Ottawa, Ontario - ExpertHost (www.experthost.com), a worldwide leader in Business and VPS hosting, today announced that it has received a Virtual Private Server Hosting Award from Web Host Directory for the month of August 2008. The award reflects the preferences of end-users, who are asked to vote for the vendors they believe offer the best VPS service offerings. ExpertHost’s win confirms the strength of the company’s scalable, flexible VPS management Software.

The Virtual Private Server Hosting Award is given out on a monthly basis, and is one of the top categories of hosting solution awards on the Web Hosting Directory site. This specific category is reserved for vendors who provide a fully, root-accessible server to their customers, which in turn affords customers a more manageable, user-friendly experience than typically found in a shared environment.

Dr. Atul Joshi, President of ExpertHost™ commented on the honor: “We’re very proud to have our company acknowledged for this award. ExpertHost™ is one of the world’s earliest, private-label, wholesale web hosting, email, and SaaS providers. Our rapid growth and retention can be directly attributed to the hardworking and dedicated members of the ExpertHost™ team, as well as our loyal partners and customers.

“ExpertHost is celebrating its 10th Anniversary in the web hosting business”, said Joshi. “This year marks a milestone for our company. We have clients and partners that have been with us from the very beginning. We would simply like to thank all of them, new and old, for voting for us.”

Pets become depressed when the new school year rolls around and the kids are not home. New interactive pet website, MyPetCareTV.com, offers tips, advice, and access to top veterinarians. More than 71 million American households have at least one pet. That is sixty-three percent of U.S. households, many of whom consider the pet or pets integral members of the family. Like family members, every pet presents unique challenges, surprises, and endearing, disgusting, or harmful behaviors.

For example: Dogs and cats are creatures of habit; they love routines and they love their owners. During the lazy dog days of summer, it is not unusual for a pet to become overly attached to children through hours spent romping, playing ball, going for walks and generally just hanging out with each other. When the routine is broken at the start of the school year, separation anxiety often ensues. Separation anxiety can occur when any caregiver, child or adult, is absent more than the pet is used to.

MyPetCareTV.com, a newly launched, unique community-based website for pet owners and veterinary clinics, offers pet owners sound advice to help pets adjust to the coming school session.

Dr. Bernadine Cruz, DVM, one of the resident veterinarian advisors on MyPetCareTV.com, says that signs of separation anxiety for a dog can range from refusal to eat to excessive barking, chewing up of clothing, shoes, toys or furnishings. Severe cases of separation anxiety are best likened to panic attacks. These unfortunate dogs will experience vomiting and diarrhea, often coupled with constant pacing and whining. Dogs have been known to destroy baseboards, chew through doors, and break through windows in their attempts to reunite themselves with their owners.

“However,” assures Dr. Cruz, “concerns over potential separation anxiety should not deter children and caregivers from forming strong attachments with their pets.” A Companion Animal Medicine Expert at Laguna Hills Hospital in Southern California, and author of The Secret Sex Life of Dogs and Cats, Dr. Cruz suggests these simple steps to decrease the incidence of this behavior in dogs:
1. Start with goodbye. Don’t make a big deal out of coming or going. Don’t fuss over the dog. Give it a specially designed toy stuffed with bits of kibble, bits of rice cakes, or peanut butter. Your dog will be so intent in getting all the goodies out of the toy, it will be some time before your absence is even noticed. When you return home, don’t smoother your dog with attention. Go about your routine for several minutes before giving your pet lots of attention.
2. Vary your routine. Collect all of your school books or your jacket and car keys and then put them down. Your dog will initially think that you are going to leave only to find that you were staying home.
3. Become a drill sergeant. Reinforce basic behaviors such as come, sit, and stay. Make your dog work for attention or food. Make it sit and stay before it gets anything. This helps the pet to realize that it works for you.
4. Safety in surroundings. A dog’s ancestors were den-dwelling animals. A crate is not a cruel and unusual punishment; in fact, dogs can feel very secure in a crate but should not be confined in one for more than 4 to 5 hours. If you need to be gone for longer than 5 hours, have a neighbor or pet sitter come and let the pet out to stretch its legs. You can also make one room in your home a safe haven, with a comfy bed, food and water. Care needs to be exercised to insure that your dog can not injure itself or damage the room.
5. Keep them active. Lots of exercise will keep your pet healthy and tired. It is harder for a pooped pup to get into trouble.

