Company trying to get back on track: BP PLC is paying India’s Reliance Industries $7.2 billion to take a stake in key oil and gas blocks, gaining a significant foothold in the Asian country as it continues to reposition global operations following the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill. The tie-up, which could eventually amount to a $20 billion investment from BP, was announced today and includes an agreement between the two companies to form a joint venture to source and market gas. London-based BP is making the initial payment for a 30% stake in 23 oil and gas blocks across India covering around 270,000 square kilometers, making the partnership the country’s largest private sector holder of exploration acreage.
Promising new treatment: Call them brain pacemakers, tiny implants that hold promise for fighting tough psychiatric diseases—if scientists can figure out just where in all that gray matter to put them. Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of Parkinson’s disease. Blocking mental illness isn’t nearly as easy a task. But a push is on to expand research into how well these brain stimulators tackle the most severe cases of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome—to know best how to use them before too many doctors and patients clamor to try. Unlike with tremor patients, the psychiatric patients who respond to DBS tend to improve gradually, sometimes to their frustration. And just because the tics of Tourette’s fade or depression lightens doesn’t mean patients can abandon traditional therapy. How does it work? Surgeons implant a wire deep in the brain. Tiny electrical jolts run from a pacemaker-like generator near the collarbone up the neck to that electrode and disable overactive nerve cells to curb the shaking.
