If you walk down a US city street and don't think a lot of people are overweight, you probably are. Likewise, thin people will increasingly be regarded as an anomaly to be eliminated out of concern as people get heavier. In a culture of obesity, thin is like a cancer.

Research by economists at the University of Warwick, Dartmouth College, and the University of Leuven, finds that people are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them - human beings keep up with the weight of the society they live in, which can lead to a spiral of imitative obesity.

The researchers will present their results on Friday July 25th at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Cambridge Massachusetts in a paper entitled Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility at the NBER Summer Institute on Health Economics.

LONDON, July 24 /PRNewswire/ --

- Output of New Molecular Entities Drops to Historic Low as Pharma Companies Face Increasing Competition from Generics Companies

The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters today announced the availability of the newly published CMR International 2008 Pharmaceutical R&D Factbook, an indispensable reference and business planning tool for decision makers in pharmaceutical R&D, corporate finance, business strategy, marketing planning and corporate communications. This year's Factbook offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of emerging trends in worldwide pharmaceutical R&D and has been considerably enhanced with data sourced from other Thomson Reuters businesses providing insight into areas such as generic drugs and patents.

WASHINGTON, July 24 /PRNewswire/ --

The PIDX International North Sea Forum was held on July 9 in Aberdeen, Scotland, offering an opportunity for the North Sea's independent oil and gas operators to share best practices on eCommerce. The Aberdeen meeting was the largest regional forum to date. Approximately 50 company representatives from various operators and suppliers shared experiences and best practices with eCommerce to help enhance their current business processes.

The next meetings will be held in London on November 7, 2008, and in the Middle East shortly following.

CHANDLER'S FORD EASTLEIGH, England, July 24 /PRNewswire/ --

Federal Signal Corporation's (NYSE: FSS) Safety and Security Systems Group, a leader in advancing security and well-being, today announced that its PIPS Technology Ltd subsidiary has supplied Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to Siemens Traffic Controls, as part of a contract awarded by Transport for London to provide an enforcement structure for London's Low Emission Zone (LEZ). The contract is for the established Spike+ cameras, already in use worldwide for applications such as road user charging and enforcement.

The aim of the scheme is to improve air quality in the city by deterring the most polluting vehicles from driving within Greater London.

ESPOO and SAN DIEGO, July 24 /PRNewswire/ --

- Companies Agree to Settle All Litigation -

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) today announced that they have entered into a new agreement covering various standards including GSM, EDGE, CDMA, WCDMA, HSDPA, OFDM, WiMAX, LTE and other technologies. The agreement will result in settlement of all litigation between the companies, including the withdrawal by Nokia of its complaint to the European Commission.

Our friends at LiveScience love Garth's stuff so much (*) they threw out the idea for a nifty widget that will give you a little drop-down tool and let you see lots of his equations.

So if you are unsure whether or not to bluff in Texas Hold 'Em, simply stop the game, pull out your iPhone, and plug in the numbers.

Likewise if you are standing in line at Starbucks and unsure how many cups of coffee you should have, this widget can tell you.

Basically, you can completely abdicate responsibility for your own decisions. Leave it to Garth. He knows what he's doing.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Users and Developers Gain New Ways to Share and Stay Connected through the Power of Feeds

Facebook f8 Conference, July 23, 2008 -- Facebook today introduced the latest advancements to Facebook Platform during its annual f8 developer conference, calling on its more than 400,000 developers to connect their Websites with Facebook through Facebook Connect, extend their applications to dozens of languages worldwide, and make use of new developer resources to help them succeed.

On July 18, “Naked Nelson” was detained for stripping off his clothes and trying to open an emergency exit on a flight from Boston to Oklahoma City. Athletes from the New England Revolution, a Major League Soccer team, helped apprehend the man and detained him until officials arrived at the scene. Yet it is unclear what sort of mood “Naked Nelson” was in to drive him to such extremes.

Robert E. Thayer who is a professor of psychology at California State University Long Beach has written several books regarding moods. In his 1989 book "The biopsychology of mood and arousal" he defines a mood simply as a relatively long lasting, affective or emotional state. The state of mind of the nude man on the airplane therefore qualifies. Yet his mood, like an increasing number of other mental states, from attention deficit disorder to social anxiety disorder, would be classified as other than normal.

In a world in which such classified moods are often medicated, understanding factors that contribute to certain degrees of emotional states may be helpful in dictating a more positive mood. In the hunt for contributing factors that influence the mood food, sleep and exercise are among the most commonly referenced.

REDWOOD CITY, California, July 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Fastest Growing Broadband Provider in Spain Fortifies DNS, Prepares for Future Growth and New Services

Nominum, the leading provider of network naming and addressing technologies, announced today that ONO, a broadband provider in Spain, has selected Nominum's carrier-grade DNS as the foundation for its broadband Internet access service.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000511/SFTH101LOGO)

PHILADELPHIA, and LONDON, July 23 /PRNewswire/ --

The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters today announced that new features have been added to ISI Web of Knowledge. Most notably, a citation mapping tool has been incorporated to provide researchers with a visual result to their research.

The citation mapping tool tracks an article's cited and citing references through two generations, allowing researchers to visually discover an article's wider relationships. The resulting "family tree" of information can be utilized by the researcher to highlight the citation relationships most important to their research.