http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. For more than 25 years, all attempts at culturing pearls from the queen conch (Strombus gigas) have been unsuccessful -until now. For the first time, novel and proprietary seeding techniques to produce beaded (nucleated) and non-beaded cultured pearls from the queen conch have been developed by scientists from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI). With less than two years of research and experimentation, Drs. Héctor Acosta-Salmón and Megan Davis, co-inventors, have produced more than 200 cultured pearls using the techniques they developed. Prior to this breakthrough, no high-quality queen conch pearl had been cultured. This discovery opens up a unique opportunity to introduce a new gem to the industry. This significant accomplishment is comparable to that of the Japanese in the 1920s when they commercially applied the original pearl culture techniques developed for pearl oysters. http://www.physorg.com/news176524775.html Biology Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:40:06 EST news176524775 Scientists at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) advise buyers of cultured pearls to be more vigilant. "In Germany too, we are increasingly seeing Chinese sweet-water cultured pearls being marketed as Japanese, although they actually originate from China," say Dr Dorrit Jacob and Ursula Wehrmeister of the Institute of Geosciences. http://www.physorg.com/news135317545.html Other Sciences Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:12:25 EST news135317545