When comparing players in baseball, it's difficult to cross even modern 'eras' because conditioning and strategies have changed.   6'2" shortstops are relatively common now but unheard of even 30 years ago.   Likewise, American football has undergone strategic shifts that are easily recognizable, with the West Coast Offense less in vogue but a 3-4 defense coming back into popularity as compared to 20 years ago.

New research by an Arabian prince could see the millions of date stones disposed of in Saudi Arabia each year instead used to decrease air and water pollution.  Abdulrahman Bandar Al-Saud, 34, is studying for a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

His research is based on the premise that date stones can be used to develop activated carbon with a high adsorption capacity.   Activated carbon is a form of the element that has been processed to make it extremely porous with a very large surface area available for adsorption.

European researchers say they have developed the most advanced spontaneous language understanding (SLU) system ever devised for both Polish and Italian languages.  That's because it is also the first one, according to the Luna project behind the work.

Spontaneous language understanding is far more advanced than the traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems that people may already be familiar with. In traditional IVRs, the user is required to answer questions with specific words or short sentences proposed by the systems.

But with SLU, language systems are designed to respond to spontaneous speech: real conversations between people that include the sentence fillers and pause words like ‘um’ and ‘er’.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, January 21 /PRNewswire/ --

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) announces the following TechOnline Webinar:

What: Synopsys, Inc. Webinar When: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 @ 9:00 a.m. (Pacific) / 12:00 p.m. (Eastern) Where: http://www.techonline.com/learning/livewebinar/212701450 How: Live over the Internet -- Simply log on to the web at the address above. Contact: Heather Webb of Synopsys, Inc., Heather.Webb@synopsys.com.

In this webinar:

- Discover the different types of I/O Virtualization

- Learn how I/O Virtualization is addressed within the PCI Express specification

ALGIERS and TORONTO, Canada, January 20 /PRNewswire/ --

- New VoIP Service Provides Virtual Algerian Phone Numbers to Iristel Subscribers Worldwide -

Algeria Telecom, Algeria's leading provider of telecommunications services, and Iristel Inc., a leading global provider of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, today announced an exclusive alliance to offer Algeria Connect, a new VoIP service that provides virtual Algerian phone numbers to Iristel subscribers worldwide. With Algeria Connect, phone calls from Algeria can be made to subscribers regardless of where they are located in the world, using an Algerian phone number and at the cost of a local call.

ANTONY, France, January 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Stallergenes S.A. today announced that the Paul Ehrlich Institute, the German agency in charge of regulating biological products, has approved its application for a pediatric extension (5-17 years) of the indications for Oralair(R) Grasses, sublingual tablets for desensitization to grass pollens.

The marketing authorization for adults was granted on June 24, 2008. Oralair(R) Grasses will therefore be marketed for both indications in Germany for the 2009 pollen season.

DUBLIN, Ireland and WASHINGTON, January 22 /PRNewswire/ --

- dotMobi will make sought-after domains, consisting of one and two characters, available to brands for high-quality mobile Web sites

dotMobi, the company behind .mobi - the only Internet address created specifically for locating content that works on all mobile phones - today announced that they will make available .mobi domain names with one and two alphanumeric characters, such as q.mobi, k9.mobi, 13.mobi or ny.mobi.

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands, January 21 /PRNewswire/ --

The BFE's 13th Annual Conference will take place February 24-28, 2009 at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. (http://www.bfe.org/meeting.html). Registration is ongoing and the meeting is open to all healthcare practitioners who wish to participate. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet and/or attend workshops presented by international experts. A full list of workshops (http://www.bfe.org/meeting/13th/WORKSHOP%20SCHEDULE%202009.pdf) is available on our website. Among this year's presenters are:

LONDON, January 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Telnic Limited (http://www.telnic.org), the registry operator for the new .tel top level domain (TLD), today announced that universities on both sides of the Atlantic are registering their .tel domains.

The Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom were successful in securing OXFORD.TEL as well as UNIVERSITYOFOXFORD.TEL, whilst the President and Fellows of Harvard College were also front of the queue in securing HARVARD.TEL.

LONDON, January 19 /PRNewswire/ --

Based on its recent analysis of the European printed circuit board (PCB) automatic test equipment (ATE) markets, Frost Sullivan recognizes REINHARDT System - und Messelectronic GmbH (Reinhardt) with the 2008 European Customer Value Enhancement of the Year Award. Reinhardt stands out in the market for its ability to offer the best solutions and time-to-market, while its engineers efficiently address all key end-user concerns by being in constant touch with them.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081117/FSLOGO )