"Wash that for you?" If you were a fish living in the warm turquoise waters off the coast of Bonaire, you may not hear those words, but you'd see the shrimp sign language equivalent. It seems Periclimenes yucatanicus or Spotted Cleaner Shrimp is doing a booming business in the local reefs by setting up a fish washing service.

NOVATO, California, April 13 /PRNewswire/ --

Raptor Pharmaceuticals Corp. (Raptor or the Company) (OTC Bulletin Board: RPTP) today announced the appointment of Patrice P. Rioux, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Dr. Rioux will be responsible for the clinical and regulatory advancement of Raptor's clinical-stage drug development programs.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071022/NYM074LOGO )

Raptor's clinical programs include Delayed-Release Cysteamine (DR Cysteamine) for the potential treatment of nephropathic cystinosis (cystinosis), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and Huntington's Disease (Huntington's), as well as Convivia(TM), for the potential treatment of aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) deficiency.

LOMA LINDA, California, April 13 /PRNewswire/ --

Loma Linda University research just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compares the effects of walnuts and fatty fish in the fight against heart disease, demonstrating that in healthy individuals, walnuts lower cholesterol more than fish, while fatty fish lower triglycerides. Both can reduce the overall risk of coronary heart disease.

The practical significance of the study is that eating an easy-to-incorporate amount of walnuts and fatty fish can cause meaningful decreases in blood cholesterol and triglycerides even in healthy individuals, says lead author Sujatha Rajaram, Ph.D., associate professor in the department of nutrition at Loma Linda University School of Public Health.

In honor of my daughter's first birthday, today I thought I'd write about ray weaponry.

With only a quick stop at your local box store, you can be ready to pop a conventional cap in someone’s ass; however, charring said ass to a crisp using a laser or other ray weapon is not so easy. This is because—despite many decades of government promises—laser weapons do not currently exist (despite the ubiquity of industrial cutting lasers and promises by high school tech ed teachers that one false move with a pointer will render your lab partner a cyclops).

NEW YORK, April 13 /PRNewswire/ --

Is Facebook that addictive or is a new pilot study correlating Facebook use to lower grades simple picking on the big gorilla of social media?   75 Percent of Facebook users claimed that their use of the social networking site didn't interfere with their studies but college students who use Facebook have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up.

Don't get too alarmed.    This was a small, exploratory study but it did find that Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.  And that will get some attention.   In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.

After about seven months growing in the womb, a human fetus spends most of its time asleep. Its brain cycles back and forth between the frenzied activity of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and the quiet resting state of non-REM sleep. But whether the brains of younger, immature fetuses cycle with sleep or are simply inactive has remained a mystery - until now.

Yuan et al. have identified another anti-cancer effect of the "longevity" protein SIRT1. By speeding the destruction of the tumor promoter c-Myc, SIRT1 curbs cell division. The study will be published in the Journal of Cell Biology.

Applied scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in collaboration with researchers from Hamamatsu Photonics in Hamamatsu City, Japan, have demonstrated, for the first time, lasers in which the direction of oscillation of the emitted radiation, known as polarization, can be designed and controlled at will. The innovation opens the door to a wide range of applications in photonics and communications. Harvard University has filed a broad patent on the invention.

BERN, Switzerland, April 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- In the connect PBX converged-IP service for SMEs, Switzerland's largest cable network relies on SmartNode(TM) VoIP CPE to satisfy the stringent demands of classic ISDN users.

- SmartNode(TM) VoIP... more than just talk.

Patton-Inalp Networks AG -- creator of SmartNode(TM) industry-leading VoIP technology --announced today that Cablecom -- the largest cable-network operator in Switzerland -- has selected the SmartNode(TM) 4630 Multiport BRI VoIP Router as customer premise equipment for its connect PBX ISDN VoIP and data service for small-to-medium enterprises.