LUGANO, Switzerland, January 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Helsinn Healthcare S.A., Switzerland, a privately owned pharmaceutical group and its partner, MGI Pharma (Nasdaq: MOGN), a biopharmaceutical company focused in oncology and acute care, today announced that a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for Aloxi(R) (palonosetron hydrochloride) Capsules for oral administration was accepted for filing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Aloxi Injection is approved by the FDA for the prevention of acute nausea and vomiting associated with initial and repeat courses of moderately and highly emetogenic cancer chemotherapy and for the prevention of delayed nausea and vomiting associated with initial and repeat courses of moderately emetogenic cancer chemotherapy.

Is marketing a bad thing? How much money does Coca-Cola spend on Research & Development of its premier soft drink? Nothing. When something works, you go with it. New Coke taught them that. But they market it like crazy.

Yet whether pharmaceutical companies are primarily interested in research and development or marketing is central to the cultural debate about medicine.

Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin, writing in PLoS Medicine, state that information on promotional expenditures from IMS, the most widely quoted authority that surveys pharmaceutical firms, isn't reliable.

The extinction of dinosaurs has always fascinated historians and biologists. Theories abound regarding asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows that might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct but a new book argues that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force – biting, disease-carrying insects.

An important contributor to the demise of the dinosaurs, experts say, could have been the rise and evolution of insects, especially the slow-but-overwhelming threat posed by new disease carriers.

For centuries, human beings have been entranced by the captivating glimmer of the diamond. What accounts for the stunning beauty of this most precious gem?

As mathematician Toshikazu Sunada explains in an article in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, some secrets of the diamond's beauty can be uncovered by a mathematical analysis of its microscopic crystal structure. It turns out that this structure has some very special, and especially symmetric, properties. In fact, as Sunada discovered, out of an infinite universe of mathematical crystals, only one other shares these properties with the diamond, a crystal that he calls the "K_4 crystal".

Researchers at the Biodesign Institute are using bacteria as a viable option to make electricity. The next step could be commercialization of a promising microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology.

"We can use any kind of waste, such as sewage or pig manure, and the microbial fuel cell will generate electrical energy," said Marcus, a Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate student and a member of the institute's Center for Environmental Biotechnology. Unlike conventional fuel cells that rely on hydrogen gas as a fuel source, the microbial fuel cell can handle a variety of water-based organic fuels.

"There is a lot of biomass out there that we look at simply as energy stored in the wrong place," said Bruce Rittmann, director of the center.

In the first study examining American physicians' use of placebos in clinical practice in the 21st Century, 45 percent of Chicago internists report they have used a placebo at some time during their clinical practice researchers report in the January issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine.

This study indicates a need for greater recognition of the use of placebos and unproven therapies and discussion about its implications," say the study authors, Rachel Sherman, a fourth year medical student at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, and John Hickner, MD, MSc, professor of family medicine, at the University of Chicago and University of Chicago Medical Center.

The authors sent questionnaires inquiring about placebo use to 466 internists at the University of Ch

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, January 3 /PRNewswire/ --

Mersana, a cancer therapeutics company, announced today the appointment of C. Boyd Clarke as Chairman of the Company's Board of Directors. Mr. Clarke is a senior biotechnology and pharmaceutical executive with a significant record of accomplishment over a 30-year industry career.

FREMONT, California, January 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- USB Drives Have Capacity to Hold Over 16 Full-Length High-Definition Movies or an Entire Season of a TV Series

Corsair(R) http://www.corsair.com, a worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, announced today that it is expanding its Flash Voyager and Flash Survivor USB family lines with new 32GB capacity offerings. The new Corsair 32GB Flash Voyager and Flash Survivor USB drives will be debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show 2008 (CES) next week in Las Vegas in the Corsair Suite at the Wynn Hotel and at Showstoppers CES 2008.

Ultimate Solution for Storing, Transporting & Backing-up Critical Data

BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE, England, January 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- ZigBee technology connects people with their homes via the Internet and mobile phones

AlertMe.com, provider of people-friendly home security, has teamed up with Ember to make it easy for people, wherever they may be, to keep a close eye on their homes by combining ZigBee wireless technology, the Internet and mobile phone networks.

As structures made of metal get smaller — as their dimensions approach the micrometer scale (millionths of a meter) or less — they get stronger. Scientists discovered this phenomenon 50 years ago while measuring the strength of tin "whiskers" a few micrometers in diameter and a few millimeters in length.