Author: Serkadis

A Superfund site is an area designated by the U.S. EPA for clean up due to dumping or discharge of toxic waste that could be extremely injurious to human health. There is no better analogy for the toxic dumping ground in the body known as belly fat. While unsightly and…

The unsettling news about antibiotic-resistant super-bacteria is gaining attention, as reports of outbreaks continue to surface in hospitals and other health care facilities across the nation. Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) appears to prey on the those…

Men who do not get enough folic acid in their diets may be more susceptible to depression, studies have shown. Folic acid is the dietary form of vitamin B9 and is found primarily in green leafy vegetables, citrus fruit, beans and other legumes, liver, and yeast (including…

Often is the time when the mainstream media has been little more than a shill or an echo chamber for President Barack Obama, but when an organization flat-out lies about a well-documented truth, what little credibility remained within that organization should evaporate…

The island of Whidbey near Seattle, Washington, has been active lately, but not in the healthy, get-out-and-move sense. Residents living on the island, which is the fourth largest in the contiguous United States, were shaken recently when a massive landslide destroyed…

Numerous studies have confirmed that berries are the best foods to maximize your intake of disease-fighting antioxidants, and have also identified the other fruits and vegetables with the highest antioxidant content. Antioxidants are increasingly implicated as the…

Of the many definitions of collectivism, this simple one is my favorite: “The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.” When I was starting out as a reporter 30 years ago, one of my first editors sat down with me and said, ” In…

Scientists have found there’s a way to dramatically prevent serious, life-threatening infections– including those caused by especially dangerous and hard-to-treat superbugs. It doesn’t involve Big Pharma drugs or toxin-laden chemical treatments. Instead, the germ-busting…

Federal sequestration measures that came into effect on April 1 are making it impossible for many cancer clinics across the country to administer conventional care to patients, and particularly to those on Medicare. Consequently, thousands of cancer patients with taxpayer…

In New York City on a recent morning, a man approached a woman standing at a Queens bus stop, forced her to a nearby cemetery by knifepoint, then proceeded to rape her. The man, whom the victim described as 25-30 years old, approached the 41-year-old victim and asked…

Every year, people continue to be diagnosed with the different types of diabetes. And since the major causes are not all the time organic, diabetes can be managed and can be reversed with a better lifestyle. And while most people see lifestyle management as an opportunity…

We talk a lot around here about food and its importance in sustaining life. But how do we as humans continue to sustain the viable production of food itself, particularly in a world where natural resources seem to be getting increasingly more scarce? One of the answers…

A lack of education kills more people than cancer, heart disease and conventional medicine combined. Would we really see so much death and destruction if the majority of the people really knew about the value of fresh, clean food, water and air? And, if people really…

Imagine a world where all the vitamins, minerals, herbs, extracts, compounds, powders, and probiotics that are so freely available at any health food store and at many grocery stores were suddenly made illegal so they could be turned into pharmaceutical drugs. Such a…

Following reports that app recommendation service AppGratis had its iOS application pulled from the App Store, Apple (AAPL) is reportedly getting ready to crack down on numerous apps that have quietly been violating Apple’s terms and conditions. According to multiple unnamed sources speaking with AllThingsD, Apple pulled AppGratis from the Store for violating two clauses in its App Store Review Guidelines, one that forbids apps from promoting other companies’ software and a second that bars developers from sending marketing messages using push notifications. The blog’s sources say Apple is getting ready to crack down on other apps that violate these two clauses — though it would be nice if Apple were to fix its own “Genius” app recommendation system, which is still absolutely awful despite a recent overhaul, before ousting similar services that actually work.

When it comes to identifying potentially adverse reactions to prescription drugs, you might think doctors would be on the front lines. After all, they see a lot of patients for a lot of conditions and prescribe a lot of drugs, so who better to notice when certain prescriptions keep leading to the same side effects? And you’d be right — and wrong.

As individuals, doctors probably don’t see enough of any given adverse reaction to notice patterns emerging. But as a collection, their notes on patients’ medical records can provide valuable insights, as a group of Stanford researchers recently discovered. Using “18 years of patient data from 1.8 million patients [consisting of] 19 million encounters, 35 million coded ICD-9 diagnoses, and >11 million unstructured clinical notes,” the team was able to accurately identify interactions by analyzing the free-form text that doctors had entered about patients’ symptoms, conditions and prescription regimens.

