"March Madness", the annual tournament in college basketball to determine the national champion, impacts more than just sports fans. College basketball teams that make this year’s cut for the 'Sweet 16' may boost the number of students applying to their schools by as much as 3 percent next year, while the winner of the tournament, may see a 7 percent to 8 percent jump in applications, according to a new study.

Jaren Pope, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at Virginia Tech and his brother Devin Pope, an assistant professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, have co-authored a paper in Southern Economic Journal that finds a link between college sports success and college admissions around the country.

SAN JOSE, California, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI), a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced the availability of high-bandwidth, low-latency InfiniBand (IB) connectivity solutions for its SuperBlade(TM) and high-performance computing (HPC) product lines. Both the Supermicro AOC-UINF-M2 Universal I/O (UIO) network adapters and SuperBlade integrated switch and Mezzanine IB solutions are based on Mellanox(R) Technologies, Ltd. (Nasdaq: MLNX; TASE: MLNX) controllers for industry-leading 20Gb/s InfiniBand I/O performance.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080320/AQTH019)

WASHINGTON, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

- Online Competition Galvanizes Innovations

Global Water Challenge (GWC) and Ashoka's Changemakers invite everyone to join "Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis," an online competition to discover and support entrepreneurs with groundbreaking approaches to the world's water and sanitation challenges. Also today, director of Oscar-winning films, Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur launches a blog on Changemakers.net inspired by his latest film, Paani ("Water"), which will examine the daily struggle for water in the slums of Mumbai.

SANTA CLARA, California, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

Finesse Solutions, LLC, a manufacturer of measurement and control solutions for life sciences process applications, is pleased to announce the opening of their new E-Commerce Store effective March 25th. Finesse will be introducing this new E-Store at Interphex in Philadelphia. The new E-Store has been added to the Finesse web site (http://www.finesse.com) so that customers can harness the power of the web and purchase sensors and other accessories on-line.

MACCLESFIELD, England, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Photo

Computing teacher Kirstin Bailey (36), of Rushton Spencer, Macclesfield has designed a website that aims to make a difference for charities. At a pound per pixel, the millionpound-ad at http://www.millionpound-ad.co.uk lets people and businesses advertise their products or services through a GBP100 pound square of 100 pixels on the main page with a link to their own website.

A keen athlete, Kirstin studied at Huddersfield Uni and met fellow athlete John Taylor while fell running. He died suddenly a few years ago from cardiomyopathy and Kirstin set up the registered charity, The John Taylor Foundation, to financially help young athletes and also raise awareness of Cardiomyopathy.

HAIFA, Israel, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

- Annual net Income NIS 693 Million, up 29% Over 2006

- Company to Distribute NIS 240 Million Dividend, in Addition to NIS 280 Million Distributed in October 2007

- Annual Refining Margin 57% Higher Than Regional Benchmark; Annual EBITDA up 21% Over 2006

- Successfully Completed $474 Million Bond Issue in December 2007 to Finance Strategic Plan

Oil Refineries Ltd. (TASE: ORL) ("Oil Refineries" or the "Company") announced today its financial results for three and twelve-month periods ending December 31, 2007.

READING, England, March 20 /PRNewswire/ --

- Clean Technology Bringing Daylight Indoors

Semplice Energy Limited, a leading provider of CleanTech energy solutions to reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions, today announced an exclusive agreement with Enosayv, provider of the latest energy efficient luminaires, to add their award winning lighting products to the Semplice 'Bright' technology solution portfolio.

AMSTERDAM, March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics (Euronext: AMT), a leader in the field of human gene therapy, today announced that AMT's Supervisory Board has decided to propose Alexander Ribbink to be appointed to the Supervisory Board at its Annual General Meeting of shareholders on April 16, 2008. Mr. Ribbink is Chief Operating Officer of TomTom (Euronext Amsterdam: TOM2), and has been instrumental in building TomTom into the world's largest portable navigation solutions provider.

Experts estimate that $9 in productivity, health and other benefits are returned for every dollar invested in installing toilets for people in countries that today are off-track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

Achieving the sanitation goal – to simply halve the number of people without access to a toilet by 2015 – would cost $38 billion, less than 1% of annual world military spending. That investment, they say, would yield $347 billion worth of benefits – much of it related to higher productivity and improved health.

According to UN figures, meeting the sanitation MDG target would add 3.2 billion annual working days worldwide. Universal coverage would add more than four times as many working days.

A recent survey by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harris Interactive, as part of their ongoing series, Debating Health: Election 2008, finds that Americans are generally split on the issue of whether the United States has the best health care system in the world (45% believe the U.S. has the best system; 39% believe other countries have better systems; 15% don’t know or refused to answer) and that there is a significant divide along party lines.

Nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) believe the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, compared to just three in ten (32%) Democrats and four in ten (40%) Independents who feel the same way.