More great tips like these (and for more types of pets) can be found at MyPetCareTV.com, an interactive website that brings pet-owners and veterinarians together in an all-in-one free online resource. With features from social networking to health advice from peers and professionals, MyPetCareTV.com is Facebook for pets, inviting owners to be a friend to their pet and find community for themselves.

Unlike other pet community sites, MyPetCareTV.com provides full access to valuable educational resources on pet health and wellness, including veterinarian blogs and a virtual on-demand library of pet-care videos developed and hosted by veterinarians such as Dr. Jeff Werber, national pet-care spokesperson, head of the Century Veterinarian Group in Los Angeles, CA, and vet to “Lassie.” Pet owners who register at MyPetCareTV.com and create a member profile can also participate in a variety of groups and forums as well as post their own pet videos and photos.

Members at MyPetCareTV.com can make friends while participating in topic-centric forums from Ethics to Nutrition, and join veterinarian-moderated groups specific to their pet or animal care concern. (There is no cost for membership or any of these benefits.) Other features include:
- personalized calendars for tracking pet needs;
- a News Feed that is constantly updated with issues of interest to pet-owners;
- pet-centric blogs;
- format to start a group on any pet-related topic.

MyPetCareTV.com recognizes that aging and ill-health are serious concerns for pet-owners and addresses this source of worry with an Older Pets group that, like every group, allows creative solutions to surface and medical interventions to be discussed.

For dogs, cats, birds, horses, small mammals, reptiles, exotic pets, and other species blog posts and on-demand videos answer questions related to their ailments, such as:
- Obesity;
- Immunization;
- Heart Disease;
- Arthritis;
- Parvo Virus;
- Periodontal Disease;
- Fleas, Ticks and other Parasites;
- Kidney Problems;
- Pain Management.

And, how many people wonder about pet exam schedules, how to best travel with their pet, pet death, basic training and nutrition, what happens when pets and babies meet, and how to manage the first few days of a new pet in their home? Pet owners will find all their questions answered at MyPetCareTV.com.

SAN FRANCISCO, - Salesforce.com , the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), today announced the acquisition of InStranet, the leading provider of knowledge management technology for business to consumer (B2C) call centers. The acquisition brings powerful knowledge base Dimensions technology to Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support, enabling customers and call center agents around the world to quickly find the answer they need, the first time. The addition of this game-changing technology and approximately 350,000 global call center agents aggressively accelerates the momentum of Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support in the growing customer service and support market, which is currently estimated at $3.4 billion by Gartner (Gartner, Market Trends: CRM Software, Worldwide, 2007-2012, March 31, 2008).

“I’d like to welcome the InStranet team to salesforce.com,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at salesforce.com. “We’re excited to add this unmatched technology to our SaaS applications and Force.com platform. Not only will it make our service and support offering stronger for our customers and further their success, but it will help catapult our growth in the customer service and support space.”

“Delivering our technology as a service had become a key focus for us due to strong interest from our customers,” said Alex Dayon, founder and CEO of InStranet. “This is an exciting opportunity for all of us at InStranet, and will be a huge leap forward for the SaaS market.”

“This acquisition gives Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support unique technology that provides a better approach to knowledge base management,” said Sheryl Kingstone, director, Enterprise Research at Yankee Group. “And the timing is ripe — companies have been asking for a better way to organize their corporate knowledge to serve customers, and this acquisition will help salesforce.com differentiate itself from the competition.”

