WASHINGTON, Jan 16 - Business groups on Wednesday filed their most expansive case yet attacking a new U.S. securities rule that requires companies to determine if their products contain minerals from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

The lawsuit is one of several challenging rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul.

The National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable filed notice of their lawsuit last November but did not explain their case until Wednesday.

The groups based much of their case on an argument that has helped them win similar cases -- that the SEC did not adequately weigh the rule's costs and benefits before approving it, as rule-making procedures require.

In a brief filed in Washington federal appeals court, the groups said the SEC never determined whether the rule would provide any benefits to the people in Congo, and also estimated the rule could impose $3 billion to $4 billion of initial compliance costs on American businesses.

The groups echoed commission members who voted against the rule and said: "good intentions are no substitute for rigorous analysis, and the Commission's analysis here was woefully inadequate."

The groups also challenged several specific provisions of the rule, including one under which the SEC declined to grant exceptions for trace amounts of the minerals, which include gold, tin, tantalum or tungsten. Such minerals are used in everything from cans to cell phones and computers to medical equipment.

In approving the rule in August, the commission said it concluded it lacked the authority to adopt such an exception.

The groups said the rule also violated the First Amendment by requiring companies to disclose that certain of their products are "not DRC conflict free." Such a rule would compel companies to make "misleading and stigmatizing public statements linking their products to terrible human rights abuses," the groups said.

The SEC has until March 1 to file a response, according to the court docket.

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Vancouver, British Columbia CANADA, January 16, 2013 - Deer Horn Metals Inc.is pleased to inform its shareholders of two recent developments. Firstly we have received results from a 10-day prospecting program completed on the Deer Horn property, located in West Central British Columbia approximately 36 kilometers south of the Huckleberry Mine. Secondly we have hired Moose Mountain Technical Services (MMTS) to produce a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) of the Deer Horn property.

The helicopter-supported program took place from September 9 - 19, 2012.  It evaluated several gossanous areas and ground-truthed a number of geophysical anomalies that were identified during a detailed assessment of 2011 airborne magnetic and radiometric survey data.  Prospecting also evaluated the potential western extension of the Main Vein and Contact Zone gold-silver-tellurium vein system and areas in the vicinity of historic Harrison tungsten mineral occurrence. 

Harrison Scheelite Zone

Sampling of newly recognized tungsten mineralization from the historic Harrison Scheelite occurrence, centered approximately 680 m southwest of Lindquist Peak, produced encouraging results.  Composite chip samples were collected from bedrock exposures that included bands of disseminated scheelite crystals within calc-silicate altered tuffaceous limy siltstones.  Samples grade up to 4750 ppm W (0.60% WO3).  The style of mineralization is similar to that observed in the footwall of the Contact Zone. Several 2011 drillholes, collared more than 650 m to the east of the 2012 surface showings, intersected scheelite-bearing, calc-silcate altered limy volcanic sediments, including DH11-119 that encountered 3.00 m averaging 0.23% WO3.  The new showings also occur upslope and at least 170 m northwest of the areas trenched in 2011 where sample results included 6 m averaging 1.08% WO3. 

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RENO, Nev., Jan. 16, 2013 -- Infrastructure Materials Corp. (the "Company") is pleased to announce a new copper-gold discovery at its Kope Scheelite Project (the "Project") in Nevada. The Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Silver Reserve Corp., has completed a preliminary review of assay and geochemical data from reverse circulation drilling on the Project to further delineate the potential of gold, copper, silver and lead mineralization on the Project.

Drilling has identified copper and gold mineralization hosted both in the intrusive and in adjacent sediments. In addition to those elements reported in this news release, a complex suite of anomalous elements including antimony, bismuth, cobalt, cadmium, gallium, germanium, molybdenum, indium, selenium, tellurium, tin and tungsten were found to form zones in and surrounding the mineralization.

About the Kope Scheelite Project

The Project consists of 101 mineral claims located in Mineral County, Nevada, approximately 11 miles northeast of the town of Mina. Previous exploration efforts include recent Time Domain Electro-Magnetic ("TDEM") surveys that offered evidence of the presence of conductive structures on the Project with potential mineralization present within a porphyry system.