A key aspect to being able to predict adverse interactions is understanding the relationships among the different sets of terminologies used in different medical fields. It’s a lot easier to spot patterns across hospitals or even an individual patients’ records when you know that a radiologist writing X is the same, or related to, an oncologist writing Y. We covered an earlier collaboration between the study’s leader, Nigam Shah, and medical-data startup Apixio around this very topic in 2011.

Shah and his team hope their work can complement the current process for tracking drug reactions, the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System. Whereas that system requires doctors and patients to manually alert the FDA of potential adverse side effects, their method could highlight potential problems that no one noticed or took the time to report. I’d consider this similar to some early research by social medical sites such as PatientsLikeMe, whose users are producing lots of data about their conditions, drugs, dosages and side effects that could produce correlations ripe for controlled experiments.

A press release announcing the study’s publication highlights some of its future promise and current limitations:

“[T]he research team is working on refinements that will cull even more useful information from clinical notes, such as reports of reactions caused by drug combinations, the use of medications typically prescribed for one condition but found effective for treatment of a different health problem, or finding medical profiles of patients that fit a certain scenario. …

One downside is that most electronic health record systems are set up for patient care, not patient research, Goodman noted. In this study, the researchers mined a data system created for this kind of research, which isn’t widely available. The researchers used the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment, known as STRIDE.”

This is just one of many ways in which researchers are experimenting with big data concepts to help medical professionals make sense of more data than they could possibly analyze on their own. Other examples we’ve covered recently include an artificial intelligence model for prescribing safe, cost-effective treatments, the application of Google PageRank-like algorithms to map the spread of cancer cells throughout the body, and the use of graph data structures to organize highly complex sequencing data.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Maksym Dykha.

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In some alternate universe, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer slaps former Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky on the back for a job well done. The company’s newest operating system is such a huge success that sagging PC shipments soared to record numbers. Our reality is something shockingly different. First-quarter declines are the worst since IDC started tabulating numbers in 1994 and surpass the worst estimates. You know things are really bad when even perennial gainer Apple sees a huge year-of-year fall off.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market”, Bob O’Donnell, IDC vice president, says. Holy Moley, Windows 8 slowed the market? You want to know why Ballmer booted Sinfosky out the door? O’Donnell offers chilling indictment.

“While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices”, he says. “Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market”.

Strangely, I really like Windows 8 — well, running on Surface Pro. The broader market of buyers disagree. Well, now we have another reason Microsoft rushes Windows 8.1 development for pre-holiday 2013 release.

It’s the Apocalypse

In mid-March IDC warned that PC shipments might decline greater than its 7.7 percent forecast. The year-over-year drop is nearly double that — 13.9 percent. Let me put that figure in context that makes more sense of O’Donnell blaming Windows 8. Shipments sagged in Q1 2012, too, something that should have magnified gains a year later. Decline’s severity tells a story that O’Donnell reads grimly, for Windows 8.

“Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome”, David Daoud, IDC Research Director, says. You think?

Simply stated, and there’s no easy way about it, Windows 8 is failure. The measure of how much likely comes when Microsoft announces first-quarter results later this month. Looks like early license sales success is more a factor of low-cost upgrades, which the company no longer offers. Sustainability of license sales, at full price and without much lift from PCs, is something Microsoft must answer with earnings. Share price is down more than 2 percent in after-hours trading tonight, BTW.

Accelerating a trend already evident from past quarters, smartphones and tablets pull sales from PCs. Even Apple. IDC asserts that iPad contributed to Mac shipment declines during first quarter.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide PC Shipments, First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands) 

Vendor	1Q13 Shipments	1Q13 Market Share	1Q12 Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	1Q13/1Q12 Growth
1. HP	11,997	15.7%	15,726	17.7%	-23.7%
2. Lenovo	11,700	15.3%	11,705	13.2%	0.0%
3. Dell	9,010	11.8%	10,110	11.4%	-10.9%
4. Acer Group	6,150	8.1%	8,952	10.1%	-31.3%
5. ASUS	4,363	5.7%	5,401	6.1%	-19.2%
Others	33,075	43.4%	36,739	41.5%	-10.0%
Total	76,294	100.0%	88,635	100.0%	-13.9%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, April 10, 2013

“The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer”, Daoud says. “Vendors will have to revisit their organizational structures and go to market strategies, as well as their supply chain, distribution, and product portfolios in the face of shrinking demand and looming consolidation”.

