SHANGHAI, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The Soitec Group (Euronext Paris), the world's leading supplier of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and other engineered substrates for the microelectronics industry, announced today a new partnership with a distributor in China to strengthen its Far East presence. A member of the Shanghai Semiconductor Association, Cantang Electronics Technology Inc. is a professional service provider specialized in semiconductors, with staff and engineers that understand SOI technology and its markets. Under the new partnership agreement, Cantang Electronics will distribute, market and support Soitec's products and services throughout China.

Bell curves are everywhere. Pick 100 random people and measure them: measure their height, their weight, their blood pressure, their time to run a mile, or to sprint 50 yards, and their IQ, and you find that most of us fall in the middle of the spectrum, while there are always some people on either extreme. Why?

The puzzle grows deeper when you think about genetics. If a trait like height is controlled largely by genes, how is it that height falls into a bell-curve pattern? Bell-curves seem completely at odds with what we learn about the discrete genetics of Mendel's round and wrinkled peas in high school biology.

It turns out that the solution to this puzzle is fairly simple (although the details get messy). In fact, Darwin's cousin hit on the right answer (long before he or anyone else knew about Mendel's genetics), with what he called the "Supreme Law of Unreason": a bell curve is exactly what you expect when you toss together "a large sample of chaotic elements." In other words, genetics is like one big game of The Price Is Right.

WASHINGTON, March 18 /PRNewswire/ --

The Vatican has yet again been forced to revise statements made by Pope Benedict XVI as he embarked on a foreign trip. En route to Cameroon on March 17, the pope claimed that condom use would aggravate the problem of HIV.

A transcript of the pope's comments on the Vatican's Web site altered the comment to suggest that condoms risked aggravating the problem.

Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, welcomed the change as a sign that the pope is not infallible on this issue and is willing to acknowledge his mistakes.

MIGDAL HA'EMEK, Israel, March 18 /PRNewswire/ --

How did life begin, anyway?

     I am a research professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and over the past 30 years my students and I have been working to understand how cellular life arose. The unit of all life today is the cell, a molecular system of functional polymers (proteins and nucleic acids) that is bounded by a membrane composed of lipid.

New treatments for infertility could be closer to reality, thanks to a discovery from scientists at the Université de Montréal and Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre.

According to a study published in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction, the researchers have become the first to clone, produce and purify a protein important for sperm maturation, termed Binder of Sperm (BSP), which may have implications for both fertility treatments and new methods of male contraception.

MADISON, Wisconsin, March 18 /PRNewswire/ --

The Dutch higher education market is one of the world's most advanced in lecture capture and Technical University of Delft leads the pack, recording 80 class hours that attract 10,000 views - each and every week. But the widespread success of this ambitious campus program did not come without the usual challenges.

Sonic Foundry, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, will host a webinar in which Leon Huijbers will discuss how he and his Multimedia Department overcame the space, funding and workforce shortages that initially threatened the lecture capture initiative.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, March 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the European launch of FIRMAGON(R) (degarelix), a new treatment option in hormonal therapy for prostate cancer, with details presented at the 24th Annual European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Stockholm. FIRMAGON(R) is a new GnRH receptor blocker indicated for the treatment of patients with advanced hormone-dependent prostate cancer.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, March 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Attn: Healthcare Editors

Screening for prostate cancer can reduce deaths by 20%, according to the results of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) published online 1700 hours CET 18 March (NEJM, Online First*). ERSPC is the world's largest prostate cancer screening study and provides robust, independently- audited evidence, for the first time, of the effect of screening on prostate cancer mortality.

LONDON, March 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Stafford Hospital is a classic case of the government's 'flawed' privatisation agenda for the NHS, Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Wednesday, 18 March).

The hospital, run by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, where more than 400 people are said to have died over a three year period - an above average figure - is 'an example of what happens when the target obsessed privatisation culture takes hold'.

David Fleming, Unite National Officer for Health, said: 'This is a classic example of the fragmented and insidious approach to dismantling the NHS and providing alternatives that are never going to be as good.'