The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.

“It’s a fantastic moment,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

Starting up a major new particle accelerator takes much more than flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony, timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, and beams finer than a human hair have to be brought into head-on collision.

CHARENTON-LE-PONT, France, September 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Essilor is pursuing its growth strategy in Eastern Europe's markets by acquiring a majority stake in Omega Optix. The company is a leading operator in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where its prescription laboratories generate total revenue of more than EUR10 million.

In addition to ensuring the long-term viability of a recognized market player, the acquisition will enable Essilor to offer local customers an alternative lineup of products and services, thereby driving fast growth in a rapidly developing market.

The current Omega Optix management team will remain in place and continue to operate the company independently.

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MELBOURNE, Australia, September 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- World's Richest Photographic Competition Proudly Supported and Sponsored by "Polaroid" "The Victorian Government" and "Clean Ocean"

The International Aperture Awards on-line photography competition is open to ALL professional and aspiring photographers, photographic students and anyone with a hidden gift for capturing a winning photograph. Enter up to four images from the following categories for your chance to win - People and Portrait; Sport; Landscape; Science and Nature; Commercial/Advertising; Abstract/Illustrative; Photojournalism/Press.

BASEL, Switzerland, September 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- 100+ Abstracts on Roche Medicines Feature at This Congress

More than 100 Roche abstracts have been accepted for the biggest cancer congress in Europe, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), which opens in Stockholm on Friday (12th September). The Roche abstracts include the latest data on Avastin (bevacizumab), Herceptin (trastuzumab), Tarceva (erlotinib), Xeloda (capecitabine) and the new breast cancer drug, pertuzumab, which is currently in phase III trials. Roche's pipeline drug IGF-1R, which is in early development, will also feature.

Key presentations include:

Researchers studying a critical stage of pregnancy – implantation of the embryo in the uterus – have found a protein that is vital to the growth of new blood vessels that sustain the embryo. Without this protein, which is produced in higher quantities in the presence of estrogen, the embryo is unlikely to survive.

This is the first study to detail the mechanism by which the steroid hormone estrogen spurs cell differentiation and blood-vessel growth in the uterus during pregnancy, the researchers report.

The findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, Emory University, Baylor College of Medicine and New York University, appear in the journal Development.

The precise timing of the origin of life on Earth and the changes in life during the past 4.5 billion years has been a subject of great controversy for the past century.

The principal indicator of the amount of organic carbon produced by biological activity traditionally used is the ratio of the less abundant isotope of carbon, 13C, to the more abundant isotope, 12C. As plants preferentially incorporate 12C, during periods of high production of organic material the 13C/12C ratio of carbonate material becomes elevated.

Using this principle, the history of organic material has been interpreted by geologists using the 13C/12C ratio of carbonates and organics, wherever these materials can be sampled and dated.

GRB 080319B was so intense that, despite happening halfway across the Universe, it could have been seen briefly with the unaided eye. In a Nature paper, Judith Racusin of Penn State University, and a team of 92 co-authors report observations across the electromagnetic spectrum that began 30 minutes before the explosion and followed it for months afterwards.

"We conclude that the burst's extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material almost directly towards Earth at almost the speed of light - the difference is only 1 part in 20 000," says Guido Chincarini, a member of the team.

Gamma-ray bursts are the Universe's most luminous explosions. Most occur when massive stars run out of fuel. As a star collapses, it creates a black hole or neutron star that, through processes not fully understood, drives powerful gas jets outward. As the jets shoot into space, they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it, thereby generating bright afterglows.

New nanotechnology paints for walls, ceilings, and surfaces could be used to kill hospital superbugs when fluorescent lights are switched on, said scientists today at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin.

The new paints contain tiny particles of titanium dioxide, which is the dazzling white compound often used as a brightener in commercial paints. It will also be familiar to tennis fans as the powder used for the white lines to mark out the courts at Wimbledon.

Retail medical clinics located in pharmacies and other stores primarily attract both insured and uninsured patients who are seeking help for a small group of easy-to-treat illnesses or preventive care but do not otherwise have a regular health care provider, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Retail medical clinics are typically located in drug stores and other large retail chain stores, such as Target and Wal-Mart, rather than in medical facilities. There are now almost 1,000 retail clinics in the United States and it is estimated there may be 6,000 by 2011.

The RAND Health study is the first to examine the types of patients who use the retail clinics and the health care services delivered by the clinics, which are growing in number and popularity. The findings are published in the September/October of the journal Health Affairs.

More than 1,500 audiocassette tapes taken in 2001 from Osama bin Laden's former residential compound in Qandahar, Afghanistan, are yielding new insights into the radical Islamic militant leader's intellectual development in the years leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Flagg Miller, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis, and the first academic researcher to study the tapes, will present his preliminary observations in a lecture at the Center of Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin on Sept. 18. The first research paper stemming from Miller's study of the tapes will appear in the October issue of the journal Language & Communication.