The Customer Service and Support Market Opportunity — Turning Agents into Brand Champions and Customers into Evangelists

Among the top five providers of customer service applications, salesforce.com was the fastest growing by revenue in 2007 (Source: IDC, “Worldwide Customer Service Applications 2008 Vendor Shares: Economic Uncertainty Will Drive Service Applications,” Doc # 213028, July 2008). Thousands of customers around the world such as Qualcomm, Transunion, Corporate Express, and Misys have already standardized on Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support. According to Gartner, at least 75% of customer contact centers will use a form of SaaS by 2013 (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers, Maoz, March 19, 2008).

Traditional customer service and support vendors’ “search and hope” approach using keyword search technology has been riddled with failure: Customers struggle because they can’t find the right answer to their questions through Web-based self-service portals, and call center agents are more challenged than ever to help customers due to the large amount and complexity of information buried in their knowledge bases. According to IDC, searchers fail to find what they are looking for 30-50% of the time (Source: IDC, “Microsoft Buys Powerset Up the Web Search Ante,” Doc # lcUS 21330608, July 2008).

InStranet has solved the customer service and support challenge by taking a completely different approach to knowledge base management through its patented knowledge base Dimensions technology, which adds the customer’s context, such as product or geography, to the knowledge base to quickly hone in on the right solution and eliminate irrelevant search results. This powerful technology provides call center agents with accurate answers to customer questions at an unmatched speed and greatly improves customers’ Web-based self-service experience, drastically reducing the number of calls to call center agents by frustrated customers. Given that Yankee Group estimates that a customer service call costs $5.50 on average (Yankee Group, Great Expectations: Self Service Success Can Happen, Kingstone, May 2006), InStranet’s customers are saving money and providing higher levels of customer satisfaction.

In addition, because of the technology’s open architecture, it provides rapid time to value, with deployments taking place in weeks as opposed to months. This approach has found tremendous customer success in the most demanding enterprises, including some of the world’s largest call centers supporting more than 35,000 agents. Salesforce.com is adding this technology innovation as a key component to Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support, enhancing its Call Center and Customer Portal applications in use today by thousands of companies around the world.

“Salesforce CRM Customer Service & Support has already revolutionized our support centers by bringing the benefits of SaaS to our support personnel around the globe,” said Peter Rubenacker, vice president, Information Technology, Qualcomm. “The addition of this knowledge base Dimensions technology provides a valuable extension of their platform.”

“This technology has had a significant impact on our ability to rapidly launch new clients and maximize our agents’ efficiency. Our 7,000 customer service representatives use the solution on a daily basis, and I see further growth potential,” said Alan Giles, CTO, Transcom. “InStranet discovered how to filter out the noise created by the explosion of information that customers and agents must navigate. The combination of InStranet’s technology and Salesforce CRM makes a lot of sense.”

Salesforce.com Acquires InStranet

Salesforce.com’s acquisition of InStranet closed on August 4, 2008, for approximately $31.5 million, which includes the assumption of $4.2 million in cash on InStranet’s balance sheet. This acquisition does not have an impact on salesforce.com’s results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009, which will be announced later today.

InStranet is headquartered in Chicago, IL, with most of its operations in Paris, France. As part of its ongoing commitment to customer success, salesforce.com will continue to support InStranet customers and plans to fully integrate the seasoned InStranet management team and employees.

Additional information will be available during salesforce.com’s quarterly results call scheduled for 2:00pm PT/5:00 pm/ET today. Press, analysts, and investors may access the event by visiting http://www.salesforce.com/investor.

Atlanta, Ga. – On August 20, 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) will announce the award of a $2 million grant to the University of Kentucky to study nanoparticles. This is the largest EPA Science to Achieve Results ( STAR ) grant ever awarded to the University of Kentucky as well as the largest single grant ever awarded by EPA STAR for nanotechnology research.

Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating extremely small particles – ranging in size from 1 to 100 nanometers. As nanotechnology progresses from research and development to commercialization and use, it is likely that manufactured nanomaterials will be released into the environment. EPA is charged with protecting human health and the environment, as well as ensuring that the uses of engineered nanotechnology products occur without unreasonable harm to human health or the environment. This research will provide relevant information needed for risk assessments that can inform decision making related to nanotechnology products.

