In Northern Vietnam, neonatal mortality is almost four times higher than the official figure according to a report published today in the open access journal BMC International Health and Human Rights. This under-reporting could mean neonatal healthcare in the country is massively under-funded.

Lars-Ake Persson, Mats Målqvist and colleagues at Uppsala University, along with researchers at Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, are working with the Uong Bi General Hospital, in Quang Ninh, and the Vietnamese Ministry of Health, in Hanoi, on the question of unreported births and neonatal deaths.

An international collaboration is creating an innovative "freely-accessible, high resolution" digital interactive archive of William Shakespeare's pre-1641 quartos; living artifacts that tell the story of how Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, to name just a few, first circulated.

The University of Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) Director Neil Fraistat says, "The quartos themselves offer crucial evidence about what actually was performed" by Shakespeare's troupe.

Because Shakespeare himself did not authorize a printed edition of his plays, what was published at the time represented what others heard, memorized or took from the marked-up "foul papers" of a particular production.

DALLAS, March 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Company Teams With Menlo Worldwide, CSC and Olgoonik Logistics to Deliver Multi-Party 21st Century Demand-Driven Transportation Solution

One Network Enterprises, a pioneer in multi-enterprise and multi-party sense-and-respond solutions, announced that it has been selected to provide its Demand-Driven Transportation solution for the Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative (DTCI). One Network is deploying an integrated suite of on-demand software applications and services for the initiative under a subcontract with DTCI's prime contractor and program manager, Menlo Worldwide Government Services.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071024/LAW154LOGO)

Of the almost 25,000 human genes science that have been identified, half are believed to be silent at any particular time and activated only when needed.

Perhaps not, says Andre Ptitsyn, of the Center for Bioinfomatics at Colorado State University. He says he has discovered that current tools cannot measure extraordinarily low levels of gene expression signals so genes may not be turned off, but instead have undetected functioning.

"Genes that we have believed to be silent are actually whispering," said Ptitsyn, who a applied a common physics principle to find oscillating patterns of gene expression in genes previously thought to be shut off.

An epidemiological study in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics by H.U. Wittchen and collaborators at the University of Dresden examined the 10-year natural course of panic attacks (PA), panic disorder (PD) and agoraphobia (AG) in the first three decades of life, their stability and their reciprocal transitions.

DSM-IV syndromes were assessed via Composite International Diagnostic Interview - Munich version in a 10-year prospective-longitudinal community study of 3,021 subjects aged 14-24 years at baseline. At the end of the study, incidence patterns for PA (9.4%), PD (with and without AG: 3.4%) and AG (5.3%) revealed differences in age of onset, incidence risk and gender differentiation.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, North Carolina, March 26 /PRNewswire/ --

- Agreement with Medca Japan extends network of CAP-certified laboratories

Quintiles Transnational Corp. today announced an agreement with Medca Japan to provide central laboratory services, further extending the Quintiles global network of laboratories certified by the College of American Pathologists (CAP).

Quintiles will have its own staff at the CAP-certified Medca Japan laboratory in Saitama, a city in the Greater Tokyo area. The lab will support clinical trials in Japan.

OAK PARK, Michigan, March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Azure Dynamics Corporation (TSX: AZD & LSE: ADC) ("Azure" or the "Company") a leading developer of hybrid electric and electric powertrains for commercial vehicles, today announced its financial results for the three and twelve-month periods ended December 31, 2007. The Company also provided an update on corporate and product development activities in the year.

WASHINGTON, March 26 /PRNewswire/ --

Academic health center leaders from around the world will be taking a Voyage of Discovery addressing the visions, growth, and strategic partnerships of academic health centers in a global environment and speaking to vital infrastructure issues that impact education, research, and patient care innovations at the 2008 International Forum of the Association of Academic Health Centers.

WHO: THE NEED TO GO GLOBAL: Victor J. Dzau, MD, Chancellor for Health Affairs, Duke University, and President and CEO, Duke University Health System

The "Large Molecule Heimat" is a very dense, hot gas clump within the star forming region Sagittarius B2. In this source of only 0,3 light-year diameter, which is heated by a deeply embedded newly formed star, most of the interstellar molecules known to date have been found, including the most complex ones such as ethyl alcohol, formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, glycol aldehyde (a basic sugar), and ethylene glycol.

Starting from 1965, more than 140 molecular species have been detected in space, in interstellar clouds as well as in circumstellar envelopes. A large fraction of these molecules is organic or carbon-based. A lot of attention is given to the quest for so-called "bio"-molecules, especially interstellar amino acids. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and therefore key ingredients for the origin of life, have been found in meteorites on Earth, but not yet in interstellar space.

Astrophysicists say may be one step closer to understanding how new planets form. A circumstellar disk with telltale signs of planet formation around the star AB Aurigae could be a new planet in the works.

Ben R. Oppenheimer, assistant curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Astrophysics, and colleagues have used the Lyot Project coronograph attached to a U.S. Air Force telescope on Maui, Hawaii, to construct an image of material that seems to be coalescing into a body from the gas and dust cloud surrounding AB Aurigae, a well-studied star.

The body is either a planet or a brown dwarf - something with mass between a star or a planet. Brown dwarfs have been found orbiting stars since a team that included Oppenheimer first discovered one in 1995.