This release is available in German. Sighişoara/Leipzig. Traditional agricultural practices can make a major contribution to preserving biodiversity in the EU's new member states in Central and Eastern Europe. By contrast, the construction of roads and the intensification of agriculture currently encouraged by EU farming subsidies pose a threat to amphibians. The rich natural environment still extant in many accession countries is under threat, according to scientists writing in the journal Biological Conservation. The researchers from Romania, Germany and the ...

Donna Price, President of Compass Rose Consulting and Co-Founder of the Real World Leadership Institute is pleased to announce the introduction of a new workshop entitled: Great Workplace . Based on a many years of research and training conducted at the Great Place to Work Institute—producers of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For Annual List—The Great Workplace: Building Trust and Inspiring Performance Workshop provides managers with a set of powerful, effective exercises that will help them understand the conceptual and practical considerations of creating a high-trust ...

This release is available in German. »It was a matter of minutes,« Dr. Heribert Schmidt remembers the day in spring of 2002. To find opportunities for improvement, he had often pondered about the switching plan of an inverter while in his office at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, Germany. A sudden flash of inspiration – and a solution that was ingeniously simple came to his mind. He immediately went to get an inverter from the laboratory, laid a few new strips and installed two additional semiconductor switches. »Then it required only ...

"There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage", says Martin Luther. So, it's important to nurture that beautiful wedding occasion throughout our life. Having a videotape of your wedding will preserve the magic of your special day alive and it will become your most treasures possessions. This can be done only by an expert wedding videographer, who has the ability to turn your wedding into a wedding film that you'll cherish and enjoy watching and sharing with your loved ones forever. You can't blindly choose ...

After the success of their first bootcamp on International grounds, Digital Vidya, India's premier digital marketing training company, will be spreading the Social Media madness in Singapore again on Jun 09 and 10, 2011. On their first visit there, Digital Vidya witnessed a hall full of social media enthusiasts from the city of Singapore. In association with TiE Singapore and a mission to spread the Digital Vidya globally, Mr. Pradeep Chopra and Kapil Nakra led a workshop of over 30 people, helping them build and nurture digital marketing talent and helping them leverage ...

This release is available in German. Before a new vehicle rolls off the assembly lines, it first takes shape as a virtual model. In a cave – a room for the virtual representation of objects - the developers look at it from all sides, they »sit« in it, they examine and improve it. For example, are all the switches easy to reach? The developers have so far used a joystick to interact with the computer which displays the virtual car model. In the future, they will be able to do so without such an aid – their hand alone is intended to be enough to provide the computer with ...

The Internet security experts at Agnitum are pleased to announce that Outpost Security Suite Pro (OSS Pro) 7.1 has aced performance tests carried out by Russia's respected Anti-Malware Test Lab in May 2011. OSS Pro 7.1 received 3 Gold Awards for its high-speed performance. Internet security product Outpost Pro 7.1 performed optimally on the majority of tests, leaving far behind many competing products. PC security products delivered by AVG, Avast, Avira, Eset, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro also participated in the Anti-Malware's testing. When compared ...

This release is available in German. Is the component ok or have errors been made during production? Are the inner structures built up as intended? This can be examined with an X-ray tomograph: it takes numerous X-ray images and combines them into cross-sections. This way, one gets a three dimensional model of the component without having to destroy it. Currently these apparatuses usually weigh uo to several tons, with even the lightest ones still weighing approximately 50 kilograms. During the work on his Diploma thesis at the Development Center for X-Ray Technology ...

NNG LLC, a leading navigation solution provider and developer of the iGO primo navigation software, and Blaupunkt a leading brand for quality and innovative car radios, sound components and consumer electronics in Europe and worldwide, jointly announce the new New York 800 aftermarket infotainment unit with navigation and communication functions. Designed for the increasing number of upgradeable 2DIN car radio compartments, the New York 800 is already available in Germany, and will shortly be launched in other countries all over the world. iGO primo is the optimal navigation ...

The age-specific blood levels of the Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) can predict when women will reach menopause. This makes family planning easier, say fertility researchers from the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. Their findings were published online May 26 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Generally, women enter menopause between the age of forty and sixty. A woman's fertility, however, ends ten years prior to this and in the most unfavorable circumstances occurs around the age of thirty. With regard to family planning and a career, ...

Agoda.com, Asia's global hotel booking site and part of the Nasdaq-listed Priceline.com Inc. (Nasdaq: PCLN), announces a host of summer hotel deals in Rome to coincide with Estate Romana. Now in its 34th year, Estate Romana is a citywide celebration of all things artistic, musical, and cultural. From pop and rock concerts to classical recitals, art exhibitions, and theatre performances, this summer-long spectacular encapsulates the very spirit of Italy's chic and vibrant capital. For those who like their music live and loud, Rock in Roma is not to be missed. With ...

This release is available in German. »Medicines from plants« – one thinks of herbal teas or valerian drops. However, that has nothing in common with what the researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Aachen, Germany, are doing. They use plants to produce biopharmaceuticals. Those are proteins that, unlike many other medications, cannot be chemically produced. Biologically produced medications, such as recombinant insulin or therapeutic antibodies to fight cancer, have become indispensable. Plants are particularly suitable ...

Lanner, the simulation modeling and process optimization solutions provider, announced details of its latest channel strategy at its annual reseller conference held in Prague, Czech Republic last week. Speaking to an audience of channel partners from a dozen countries, CEO David Jones set out Lanner's focus for the next 12 months, including new channel relationships, key markets and territories, further investment in people, and a renewed focus on customer support. As part of the simulation software provider's objective to grow its channel strategy, two new channel ...

