It has all the hallmarks of a Cretaceous melodrama. A dinosaur sits on her nest of a dozen eggs on a sandy river beach. Water levels rise, and the mother is faced with a dilemma: Stay or abandon her unhatched offspring to the flood and scramble to safety?

Seventy-seven million years later, scientific detective work conducted by University of Calgary and Royal Tyrrell Museum researchers used this unique fossil nest and eggs to learn more about how nest building, brooding and eggs evolved. But there is a big unresolved question: Who was the egg-layer?

Evolution isn't just for living organisms. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity. The finding, published in American Mineralogist*, could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.

BAAR, Switzerland, November 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- ZEVTERA(TM) A Broad-spectrum, Anti-MRSA Cephalosporin Antibiotic to Treat Complicated Skin and Soft Tissue Infections Approved in Switzerland

- Not for UK Media

Swissmedic, the Swiss agency for therapeutic products, has approved ZEVTERA(TM) (ceftobiprole medocaril) for the treatment of complicated skin and soft tissue infections, including diabetic foot infections which have not spread to the bone.

Ceftobiprole is licensed from and co-developed with Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. Janssen-Cilag will market ceftobiprole in Switzerland under the trade name ZEVTERA(TM). Swiss based Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd will co-promote the drug in key European markets and North America.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).  Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by the US- UK-Dutch Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible light image of a large dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut. It clearly showed that this structure is in fact a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 34.5 billion kilometres across with a sharp inner edge.

A major milestone has been achieved in the completion of the U's next-generation particle accelerator, ALICE, which is set to produce an intense beam of light that will revolutionize the way in which accelerator based light source research facilities will be designed in the future.

ALICE is an acronym standing for Accelerators and Lasers In Combined Experiments. Financed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council with seed funding from the North West Development Agency, the project is designed to produce light from both the accelerator and advanced lasers that can be used simultaneously in cutting edge experiments.

AAAS isn't usually regarded as fans of science journalism (well, unless it's people writing for Science) but that hasn't always been the case. Since 1945 they have honored science reporting for print and radio and later expanded that to television and now online reporting.

This year, an ambitious series on memory and the brain, a look at whether research supports widespread use of anti-cholesterol medications, and a broadcast account of the contentious battle over intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania, are among the winners of the 2008 AAAS Science Journalism Awards.

Panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which are sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C.

Researchers at MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research have produced a report concerning key design issues of proposed "cap-and-trade" programs that are under consideration in the United States as a way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The first contribution of the three-part study found that, based on an examination of the European Union's system and of similar U.S. programs for other emissions, such a program can indeed be effective in reducing emissions without having a significant economic impact.

Humans would never agree that elections sometimes come down to looks.   Science disagrees.   Some argue that Barack Obama won because he looks younger and healthier than John McCain while others contend that having twice as much money makes any candidate more likely to win and about three people actually voted based on the issues.

A new report in the November 13th issue of Current Biology says that one species of fish picks its leaders in much the same way; most of the time they reach a consensus to go for the more attractive of two candidates. 

CAMBRIDGE, England, November 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- Popular Commercially-Supported Linux Distribution Ubuntu to be Available on Low-Power ARM SoCs With Rich Integrated Graphics and Video Subsystems and a Proven Track Record of Low-Power Design

ARM ((LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMH)) and Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu(R), today announced that it will bring the full Ubuntu Desktop operating system to the ARMv7 processor architecture to address demand from device manufacturers. The addition of the new operating system will enable new netbooks and hybrid computers, targeting energy-efficient ARM(R) technology-based SoCs, to deliver a rich, always-connected, mobile computing experience, without compromising battery life.