In other words, traditional PC makers must tighten up supply chains, which reverberations will be felt globally by component manufacturers and suppliers, among other parts of the ecosystem. Then there is the tablet quandary, about which some companies must reallocate resources to different devices.

Globally PC shipments fell among four of the five top PC manufacturers — flat for second-ranked Lenovo. Acer posted the steepest decline — 31.3 percent.

Top 5 Vendors, United States PC Shipments, First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands) 

Vendor	1Q13 Shipments	1Q13 Market Share	1Q12 Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	1Q13/1Q12 Growth
1. HP	3,570	25.1%	4,632	28.5%	-22.9%
2. Dell	3,074	21.7%	3,590	22.1%	-14.4%
3. Apple	1,418	10.0%	1,533	9.4%	-7.5%
4. Toshiba	1,279	9.0%	1,349	8.3%	-5.2%
5. Lenovo	1,274	9.0%	1,127	6.9%	13.0%
Others	3,581	25.2%	4,022	24.7%	-11.0%
Total	14,197	100.0%	16,255	100.0%	-12.7%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, April 10, 2013

What Will Apple Do?

Regionally, the United States is a PC market in crisis. With the exception of a slight 2 percent gain in third quarter 2011, shipments fell for 10 consecutive quarters. In Q1, 12.7 percent year over year but stunning 18.3 percent sequentially. Shipments fell for the top-four vendors, with Lenovo, which gained 13 percent, the exception.

Apple’s 7.5 percent annual decline is anomaly but clearly an early trend. Shipments fell slightly, by 0.2 percent, during fourth quarter. More disturbing Q4 to Q1, shipments slumped by more than 30 percent. Mac’s woes reflect on trends larger than Windows 8 and, from my analysis, makes demand for smartphones and tablets more factor than any changes Microsoft made to its flagship operating system.

I’m suddenly thinking whole lots about Apple and PCs, because of something expressed by Derrick Wlodarz earlier today when writing about Apple and the enterprise:

what if Apple just stops making traditional computers altogether? Is this really that crazy of a prediction to make? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when you have a growing majority of your revenue (iOS) overtaking a product line that represents the ‘old vision’ of computing according to Apple (laptops, desktops), some kind of drastic change needs to be made. And seeing how blunt Apple generally is with its market statements, I wouldn’t at all be shocked to see OS X 10.x be the last of its breed. In true Xserve fashion, the legacy of the Mac cats may be slowly nearing its digital end.

Derrick speculates for five years out. But, yeah, I can really see that from the company with a tendency to dump tech deemed unnecessary. Why not a whole category, particularly when tablets — perhaps with modular pieces — become good enough to replace PCs?

The numbers tell a story. During fourth quarter 2007, Macs accounted for 37 percent of Apple revenue. Five years later: 14 percent, while iOS devices represented close to three-quarters of revenue. If iPad already pulls away sales from Mac laptops, speculation Apple might some day largely exit the market is quite reasonable. Within five years — yeah, I’ll buy that.

Something else Derrick observes:

One must also be slightly suspicious as to why Apple has not made a peep about competing with Microsoft in touch on the traditional laptop and desktop side. After all, Windows 8 has been a public reality for Apple since 2011 when the fuller picture about Microsoft’s intentions for 8 were solidifying. We’re now full force moving into Spring 2013 and there is zero news about anything remotely touch related making its way to Macbooks or Mac desktops. If Apple plans something spectacular to slow the Windows 8 touch train, it certainly hasn’t brushed through any of the traditional leak channels as with most prior releases.

If O’Donnell’s assessment about lagging interest in Windows 8 touch PCs is right, perhaps Apple watches and waits. After all, consumers seem content enough with touchscreen tablets.

Whatever anyone does next, Daoud’s warning about a “critical crossroads” aptly describes two computing eras intersecting.

Photo Credit: Cameron Whitman/Shutterstock

The Northfield News recently ran a letter from Senator Amy Klobuchar that promotes keeping rural communities connected. She begins with picturing better broadband for rural communities…

Now, modern communications are bringing the world even closer.