To learn more about EPA’s nanotechnology program: http://www.epa.gov/ncer/nano
For more information on this grant:

http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/8800/report/0

Abcam and Transinsight agree on collaboration in the area of semantic
search technologies for finding antibodies

Cambridge, UK / Dresden, Germany - 13th August 2008

Abcam, a bioscience company specialising in the supply of antibodies from a web-based catalogue and Transinsight, a specialist in semantic search technologies are pleased to announce a collaboration in the field of protein information quality control using bioinformatics workflows.

Accurately compiling all the required information around antibody targets is a challenging task, which has created the requirement for an automated intelligent computer-based solution to ensure top-quality information content about proteins. For example, an average human gene name has 6 or 7 synonyms and many more spelling variants. Hand-curated databases do not cover all possible ways of naming and spelling genes and hand-curation is a tedious, error prone and labour-intensive task.

“Until recently there were only limited software tools and scientific workflows available to help us automatically produce high quality data sets surrounding each of Abcam’s thousands of antibody targets. We need these data sets to help our customers find the right products”, says Dr. Harter, Senior Business Development Manager at Abcam. Harter continues “We were looking for solutions for supporting our team of experts and were impressed by the advanced technologies of Transinsight. The fact that the company operates the semantic search engine GoPubMed.org and has extensive bioinformatics and protein databases expertise made the decision to work with Transinsight easy.”

The award winning technology behind GoPubMed fully automates very difficult analyses normally done by scientists with equal or better performance, predicting the necessary information by sophisticated algorithms. “It is good to see how we can significantly enhance our customers’ performance by improving their data quality and thus freeing their staff from an unnecessary burden” says Michael R. Alvers, CEO at Transinsight.

About Abcam
Abcam plc is a producer and distributor of research-grade antibodies and associated products headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with a US office located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a Japan office located in Tokyo. The Company produces and distributes its own and third party produced antibodies to academic and commercial customers throughout the world with product information and ordering available through the Company’s website, www.abcam.com. Abcam’s vision is to build the largest online catalogue of the best antibodies in the world.

About Transinsight
Transinsight develops knowledge-based semantic solutions in the Life Sciences. Their flagship products www.Go3R.org and www.GoPubMed.com, renowned biomedical search engines, are the first knowledge-based search systems of the next generation for the Life Sciences on the internet. In acknowledgment of the technologies developed by the company, Transinsight has repeatedly been honoured with international awards. The firm works in close collaboration with the Dresden University of Technology. Selected customers are: Unilever, BASF, BfR, StatoilHydro, Wintershall, Abcam and EMBL. For further information on Transinsight on the internet, see www.transinsight.com.

MENLO PARK, Calif. and PHOENIX, Ariz. - Geron Corporation (Nasdaq:GERN) and Exeter Life Sciences, Inc. announced today the merger of Start Licensing, Inc. (“Start”), a joint venture between Geron and Exeter Life Sciences, and ViaGen, Inc., a subsidiary of Exeter Life Sciences.

Start manages and licenses a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies, including animal cloning. ViaGen is a leading animal genomics and livestock cloning firm.

The merger of Start and ViaGen, combines the full breadth of intellectual property rights to nuclear transfer cloning technology, including that developed at the Roslin Institute for cloning Dolly the sheep, with in-house state-of-the-art breeding services and expertise in advanced reproductive technologies, particularly in cloning, to provide a one-stop licensing and operating company.

“We believe it makes sound business sense to join a patent estate for nuclear transfer that has been tested and is recognized as dominant with a leading operating company in the field,” said David Greenwood, Geron’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

“We have built a world-class team of cloning practitioners and have key industry relationships in place,” said Jonathan Thatcher, Exeter Life Science’s chief executive officer. “We are now creating a company that holds the proprietary intellectual property and has demonstrated operating leadership in the field. Customers can secure a license to practice or contract cloning services.”

