LONDON, December 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Weighing Primary School Children is 'a Waste of Money', as Obesity Rates Soar

Weighing and measuring children when they enter and leave primary school is a waste of public money, as it is not tackling the obesity epidemic in England, Unite the Union said today (Friday, 12 December).

Instead, Unite, the largest union in the country, is calling for the immediate employment of 2,000 more qualified school nurses in England - nearly doubling the current workforce - to monitor and give advice on the overall health of school-aged children, on issues such as teenage pregnancy, and alcohol and drug misuse.

LEEDS, England, December 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Masternaut Three X has launched the first online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system with integrated satellite resource tracking. For the first time companies can take advantage of a user-friendly real-time and totally web-based solution that enables sales and customer service personnel to provide instant feedback to customers about the whereabouts of their deliveries and mobile workers.

CALGARY, Canada, December 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Additional 18.75 Per Cent Interest of Offshore Gryphon Marin License Area

Addax Petroleum Corporation (Addax Petroleum or the Corporation) (TSX:AXC and LSE:AXC), today announced that it has acquired an additional 18.75 per cent interest in the Gryphon Marin license area bringing its total interest in the license area to 68.75 per cent, prior to third party back-in options. Addax Petroleum is the operator of the Gryphon Marin license area.

PARIS, December 12 /PRNewswire/ -- In the news release, Alcatel-Lucent: Major Strategic Transformation and Realignment of Operations issued on 12 Dec 2008 06:15 GMT, by Alcatel-Lucent NYSE:ALU over PR Newswire, we are advised by a representative of the company that the Safe Harbor Statement originally issued has been revised. Complete, corrected release follows:

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced its strategic plan to enable service providers, enterprises and end-users to take greater advantage and gain more value out of today's web environment as well as its next evolution.

Strategy

POZNAN, Poland, December 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday at the Climate summit in Poznan, the Swedish government announced that it will provide USD 500 million to help developing countries to prepare, plan for and cope with the effects of climate change. However, while the Swedish contributions are significant, they are still insufficient to meet the adaptation needs of developing countries.

This contribution, combined with earlier pledges to the World Bank and European Union, confirms the Swedish commitment to support developing countries in their efforts to address climate change and its impacts.

HAMILTON, New Zealand, December 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Khipu Systems, developer of the iCalibra software platform for NIR, today announced that it has developed a breakthrough in the area of NIR instrument standardization.

The iCalibra Standardization module allows single calibration models which provide accurate results from dispersive and FT instrument technologies simultaneously. Significantly, the standardization processes are integrated within the predictive models, so the models and standardization layers are capable of automated re-learning and enhancement.

This means that NIR instrument selection can become truly independent of existing calibration data sets.

A new paper in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that turbulence plays a critical role in creating ripe conditions for the birth of planets, a challenge to the prevailing theory of planet formation, gravitational instability. 

Using three-dimensional simulations of the dust and gas that orbits young stars, the study claims that turbulence is a significant obstacle to gravitational instability, which scientists have used since the 1970s to explain the early stage of planet formation. 

One of the moons in our solar system that scientists think has the potential to harbor life may have a far more dynamic ocean than previously thought.   If Europa is tilted on its axis even slightly as it orbits the giant planet Jupiter, then Jupiter's gravitational pull could be creating powerful waves in Europa's ocean, according to Robert Tyler, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and author of a letter on the subject in the Dec. 11 Nature. As those waves dissipate, they would give off significant heat energy. 

PARIS, December 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced its strategic plan to enable service providers, enterprises and end-users to take greater advantage and gain more value out of today's web environment as well as its next evolution.

Strategy

More than one in five women has a secret Santa Claus fantasy, according to  dating website  BeNaughty.com.  As you can guess by their URL, their subscribers probably were more inclined to fantasy about numerous holiday icons, so guard your turkeys at Thanksgiving.

Research by the site reveals that women find the chubby, bearded gift-giver very sexy indeed. More than 1,000 women were asked whether they fancied Santa Claus in the poll. 1 in 10 even wear a Santa costume themselves in the bedroom, though a beard and breasts probably says more about the men they are with than it does the women themselves.