Create your own free news widgets.

Plant roots provide the crops we eat with water, nutrients and anchorage. Understanding how roots grow and how hormones control that growth is crucial to improving crop yields, necessary to address food security and produce better biofuels. Scientists have now shed light on how a plant hormone is crucial in controlling the growth of plant roots.

Thousands of jumbo flying squid - 5-foot-long sea monsters with sharp beaks and toothy tentacles - have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, spooking divers and washing up dead on beaches.

The streets and foundations of the oldest town in Britain are emerging on a low hill near Basingstoke in Hampshire - and they may cause history books to be shredded.Almost a century before the Romans arrived in 43 AD, a town of up to 10,000 people was laid out at Silchester, with all the characteristics credited to the invaders: a regular grid pattern of streets and narrow alleys dividing plots, supplied with water from wells and springs - a wealthy place minting its own coins and trading in luxury goods with continental Europe.Even the name it kept through centuries of Roman rule, Calleva Atrebatum, dates back to its iron age founders. A layer of charred wood suggests the town was destroyed by fire, possibly in the revolt led by Boudicca in 60AD.The site is surrounded by Roman walls built more than a century later, still 4m tall in places, but the emerging evidence suggests its glory days were pre-Roman.'We're turning up more questions every day, but the evidence is all pointing in on

Now that BioDelivery Sciences International has won regulatory approval for its first product, CEO Mark Sirgo says the company is in a better position to develop other products in its pipeline.

Turkmenistan is channeling water across hundreds of miles to create a lake in a desert - a Soviet-style engineering feat that some fear could unleash an environmental catastrophe.

Sweden has brought in the stickers in the hope is that consumers will buy greener products – but will companies make claims they can't back up?

The European Union and Canada settled a World Trade Organization complaint over the way the EU approves imports of genetically modified products.

Ship traffic, seismic tests and sonar pings can make navigating the seas tricky for whales. But with the help of the heat and sound naturally generated by the warm-blooded creatures, researchers are hoping to make their waters safe again. [More]

The Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) has announced that it has awarded the contracts for engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPC) works for the integrated gas systems projects worth Dhs34bn, Wam has reported. Eighteen companies had participated in the tenders for these projects either individually or in consortiums, Gasco has said. The projects include the gas treatment plant in Habshan-Habshan Complex 5 and its utilities and annexes, the fourth LNG fractionation train at the Ruwais Plant and storage tanks for propane, butane and pentane products. [AMEInfo.com]

Today at the Intersolar North America 2009 conference, Prism Solar Technologies, Inc., a manufacturer of a unique holographic solar technology for solar-electric modules, announced receiving $1.5 million from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) through the Renewable, Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency Product Manufacturing program. The program provides New York consumers with greater access to renewable, clean energy, and energy-efficient products by assisting manufacturers to further develop or expand current manufacturing operations within the State.