New Delhi, Nov. 12: Foreign Ministers of the seven member countries of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) are currently meeting in the Indian capital to prepare the agenda for the one-day summit meeting of the grouping to be held here on Thursday.

Informed sources said the focus of Wednesday''s meeting would be to look for ways to enhance trade and promote greater connectivity between India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Thailand.

Washington, Nov 12 : Hollywood couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have revealed that they are keen to adopt a child from South America, but are being held back by the complicated adoption laws there.

They already — who already have three adopted children, Maddox, seven, from Cambodia, Pax, four, from Vietnam, and Zahara, three, from Ethiopia, and three biological children Shiloh, two, and baby twins Knox and Vivienne — are eager to add another child to their already huge brood.

Washington, Nov 12: Scientists suggest that neuroprosthetic brain implants may help stroke patients to overcome partial paralysis.

The researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered that implants known as brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may be able to detect activity on one side of the brain that is linked to hand and arm movements on the same side of the body.

They hope to use these signals to guide motorized assistance mechanisms that restore mobility in partially paralyzed limbs.

Paris - French investment bank Natixis lost 975 million euros (1.23 billion dollars) in trading last month and is to issue a fourth-quarter profits warning, the business daily La Tribune reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the losses were registered in trading with shares as well as currencies and interest rates.

It remained unclear if the loss was due to unauthorized deals carried out by a small group of traders, as was reportedly the case with Natixis's parent company Caisse d'Epargne, which lost 751 million euros in early October.

Washington, Nov 12 : An Indian origin physics professor at Clemson has made a major breakthrough in nanotechnology which may lead to nano-scale electromechanical sensors that can read and alert us to toxic chemicals or gases in the air.

In the research, Apparao Rao found that nano-scale cantilevers hold the potential to detect the toxic chemicals or gases in the air.

He claimed that, when put into a small handheld device, the cantilevers can pave the way for real-time chemical alerts in battle, in industry, in health care and even at home.

“The ability to build extremely small devices to do this work has been something we’ve only seen so far in science-fiction movies,” said Rao.

Washington, Nov 12 : In a study on the sex life of pond snail, a researcher has found that just like humans, the snails have been genetically programmed to use the left or right handed side of its brain to perform different tasks, which at times can even hamper their mating.

Hayley Frend, who is a third-year undergraduate student in the School of Biology at The University of Nottingham, has established that just like humans, snails also tend to have brains that produce ''handed'' behaviour.

It was recently shown that behavioural handedness is not just confined to vertebrates.