Polar lows are small-scale storms that occur in the oceans of the high latitudes and are comparable to a tropical cyclone. The strong winds they produce are rightly feared by seamen. In the course of the last century, North Atlantic polar lows caused 56 shipwrecks with a total of 342 people lost at sea.

Although polar lows do not always produce winds of hurricane force, they are particularly treacherous to shipping because they can develop very suddenly and, on account of their small diameter of only a few hundred kilometres, are very difficult to predict.

Similarly, the lack of meteorological stations in the polar regions further compounds the difficulties of forecasting and documenting these weather systems.

Less experienced prostitutes are more likely to have sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A study of more than a thousand female sex workers in Cambodia, reported in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases, has shown that girls who were new to the sex industry were twice as likely to have gonorrhoea or chlamydia.

Not 10 years ago, most doctors agreed that estrogen supplements for post-menopausal women reduced the risk of heart attacks. Millions were paying extravagantly for “hormone replacement therapy”, and drug companies were making a killing. However, a comprehensive study conducted by the Women’s Health Initiative was stopped early, in 2002, because the dangers to healthy women taking estrogen were deemed excessive. Estrogen therapy, it turned out, actually increased the risk of heart attack, strokes, and breast cancer. The medical community was shocked. The Annals of Internal Medicine ran an editorial “How Could We Have Been So Wrong?” The National Institutes of Health hosted a special seminar on “methodology” and “medical evidence”.

FRIMLEY, England, December 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Adding Zometa to Chemotherapy Prior to Surgery Led to an Additional 33% Reduction in Tumour Size, Resulting in Fewer Mastectomies

- New Data is First to Demonstrate Direct Effect of Zometa to Help Shrink Primary Tumours; Further Evidence of Zometa as a Potential Anticancer Therapy

New data released today demonstrates that the addition of Zometa(R) (zoledronic acid) infusion to standard chemotherapy before breast cancer surgery reduces the size of breast tumours more effectively than chemotherapy alone in women with early-stage disease.

DALLAS, December 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Strategic move enables both companies to sharpen focus on core competencies

BancTec, Inc. a global provider of advanced, high-volume document and payment processing services and solutions, today announced that it has reached an agreement to sell its Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) division to QualxServ, LLC a leading provider of technology deployment and field delivered support services.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, December 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Experienced editorial staff combined with focused circulation meets demand from the European electronics market

TechInsights Europe, the leading dedicated media and marketing services business serving the European electronics market, announces that the Industrial Automation and Test Measurement supplement of its flagship media service EE Times Europe will be published 20 April 2009.

LONDON, December 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- Femara showed reduced risk of death by 13% (P=0.08) versus tamoxifen, despite inclusion of patients who had switched over from tamoxifen to Femara during the study period, following the study's unblinding

- In a separate censored analysis excluding patients after they crossed over to Femara, reduction in risk of death was 19% (HR= 0.81, 95% CI: 0.69-0.94)

- Long-term follow-up from major independent BIG 1-98 trial adds further evidence that starting with Femara may be the optimal treatment strategy versus tamoxifen

LONDON, December 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- East London Families Miss out on Services as Health Visitor Workforce 'in Crisis'

The possibility of tragedy is on the cards in Barking and Dagenham, following a steep decline in the number of health visitors, Unite the Union has warned.

Unite, the largest union in the country, says that with the health visitor vacancy rate running at 45%, hundreds of East London families are not receiving the support they deserve in one of the capital's most deprived boroughs.

HAMBURG, Germany, December 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Olympus has further cemented its position as a leader in the field of minimally invasive surgery by signing an exclusive and immediate deal to distribute the products of Irish company Advanced Surgical Concepts worldwide. ASC is the sole global provider of ports for state-of-the-art laparoscopic operative techniques via a single access point - the patient's navel. Olympus is now the exclusive distributor for the full range of products involved.