Making a virginity pledge may help some young people postpone the start of sexual activity, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Researchers found that adolescents who made pledges to remain virgins until they are married were less likely to be sexually active over the three-year study period than other youth who were similar to them, but who did not make a virginity pledge, according to the study published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"These findings do not suggest that virginity pledges should be a substitute for comprehensive sexual education programs, or that they will work for all kinds of kids" said Steven Martino, the study's lead author and a psychologist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "But virginity pledges may be appropriate as one component of an overall sex education effort."

A detergent solution developed at The University of Texas at Austin that treats donor nerve grafts to circumvent an immune rejection response has been used to create acellular nerve grafts now used successfully in hospitals around the country. Research also shows early promise of the detergent solution having possible applications in spinal cord repair.

The solution – combined with an enzyme treatment conceived at the University of Florida in Gainesville – is licensed by AxoGen, an Alachua, Florida-based company, and is used to create an acellular nerve graft from human cadaver tissue, called AVANCE Nerve Graft. Nationwide, nearly 100 patients suffering nerve injuries have received AVANCE grafts, all involving peripheral nerves which transmit sensory information between the brain and muscles.

This year's presidential primaries have already exhibited a number of time-honored traditions in American democracy - attacks, anonymous leaks and partisan journalism. Unfortunately, like other recent presidential elections, those include a new ritual - questions about the accuracy of techniques used to cast and count ballots.

A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE) is a team of computer scientists and academic researchers from across the country bringing the latest research, insights and innovations from the lab to the voting booth.

The project is headed by Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. An expert in information security, Rubin was intrigued by the challenges associated with improving voting technologies. "There was a perceived need," Rubin says, "that these systems were not secure enough." Once they began examining the issue from a scientific perspective, Rubin and his colleagues discovered that a more holistic approach was needed to understand how the computers, touch screens and other technologies are interrelated in elections.

A new study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology reviewed the behavior of participants exposed to various HIV brochures. Researchers found that both men and women were likely to avoid gender-mismatched brochures. Women, however, were more likely to approach gender-matched brochures over gender-neutral brochures.

Kathleen C. McCulloch and Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Marta R. Duranti from the University of Florida looked at the behavior of 350 volunteers consisting of both men and women who were African American, European American, or Latino, with over half having an average income under $10,000.

Participants were exposed to six HIV-prevention brochures, two of which were gender-targeted and four of which were gender-neutral. The study was conducted at the Florida Department of Health in Alachua County. Participants were then given the chance to watch an HIV-prevention video and participate in an HIV-prevention counseling session.

LONDON, June 10 /PRNewswire/ --

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Phase 3 Once Weekly Investigational Diabetes Therapy Also Improved Glucose Control in Patients Switching from Exenatide Taken Twice a Day -

Be warned: this article deals primarily with shark attacks, the lottery, beer, and how to get a date using math. Is it a good decision to keep reading? Unfortunately, the answer is "you need to keep reading to find out."

Sound irrational? Good—your massively irrational mind should have no problem with it, then.

Consider this: every year when the Discovery Channel broadcasts "Shark Week" visits to Florida beaches decline. Presumably, the network's programming makes the waters no less safe (assuming sharks are not, in fact, empowered by cable television). However, after watching a week of kicking legs seen from below, the idea of shark attack is refreshed in our minds and we choose not to offer ourselves as bait.

This phenomenon is known as an availability heuristic — a heuristic being a rule-of-thumb. Our rationality is subverted by easily available sensationalist images.

PARIS and SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 /PRNewswire/ --

Orange and Apple today announced that the iPhone 3G will be available in Austria, Portugal and Switzerland on July 11and in France on July 17. It will launch in additional markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa later this year. Orange will begin taking pre-orders for iPhone 3G later this month. iPhone combines three products into one small, lightweight device-a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and it puts the Internet in your pocket with the best email, web browsing, search and Maps applications ever on a mobile phone.

PARIS and SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Orange and Apple today announced that the iPhone 3G will be available in Austria, Portugal and Switzerland on July 11and in France on July 17. It will launch in additional markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa later this year. Orange will begin taking pre-orders for iPhone 3G later this month. iPhone combines three products into one small, lightweight device-a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and it puts the Internet in your pocket with the best email, web browsing, search and Maps applications ever on a mobile phone.

PALO ALTO, California, June 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- Accelerating global customer and community adoption

Nexenta Systems, Inc., developer of NexentaStor(TM), the leading Open Storage management software that provides enterprise class NAS/SAN/iSCSI capabilities for 80-90% savings versus legacy solutions, has achieved a number of milestones since the launch of the NexentaStor Enterprise Edition in late April of 2008: