NEW YORK, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Forum for Accomplished Women Entrepreneurs Launches in London

The Women Presidents' Organization (WPO) will launch a new chapter in London, England on Wednesday, February 13 introducing the first WPO presence in the United Kingdom. The WPO is the premier organization for accomplished woman entrepreneurs grossing at least US$2 million in annual revenue (US$1 million for a service-based business), or the pound equivalent.

INDIANAPOLIS, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Global contest seeks expressions of the triumphs and challenges of living with diabetes through art, essay, poetry, photography and music

Eli Lilly and Company, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), and the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) today announced that the entry deadline for submissions into the global competition will be extended until 31 March 2008. The global Inspired by Diabetes Creative Expression Competition is a contest asking people with diabetes, as well as their family and friends, to express how diabetes has impacted their lives -- and share those stories with others around the world. The original deadline for entries was 31 January 2008.

Squeeze a crystal of manganese oxide hard enough, and it changes from an electrical insulator to a conductive metal. In a Nature Materials report, researchers use computational modeling to show why this happens.

The results represent an advance in computer modeling of these materials and could shed light on the behavior of similar minerals deep in the Earth, said Warren Pickett, professor of physics at UC Davis and an author on the study.

Manganese oxide is magnetic but does not conduct electricity under normal conditions because of strong interactions between the electrons surrounding atoms in the crystal, Pickett said. But under pressures of about a million atmospheres (one megabar), manganese oxide transitions to a metallic state.

HEIDELBERG, Germany, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

During a lengthy interview with a reporter from a tabloid in Guben, Germany on Feb 4. 2008 anatomist, Dr. Gunther von Hagens explained his views on anatomy, the poor access to medical knowledge by lay people, and his own professional evolution from male nurse, to anesthesiologist, to Ivory Tower academic, to public scientist.

Dr. von Hagens believes that to differentiate between experts and laypersons points to an inherent bias that could lead to the colonizing of knowledge by the medical and scientific elite. Thus, he floated the idea that plastinates ought to be distributed to qualified individuals including laypersons. In a moment of scientific bravado on behalf of lay people, Dr. von Hagens claimed the enterprise as feasible and active, and went so far as to venture how such a plan would operate.

Manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder, is a psychiatric condition characterized by alternating mania and depression, affecting about one in every hundred people worldwide. Although it is known that the condition can be treated relatively effectively using the mood-stabilising drugs lithium and valproic acid, the reasons why these treatments work are poorly understood.

People with manic depression have a distinct chemical signature in their brains, according to a new study. The research may also indicate how the mood stabilisers used to treat the disorder counteract the changes in the brain that it appears to cause.

BOSTON, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

A new study led by researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center has identified insulin resistance in the liver as a key factor in the cause of metabolic syndrome and its associated atherosclerosis, disorders that put tens of millions of Americans at high risk of cardiovascular disease.

The findings, published in the February issue of Cell Metabolism, provide not only an understanding of how metabolic syndrome occurs, but also pinpoint a target for treatment of the condition. This represents the work of Sudha Biddinger, M.D., Ph.D., and a team led by C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Head of the Joslin Research Section on Obesity and Hormone Action and the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Ethylene, the world's most commonly produced organic compound, is used many types of industries. Farmers and horticulturalists use it as a plant hormone to promote flowering and ripening, especially in bananas while doctors and surgeons have long used ethylene as an anesthetic and ethylene-based polymers are found in everything from freezer bags to fiberglass.

Its current production methods result in a number of greenhouse gases. A new environmentally friendly technology created by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory may revolutionize creation of this compound by use of a high-temperature membrane that can produce ethylene from an ethane stream by removing pure hydrogen. Says senior ceramist Balu Balachandran, “This is a clean, energy-efficient way of producing a chemical that before required methods that were expensive and wasteful and also emitted a great deal of pollution.”

The elliptical galaxy NGC 1132 (Hubble picture and video below) belongs to a category of galaxies called giant ellipticals. NGC 1132, together with the small dwarf galaxies surrounding it, are dubbed a “fossil group” as they are most likely the remains of a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past.

In visible light NGC 1132 appears as a single, isolated, giant elliptical galaxy, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Scientists have found that NGC 1132 resides in an enormous halo of dark matter, comparable to the amount of dark matter usually found in an entire group of tens or hundreds of galaxies.

A 'barcode' gene that can be used to distinguish between the majority of plant species on Earth has been identified.

This gene, which can be used to identify plants using a small sample, could lead to new ways of easily cataloguing different types of plants in species-rich areas like rainforests. It could also lead to accurate methods for identifying plant ingredients in powdered substances, such as in traditional Chinese medicines, and could help to monitor and prevent the illegal transportation of endangered plant species.

The team behind the discovery found that DNA sequences of the gene 'matK' differ among plant species, but are nearly identical in plants of the same species. This means that the matK gene can provide scientists with an easy way of distinguishing between different plants, even closely related species that may look the same to the human eye.

Africa and Europe get about 4 mm closer every year in a northeast convergence direction. The exact position and geometry of the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates is unknown, but it is located near the Gibraltar Arc — an area of intense seismic activity.

A group of researchers from the Andalusian Institute for Earth Sciences (CSIC) and the Department of Geodynamics of the University of Granada described for the first time the physical and mechanical properties of the uppermost part of the Earth’s crust — to a depth of 30 km which is where the highest magnitude earthquakes occur.

This study has made it possible to establish the exact position of the active faults of the Gibraltar Arc area which cause earthquakes, thus obtaining valuable geological information which could help determine the areas in which earthquakes are most likely to occur.