VIENNA, Austria, February 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A workshop organized by the International Scientific Working Group on Tick-Borne Encephalitis (ISW-TBE), held in Baden/Vienna, aims at raising public awareness of TBE and informs on the effectiveness of vaccination. Tick-borne encephalitis, a viral disease transmitted by infected ticks, can leave infected persons with permanent sequelae. The case fatality rate is 1-2%.

Event tourism and TBE

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands and CAMBRIDGE, England, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Agreement Includes ARM Cortex-M3 Processor for Microcontrollers

NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, and ARM (LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY) today announced that they have expanded their strategic relationship with a new licensing agreement, including the high-performance, low-power ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-M3 processor, as well as other ARM technology. NXP will introduce a new family of microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M3 processor starting in 2008, further expanding its broad portfolio of 56 ARM7(TM) and ARM9(TM) family-based MCUs.

A compound that naturally occurs in grapefruit and other citrus fruits may be able to block the secretion of hepatitis C virus (HCV) from infected cells, a process required to maintain chronic infection.

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) report that HCV is bound to very low-density lipoprotein (vLDL, a so-called “bad” cholesterol) when it is secreted from liver cells and that the viral secretion required to pass infection to other cells may be blocked by the common flavonoid naringenin.

If the results of this study extend to human patients, a combination of naringenin and antiviral medication might allow patient to clear the virus from their livers.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d absorbs “red edge,” near infrared, long wave length light, invisible to the naked eye.

In so doing, the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina, competes with virtually no other plant or bacterium in the world for sunlight. As a result, its genome is massive for a cyanobacterium, comprising 8.3 million base pairs, and sophisticated. The genome is among the very largest of 55 cyanobacterial strains in the world sequenced thus far, and it is the first chlorophyll d –containing organism to be sequenced .

For the first time, scientists have described the transition of the flat, disc-shaped heart field into the primary linear heart tube. The investigations on zebrafish embryos were made by Stefan Rohr and Cécile Otten, members of the research group of Dr. Salim Abdelilah-Seyfried of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany.

Currently, one of the most important areas to explore in developmental biology is how cellular transformation processes lead to the three-dimensional formation (morphogenesis) of organs. A better understanding of these processes is a basic requirement for elucidating congenital malformation of organs.

The heart, for instance, develops in the embryo from a flat disc, the so-called heart field. The tissue of this two-dimensional structure consists of a thin layer of epithelial cells. Similar cells line all inner organs, but also the skin and blood vessels.

Yulex Corporation, a Maricopa, Arizona company that develops clean technologies to derive bio-based materials and products including natural latex, rubber and renewable energy sources from the desert plant guayule (why-YOU-lee), has added two experts in its efforts to create new industrial products from the crop.

Dr. Lauren Johnson, a leading expert in plant breeding, joins Yulex Corporation as Agricultural Research Director and Jim Mitchell joins as Senior Director of Technology Development respectively.

A new plan to further reduce, refine and replace the use of animals in research and regulatory testing, commonly referred to as the 3Rs, was unveiled today by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM).

Traditionally, chemicals, consumer products, medical devices and new drugs are tested on animals to predict toxicity on humans, but scientists in ICCVAM are working to promote the development and validation of alternative test methods. Alternative test methods are those that accomplish one or more of the 3Rs; of reducing the number of animals used in testing, refining procedures so animals experience less pain and distress or replacing animals with non-animal systems.

ICCVAM has evaluated more than 185 test methods since its inception in 1997. ICCVAM itself does not conduct research but makes evaluates proposed solutions and makes recommendations about their usefulness to federal regulatory agencies.

More than 25 per cent of the world’s adult population are hypertensive, and it has been estimated that this figure will increase to 29 per cent by 2025. In addition, hypertension causes around 50 per cent of coronary heart disease, and approximately 75 per cent of strokes.

In demonstrating that nitrate is likely to underlie the cardio-protective effect of a vegetable-rich diet, researchers at Barts and The London School of Medicine have discovered that drinking just 500ml of beetroot juice a day can significantly reduce blood pressure.

Led by Professor Amrita Ahluwalia of the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and The London School of Medicine, and Professor Ben Benjamin of Peninsula Medical School, the research reveals that it is the ingestion of dietary nitrate contained within beetroot juice - and similarly in green, leafy vegetables - which results ultimately in decreased blood pressure.

Previously the protective effects of vegetable-rich diets had been attributed to their antioxidant vitamin content.

In The Big Bang and the Birth of Culture, we talked about the beginning of culture long before what anthropologists had previously assumed.

In Supersynchrony And The Evolution Of Mass Culture, we talked about how even the most primitive components of the universe had a sort of retained memory; the culture of quarks, if you will.