The production volume of URALCHEM holding enterprises during the first 6 months of 2011 increased by 4% compared to the same period in 2010, amounting to a total of 2.6 million tonnes. The production of nitrogen fertilisers increased by 3%, and complex fertilisers by 13%. The growth in production of NPK fertilisers was in line with the company's strategy to increase the share of specialised products with high added value while gradually reducing the production of standard types of nitrogenous and phosphate fertilizers. The total production increase in the first half ...

The West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) will present their Big Sing concert in Perth at the start of September.   Billed by the organisers as a fun way to spend an afternoon singing along with the WASO Chorus, the show is scheduled to take place on Sunday September 4th at Perth Concert Hall.   The community event is open to people of all ages, regardless of whether they are trained vocalists or just keen to experience the joy of singing several popular choral works, led by WASO Chorus director Marilyn Phillips.   Admission is free, but advanced bookings are ...

Bell Shakespeare will bring their re-imagining of the classic play Julius Caesar to Cairns at the end of September.   Associate artistic director Peter Evans has taken the original plot but transported it to the contemporary world of backroom politics, turning the production into a sharp drama about affairs of state.   Describing the piece, Mr Evans insisted Julius Caesar is never out of date and still feels "relentlessly modern".   "We witness the original pre-emptive strike and the irony of the 'honourable assassination' with all the carnage that ...

Culinary enthusiasts will be heading to venues in and around Broadbeach next month for the Tastes of Gold Coast festival. Running for 16 days, the event aims to celebrate the high calibre of food and drink producers, chefs and restaurants from the Gold Coast and the Hinterland region. "As the name implies, it's a festival that's all about good old-fashioned fun and people enjoying themselves - a festival that perfectly compliments our superb weather and relaxed lifestyle," explained Gold Coast mayor Ron Clarke. Tastes of Gold Coast 2011 is set to run ...

Alice Cooper is bringing his No More Mr Nice Guy tour to St Kilda towards the end of next month.   The rock'n'roll icon is set to take the stage at the Palais Theatre on Thursday September 29th, giving fans the chance to witness his legendary live show that features everything from boa constrictors to zombies.   Doors at the venue are due to open at 19:30 local time on the night. The support band, highly acclaimed Sydney five-piece Syndicate, will kick off proceedings at 20:00, with timings for the rest of the show yet to be confirmed.   Tickets for the concert are ...

American soul singer Aloe Blacc will be among the star performers at next month's BAM Festival in Barcelona.   Taking place from Thursday September 22nd to Saturday September 24th at outdoor venues around the Catalan capital, the free event forms part of the city's annual Merce celebrations.   Blacc - real name Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III - has enjoyed major chart success this year with his single I Need a Dollar.   The song, which appears on the artist's second studio album Good Things, grew in popularity after featuring on the HBO series How to Make It in America ...

Ben Hur Live is due to arrive in the Italian capital on Friday September 30th. The production, which was showered with critical praise when it debuted at London's O2 Arena in 2009, will run until late November at the Nuova Fiera Rome. Based on the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, the show includes a high-speed chariot race and a dramatic naval battle, among other scenes likely to leave audience members on the edge of their seats. It also features a soundtrack by American musician Stewart Copeland, the former drummer of The Police. Ben Hur, the epic film starring ...

Corteo, a spectacular touring production from Cirque du Soleil, is due to open in Seville next month.   People visiting the Spanish city will be able to enjoy the show at the Charco de la Pava from Wednesday September 7th, with adult tickets priced between EUR37 and EUR177 (GBP32.40 and GBP155.20).   Corteo, which means "cortege" in Italian, is a contemporary circus production that premiered in Canada in 2005.   It tells the unusual story of a clown who watches his own funeral taking place in a carnival atmosphere, with angels looking on.   According to ...

On Thursday, August 11, 2011, criminal charges were filed against two Crestwood officials. The indictment was filed against Theresa Neubauer, the Village of Crestwood's police chief and former water department supervisor, and the former Village of Crestwood's former certified water operator, Frank Scaccia. For years, it is alleged that the Village told residents and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency it was only using Lake Michigan water after 1985, when it discovered a Village well had been tainted by vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen. But regulators later ...

Financial trading website www.Online-Spread-Betting.com has launched a brand new section as part of the ongoing improvements to the site. The new section, updated daily, is called the Spread Betting Shares News, and is intended to aid any investor speculating on stocks and shares from around the world, as well as stock market indices as a whole. Throughout 2011, Online-Spread-Betting.com has been working hard to improve the site. In January, they completely overhauled the design and house style of the site in order to make it more accessible and easier to navigate. Later ...

iPhone Betting Apps (www.iphonebettingapps.com) have launched an updated and redesigned version of their popular mobile gaming portal for iPhones and iPads. The new iPhone Betting site incorporates a completely new layout and design, making it easier to navigate between the various types of iPhone mobile gambling apps. The site is now broken down into 5 main sections, Sports Betting Apps, Horse Racing Apps, Poker Apps, Casino Apps and a mobile betting blog. The Mobile Sports Betting section reviews the best iPhone betting apps for those looking to place iPhone wagers ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital's Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center have found positive associations between fish oil supplements and cognitive functioning as well as differences in brain structure between users and non-users of fish oil supplements. The findings suggest possible benefits of fish oil supplements on brain health and aging. The results were reported at the recent International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, in Paris, France. The study was led by Lori Daiello, PharmD, a research scientist at the Rhode Island Hospital ...