This release is available in German. What do potato chips and thin-film solar cells have in common? Both need films that protect them from air and water vapor: the chips in order to stay fresh and crisp; the solar cells in order to have a useful life that is as long as possible. In most cases, glass is used to protect the active layers of the solar cells from environmental influences. Dr. Klaus Noller from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising explains the advantages of a plastic film: "The films are considerably lighter – and ...

Cornerstone Farm (www.cornerstonefarminc.com), a local business offering horseback riding lessons and horse training services to area residents for 14 years, has announced its 2011 summer horsemanship camp schedule. Cornerstone Farm specializes in hunter/jumper instruction for beginning through advanced riders on all breeds of horses, and offers camps, lessons and training at Triple Creek Ranch (www.triplecreek-ranch.com), 4255 Nelson Road in Longmont. Three types of camps are offered: an Introductory camp for beginners; Beginner 2 for those who can walk and trot and ...

"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." . . . Wes "Scoop" Nisker Taking a page from the book of San Francisco radio legend Scoop Nisker, biologists who find themselves dissatisfied with the microbes nature has provided are going out and making some of their own. Members of the fast-growing "synthetic biology" research community are designing and constructing novel organisms and biologically-inspired systems - or redesigning existing organisms and systems - to solve problems that natural systems cannot. The range of potential applications for synthetic ...

A free exhibition of Jacques-Henri Lartigue's work is currently on show at the CaixaForum Madrid, offering art fans the chance to see many of his pictures in the city for the first time. The French artist carried his camera with him throughout his life and the images he captured offer snapshots of a generation and how they enjoyed themselves before the first world war. Among the 200 pictures in the collection are scenes showing people taking part in motorsports, swimming and embracing new fashions. Lartigue was also a painter, but it is his photographs that have ...

This release is available in German. mp3 for phone calls – Considering the poor sound quality of many phone calls, this is a great idea. Videoconference phone calls in particular can be unintentionally awkward because the participants start to speak at the same time due to the time delay in the transmission. The reasons for this are long delay times and the poor quality of today's video calls. Fraunhofer's task was therefore to improve the quality and simultaneously minimize the delay time. The technology that makes this possible is called Enhanced Low Delay Advanced ...

Musicians are expected to flock to the 2011 Cairns Ukulele Festival (CUF) next month for an ambitious attempt to break a world record. The organisers are hoping to set a new benchmark for the largest ukulele ensemble, having tried and failed to achieve this goal at last year's event. With the bar currently standing at 851, the team behind the festival have registered the attempt with Guinness World Records and are hoping to attract 1,000 players to the Courthouse Hotel on July 2nd. All those who take part in the challenge will have to join in with a five-minute ...

Next month will see the Heart for Healing Festival take place in Bali, with all sorts of alternative therapies and workshops to be offered. The event is held on Saturday June 18th at the Bumi Ubud Resort and will kick off at 10:00 local time with a performance by children from the Pelangi School. Their presence is of prime importance to the occasion, since the festival is a fundraiser for the youngsters, with all proceeds going to a scholarship programme. Healing massages, healthy food and lectures are among the activities on offer over the course of the day. The ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A team of researchers at MIT has found a way to make complex composite materials whose attributes can be fine-tuned to give various desirable combinations of properties such as stiffness, strength, resistance to impacts and energy dissipation. The key feature of the new composites is a "co-continuous" structure of two different materials with very different properties, creating a material combining aspects of both. The co-continuous structure means that the two interleaved materials each form a kind of three-dimensional lattice whose pieces are fully ...

This release is available in French and Spanish. University of Granada researchers have proven that music therapy combined with other relax techniques based on guided imagery reduces significantly pain, depression and anxiety, and improves sleep among patients suffering from fibromyalgia. Thus, this therapy enhances patients' quality of life. This pioneer experimental study in Europe has shown that these two techniques enhance the well-being and personal power of patients with fibromyalgia, who are allowed to take part in their treatment. This research study was conducted ...

For cooperation to persist in the often violently competitive realm of bacteria, cheaters must be kept in line. Two Indiana University Bloomington biologists have learned that in one bacterium, at least, bacterial cooperators can evolve to "police" the cheaters and arrest their bids for dominance. "Even simple organisms such as bacteria can evolve to suppress social cheaters," said Gregory Velicer, who with Ph.D. student Pauline Manhes has reported the policing behavior in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their laboratory experiments suggest ...

Research suggests that landfill gas-recovery projects should be implemented quickly if the maximum amount of methane gas is to be retrieved from organic waste in as short as time as possible, according to a study published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Environment and Waste Management. Through appropriate management, landfill can be used to generate an alternative fuel gas containing that has half the caloric value of natural gas. Landfill gas (LFG) comprises approximately 50% methane and 50% carbon dioxide. However, such management requires significant ...

Bats at Wetlands is sure to be a popular exhibition for fans of the winged animal who visit the wildlife park. It has been organised as part of the venue's fifth anniversary and will be running until October 31st 2011. In a statement, the organisers said: "Visitors may discover the fun facts about the behaviour, cultural symbolism and conservation research projects on bats through a wide range of high-tech games, videos, interactive panels and interpretation sessions." They went on to point out that the animal has a special significance in Hong Kong, ...