SAN FRANCISCO, December 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Synosia Therapeutics today announced the appointment of Antony Blanc, Ph.D., as the company's new chief business officer, effective immediately.

Dr Blanc, who will serve as head of Synosia's office in Basel, Switzerland, joins from Syngenta, where he created and led the biopharmaceuticals business unit. A molecular biologist by training and an experienced biotech entrepreneur, Dr. Blanc helped biotech and pharma clients with R&D, commercial and strategy issues as associate partner with the business consultants McKinsey & Company.

BASINGSTOKE, England and PHILADELPHIA, December 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY, TSX: SHQ), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, today announces its Board succession plans. Dr James H Cavanaugh (age 70) will retire as Non-Executive Chairman; Matthew Emmens (56) will succeed him as Non-Executive Chairman. Angus Russell (51) will be appointed Chief Executive.

These Board changes will become effective at Shire's AGM in June 2008. Also, at that time, David Kappler will be appointed as Deputy Chairman in addition to his existing role as Senior Independent Director. These appointments have the unanimous support of the Directors.

GENEVA, Switzerland, December 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- Trial Will Evaluate Safety and Efficacy of Atacicept in Lupus Nephritis and is Intended to Support Marketing Authorizations

Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA, and its partner ZymoGenetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZGEN) announced today the initiation of a Phase II/III clinical trial of atacicept in lupus nephritis, a severe form of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The kidneys are affected in at least 30% of the estimated 1.5 million people suffering from SLE worldwide. This study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of atacicept for the treatment of patients with active lupus nephritis.

When the Nobel Committee awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to former US Vice President Al Gore, Jr. and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) part of their rationale was

Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Gene flow from genetically modified crop plants to their wild relatives will have little overall impact on human health or the environment, predicts a team of researchers in a report released today by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.

Gene flow -- the movement of genes from one plant population to another -- has always occurred naturally but has drawn particular attention during the past 10 years, as genetically modified crop plants have moved into commercial production.

"Regulatory requirements and market standards that are specific to crops developed using biotechnology have resulted in much closer monitoring of gene flow than has been done in the past," said plant scientist Kent Bradford, a co-author of the report and director of UC Davis' Seed Biotechnology Cen

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a shape-memory rubber that may enable applications as diverse as biomedical implants, conformal face-masks, self-sealing sutures, and “smart” labels.

The material, described in the journal Advanced Materials, forms a new class of shape-memory polymers, which are materials that can be stretched to a new shape and will stay in that form until heated, at which time they revert to their initial shape.

Unlike conventional shape-memory polymers, however, the new material is transparent, rubbery, and most importantly, engineers will be able to control the speed at which it returns to its original shape.

Here’s a nice post about dietary puzzles in which a group of people who should have a high or low rate of heart disease don’t. For example,

Spanish paradox. Those naughty Spaniards are eating more fat and less carbs and getting LESS heart disease, now there’s a surprise. Good thing their medical system is so marvelous.

Although there have been great improvements in the field of robotics in the last fifty years, much work remains in order to introduce androids into our daily life. Rafael Muñoz Salinas, a researcher from de Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Granada, is the author of a doctoral thesis which represents a major improvement in the interaction between robots and human beings.

Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist Aaron Filler, MD, PhD, has posted a 25 minute video titled, "Hominiform Progression", which he says is a revolutionary direct video view into the evolution of movement among the hominiforms: the apes and humans.

Most remarkable, he says, is video evidence that siamang ape babies naturally learn to walk bipedally as their fundamental and innate means of movement. Filler says this provides new evidence that the infants of a shared common ancestor of humans and apes also learned to walk bipedally as their normal means of movement.

In October(1), Dr.

ROCKFORD, Michigan, December 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Wolverine World Wide, Inc. Announces Voluntary Recall of Certain Styles of Children's Shoes

Wolverine has become aware of a risk of the black plastic tab at the end of the shoelaces on Caterpillar(R) brand children's Sheltered, Equate and Kudos models (pictured below) coming off the laces when pulled. Wolverine has not received reports of any incidents from any consumer, but is voluntarily recalling the styles listed above in EU children's sizes 23-29 (equivalent to US children's sizes 7-12) as a precaution because of the potential choking hazard to young children.