The authors of a new book, "Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World", say lessons learned from Mother Nature help protect us from terror threats -- if governments are willing to think outside the box.

“Biological organisms have figured out millions of ways, over three and a half billion years of evolution, to keep themselves safe from a vast array of threats,” said Raphael Sagarin, a Duke University ecologist who co-edited the book with Terence Taylor, an international security expert.

“Arms races among invertebrates, intelligence gathering by the immune system and alarm calls by marmots are just a few of nature’s successful security strategies that have been tested and modified over time in response to changing threats and situations,” Sagarin said. “In our book, we look at these strategies and ask how we could apply them to our own safety.”

A unique transmissible and rapidly spreading cancer threatens the very existence of Tasmanian devils. To combat this particularly aggressive disease, a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory research team, in collaboration with 454 Lifesciences, is committing resources to sequence parts of the devil’s genome in an effort to increase the odds of saving them from extinction.

In 1996 scientists first discovered the facial tumors on Tasmanian devils. Subsequent research revealed that the cancer is transmitted from one devil to another when tumor cells are transplanted through fighting, biting, and other physical contact.

Once afflicted with the cancer, aggressive tumors begin to appear on the face and neck of the devils, restricting their ability to eat. Within approximately three months, the devils succumb to the disease and often die of starvation. The disease has decimated the devil population by nearly 90 percent in certain geographical areas of Tasmania, and officials project that within twenty years the entire species could become extinct.

NEW YORK, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

QTRAX (www.QTRAX.com), the world's first free and legal peer-to-peer music service announced that at today's V.2 Beta launch, its ground-breaking service had approximately 61,000 unique users per hour (between 7am and 1pm EST). This translates to approximately 1,464,000 unique users per day. QTRAX believes that a significant percentage of users were unable to access the site due to this massive demand and has now dramatically increased its download capacity.

NEW YORK, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

Government, business, civic and public health leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland announced the creation of aids2031, a global initiative dedicated to taking a critical look at what we need to do now in order to change the face of AIDS by 2031. The year 2031 will mark 50 years since AIDS was first reported.

According to Stefano Bertozzi, chairperson of the aids2031 steering committee and director of health economics and evaluation for the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico, the focus of aids2031 is greatly needed.

Cosmologists at the University of Illinois say ancient light absorbed by neutral hydrogen atoms could be used to test certain predictions of string theory - but they'll need a gigantic array of radio telescopes to do it, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 square kilometers.

String theory is commonly considered (and one of our Ph.D.s will likely point out the flaws in this simplified explanation) a theory in which the fundamental building blocks are tiny one-dimensional filaments. One of its many flavors is usually the leading contender for a 'theory of everything' that unifies all four fundamental forces of nature - the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity. It's not an easy thing to test.

Now these cosmologists say absorption features in the 21-centimeter spectrum of neutral hydrogen atoms could be used for such a test.

NEW YORK, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- MTV Networks Germany to advertise and promote FunkySexyCool across Germany, Switzerland and Austria on its TV and digital platforms

MTV Networks Germany (MTVN) and FunkySexyCool, the global mobile social community for 18-34 year olds, signed a cooperation agreement to promote FunkySexyCool across Germany, Switzerland and Austria on MTVN's German, Swiss and Austrian TV, web and mobile networks.

MTVN and FunkySexyCool also agreed to co-brand FunkySexyCool's service in the German-speaking territories with MTVN's popular VIVA brand. VIVA is Germany's market-leading TV channel for music and youth culture and its fields of activities expand far beyond traditional TV into various online and mobile platforms.

First results from a new NASA-funded scientific instrument at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii are helping scientists overturn long-standing assumptions about powerful explosions called novae and have produced the first unified model for a nearby nova called RS Ophiuchi.

"We were getting ready for a routine engineering run when all of a sudden the nova went off. It was very bright and easy to observe, so we took this opportunity and turned it into gold," says team member Marc Kuchner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

TEL AVIV, Israel, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

Stanford Venture Capital Holdings has announced it has committed to invest US$10 million in AquAgro Fund L.P., a venture capital fund formed to focus on Israel's innovative water, agriculture and clean-tech technology businesses.

PALM DESERT, California, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

ikordo, the free online meeting planner that organizes and schedules meetings, has an onsite meeting pod open for business at the DEMO 08 conference, being held from January 28th - 30th 2008 in Palm Desert, CA at the JW Marriott Resort and Spa. DEMO is the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. As a gold sponsor of DEMO, ikordo invites delegates to schedule their onsite and follow up meetings at the meeting pod located in the Sponsor Network Lounge. Delegates will have the opportunity to receive tips on best practices from an ikordo expert.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, January 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- Providing any-to-any multi-path switching, security, survivability, and presence/reachability, SmartNode(TM) Unified Communication Agent integrates IP-based communications with existing TDM/PSTN telephony and SIP/H.323 VoIP systems

Patton Electronics -- the leader in business and carrier-class network access, connectivity, and voice-over-IP equipment -- has announced the new Unified Communication Agent (UCA) for SmartNode(TM) VoIP Gateway-Routers.