TOKYO, June 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- NEC Strengthens Global Software Business Helping Communications Service Providers Accelerate Business Transformation

NEC Corporation (NEC) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire NetCracker Technology Corp. (NetCracker), a US based software and solutions company with an industry leading track record of delivering Operations Support Systems (OSS) transformation to communications service providers across the globe. This strategic acquisition underscores NEC's long standing commitment to offer innovative solutions to the communications industry, enabling them to transform their business, and rapidly deploy new infrastructure and services.

Due to concerns about greenhouse gases, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) have become the rage - even to a point where common sense has taken a holiday, namely when environmental sites fall back on Big Tobacco language like 'unlikely to hurt you' and 'no conclusive evidence' instead of realistically telling you that you should call in a Haz-Mat team if one breaks.

Introduced in the United States in 1979, they reached nearly 300 million last year. Experts expect that figure to rise steeply by 2012, when a federal law requiring energy-efficient lighting goes into effect.

There's just one catch to this energy conservation story: Each CFL contains a small amount (3 to 5 milligrams) of mercury, a neurotoxin that can be released as vapor when a bulb is broken. The gas can pose a minor risk to certain groups, such as infants, small children and pregnant women. Mercury can escape from plastic bags containing discarded bulbs, which makes long-term storage, disposal or recycling tricky.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined that starvation blocks the effects of growth hormone via a mechanism that may have implications in treating diabetes and extending life span.

Using genetically altered mice, the researchers found that during fasting, the actions of growth hormone are blocked by a fat-burning hormone called FGF21.

Growth hormone has many functions in the growth and reproduction of cells, such as controlling the length of developing arm and leg bones in children.

A new publication answers centuries' old questions regarding the mechanism and function of humor, identifying the reason humor is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of homo sapiens and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants.

Previous theories have only ever applied to a small proportion of all instances of humor, many of them stipulating necessary content or social conditions either in the humor itself or around the individual experiencing it. But this doesn't explain why an individual can laugh at something when no one else around them does, nor why two people can laugh at the same stimulus for different reasons.

Want to really store carbon? Get old ... and underwater. Researchers at the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory in the Department of Forestry discovered that trees submerged in freshwater aquatic systems store carbon for thousands of years, a significantly longer period of time than in a forest, thus keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

The team studied trees in northern Missouri, a geographically unique area with a high level of riparian forests (forests that have natural water flowing through them). They discovered submerged oak trees that were as old as 14,000 years, potentially some of the oldest discovered in the world. This carbon storage process is not just ancient; it continues even today as additional trees become submerged, according to Guyette.

"If a tree is submerged in water, its carbon will be stored for an average of 2,000 years," said Richard Guyette, director of the MU Tree Ring Lab and research associate professor of forestry in the School of Natural Resources in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. "If a tree falls in a forest, that number is reduced to an average of 20 years, and in firewood, the carbon is only stored for one year."

Engineers working in optical communications bear more than a passing resemblance to dreamers chasing rainbows.

They may not wish literally to capture all the colors of the spectrum, but they do seek to control the rate at which light from across the spectrum moves through optical circuits.

This pursuit is daunting when those circuits contain dimensions measured in nanometers.

At the nanoscale, says Qiaoqiang Gan, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., engineers hoping to integrate optical structures with electronic chips face a dilemma.

LIMA, Peru, June 27 /PRNewswire/ --

PERU LNG announced today that they have secured US$2.25 Billion in loans from third party credit agencies to finance the construction of the PERU LNG project. The PERU LNG project is the largest direct foreign investment in Peru's history, with a total project cost estimated at US$3.8 Billion including financing costs.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080626/LATH535-a) (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080626/LATH535-b)

PERU LNG is a partnership between Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, Texas (Project Leader, 50%), SK Energy of South Korea (20%), Spain's Repsol YPF (20%) and Marubeni of Japan (10%).

LONDON, June 27 /PRNewswire/ --

A new clinic has opened in London today (Friday 27 June 2008), offering for the first time, a surgical approach to migraine. The Migraine Surgery Centre brings hope to the six million people in the UK who suffer from migraine attacks.

Migraine is a complex condition with a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from painful headache to disturbed vision. Attacks can last anywhere between four to 72 hours(1), during which time sufferers often have no choice but to lie still in a darkened room.

EDMONTON, Canada, June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Edmonton will be home to the world's first industrial scale facility to produce biofuels from municipal solid waste. The City has signed a 25-year agreement with GreenField Ethanol, Canada's largest ethanol producer and Enerkem, a leading biofuels technology company.

The CDN$70 million biofuels facility will initially produce 36 million litres of biofuels per year and reduce Alberta's carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint by more than 6 million tonnes over the next 25 years - the equivalent of removing 12,000 cars off the road every year.

LONDON, June 26 /PRNewswire/ --

Partners, Directors and Senior Architects are set to gather at Building's Sustainable Non-Dwellings Conference on 10th July 2008 in London, to hear how the construction industry could be affected by the 2019 zero-carbon targets for non-domestic buildings.

"This is the first public event to try and grapple with an enormous challenge for the industry. To be able to design build and operate zero carbon offices, schools and hospitals is a massive task, one that requires fresh ideas, initiative and co-operation. This conference will be important for the industry in making the first step," quotes Phil Clark, Editorial Director of Sustainability for Building Magazine.