LONDON, December 7 /PRNewswire/ -- David Brennan, AstraZeneca CEO, and senior management from AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) (NYSE: AZN) and MedImmune discuss opportunities in the biologics field, R&D and portfolio progress plus the Group's current focus and priorities. Video interviews and transcripts are available now on http://www.cantos.com.

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DUSSELDORF, Germany, December 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kythera Award, founded in 2001 by the author and artist Gabriele Henkel, is awarded annually to particularly deserving artists with respect to cultural exchange between Germany and the Latin countries of Europe. The former recipients are publisher Klaus Wagenbach, film director Patrice Chéreau, conductor Claudio Abbado, architect Renzo Piano as well as art historian Dr. Sylvia Ferino in the K.H.M. in Vienna.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil and AMSTERDAM, December 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Petrobras and Avantium announced today that they have started a research collaboration for the development of new catalysts for emerging technologies within Petrobras, Brazil's largest energy company.

Avantium specializes in experimental methodologies that enable scientists to conduct parallel experiments on a very small scale and at a very high speed. This increases productivity and allows scientists to explore and compare very large numbers of experimental conditions and catalytic materials. Statistical techniques are applied to direct the experimental program into the most promising areas and to extract knowledge from the data that can be used to optimize industrial processes.

Although most scientists believe tuberculosis emerged only several thousand years ago, new research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals the most ancient evidence of the disease has been found in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey.

The discovery of the new specimen of the human species, Homo erectus, suggests support for the theory that dark-skinned people who migrate northward from low, tropical latitudes produce less vitamin D, which can adversely affect the immune system as well as the skeleton.

John Kappelman, professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin, is part of an international team of researchers from the United States, Turkey and Germany who have published their findings in the Dec.

BERLIN, December 7 /PRNewswire/ --

CONNECTIONS(TM) Europe has finished following three full days of interactive panels with top international executives discussing new business models and growth opportunities in the digital living markets.

Parks Associates, in partnership with CEA(R), hosted CONNECTIONS(TM) Europe on December 4-6, 2007, at the Adlon Kempinski, Berlin, Germany. Sponsors included IBM, io-homecontrol, Radialpoint, AwoX, Casero Inc., Design of Systems on Silicon, Intamac Systems Ltd, Invest in Germany, NDS, Netineo, NXP Semiconductors, SiConnect, Thomson, Yitran Communications Ltd., Zensys Inc., Macrovision, SmartLabs, Inc., Smart Design, and Universal Electronics.

Until recently, a student solving a calculus problem, a physicist modeling a galaxy or a mathematician studying a complex equation had to use powerful computer programs that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. But an open-source tool based at the University of Washington won first prize in the scientific software division of Les Trophées du Libre, an international competition for free software.

The tool, called Sage, faced initial skepticism from the mathematics and education communities.

"I've had a surprisingly large number of people tell me that something like Sage couldn't be done – that it just wasn't possible," said William Stein, associate professor of mathematics and lead developer of the tool. "I'm hearing that less now."

Creating a strongly oil-repelling, or “oleophobic” material, has been a long-standing challenge for scientists since there are no natural examples of such a material.

“Nature has developed a lot of methods for waterproofing, but not so much oil-proofing,” said Gareth McKinley, MIT School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the research team that have designed the first simple process for manufacturing materials that strongly repel oils. “The conventional wisdom was that it couldn't be done on a large scale without very special lithographic processes.”

Yet the MIT team has done it.

Described as a hotspot of botanical diversity, there are more than 20,000 indigenous plant species in South Africa. Several thousand of them are used by traditional healers every day in that country for treating a range of problems from the common cold to serious diseases such as AIDS.

How safe and effective these treatments are will be the focus of The International Center for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies (TICIPS), a collaborative research effort between the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

It’s a rare case of all light and no heat: A new study reports that a laser can be used to switch a film of vanadium dioxide back and forth between reflective and transparent states without heating or cooling it.

It is one of the first cases that scientists have found where light can directly produce such a physical transition without changing the material’s temperature.

It is also among the most recent examples of “coherent control,” the use of coherent radiation like laser light to affect the behavior of atomic, molecular or electronic systems. The technique has been used to control photosynthesis and is being used in efforts to create quantum computers and other novel electronic and optical devices.

Esquire magazine scribe Tom Junod recently wrote something that made me question my judgment and his sanity - namely that Franziska Michor Is the Isaac Newton of Biology

Now, the last time someone compared themselves to Isaac Newton it was ... well, okay it was me, but even I can't be serious about comparing myself to Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton is a serious guy in physics. A giant. Maybe the giant. It's one thing to make comparisons for dramatic effect, which a keen writer like Junod can do better than anyone, but another to make a serious case.