WASHINGTON, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- New education index sheds light on opportunities for investment in Africa

This month School Ventures launched the African Private Schools Investment Index ("APSI"), developed in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit. The APSI is an analytical tool for investors, policy makers, philanthropists, educationalists, and the general public. It compares the attractiveness of African education markets as destinations for private investment.

BASINGSTOKE, England and PHILADELPHIA, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- Worldwide Rights for all Potential Uses, Excluding U.S. and Japan

- No Other Existing Therapeutic Treatment for Celiac Disease

Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY, TSX: SHQ), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, today announces that it has acquired the worldwide rights, excluding the U.S. and Japan, to AT-1001 from Alba Therapeutics Corporation (Alba). AT-1001 is Alba's lead inhibitor of barrier dysfunction in various gastrointestinal disorders that is currently in Phase 2 development for the treatment of Celiac disease. Shire has acquired rights to all uses for AT-1001, which may also be studied for the treatment of Crohn's disease and other indications.

Single-cell organisms were already in existence 500 million years ago, with several thousand genes providing different cellular functions. Further developments seemed dependent on producing even more genes.

If so, a highly developed organism like a human should have resulted in several million genes yet the publication of the human genome showed us that a human only has around 25,000 genes – not many more than a fruit fly or a worm with approximately 15,000 to 20,000 genes.

It would appear that, over the last 500 million years, other ways to produce highly complex organisms have evolved. Evolution has simply found more efficient ways to use the genes already there.

But what could have made this possible?

A team led by a Cardiff University archaeologist has reconstructed a 3,000-year-old glass furnace, showing that Ancient Egyptian glassmaking methods were much more advanced than previously thought.

Dr Paul Nicholson, of the University’s School of History and Archaeology, is leader of an Egypt Exploration Society team working on the earliest fully excavated glassmaking site in the world. The site, at Amarna, on the banks of the Nile, dates back to the reign of Akhanaten (1352 - 1336 B.C.), just a few years before the rule of Tutankhamun.

It was previously thought that the Ancient Egyptians may have imported their glass from the Near East at around this time.

BASEL, Switzerland, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- Physicians Will be Able to Prescribe MabThera With Their Preferred Chemotherapy Regimen as Initial Treatment

Roche announced today that the European Union's Committee on Human Medical Products (CHMP) has given a positive recommendation for extension of the MabThera label to include use of MabThera combined with any chemotherapy combination as first-line treatment for follicular Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL), the most common form of indolent NHL. Physicians will now be able to prescribe MabThera with their preferred chemotherapy regimen as an initial treatment for their patients.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Lancet Oncology publication provides important insights on the use of MammaPrint(R) Breast Cancer Prognosis Test in clinical practice

New research demonstrates that the MammaPrint(R) breast cancer prognosis test was successfully implemented in the diagnostic process of breast cancer patients in community hospitals in The Netherlands. MammaPrint(R) assigned up to one-third of the patients to different risk categories as compared to currently used risk assessment tools. In the majority of these situations, it may lead to a reduction in the use of adjuvant chemotherapy. The findings were published in the December issue of The Lancet Oncology.

STAMFORD, Connecticut, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC), a leading provider of information solutions to business and professional customers worldwide, today announced that its controlling shareholder, The Woodbridge Company Limited, has indicated that it will reinvest 50% of its quarterly dividends in Thomson common shares during the first three quarters of 2008 in accordance with the terms of Thomson's dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP).

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020227/NYW014LOGO )

New observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft indicate the rings of Saturn, once thought to have formed during the age of the dinosaurs, instead may have been created roughly 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was still under construction.

Professor Larry Esposito, principal investigator for Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph at CU-Boulder, said data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s and later NASA's Hubble Space Telescope had led scientists to believe Saturn's rings were relatively youthful and likely created by a comet that shattered a large moon, perhaps 100 million years ago.

When humans began to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago, their skin color gradually changed to adapt to their new environments. And when the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, marine ancestors of ocean-dwelling stickleback fish experienced dramatic changes in skin coloring as they colonized newly formed lakes and streams.

New research shows that despite the vast evolutionary gulf between humans and the three-spined stickleback fish, the two species have adopted a common genetic strategy to acquire the skin pigmentation that would help each species thrive in their new environments.

AMSTERDAM, December 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- A Classification for Innovative New Treatments

Kiadis Pharma announced today that its lead product ATIR has received approval for regulatory classification as a "cell based" medicinal product by the Innovation Task Force (ITF), a division of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). Based upon this regulatory classification ATIR is eligible for EMEA procedures. As a next step Kiadis Pharma will file for orphan drug designation with the EMEA to obtain additional product protection upon marketing approval. In November this year ATIR has been granted orphan drug designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).