Small caps round-up: Nautical Petroleum, ThirdForce, Allied Gold...

Oil group Nautical Petroleum reported 'significant progress' in its asset portfolio in the year to June 30 and said it expects its assets to rise in value once they move into the execution stage.Pre-tax losses for the year totalled £6.63m, compared with £4.52m the previous year.Shares in e-learning software group ThirdForce jumped after its chief executive and chairman made a formal offer for the company.The directors, who have set up an investment vehicle called LearnVantage, offered shareholders one LearnVantage share for every ThirdForce share, three LearnVantage shares plus €0.12 for every four ThirdForce shares or €0.105 for every ThirdForce share.Allied Gold's takeover offer for Australian Solomons Gold has gone unconditional, giving the miner 49% of the business.Those ASG shareholders who accepted the offer will get 0.85 Allied shares for every ASG share held. Allied expects further acceptances."This is a milestone in Allied Gold's emergence as a substantial South East Asian gold producer with a clear production development profile that will see the company producing in excess of 250,000 oz of gold," said Allied's executive chairman, Mark Caruso. Greystar Resources, which owns the Angostura gold-silver deposit in northeastern Colombia, is to start two exploration drill programs to investigate near surface oxide gold mineralization recently discovered at the Mongora prospect.The first drill holes will target the Los Laches area at Angostura where previously drilled core holes LL08-24 and QP08-03 returned "excellent" results.Uruguay Mineral Exploration and Canada's Fortune Valley Resources have completed their merger, creating a more significant Latin American focused gold producer.Mixed phase catalyst technology developer Catalytic Solutions saw its pre-tax loss narrow to $7.94m in the first half of 2009 from $9.92m a year earlier on revenue that grew from $26.83m to $27.65m.The company's shares remain suspended while it tackles its liquidity crisis. The company is in talks over short-term financing to give it breathing space to sort out longer term facilities.Electronic payments company Earthport said its services are gaining popularity among Exchange Houses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Earthport is the exclusive provider of 'to bank' remittance services in 119 Exchange House branches in the UAE, and expects to see further adoption of the service before the end of the year in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan.Shares in ReGen Therapeutics were wanted after the pharma company announced more good news relating to its Zolpidem project, Results of tests conducted in South Africa indicate that zolpidem significantly boosts the cognitive and motor performance of brain damage victims.Drug testing group Epistem is to present the clinical results of two recently completed studies on hair follicle analysis at the AACR-NCI-EORTC conference in Boston next week.The first study demonstrates androgen receptor pathway activity in hair from elderly volunteers, while in the second, a phase I study, novel pharmacodynamic markers for Enzon Pharmaceuticals Inc's survivin messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) antagonist were identified from hair follicle analysis. Dr. Ged Brady will present data which demonstrates plucked human scalp hairs as a preferred method for assessing androgen receptor directed therapies, the company said.Tristel, which provides infection and contamination control products, has raised £2m through a placing.It will use the funds to accelerate expansion of its overseas businesses, the company said.