Using observations from ESO’s VLT, astronomers were able for the first time to reconstruct the site of a flare on a solar-like star located 150 light years away - about ten million times further away from us than the Sun is. The study of this young star, BO Microscopii, will help scientists better understand the youth of our own star.

BO Microscopii is a young star with a mass about 90% of the mass of our Sun. It is located 150 light years away towards the Microscope constellation. 'Speedy Mic', as it is called, got its name because of its very fast rotation. The object rotates 66 times as fast as our Sun, which results in much stronger magnetic fields than ours.

SAN MATEO, California, December 20 /PRNewswire/ --

NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N) announced today the initial public offering of 6,200,000 shares of its common stock at a price of US$26.00 per share. NetSuite and certain selling stockholders have also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 930,000 shares to cover over-allotments. NetSuite's common stock will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "N" on Thursday, December 20, 2007.

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Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC acted as sole book-running manager for the offering and W.R. Hambrecht + Co., LLC acted as co-manager.

Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have corrected key symptoms of mental retardation and autism in mice.

The report in Neuron also indicates that a certain class of drugs could have the same effect. These drugs are not yet approved by the FDA, but will soon be entering into human clinical trials.

Fragile X syndrome (FXS), affecting 100,000 Americans, is the most common inherited cause of mental retardation and autism. The MIT researchers corrected FXS in mice modeling the disease. “These findings have major therapeutic implications for fragile X syndrome and autism,” said study lead author Mark F. Bear, director of the Picower Institute and Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT.

The seemingly inefficient way our bodies replace worn-out cells is a defense against cancer, according to new research.

Having the neighboring cell just split into two identical daughter cells would seem to be the simplest way to keep bodies from falling apart.

However that would be a recipe for uncontrolled growth, said John W. Pepper of The University of Arizona in Tucson. We wrote of the paper by Pepper and his colleagues,, "Animal Cell Differentiation Patterns Suppress Somatic Evolution", last week.

"If there were only one cell type in the group, it would act like an evolving population of cells.

UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system -- when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock -- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years.

UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Frederic Moynier, Qing-zhu Yin, assistant professor of geology, and graduate student Benjamin Jacobsen established the dates by analyzing a particular type of meteorite, called a carbonaceous chondrite, which represents the oldest material left over from the formation of the solar system.

The physics and timing of this first stage of planet formation are not well understood, Yin said. So, putting time constraints on the process should help guide the physical models that could be used to explain it.

Heart attacks among cigarette smokers may have less to do with tobacco than genetics. A common defect in a gene controlling cholesterol metabolism boosts smokers’ risk of an early heart attack, according to a new study in Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology. The findings also show that smokers without the defect normally have heart attacks no sooner than their non-smoking peers.

Although the link between smoking and heart disease was established decades ago, the reasons for that link were unclear. More recent studies suggest smoking interferes with cholesterol metabolism, lowering smokers’ levels of high-density lipoprotein, the good cholesterol that protects against heart-attack risk.

MINNEAPOLIS, December 19 /PRNewswire/ --

Nonin Medical, Inc., a leading innovator of physiological monitoring solutions, received the 2007 Industry Best Practices Award for Product Differentiation Innovation from Frost & Sullivan. Frost & Sullivan recognizes outstanding industry achievements and the Awards are recognized worldwide by the media, the investment community and end-user markets. The global growth consulting company honored Nonin for its pioneering vision that has transformed the vital sign monitoring industry and brought powerful, portable and easy-to-use pulse oximetry technology to more people and applications worldwide.

JEFFERSON, North Carolina, December 19 /PRNewswire/ --

Next Safety, Inc., a leader in developing pulmonary drug delivery devices, today announced verification of a significant breakthrough in pulmonary science that provides high efficacy delivery of drugs to the lungs.

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Advanced optical characterization techniques performed by a third party laboratory showed that 99.8% of the droplets delivered by Next Safety's pulmonary drug delivery devices were between one and three microns in diameter, and the droplets separated sufficiently in space and time to be absorbed into the alveoli of the lungs.

A research team led by Dr. Pierre Moffatt of the Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal and McGill University’s Department of Human Genetics has uncovered the molecular mechanism by which the protein osteocrin controls bone growth – a discovery that may have important implications for people suffering from bone diseases affecting skeletal growth. The study can be read in the December 14 edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Osteocrin is a small protein produced by the body’s bone-forming cells, or osteoblasts. In this study, mice that were genetically engineered to over-express osteocrin developed hunchbacks and elongated bones. This led Dr.

TORONTO, December 19 /PRNewswire/ -- GuestLogix Inc. (TSX-V: GXI), the leading provider of on-board retail technology and solutions to the airline industry, today announced that Germany's leading no-frills airline, Germanwings of Cologne/Bonn Germany, will be using GuestLogix' Mobile Virtual Store(TM) to process on-board cash, credit and debit card purchases on flights to over 66 destinations in Europe. The deal was secured by GuestLogix' global business partner LSG Sky Chefs, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Xetra: WKN 823212).