SYDNEY, April 6--AsiaNet/InfoQuest ALERIS APPOINTS... BEACHWOOD, Ohio: Aleris International, Inc. Wednesday announced that Jimmy Chen has joined the company's leadership team as Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific. http://aleris.com UNIVERSITIES ACQUIRE... PHILADELPHIA, Pa. & LONDON: Thomson Scientific, a business of The Thomson Corporation, Wednesday announced that Kyushu University (Japan) and the University of Melbourne (Australia) are the first universities in Asia-Pacific to acquire a "Century of Science". http://www.thomson.com http://www.scientific.thomson.com TICKERMASTER ACQUIRES... MELBOURNE: Ticketmaster, the world's leading ticketing company, Wednesday announced it has signed an agreement to acquire the shares in Ticketmaster7 currently held by Seven Network Limited, Australia's largest broadcast television network. http://www.sevencorporate.com.au http://www.ticketmaster7.com http://www.ticketmaster.com WEB SITE... CHICAGO, Ill.: Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the largest futures exchange in the United States, Wednesday launched the Chinese version of its Web site. http://www.cme.com http://www.china.cme.com PLUSFUNDS APPOINTS... TOKYO: PlusFunds Group, Inc. Wednesday announced it has appointed Tokyo based Yoshiro Okawa to represent it in the Japanese market. http://www.plusfunds.com http://www.sp-hedgefundindex.com FULL OWNERSHIP... NEW YORK: Georgeson Shareholder Communications, Inc. Wednesday announced the acquisition of the remaining 54% that it did not own of GSC Proxitalia, an entity that was originally established in 1999 as a joint venture of Georgeson Shareholder with partners Stefano Marini and Alvise Recchi. http://www.computershare.com http://www.georgesonshareholder.com ISO REGISTRATION RESTON, Va.: PRA International, a leading global clinical research organization, Wednesday announced that it has received ISO 9001:2000 registration for its global, integrated management system following an extensive and comprehensive audit by Bureau Veritas Quality International (BVQi). http://www.prainternational.com DOWNLOAD MANAGER... HAIFA: Download Accelerator Plus (DAP), the world's most popular download manager from SpeedBit Ltd., Wednesday announced that it has reached 100 million registered users worldwide. http://www.SpeedBit.com http://www.downloadaccelerator.com RESTRUCTURING PLAN... NEW YORK: In light of the surprising recent changes in Morgan Stanley's strategy and governance, institutional investors have asked shareholders and former senior executives to set forth their plan for restructuring the firm and improving its performance. GAMES RELEASE... LONDON: Gizmondo Europe Ltd, subsidiary of Jacksonville, Florida-based Tiger Telematics Inc., Tuesday emphatically stated its resolve to become a force to be reckoned with in the games market with the announcement of a massive 89 games scheduled for release on the new Gizmondo handheld multi-entertainment device. http://www.tigertelematics.com http://www.gizmondo.com SOA STRATEGY... WALTHAM, Mass.: NetCracker Technology, a leading provider of OSS and IT Infrastructure Management solutions, Tuesday announced its Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategy. http://www.netcracker.com CASCADE TECHNOLOGY... MONTREAL, QC: ProMetic Life Sciences Inc. Tuesday confirmed the successful scale up at 30-litre scale at Hemosol's facility following the technology transfer of the Cascade process with significantly higher recovery yields for plasma proteins compared to current methods. http://www.prometic.com MEDIA PROCESSOR... SANTA CLARA, Calif.: NVIDIA Corporation, a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, Tuesday announced the immediate availability of the Company's new NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition media and communications processors (MCPs) for Intel platforms. http://www.nvidia.com RESEARCH AGREEMENT... BEIJING: InnoCentive Tuesday announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University. http://www.innocentive.com NEXT-GENERATION NETWORK... ASHBURN, Va.: MCI, Inc. Tuesday announced that MCI is providing Cray, the global leader in supercomputing, with an IPv6 network for interoperability testing and product development of next-generation applications and software. http://www.mci.com http://www.cray.com AZURE LAUNCHES... LONDON: Azure Solutions, the revenue assurance company, Tuesday announced the launch of Azure Interconnect version 9.0 at Billing Systems 2005, taking place at Olympia, London, UK 4th-7th April 2005. http://www.azuresolutions.com http://www.nvpllc.com MANAGEMENT TEAM... BEIJING: Motorola, Inc. Tuesday announced an enhancement of its China management team in order to drive its Seamless Mobility strategy and to realize 'one face' to customers for all products and services in China. http://www.motorola.com GENDER MYTH... WACO, Texas: A new study of 3,654 Australian salesmen and 2,539 Australian saleswomen reveals that the sales gender gap is a myth. http://www.bsrpinc.com http://www.baylor.edu/business/splash.php IP TELEPHONY... PARIS: NetCentrex, the leading enabler of converged voice-video-data networks and next-generation services, and AOL, one of Germany's leading Internet companies and part of the world's biggest media company Time Warner, Tuesday announced that AOL will deliver residential broadband IP telephony services in Germany based on NetCentrex' MyCall solution. http://www.netcentrex.net (AsiaNet is a consortium of leading news agencies distributing unedited, translated news releases for worldwide clients. Visit www.asianetnews.net for full-text versions.)