News Release
Contact: Barbara Haumann 413-774-7511, Ext. 20
or Sue McGovern 781-648-7157

COLUMBUS, Ohio (March 12, 2008)- In written testimony submitted today by its executive director Caren Wilcox, the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the voice of the organic industry in North America, informed the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) that the OTA strongly opposes a proposed rule that would affect labeling claims on dairy products sold in Ohio.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny skeletons found in the caves of the Pacific islands of Palau undercut the theory that similar remains found in Indonesia might be a unique new species of humans, researchers reported on Monday.

The Palau skeletons, which date to between 900 and 2,800 years ago, appear to have belonged to so-called insular dwarfs -- humans who grew smaller as a result of living on an island, the researchers said.

(Washington, D.C.) — Five consecutive years of flat funding the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is deterring promising young researchers and threatening the future of Americans’ health, a group of seven preeminent academic research institutions warned today. In a new report released here, the group of concerned institutions (six research universities and a major teaching hospital) described the toll that cumulative stagnant NIH funding is taking on the American medical research enterprise.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at the odor-tracking behavior of individual birds in the wild using remote techniques," said Gabrielle Nevitt, professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis and an author on the study with UC Davis graduate student Marcel Losekoot of the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Henri Weimerskirch of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.

Wandering albatrosses fly for thousands of miles across the ocean, usually gliding a few feet above sea level. Floating carrion, especially squid, make up a large part of their diet.

Researchers at the Endowed Chair of Wind Energy (SWE) of the University of Stuttgart are working together with researchers from the University of Oldenburg and other project partners on an alternative remote sensing technique. LIDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging) is being developed and tested for wind energy applications. This laser-based measurement technique performs wind field measurements in a more flexible and economical way. Currently, LIDAR is the best candidate to replace the met mast based wind measurements, used in power curve calculations, for offshore wind farms.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British researchers who tried to show why overweight mothers tend to have overweight children said on Monday they had filled in one small piece of the puzzle.

Their reassuring finding: women who are too fat when pregnant are probably not somehow driving the obesity epidemic by programming their children to be fat.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Chinese expert on respiratory diseases says the H5N1 bird flu virus has shown signs of mutation and urged vigilance at a time when seasonal human influenza is at a peak, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

"When avian flu is around and human flu appears, this will raise the chances of avian flu turning into a human flu. We have to be very alert and careful in March," Zhong Nanshan was quoted by the Ming Pao newspaper as saying.

"A vast array of pharmaceuticals -including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans," an Associated Press investigation shows. Water in 24 metropolitan areas, including Detroit, Louisville, southern California and Northern New Jersey is particularly at risk.