It has been long been known that bacteria swim by rotating their tail-like structure called the flagellum. The rotating motion of the flagellum is powered by a molecular engine located at the base of the flagellum. Just as engaging the clutch of a car connects its gear to its engine and delivers power to its wheels, engaging the molecular clutch of a bacterium connects its gear to its engine and delivers power to its flagellum.

Now, a paper appearing in Science describes, for the first time, how the flagellum's rotations are stopped so that bacteria stop moving.

Here's how the stopping mechanism works: while a bacterium is swimming, it releases a protein (shown in red in the stationary bacterium in the figure) that flows between its gear and engine. The presence of this protein detaches the bacterium's gear from its engine and thereby stops the delivery of power to its flagellum. This process is analogous to disengaging the clutch of a car, which detaches its gear from its engine and thereby stops the delivery of power to its wheels.

Once the delivery of power to bacterium's flagellum stops, the flagellum stops rotating, and the bacterium's swimming ends.

LONDON, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Solcara's Spotlight product has been adopted by Glasgow City Council to provide its press office with an efficient, fast, accurate and now indispensable media service.

Solcara Spotlight has been deployed in many of the UK's largest press offices, including the UK's largest Police forces, local authorities and city councils, as well as large commercial organisations that are increasingly in the media spotlight.

For those responsible for directing an organisation's communications, Solcara Spotlight allows them to connect to the information that matters, when it matters most, providing greater efficiency in the management and protection of reputation.

Chris Starrs, PR Manager for Glasgow City Council, said:

LYNDHURST, England, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- INEOS welcomes the statement made by Unite today confirming that INEOS has at no time stripped, removed or received any assets from the pension fund of INEOS workers at Grangemouth.

These were extremely serious allegations. INEOS is pleased that Unite has set the record straight by issuing its statement to the media and by publishing it on their website.

INEOS and Unite continue their discussion on the Grangemouth pension scheme with a view to finding a resolution to this dispute.

The Unite statement is given in full below:

LONDON, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- An industrial dispute has arisen involving the INEOS Group of companies and Unite the union in relation to changes proposed to the company's pension arrangements for current and future employees at the Grangemouth Refinery Petrochemicals site in Scotland. In April 2008 industrial action took place and prior to the action commencing statements were made by both the company and the union representatives in relation to the dispute.

ABERDEEN, Scotland and 'S-HERTOGENBOSCH, The Netherlands, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Quintiq, a leading provider of advanced planning and scheduling solutions, today announced that it has won the contract to provide a comprehensive resource optimisation solution to FirstGroup, the world's leading transport operator.

Following a successful pilot with First ScotRail, Quintiq's resource optimisation solutions will be implemented at all four of First's rail passenger franchises, First ScotRail, First TransPennine Express, First Capital Connect and First Great Western.

LONDON, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of the industry day of action planned for 2nd July, the Road Haulage Association will be joining forces with other protest groups, primarily to support the Fuel Price Regulator amendment to the Finance Bill (expected to be debated at that time) and also the seek the introduction of an Essential User Rebate.

The lobby will commence at 11.30am in Old Palace Yard (opposite the House of Commons) until approx 1.00pm after which time members will be seeking meetings with their MPs to highlight the issues in person.

UTRECHT, the Netherlands, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, monitored the most popular sports sites, belonging to each of the Euro 2008 nations. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites, to reveal that the nations with the best sports sites are France, Spain and the Netherlands. Sports enthusiasts in Turkey may be disappointed by confirmation that their nation's favorite sports site ranks as the worst, largely due to long load times.

With food prices going up, farmers are getting wealthy (or wealthier, in the case of the big conglomerates), right? Not outside the US, according to a study in Economic Development and Cultural Change by Marcel Fafchamps(1) and Ruth Vargas Hill(2).

In their new study for look to the long-time coffee producing nation of Uganda to attempt to answer the riddle of why higher prices don't 'trickle down' in other countries, even if they are modern liberalized economies.

Coffee is the world's largest agricultural commodity, and is also one of the world's most volatile. Large global coffee price fluctuations mean coffee has seen many periods of rapidly increasing prices. But new research shows that when global coffee prices rise, farmers do not see the same rise in the price they receive.