OSLO, May 4 /PRNewswire/ --

ODS-Petrodata has recently revised its MSS Cost Index for field development projects based on a worsening outlook for the global economy, commodity prices and contractor margins.

Global field development and pipeline construction investment, not including drilling, is expected to decline by 15 percent in 2009 relative to 2008, primarily linked to a reduction in project costs. The drop in underlying activity will be a more modest 2.0 percent, linked to investments in major ongoing field development projects.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched June 2008, has certainly started its career with a (big) bang, discovering a new class of pulsars and watching flaring jets in galaxies billions of light-years away.

Now it's going after another cosmic mystery; high-energy particles in cosmic rays.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, May 4 /PRNewswire/ --

- Featuring a front-panel touchpad for fast, easy set-up, Patton's Model 3231 extends Industrial Ethernet connections up to 9.4 kilometers (5.84 miles) in rugged environments

Patton -- the leader in business and carrier-class network access, connectivity, VoIP and triple-play equipment -- announces the ruggedized Model 3231 Managed SHDSL Modem for industrial automation and harsh environments.

The Model 3231 reduces the cost of installation, configuration, monitoring and control with password-protected local and remote management options that enable the device to work with any existing network management policy.

The description of compounds and interactions between atoms is one of the basic objectives of chemistry. Admittedly, chemical bonding models, which describe these properties very well, already exist. However, any deviation from the normal factors may lead to improving the models further. Chemists with Professor Thomas M. Klapötke at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München have now analyzed a molecule, which has an extremely short bond length.

Increased social stress in childhood and young adulthood has a direct link to later increased dating violence, and that young social stress is impacted by things like unemployment and economic worries, according to Murray Straus, professor of sociology and co-director of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory.  The research, based on a 32-nation study,  was presented at the conference on “War, Terrorism, and Social Stress: Impacts on Crime and the Criminal Justice System” at the Institute of Criminology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Monday, May 4, 2009.

He studied 14,252 university students from 68 universities in 32 nations in an International Dating Violence Study.

'Drought-proofing' Australia's urban regions by installing large domestic water tanks may enable the dengue mosquito Aedes aegypti to regain its foothold across the country and expand its range of possible infections, according to a new study published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 

Dr Nigel Beebe and colleagues from the University of Queensland, CSIRO Entomology, the Australian Army Malaria Institute, and the Communicable Diseases Branch of Queensland Health, Brisbane, challenge the common assumption that climate change will drive the spread of this mosquito. 

An international team of scientists has determined the structure of the chlorophyll molecules in green bacteria that are responsible for harvesting light energy. The team's results one day could be used to build artificial photosynthetic systems, such as those that convert solar energy to electrical energy.

Self-cleaning walls, counter tops, fabrics, even micro-robots that can walk on water -- all those things and more could be closer to reality because of research recently completed by scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at Japan's RIKEN institute. 

Humans have marveled for millennia at how water beads up and rolls off flowers, caterpillars and some insects, and how insects like water striders are able to walk effortlessly on water. It's a property called super hydrophobia and it's been examined seriously by scientists since at least the 1930s. 

Infants who receive the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) following the combination vaccine for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis and Haemophilus influenzae type b (DPTaP-Hib vaccine) appear to experience less pain than those who are immunized in the opposite order, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics&Adolescent Medicine, a theme issue on vaccines. 

Injections are the most painful common medical procedure conducted in childhood, according to background information in the article.

Children who were consistently victimized by peers were more likely to develop psychotic symptoms in early adolescence, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Some psychosis-like symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions are commonly experienced in childhood and even adulthood, according to background information in the article, though children with these symptoms are at increased risk of developing psychosis in adulthood.

So did bullying cause the psychosis or were the kids bullied because they had psychotic symptoms?