RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, North Carolina, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

Quintiles Transnational Corp. today announced the appointment of Oren Cohen, M.D. as Senior Vice President, Clinical Research Strategies.

Most recently, Cohen held the position of Chief Medical and Scientific Officer. In his new role, Cohen will be responsible for evaluating and implementing new clinical research strategies, part of the company's "shape the future" objective. He also will continue to serve as Managing Director of Quintiles Public Health and Government Services.

There is continual debate taking place over whether organisms are the result of intelligent design or evolution. The proponents of intelligent design believe that chance and selection are too casual and slow to allow complex new properties to arise. In particular, they argue that the intermediate steps in shuffling the genes to make something new are likely to scramble the existing system and be bad for the organism, e.g., "half an eye is bad for you."

A study directed by Mark Isalan, leader of the group Gene Network Engineering and Luis Serrano, coordinator of the research programme Systems Biology and leader of the group Design of Biological Systems from the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, says that although it may seem incredible that organisms could be able to face extreme mutation processes and gene reorganization, that is just what happens.

DUBLIN, Ireland, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- DomainsBot extensive "name spinner" Internet address search and suggestion tool now includes .mobi domains

dotMobi, the consortium behind .mobi -- the only Internet address created specifically for mobile phones -- today announced that DomainsBot, the leading domain name suggestion and search engine company, will now include .mobi in their domain name search and suggestion tool, used by the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers, including GoDaddy, Tucows and Register.com.

EXTON, Pennsylvania, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- Upon Marketing Authorization Orphan Status Would Provide for Ten Years of Market Exclusivity in the European Union for Both Investigational Treatments

Morphotek(R), Inc., a subsidiary of Eisai Corporation of North America, announced today that the European Commission has granted orphan drug status to the monoclonal antibodies - farletuzumab (also known as MORAb-003) for the treatment of ovarian cancer and MORAb-009 for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

SHELTON, Connecticut, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- Expanded and more dynamic reporting for all audiences

Computershare Limited (ASX: CPU) announced today the release of the Global Entity Management System application, version 6.1 (GEMS v6.1). This is the first version of the application to be released through Computershare Governance Services, a business unit that was formed by combining the acquisition of the Datacare Software Group with Computershare's World Records business.

A key feature of GEMS v6.1 is the addition of the advanced reporting module. Using a "drag and drop" approach, the module allows administrators to produce and format reports from information in customized fields, as well as from the standard fields.

DENVER, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

Altira Group LLC -- the pioneer and leader in venture capital and private equity funding for energy technology companies -- announced today an investment in Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. (HPG), of Santa Fe, New Mexico. HPG is developing a new type of small, self-contained, transportable nuclear power reactor to produce heat, steam and electricity for a variety of commercial applications that require reliable power independent of the common grid.

Altira's investment in HPG was made out of the recently closed Altira Technology Fund V -- a US$176 Million fund focused on venture capital for energy technologies.

A new study shows that wetland regions emitted significantly less methane during glacial times while methane emissions by forest fire activity remained surprisingly constant from glacial to interglacial times.

Using novel isotopic studies, scientists from the European Project for Ice Coring In Antarctica (EPICA) say this identifies the most important processes responsible for changes in natural methane concentrations over the transition from the last ice age into our warm period.

Ice cores are essential for climate research because they represent the only archive which allows direct measurements of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas concentrations in the past.

CALGARY, Canada, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Oncolytics Biotech Inc. ("Oncolytics") (TSX:ONC, NASDAQ:ONCY) announced today that Prof. Alan Melcher and his research group at St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, U.K. published the results of their work in the April 10 online issue of Gene Therapy. The paper is entitled "Inflammatory Tumour Cell Killing by Oncolytic Reovirus for the Treatment of Melanoma."

The investigators showed that reovirus effectively kills and replicates in both human melanoma cell lines and freshly resected tumour. They demonstrated that reovirus melanoma killing is more potent than, and distinct from, chemotherapy or radiotherapy-induced cell death. They concluded that reovirus is suitable for clinical testing in melanoma.

LONDON, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Computershare (ASX:CPU) and Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) are delighted to announce that Shell has been awarded the 'Best Use of Technology' accolade for its ambitious and ground breaking global tax calculator at the 7th annual Global Equity Organization Awards.

Taking place in San Francisco this year, the awards recognise innovation and achievement in the share plan industry, focusing specifically on how technology is used to develop appropriate and comprehensive technological solutions to share plan administration, communication, and internal project management.

GENEVA, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck Serono and its US affiliate EMD Serono, Inc., both part of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, announced today a planned expansion of EMD Serono's US presence with an anticipated investment of $50 million at its Billerica facility northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. The company anticipates that this investment will create more than 100 new jobs in Massachusetts.

The investment will support the construction of a center of excellence in discovery, creating critical mass in research with a common goal of finding new treatments for unmet medical needs.