The Wilkins Ice Shelf is experiencing further disintegration that is threatening the collapse of the ice bridge connecting the shelf to Charcot Island. Since the connection to the island in the image centre helps to stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the break-up of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk.

This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 July 2008, shows the break-up event which began on the east (right) rather than the on west (left) like the previous event that occurred last month. By 8 July, a fracture that could open the ice bridge was visible.

According to the image acquired on 7 July 2008, Dr Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces at Bonn University estimates the area lost on the Wilkins Ice Shelf during this break-up event is about 1350 km² with a rough estimate of 500 to 700 km² in addition being lost if the bridge to Charcot Island collapses.

A third of reef-building corals around the world are threatened with extinction, according to the first-ever comprehensive global assessment to determine their conservation status. The study findings were published today by Science Express.

Leading coral experts joined forces with the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) – a joint initiative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Conservation International (CI) – to apply the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to this important group of marine species.

"The results of this study are very disconcerting," stated Kent Carpenter, lead author of the Science article, GMSA Director, IUCN Species Programme. "When corals die off, so do the other plants and animals that depend on coral reefs for food and shelter, and this can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems."

LOS ANGELES, July 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Nearly Two out of Three Executives Say Their Company is Hiring Recent Grads -

An uncertain global economy and labor market are not significantly affecting hiring plans for new graduates, according to survey results released today. The latest Executive Quiz from Korn/Ferry International (NYSE: KFY), a premier global provider of talent management solutions, was tabulated in June 2008 as the majority of new university graduates hit the job market.

MUMBAI, India, July 10 /PRNewswire/ --

CMP India and CMP Information, The Netherlands, is once again organizing Fi India 2008, a two-day International Exhibition and Conference on Food Ingredients in Mumbai on October 3-4th, 2008. This is a part of the world-wide series of Fi Events held in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080710/NYTH081 )

Fi India took place in Mumbai in September 2006 for the first time and was inaugurated by the Hon'ble Union Minister for Food Processing Industries, Mr Subodh Kant Sahai. Subsequently it was again organised in October 2007 and was inaugurated by the noted Food Scientist and the Chairman of CFTRI, Dr V Prakash.

STUTTGART, Germany, July 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The proportion of counterfeit products is reported recently from the European commission to be rapidly increasing. There are figures to back this up, showing that manufacturers of high-quality products, including those in the pharmaceutical industry, are among the worst hit. In addition to the harm caused to pharmaceutical manufacturers through damage to their image and loss of sales, the health risks for patients is of paramount importance here. Movianto GmbH together with identif GmbH have developed a solution: by adopting the DNA coding method the pharmaceutical products become secure.

COPENHAGEN, July 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Milestone Systems, a Leading Global Manufacturer of IP Video Surveillance Software, Takes First External Investment From Leading European Venture Capital Firm.

Milestone Systems, a global developer of open platform IP video management software for surveillance systems, today announced US$27 (EUR17) million in growth stage funding from Index Ventures, one of Europe's top venture capital firms. This is the first ever external investment into Milestone, after nearly a decade in business, and marks the latest investment from Index Ventures' EUR400 million growth fund, which closed in January 2007.

Japanese scientists have made a micro-sized sewing machine to sew long threads of DNA into shape. The work published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Lab on a Chip demonstrates a unique way to manipulate delicate DNA chains without breaking them.

Scientists can diagnose genetic disorders such as Down's syndrome by using gene markers, or "probes", which bind to only highly similar chains of DNA. Once bound, the probe's location can be easily detected by fluorescence, and this gives information about the gene problem.

Detecting these probes is often a slow and difficult process, however, as the chains become tightly coiled. The new method presented by Kyohei Terao from Kyoto University, and colleagues from The University of Tokyo, uses micron-sized hooks controlled by lasers to catch and straighten a DNA strand with excellent precision and care.

The economic and psychological term known as “sunk-cost fallacy” is a bias that leads someone to make a decision based solely on a previous financial investment. For example, a baseball fan might attend every game of the season only because he already purchased the tickets. But not everyone would force themselves to brave the pouring rain for a single game in one season simply because they previously paid for the seats.

So who is more likely to commit or avoid the sunk-cost fallacy and why?

Scientists have identified about two dozen genes that control embryonic stem cell fate. The genes may either prod or restrain stem cells from drifting into a kind of limbo, they suspect. The limbo lies between the embryonic stage and fully differentiated, or specialized, cells, such as bone, muscle or fat.

By knowing the genes and proteins that control a cell's progress toward the differentiated form, researchers may be able to accelerate the process – a potential boon for the use of stem cells in therapy or the study of some degenerative diseases, the scientists say.

Their finding comes from the first large-scale search for genes crucial to embryonic stem cells. The research was carried out by a team at the University of California, San Francisco and is reported in a paper in the July 11, 2008 issue of Cell.