The Kope Scheelite Project is located in the Walker Lane, a structural belt which prolifically hosts many significant deposits, including Nevada Copper Corp.'s recently developed Pumpkin Hollow deposits (total Measured and Indicated copper resource of 3.1 billion kilograms (6.8 billion pounds) for the combined Western and Eastern Deposits (Western Open-Pit Deposits: 664 million tonnes, averaging 0.37% Cu with a 0.15% cutoff; and Eastern Underground Deposits: 45.9 million tonnes averaging 1.45% Cu with a 0.75% cutoff - news release dated October 19, 2012).

Infrastructure Materials Corp. believes the Pumpkin Hollow deposits are an analogue for the copper mineralization at the Company's Kope Scheelite Project. Initial exploration appears to indicate that the Kope Scheelite Project may have some higher grade gold mineralization that in places differentiates it from the mineralization style at Pumpkin Hollow. Pumpkin Hollow and the nearby Yerington mine are located approximately 100km (60 miles) northwest of the Kope Scheelite Project. The historical Yerington mine, operated by Anaconda from 1953 to 1978, produced more than 147 million tonnes (162 million tons) of ore grading 0.6% copper.

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MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A Kansas State University researcher is developing more efficient ways to save costs, time and energy when creating nanomaterials and lithium-ion batteries.

Gurpreet Singh, assistant professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, and his research team have published two recent articles on newer, cheaper and faster methods for creating nanomaterials that can be used for lithium-ion batteries. In the past year, Singh has published eight articles -- five of which involve lithium-ion battery research.

"We are exploring new methods for quick and cost-effective synthesis of two-dimensional materials for rechargeable battery applications," Singh said. "We are interested in this research because understanding lithium interaction with single-, double- and multiple-layer-thick materials will eventually allow us to design battery electrodes for practical applications. This includes batteries that show improved capacity, efficiency and longer life."

For the latest research, Singh's team created graphene films that are between two and 10 layers thick. Graphene is an atom-thick sheet of carbon. The researchers grew the graphene films on copper and nickel foils by quickly heating them in a furnace in the presence of controlled amounts of argon, hydrogen and methane gases. The team has been able to create these films in less than 30 minutes. Their work appears in the January issue of ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces in an article titled "Synthesis of graphene films by rapid heating and quenching at ambient pressures and their electrochemical characterization."

In a second research project, the researchers created tungsten disulfide nanosheets that were approximately 10 layers thick. Starting with bulk tungsten disulfide powder -- which is a type of dry lubricant used in the automotive industry -- the team was able to separate atomic layer thick sheets of tungsten disulfide in a strong acid solution. This simple method made it possible to produce sheets in large quantities. Much like graphene, tungsten disulfide also has a layered atomic structure, but the individual layers are three atoms thick.

The researchers found that these acid-treated tungsten disulfide sheets could also store and release lithium ions but in a different way. The lithium is stored through a conversion reaction in which tungsten disulfide dissociates to form tungsten and lithium sulfide as the cell is discharged. Unlike graphene, this reaction involves the transfer of at least two electrons per tungsten atom. This is important because researchers have long disregarded such compounds as battery anodes because of the difficulty associated with adding lithium to these materials, Singh said. It is only recently that the conversion reaction-based battery anodes have gained popularity.

"We also realize that tungsten disulfideis a heavy compound compared to state-of-the-art graphite used in current lithium-ion batteries," Singh said. "Therefore tungsten disulfide may not be an ideal electrode material for portable batteries."

The research appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in an article titled "Synthesis of surface-functionalized WS2 nanosheets and performance as Li-ion battery anodes."

Both projects are important because they can help scientists create nanomaterials in a cost-effective way. While many studies have focused on making graphene using low-pressure chemical processes, little research has been tried using rapid heating and cooling at atmospheric pressures, Singh said. Similarly, large quantities of single-layer and multiple-layer thick sheets of tungsten disulfide are needed for other applications.

Singh plans future research to study how these layered nanomaterials can create better electrodes in the form of heterostructures, which are essentially three-dimensional stacked structures involving alternating layers of graphene and tungsten or molybdenum disulfide.

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