LONDON, July 4 /PRNewswire/ --

- TrustedPlaces and BView Partner to Offer Online Marketing Solutions for Local Businesses

Scientists have long anguished over how little is known about Mercury, the innermost of the four terrestrial planetary bodies in our solar system. The gaps in knowledge covered such basic information as the planet's geology, how it was formed and evolved and whether its interior was still active.

In 1975, the Mariner 10 spacecraft returned intriguing images that showed smooth plains covering large swaths of Mercury's surface. But scientists could not determine whether the plains had been created by volcanic activity or by material ejected from below the surface when objects had collided into it. Thus, they could not reach a consensus over Mercury's geologic past.

Commercial flower and plant growers know all too well that invasive, ubiquitous weeds cause trouble by lowering the value and deterring healthy growth of potted ornamental plants. To control weeds, many commercial nursery owners resort to the expensive practice of paying workers to hand-weed containers. Some growers use herbicides, but efficacy of herbicides is questionable on the wide range of plant species produced in nurseries, and many herbicides are not registered for use in greenhouses.

Enter "dried distillers grains with solubles", or DDGS. DDGS, a byproduct of converting corn to fuel ethanol, is typically used as livestock feed. Rick A. Boydston, Harold P. Collins, and Steve Vaughn, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, undertook a research study on the use of DDGS as a weed deterrent on potted ornamentals. The study results, published in the February 2008 issue of HortScience, evaluated the use of DDGS as a soil amendment to suppress weeds in container-grown ornamentals.

'Hello, climate? We're from the government and we're here to help you.'

A group of former senior federal officials have called for the establishment of an independent Earth Systems Science Agency (ESSA) that would be created by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) into something even larger.

Charles Kennel, former Associate Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Director of Mission to Planet Earth, says, "Earth system science focuses on understanding current processes and predicting changes that will take place over the next hundred years. It merges earth, atmospheric, and ocean science into a panorama of the earth system as it is today and as it will be tomorrow. We need it to predict climate change and its impacts, and to help us mitigate and adapt to other changes that have the potential to affect our quality of life and economic well-being."

A normal-sized, black coffee cup with a handle, of course, sitting in the middle of a wooden picnic table, is filled with hazelnut coffee. While one many view this simply as a cup on a table, it is possible that another will view the cup as a metaphor for the fresh beginning of a new day. In the cyber world, Kine Dorum, a PhD Student at the University of Leicester, in Great Britain, analyzes the way humans use images from past experiences as a guide when using the computer rather then directly associating computer images to real-life. Dorum hopes to develop a set of common attributes in predicting individuals’ behaviors and performances while on the computer through her notion that the universe on screen is similar to perceptions of “real life” based on past experiences.

LSU associate professor of sociology Troy C. Blanchard recently found that a community's religious environment – the type of religious congregations within a locale – affects mortality rates, often in a positive manner. These results were published in the June issue of Social Forces.

This result, he says, is particularly timely in the context of presidential candidate Barack Obama's recent call for expanding the roles of such religious groups.

Along with co-author John Bartkowski from the University of Texas at San Antonio and other researchers from the University of West Georgia and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Blanchard found that people live longer in areas with a large number of Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. He offers two key reasons for these findings.

It is well known that a powerful perceptual experience can change the way a person sees things later. If you are startled to discover a mouse in your kitchen, you may suddenly you see mice in every dark corner - or at least think you do. Is it possible that imagining something, just once, might also change how you perceive things?

To test how imagery affects perception, the researchers had subjects imagine simple patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes, which are strongly represented in the primary visual areas of the brain. They then presented a green horizontal grated pattern to one eye and a red vertical grated pattern to the other to induce what is called binocular rivalry.

During binocular rivalry, an individual will often alternately perceive each stimulus, with the images appearing to switch back and forth before their eyes. The subjects generally reported they had seen the image they had been imagining, proving the researcher's hypothesis that imagery would influence the binocular rivalry battle.

FALLS CHURCH, Virginia, July 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- Agreement Adds Support for New U.S. Commercial Nuclear Facility

CSC (NYSE: CSC) announced today that it has signed a new information technology (IT) outsourcing contract with Urenco, a leading supplier of enriched uranium to nuclear power utilities worldwide. The new six-year agreement, which is valued at US$22 million (10.9 million pounds sterling), follows a seven-year, 23 million pounds sterling IT outsourcing contract Urenco awarded to CSC in March 2007.

LONDON, July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- In the news release, "Union Outrage at Bridlington Ward Closure" issued on 3 Jul 2008 15:16 GMT, by Unite the Union over PR Newswire, we are advised by a representative of the company that the third paragraph of this release has been amended. "DVT" has been changed to read "D&V (diarrhoea and vomiting)" as originally issued inadvertently. Complete, corrected release follows:

Unite, the UK's largest union, has expressed outrage and concern at the sudden and unexpected closure today of 28 bed acute Kent Ward at Bridlington Hospital.