Using a multidisciplinary mix of geometry, biological research and techniques developed to solve problems on supercomputers, scientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time how a genome is organized in three-dimensional space.

Researchers led by Cornelis Murre, a professor of biology at UC San Diego, and Steve Cutchin, senior scientist for visualization services at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), used the gene encoding the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus — responsible for generating diverse kinds of antibodies — to demonstrate the structure of the genome.

The observations, the researchers say, permit an insight into the structure of the human genome, which until now has remained elusive.

The government of Cameroon has created the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, the world’s first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s rarest kind of great ape.

“The creation of this sanctuary is the fruit of many years of work in helping to protect the world’s rarest gorilla subspecies,” said Dr. Roger Fotso, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Cameroon Program, which worked in tandem with the Cameroon Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in laying the groundwork for the sanctuary.

Classified as Critically Endangered by IUCN’s Red List, the Cross River gorilla is the rarest of the four subspecies of gorilla. The entire population numbers under 300 individuals across its entire range, which consists of 11 scattered sites in Cameroon and Nigeria.

Looking on the bright side can lead to irresponsible financial behavior, says Elizabeth Cowley from the University of Sydney. In a series of studies, Cowley examined repeated gambling in the face of loss. She finds that people often engage in too much positive thinking, selectively focusing on one win among hundreds of losses when they think back on the overall experience.

“When we want to justify engaging in an activity which could potentially be irresponsible – like gambling – we may need to distort our memory of the past to rationalize the decision,” Cowley explains. “People who have frequently spent more money than planned on gambling edit their memories of the past in order to justify gambling again.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 21 /PRNewswire/ --

WTTC Global Travel & Tourism Summit 2008 -- Travelport today announced the introduction of the Travelport Carbon Tracker, a new and advanced post-booking reporting tool designed for travel agencies and corporations to address the growing demand to measure and report carbon emissions as part of a sustainable travel programme.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20061023/NYM260LOGO )

NEW YORK, April 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Vedant Sampath Brings Software Development and Product Management Expertise

Operative, a global advertising resource management (ARM) platform provider, today announced the appointment of Vedant Sampath as Chief Technology Officer. In his new role, Vedant will lead the company's overall technology direction and drive Operative's rapid growth and industry leadership. A 20-year veteran of the software technology industry, Vedant joins Operative from Oracle Corporation where he served as Vice President of Software Development.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070926/OPERATIVELOGO )

MANCHESTER, England, April 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Photo

Quest Personal Care Products are delighted and honoured to receive the Queen's Award for Enterprise 2008.

Antony Wagman, 41, founded the Radcliffe-based disposable personal hygiene products maker Quest in 1989. The company manufactures in its joint venture Far East operations, the amazing total of 20 billion cotton buds a year . It also makes cotton wool pads, plasters, tissues and wipes selling globally to Importers, distributors and some of the world's best known names in the retail industry.

Antony says: "Quest was only a concept 20 years ago and over the years, the concept became reality and the reality grew!"

A genetic variation protects some people with heart failure, enabling them to live longer than expected, according to a research team led by investigators at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The researchers found that the genetic variation acts just like beta-blockers, a class of drugs used to treat chronic heart failure.

In the study, the researchers found that black heart failure patients with the genetic variation had a natural protection against death and the need for a heart transplant that is the same as the protection provided by beta-blocker therapy.

A close binary system of two candidate black holes in the quasar OJ 287 has shown Einstein some physics love. A central black hole, with a mass equal to 18 billion times that of the Sun, is orbited by a smaller one, and the interaction of the system with its surroundings produces brightness changes that allow astronomers to study the evolution of the orbit.

This evolution is dominated by one of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity: the emission of gravitational waves.

Astronomers believe that very massive black holes lurk at the centers of most galaxies but, as in the case of our own Galaxy, they often remain silent and are difficult to detect. In other cases where the black holes are surrounded by disks of material that fall onto them (accretion disks), the infalling material is heated and emits huge quantities of radiation: the active nucleus of a galaxy can appear, then, as a quasar.

A 240 million year-old Ichthyosauria specimen went on display at Tromsø University Museum in northern Norway. The Botneheia ichthyosaur, presumably a new species, was the largest predator of its day.

A team from the University of Tromsø, the Norwegian Polar Institute, and the University of Tübingen discovered the exceptionally large specimen at Svalbard, Norway. The preparation and exhibition of the fossil was sponsored by the Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro.

What species is it?

The fossil from the Botneheia Formation at Sauriedalen, Svalbard belongs to the Ichthyosauria (meaning ”fish-lizards”), a large group of marine reptiles that roamed the oceans for most of the Mesozoic. It is among the more “primitive” and early ichthyosaurs of the Triassic that the new find from Svalbard finds its place.
As no large ichthyosaurs have so far been described from the Middle Triassic of Svalbard, there is a high probability that one is dealing with a genus and species new to science.

WASHINGTON, April 19 /PRNewswire/ --

April 21 Media Conference Call

On April 21, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and Grammy award-winning artist Shakira will participate in a media conference call to discuss the state of global education and out-of-school children in developing countries. This corresponds with the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) Action Week that will take place from April 21-27, 2008. Brown, Zoellick, and Shakira will join with GCE's coalition in 120 countries to call on government leaders to support a basic education for all children, including the 72 million young children and 226 million older youths who are out of school around the world.