Fingerprints are essential for crime dramas and look nicely distinct for each of us but what are fingerprints really for?

According to Roland Ennos, from the University of Manchester, other primates and tree-climbing koalas have fingerprints and some South American monkeys have ridged pads on their tree-gripping tails, so everyone presumed that fingerprints are there to help us hang onto objects that we grasp. This theory that fingerprints increase friction between the skin and whatever we grab onto has been around for over 100 years, but no one had directly tested the idea.

WIDNAU, Switzerland, June 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- By Guideline-Based Solution for Blood Pressure Measurement -- Microlife WatchBP(R)

According to National Stroke Association, high blood pressure is the one of the top two stroke risk factors. To measure true blood pressure is crucial and indispensable for hypertension treatment and management. From perspectives of primary care doctors and physicians, how to obtain the best estimation of a patient's true blood pressure in an accurate way is very important for their daily diagnoses and treatment outcomes. Blood pressure measurement devices for office, home, and ambulatory use indubitably play an important role in such diagnoses and treatment.

COPENHAGEN, June 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Advice to Support the 100 Million People in the EU who Suffer From Chronic Musculoskeletal Disorders

Researchers, doctors and patient groups will today call on rheumatologists and related healthcare professionals to view their patients as productive workers and make their staying in work an important outcome in managing their condition. Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) in Europe account for 50% of all work-related disorders and 60% of permanent work incapacity in the EU.

From 1958 to 1970 Wladimiro Dorigo, my father, directed a political and cultural magazine called "Questitalia" ("This italy"), where emerging political issues were discussed, and the ongoing transformations of Italian society were dissected by a distinguished group of intellectuals. I own a copy of all the 150 issues of that publication, and every once in a while I pick one of them out of the lot at random, and learn what Italy was 40 or 50 years ago.

MAARSSEN, Netherlands, June 11 /PRNewswire/ --

CPhI Japan - with ICSE Japan and P-MEC Japan - marked its seventh anniversary in April with robust numbers and positive feedback, against the most challenging business background in pharma services for several years.

Organisers UBM International Media were rewarded with good exhibitor and visitor responses to expanded and new features. The co-located events form Japan's leading ingredients, contract services and equipment exhibitions and seminars.

Bookings for next year's Japan shows were also higher than in previous years. In a further positive development for the region, this month's CPhI China exhibition has been fully sold, with visitor pre-registrations sharply ahead of 2008.

Injury of the peripheral nerves, such as the nerves in your arms, is common and often results in a loss of function or sensation.  Although these nerves have the capacity to regenerate and reconnect, recovery is often limited to short distances and outcomes remain relatively poor.  

With school budgets already sub-par, and the purse strings futher tightened in this current economic state, teachers have to find ways to do more with less. One suggestion, if I may, is to combine chemistry and history. Checking off the list of U.S. presidents while also teaching children about the periodic table is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, and who knows, it may even help retention of each subject.

(I use U.S. presidents as one example; you could easily apply the venerable Table to a whole host of subjects.) 

Let's start easy.

The idea of the “selfish gene” was intended to shift focus from the organism to the gene to provide a different perspective on natural selection. It was been described as a metaphor, or simply a semantic issue. However, without precision in our use of such words, we risk creating assumptions and assigning values where none exist. This is the same problem that occurs in describing animal behavior when one anthropomorphizes.

“The key question, as we shall see, is how natural selection can produce selfish genes that prescribe unselfishness.”

Bert Hölldobler and Edward.O.Wilson, The Ants

EXTON, Pennsylvania, June 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Registration Now Open for Series That Runs June Through November

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that registration is now open at www.Bentley.com/BeConnected for its innovative Be Connected online seminar series. Be Connected gives architects, engineers, builders, geospatial professionals, and owner-operators a chance to learn about applying information modeling from some of the world's leading infrastructure practitioners -- free of charge, in both live and OnDemand formats. The series, which takes the place of this year's Be Conference, begins June 23.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090611/PH30770LOGO )

AMSTERDAM, June 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Virtual Environment Brings Renowned Organic Chemists Live From Paris to Your Desk Top

Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced that it will host the Tetrahedron Virtual Conference (http://www.tetrahedron-symposium.elsevier.com) - a real-time virtual platform offering low cost online access to the high quality content to be presented at the Tenth Tetrahedron Symposium in Paris, France, 24-26 June 2009.