WASHINGTON — Fatigue can lead to dangerous errors by doctors, pilots and others in high-risk professions, but individuals who work together as a team display better problem-solving skills than those who face their fatigue alone, new research shows. "Teams appear to be more highly motivated to perform well, and team members can compare solutions to reach the best decision when they are fatigued. This appears to allow teams to avoid the inflexible thinking experienced by fatigued individuals," said Daniel Frings, PhD, a senior lecturer in social psychology at London ...

Scientists at the Smithsonian and partnering organizations have discovered a remarkably primitive eel in a fringing reef off the coast of the Republic of Palau. This fish exhibits many primitive anatomical features unknown in the other 19 families and more than 800 species of living eels, resulting in its classification as a new species belonging to a new genus and family. The team's research is published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Aug. 17. Many of the physical features of this new genus and species of eel, Protoanguilla palau, reflect its relationship ...

Researchers at The Medical College of Wisconsin investigating latex allergy in health care workers have demonstrated the most effective public health strategy to prevent allergic sensitization is by stopping the use of powdered latex gloves. Previous medical studies pointed out this association of latex allergy to powdered latex glove use but were not able to completely confirm this link in specific workers. Reducing the use of powdered gloves reduced the allergen in the air and in air ducts at two hospitals, and prevented sensitization to latex in health care workers ...

This release is available in German. "The strength of spider dragline silk exceeds that of any material produced in laboratories, by far. All attempts to manufacture threads of similar strength have failed thus far," explains Professor Horst Kessler, Carl von Linde Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at the TU Muenchen (TUM-IAS). In collaboration with the workgroup of Prof. Thomas Scheibel, who was a researcher at the TU Muenchen until 2007 and who now holds a chair of the Institute of Biomaterials at the Universitaet Bayreuth, Professor Kessler's team has been ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The public often views the apparel industry as lacking transparency, sustainability and ethical practices. Scandals like child labor, sweat shops, and environmentally damaging manufacturing methods have alienated many consumers from the industry. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that consumers are willing to support apparel companies that do have employ sustainable and ethical practices; but those businesses have to prove it. Gargi Bhaduri, a doctoral student, and Jung Ha-Brookshire, an assistant professor of textile and apparel management ...

This release is available in German. Whenever crisis threatens the financial markets, voices are loud in calling for greater control. It is dubious, however, whether tighter regulation would actually offer investors better protection against losing their capital. "Economic history shows us that strictly regulated stock markets do not necessarily function better than those that are given a free hand," says historian and economist Carsten Burhop of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn. Based on selected sample cases, he and two British colleagues, ...

Many Americans suffer from diabetes and hypertension and, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center, these individuals may have an increased risk of developing open-angle glaucoma (OAG). Joshua D. Stein, M.D., M.S., a glaucoma specialist at Kellogg, led a research team that recently reviewed billing records of more than 2 million people aged 40 and older who were enrolled in a managed care network in the United States and who visited an eye care provider one or more times from 2001 to 2007. The researchers found that people with ...

Since competitive Scrabble players are expert at studying language, University of Calgary researchers sought to determine if and how players' techniques and training changed the process of reading words. They tested competitive Scrabble players to understand the extent to which the players relied on the meaning and physical orientation of words in order to understand them as a part of the English language system. Their study shows, for the first time, that it is possible to develop visual word recognition ability in adulthood, beyond what researchers previously thought ...

An international team of researchers has completed the first major survey in Asia of a deadly fungus that has wiped out more than 200 species of amphibians worldwide. The massive survey could help scientists zero in on why the fungus has been unusually devastating in many parts of the globe -- and why Asian amphibians have so far been spared the same dramatic declines. The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd, is the culprit behind amphibian extinctions in Central, South and North America, Australia and Europe. The new Asian ...

NEW YORK, NY, LA JOLLA and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA, SEATTLE, WA, August 17, 2011 — A team of researchers at and associated with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), The Scripps Research Institute, the biotechnology company Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences Inc., a LabCorp company, report in the current issue of Nature the isolation of 17 novel antibodies capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of variants of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The new antibodies, large protein molecules that bind to pathogens and flag them for destruction, were ...

LAWRENCE, Kan. — An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Kansas plan to bring a highly successful anti-bullying effort, the KiVa program, to American schools. Starting as early as the 2012-13 school year, a pilot program could kick off in selected classrooms in Lawrence, Kan. If shown to be successful there, soon afterward the model could expand nationally. KiVa, implemented in Finland in 2007, has impressed researchers with its proven reduction in bullying incidents. According to one recent study, KiVa "halved the risk of bullying others and of ...

TORONTO, ON – The performance management process should evaluate and focus on employee engagement in addition to job performance, according to a paper published from the University of Toronto and University of Guelph. Engagement involves high levels of identification with one's work in terms of attention, absorption and feeling integrated in the performance of one's tasks and roles. The paper's authors – Professor Alan Saks from the University of Toronto and Professor Jamie Gruman of the University of Guelph – contend performance management should involve an evaluation ...

LAWRENCE, Kan. — As suburban school districts have gained advantages over their urban counterparts, they have tenaciously clung to them, often at the expense of urban districts, a new study by University of Kansas researchers shows. While urban schools' not keeping pace with suburban schools is an acknowledged problem, few have studied the causes of the discrepancies. John Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, professor and assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies, recently published an article in the American Journal of Education showing how some suburban ...