For agriculture, nuclear transfer technology has important applications. Livestock that have desired genetic traits, such as disease resistance, improved meat quality or yield, or increased milk production, can be chosen and copied by cloning. The purpose of cloning livestock is to produce animals for breeding to incorporate positive genetic traits into herds much more rapidly than could be achieved through conventional breeding and artificial insemination. Cloning could help reduce the use of antibiotics, growth hormones, or other chemicals by producing healthier animals. Research during the last decade has demonstrated that adult clones from nuclear transfer produce normal offspring by natural reproduction.

In January of this year, after six years of investigation and study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that meat and milk from cattle, pigs and goats produced by nuclear transfer, and the naturally reproduced offspring of clones, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred domestic livestock. FDA scientists at the Center for Veterinary Medicine analyzed data, which included over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and further unpublished studies. The final conclusions were supported by all of the data, both published and unpublished. The compiled report was independently reviewed and open to public comment before final publication. For a copy of the FDA report and related links, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/cloning.htm.

In addition, cloning has applications in the production of biopharmaceuticals, such as therapeutic proteins in milk and antibodies in blood.

“Our company has demonstrated expertise in use of nuclear transfer technology to clone animals for better breeding,” said Mark Walton, ViaGen’s chief executive officer. “To date more than a dozen species have been successfully cloned. There is a clear utility for animal cloning, ranging from agricultural applications to the conservation of endangered species and biopharmaceutical production.”

Additional resources:

The following websites provide information on nuclear transfer technology and food.

International Food Information Council:

http://www.ific.org/publications/qa/upload/Q-A-From-Cloned- Animals_Jan2008-Update.pdf (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Food and Drug Administration:

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloningRA_Primer_Final.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloningRA_Myths_Final.htm

Actress and show host Chrystal Rose, has halted her shooting schedule to give her support to FootstepForLife Charity and its forthcoming Gala event.

Chrystal was first informed of the Charity’s event whilst presenting her feature-length motion picture project “Never Say Never” at the Cannes Film Festival.

Close to Chrystal’s heart is the work that FootstepForLife, a UK based, ‘not for profit’ Charity organisation is doing to raise funds and awareness about AIDS and HIV orphaned children in Africa and India. The charity believes that inequality breeds poverty and children born into poverty in Africa and India stand a greater risk than most of either dying of Aids or acquiring HIV.

“Overall, every one of us must strive to improve the welfare and lives of children living with the condition and seek to prevent more children dying from it” said Chrystal Rose.

The charity’s Director of Operations, Bonny Umeadi, praised Chrystal Rose’s decision to cut short her schedule to offer her support.

“Most of the money we raise is from donations and charitable events, and the forth coming event, organised in partnership with 3R Productions & Events, is a Gala Fund Raising Evening on the 29th August 2008 at the London Irish Centre.
The evening will begin with a reception at 7.00pm and a 3 course dinner at 7.30pm, followed by a fashion show, charity auction and various musical treats. Sponsors will receive sponsor recognition, tickets for the event, and a priority table. Event sponsors include; SUPERMALT, Voice News Paper, and NanoMind IDC, to name just a few.”

For further information, and to sign up as a sponsor, please call: Ruffina Adimora, Director of Services, 3R Productions on 07791620092 or email ruffina@3rproduction.com

Gala Charity Fund Raising Event, 29th August 2008 7.00pm at the London Irish Centre 50-52 Camden Square, London, NW1 9XB

Published by Yvette Dubel / Cultural Fusion and Winfried Brumma
www.wbrnet.info/presse.html

Footsteps for Life™ is a United Kingdom incorporated not-for-profit organisation with the aim of raising fund and awareness about the plight of young innocent children in Africa who have been orphaned through HIV/AIDS.

Footsteps for Life
47 Wyfold House
Wolvercote Rd,
London SE2 9TJ UK

Email enquires can be sent to: info@footstepforlife.com