LONDON, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A pilot scheme for Personal Budgets for people with long term conditions has been discussed in the media today (Sunday) after the Department of Health confirmed it was considering the plan.

Also known as Individual Budgets, the scheme could mean people with multiple sclerosis (MS) will be able to plan what health care they receive and when they receive it.

The Government is already trialling Personal Budgets in social care and this will extend the scheme into the NHS.

MS Society chief executive, Simon Gillespie, said: "This is an opportunity to provide people with MS with the effective care they need when they need it and in the most appropriate way.

Torn posters, tape and tomato skins may seem like strange research topics for physicists and applied mathematicians, but it's perfectly normal for a team of researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, the Universidad de Santiago, Chile, and MIT.

Such real-world applications are not only fun to study, but “we can really learn things that will be useful for industry and help us understand the everyday world around us. It is also a great way to motivate students to be interested in science,” says Pedro Reis, one of the authors of the paper and an applied mathematics instructor at MIT.

So they have tackled the issue of why wallpaper never comes off the way you want it. “You want to redecorate your bedroom, so you yank down the wallpaper. You wish that the flap would tear all the way down to the floor, but it comes together in a triangle and you have to start all over again,” said

3-D images are very useful in medicine and now they're gaining ground in physics. Researchers from Hahn-Meitner-Institute (HMI) and the University of Applied Science in Berlin have succeeded in creating a direct, three-dimensional visualization of magnetic fields inside solid, non-transparent materials for the first time.

This could prove invaluable because to understand high temperature superconductivity it is vital to understand how magnetic flux lines are distributed and how these flux lines can be established in materials. With this new experimental setup, it is now possible to visualize magnetic domains in magnetic crystals three-dimensionally.

The researchers in the imaging group used neutrons, subatomic particles that have zero net charge, but do have a magnetic moment, making them ideal for investigating magnetic phenomena in magnetic materials.

While space science has long been excited about advancements in the millimeter-wavelength/terahertz spectra, its potential in biology has been largely untapped. However, since THz radiation primarily excites vibrational modes present in water, imaging of soft tissues could also show a lot of improvement.

Terahertz systems are currently used to do things like examine hidden layers under old artwork and stop terrorists by seeing through clothes but they could be used in bio-technology to find genetic mutations without using invasive or toxic fluorescent dyes.

An important step toward that is development of handheld terahertz devices that could replace the bulky, expensive systems available now. Researchers at the the Universities of Leeds and Harvard say a quantum cascade laser is the way to go for small and portable terahertz technology.

CHICAGO, March 29 /PRNewswire/ --

- Reductions seen as soon as three days and out to 450 days in patients who received either bare metal or drug-eluting stents

The investigational antiplatelet drug prasugrel plus aspirin produced a marked and highly statistically significant reduction in the risk of coronary stent thrombosis (ST) - a major concern for physicians and patients with potentially fatal consequences - in patients who received a stent as compared to standard therapy with clopidogrel (Plavix(R)) plus aspirin (1.13 percent vs. 2.35 percent, p<0.0001), according to a stent analysis from the head-to-head TRITON-TIMI 38 trial.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electrical currents without any loss below a certain temperature. Normally, high magnetic fields destroy superconductivity, turning the material into a normal conductor.

Novel experiments on organic superconductors revealed a new superconducting phase between the normal conducting and the superconducting state.

Prof. Peter Fulde from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden and Prof. Richard Ferrell predicted the existence of this special superconducting state in 1964, characterized by a spatial modulation of the superconductivity. At about the same time, two further researchers independently predicted the same phase. Therefore, the state is called Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state.

CALGARY, Canada, March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- First Calgary Petroleums Ltd. ("FCP", "the Company") today announced that ISS/RiskMetrics and Glass Lewis, two leading independent proxy advisory firms, have rejected dissident shareholder proposals to oust Richard Anderson, President and CEO of First Calgary Petroleums. Furthermore, both advisory firms have supported the FCP slate of directors.

PRINCETON, New Jersey, March 28 /PRNewswire/ --

Pharmasset, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRUS) received a second loan of US$10 million from Horizon Technology Finance under an existing working capital loan agreement that was entered into during September 2007. Pharmasset received the first loan of US$10 million in October 2007 and, at its option, may receive a third loan of US$10 million by November 30, 2008, provided certain conditions are satisfied.

NEW YORK and AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, March 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- Increased Releases and Higher Sales Attributed To Doubling Net Revenues

On March 26, 2008, surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center removed an inflamed appendix through a patient’s vagina, a first in the United States.

Following the 50-minute procedure, the patient, Diana Schlamadinger, reported only minor discomfort. Removal of diseased organs through the body’s natural openings offers patients a rapid recovery, minimal pain, and no scarring. Key to these surgical clinical trials is collaboration with medical device companies to develop new minimally-invasive tools.

The procedure, called Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES), involves passing surgical instruments through a natural orifice, such as the mouth or vagina, to remove a diseased organ such as an appendix or gallbladder. Only one incision is made through the belly button for the purpose of inserting a two millimeter camera into the abdominal cavity so the surgeons can safely access the surgical site.