NEW YORK, May 27 /PRNewswire/ --

The era of easy oil is over and the race is on to produce tomorrow's oil from new and more hostile frontier environments. The construction of the hull of one of the world's deepest oil production facilities is now complete and today it started to make its 8,200 mile journey from the shipyard in Pori, Finland, to Texas, USA.

(See video from Shell at: http://media.medialink.com/WebNR.aspx?story=35150)

The massive steel spar structure, which is as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and weighs as much as 10,000 family cars, forms part of Shell's most ambitious deepwater offshore oil and gas development ever undertaken and will be the world's deepest spar production facility.

HELSINKI, Finland, May 27 /PRNewswire/ --

Marioff Corporation Oy has been selected by the Helsinki Public Works Department to install a HI-FOG(R) Water Mist Fire Protection System in the city's new underground tunnel service network. The installation will be Finland's first automatic tunnel fire protection system. Marioff is part of UTC Fire & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX).

The Helsinki underground service network will direct road traffic under the downtown area, allowing the city to expand its pedestrian zones. The project includes a two-kilometre service tunnel, one kilometre of which will be protected by the new HI-FOG(R) system.

As fossil fuel emissions continue to climb, reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth would definitely have a cooling effect on surface temperatures.

The reduction in sunlight can be accomplished by geoengineering schemes. There are two classes: the so-called “sunshade” geoengineering scheme, which would mitigate climate change by intentionally manipulating the solar radiation on the earth's surface; the other category removes atmospheric CO2 and sequesters it into the terrestrial vegetation, oceans or deep geologic formations.

However, a new study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala, shows that this intentional manipulation of solar radiation also could lead to a less intense global water cycle. Decreasing surface temperatures through “geoengineering” also could mean less rainfall.

Eta Carinae has the shape of a 'little man' and surrounds a star doomed to explode within the next 100 000 years.

Being brighter than one million Suns, Eta Carinae is the most luminous star known in the Galaxy. It is the closest example of a luminous blue variable, the last phase in the life of a very massive star before it explodes in a fiery supernova.

Eta Carinae is surrounded by an expanding bipolar cloud of dust and gas known as the Homunculus ('little man' in Latin), which astronomers believe was expelled from the star during a great outburst seen in 1843 [1].

PARIS, May 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Collaborative groups set out to confirm potential benefits of anticancer therapies to treat women with breast cancer

A new international study for women with HER2-positive breast cancer is open for enrollment. The pivotal BETH (BEvacizumab and Trastuzumab Adjuvant Therapy in HER2-positive Breast Cancer) study is a Phase III clinical research trial that is investigating the benefits of combining two monoclonal antibodies, the anti-angiogenic, bevacizumab (Avastin(R)) and the targeted therapy trastuzumab (Herceptin(R)), together with chemotherapy for the treatment of patients with early stage HER2-positive breast cancer.

While estrogen is typically thought of as a "female" hormone, men produce it as well. Researchers say they have pinpointed estrogen as a key player in about half of all prostate cancers.

The findings are published in the May 27 online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Mark A. Rubin, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and vice chair for experimental pathology at Weill Cornell Medical College, conducted the study while at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and in collaboration with Dr. Todd Golub and other members of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass.

first discovered and described the common fusions between the TMPRSS2 and ETS family member genes subset of prostate cancer in the journal Science in 2005. "The discovery showed that these malignancies occur after an androgen (male hormone)-dependent gene fuses with an oncogene -- a type of gene that causes cancer," he explains.

Humor-

Comics are supposed to be fun, light reading. Something I read on MSNBC’s Comics & Games website has been on my mind for a few months. The column titled "News of the Weird" by Chuck Shepherd (March 30, 2008) had one paragraph that caught my attention.

"A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing," is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains. ScienceNOW Daily News, 2-29-08"

WASHINGTON DC, May 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Bavarian Nordic, the Danish-based biopharmaceutical company, has initiated a Phase I/II clinical study with its HIV vaccine candidate: MVA-BN(R) HIV multiantigen.

Enrolment in a Phase I/II safety and immunogenicity study in 15 HIV-infected patients (CD4 counts >350 ul/ml) has begun in the United States. The first safety data is expected by the end of 2008 and immunogenicity data will be available during first half of 2009.

SINGAPORE, May 27 /PRNewswire/ -- In the news release, "Energenics Agrees Enercat Fuel Nanocatalyst Distribution With Eastern European Leader in Nanotechnology" issued on 27 May 2008 09:12 GMT, by Energenics over PR Newswire, we are advised by a representative of the company that in the 9th paragraph, the phrase 'Enercat reduces fuel efficiency' should read 'Enercat increases fuel efficiency' Complete, corrected release follows:

Energenics Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Energenics Holdings Pte Ltd, announced today it has recently agreed to appoint Nanotrade sro as an exclusive Eastern European distributor for its Enercat fuel borne catalyst product.

GENEVA, May 27 /PRNewswire/ --

On World No Tobacco Day, 31 May, the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) joins the World Health Organization in calling for a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products.

Globally, most smokers start smoking before the age of 18. Almost one fourth begin before they are ten. The younger children are when they first try smoking, the more likely they are to become regular tobacco users and the less likely they are to quit.

Advertising is a net deliberately set by the tobacco industry to entrap them into addiction.