Researchers at the Duke School of Medicine apparently have solved the riddle of why cancer cells like sugar so much, and it may be a mechanism that could lead to better cancer treatments.

Jonathan Coloff, a graduate student in Assistant Professor Jeffrey Rathmell’s laboratory in the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, has found that the tumor cells use glucose sugar as a way to avoid programmed cell death.

They make use of a protein called Akt, which promotes glucose metabolism, which in turn regulates a family of proteins critical for cell survival, the researchers shared during an April 15 presentation at the American Association of Cancer Research Annual Meeting in San Diego.

A frequency-agile metamaterial that for the first time can be tuned over a range of frequencies in the so-called “terahertz gap” has been engineered by a team of researchers from Boston College, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Boston University.

The team incorporated semiconducting materials in critical regions of tiny elements – in this case metallic split-ring resonators – that interact with light in order to tune metamaterials beyond their fixed point on the electromagnetic spectrum, an advance that opens these novel devices to a broader array of uses, according to findings published in the online version of the journal Nature Photonics.

University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity: They made waveguides -- the equivalent of wires -- that carried and bent this form of light, also known as terahertz radiation, which is the last unexploited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Electricity is carried through metal wires. Light used for communication is transmitted through fiberoptic cables and split into different colors or “channels” of information using devices called waveguides. In a study published in Optics Express, Ajay Nahata, study leader and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Utah, and colleagues report they designed stainless steel foil sheets with patterns of perforations that successfully served as wire-like waveguides to transmit, bend, split or combine terahertz radiation.

LEEDS, England, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Summary:

- Beclazone(R) in MDI Form Available Until at Least End Q1 2009

- Beclazone(R) in Easi-Breathe(R) Breath-Actuated Form Supplied Later Into 2009

- Teva Giving Approximate Update Well in Advance to Facilitate a Managed Transition to Alternatives for the Benefit of Patients

PALO ALTO, California, April 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- FMS presents 'the Colossus' NexentaStor based solution with industry leading storage density

Nexenta Systems, Inc., developer of NexentaStor(TM), the leading enterprise class storage management software taking an open source approach to market, is pleased to announce that Enterprise Certified partner FMS is presenting this week at the Intel Solutions Summit, April 14-16 in Rome, Italy. The Intel Solution Summit is Intel's invitation only summit for Intel Premier Partners.

CALGARY, Canada, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Oncolytics Biotech Inc. ("Oncolytics") (TSX:ONC, NASDAQ:ONCY) has completed patient enrolment in the dose escalation portion of its U.K. clinical trial to evaluate the anti-tumour effects of systemic administration of REOLYSIN(R) in combination with paclitaxel and carboplatin in patients with advanced cancers including head and neck, melanoma, lung and ovarian.

"The preliminary results from this combination trial are very encouraging," said Dr. Brad Thompson, President and CEO of Oncolytics. "This study was the first to begin examining the use of REOLYSIN(R) with drug combinations that are used in first or second line therapy."

"The placenta is this amazing, complex structure and it's unique to mammals, but we've had no idea what its evolutionary origins are," says Julie Baker, PhD, assistant professor of genetics at Stanford Univeristy and senior author of a study in Genome Research which discusses its evolution.

The placenta is the mother's intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, delivering oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby's health. New evidence suggests the placenta of humans and other mammals evolved from the much simpler tissue that attached to the inside of eggshells and enabled the embryos of our distant ancestors, the birds and reptiles, to get oxygen.

INGELHEIM, Germany, April 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- For Medical Media, Outside the US Only

Boehringer Ingelheim today announced that the European Commission has granted marketing authorisation of the new powerful strength of their fixed dose combination antihypertensive drug MicardisPlus(R) 80/25 in all 27 EU member states. It will be launched in Germany and Denmark in the coming weeks, followed soon by Ireland, the United Kingdom and the rest of EU, and when approved also in other countries around the world.

LONDON, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the Committee representing 12,000 Unite members working in the NHS as ancillary and ambulance staff, made the decision that in consulting with members on the government's 7.99% three year pay deal, it will recommend its members to reject the pay offer.

The Unite officer representing those NHS workers, Peter Allenson, said:

"This three year pay deal is not sufficient for us to be able to recommend acceptance to our members.

"We have reservations that the re-negotiation clause, which should come into effect in situations of rising inflation, is not strong enough and that in a climate of economic insecurity, it is not at a level sufficient to meet our members' needs."

WAALWIJK, The Netherlands, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrial Automation Integrators (IAI) B.V. in Veldhoven, a subsidiary of DOCDATA N.V. in Waalwijk, will supply a SheetMaster Flex system and a WebMaster Flex system to the Government of South Africa (Government Printing Works), to enhance the security of documents.

These systems are especially designed to process documents other than banknotes, passports and ID-cards for which IAI offers dedicated systems. Because of the huge variety in such documents worldwide, the systems need to be very flexible in order to meet the requirements of a large portion of these documents.