With interactive video, a patient in Lac qui Parle County can be seen by a medical specialist in Minneapolis. With e-commerce, a small business in Fergus Falls can sell its product to anyone, anywhere. With online learning, a student in Two Harbors can tune in to a class at Stanford University.

Many companies see telecommuting as an important way to attract and retain the best, most productive workers, wherever they may be. I want to see these jobs in Lanesboro or Crookston, not China or India.

And she into more specific actions she’s taking to keep rural Minnesota connected. Starting with unlocking cell phones…

I believe consumers should be free to choose the phone and service that best fits their needs and budgets, and they deserve to keep and use the phones they’ve already bought.

That’s why I’ve introduced the Wireless Consumer Choice Act. This bipartisan legislation directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take action so consumers will be able to unlock their phones when they switch carriers.

Including a request to require call completion in all areas…

Another problem has been around for a while, but just doesn’t seem to go away. Some long-distance providers refuse to connect calls that must go through a small rural carrier because they don’t want to pay the small charge that helps support rural phone service. …

I’ve urged the FCC to crack down on phone carriers that do this. Just a few weeks ago the FCC reached a settlement with one offender, Level 3 Communications. The company must now comply with strict call-completion standards and pay a one million dollar fine.

And finally reiterating a commitment to rural broadband…

I’ve always been a strong advocate for broadband and I’ve helped secure grants from the U.S. Agriculture and Commerce departments to expand broadband access in rural Minnesota. As technology advances, I will continue working to see that our rural communities have the tools they need to stay connected.

LinkedIn has announced the launch a new home page for LinkedIn Recruiter, which introduces some new tools for hiring.

There’s a new navigation bar with the Notifications feature, accessible via the flag icon at the top right. This will alert you to alerts you to job applies, new results for saved searches, completed hiring manager reviews and completed bulk resume uploads. There’s also a new “Smart-To-Do list” feature, which lets you to create to-do items that connect with a profile, project or job, using the ‘@’ symbol. Unchecked to-dos stay at the top of the list until they’re completed. Additionally, profile reminders you previously set will move into the Smart-To-Do list.

The search box has been made more prominent, and it has a new drop-down that lets you access saved searches and history. Under that is the activity feed. There’s also a new feature on the right called “People You May Want to Hire.”

Here’s what it looks like:

LinkedIn’s Elizabeth Burstein writes in a blog post:

Its “look and feel” more closely resembles LinkedIn.com, which makes the user experience more intuitive and simple. As LinkedIn Talent Solutions’ Head of Product Parker Barrile noted during today’s homepage launch event, “Most recruiting products are outdated and designed for CIOs, not recruiters. Fortunately, the consumerization of the enterprise has begun to infiltrate the recruiting industry and is influencing a new generation of products. Consumerization means putting the user’s priorities first.”

This idea motivated the Recruiter homepage redesign; we sought to build a tool that functions like a consumer app in the front, but has the power and rich feature set of an enterprise tool in the back. Let’s take a closer look.

LinkedIn lets you take a tour of the new design here.

Sometimes, when I find myself reading about new ways to serve better ads or recommendations, or to analyze who likes what on Twitter, and I find myself asking who the hell cares. That’s because, sometimes, it all seems beyond trivial. When I imagine myself in the shoes of a modern-day slave being forced to work grueling hours under grueling conditions in a developing country, or a child whose parents are pimping her out to pedophiles, I can’t seem to figure out why it matters that my Starbucks coupon is delivered at the ideal time when I’m approaching the store.

So when I wrote on Monday about the work of the SumAll Foundation to bring the world of business and next-generation data analytics to non-profits, I was genuinely excited about what they were doing. The foundation’s first effort was around quantifying human trafficking and raising awareness of the problem. One of its next projects has to do with analyzing the online behavior of pedophiles. And the SumAll Foundation isn’t just gathering data and making infographics, but rather sharing deeper data with the relevant organizations and teaching them how to do some of this work themselves.

I was even happier on Tuesday when I began going through my Google Reader feeds to read about two other efforts dedicated to using data fighting human trafficking and sexual exploitation. One is from Microsoft researcher and Ivy League academician danah boyd. The other is from Google.

Tech can help when it understands human nature

Boyd’s work isn’t so much a project as it is a framework for helping the growing number of technologists she sees working with non-profit organizations and government institutions to fight the exploitation of children. On her blog, boyd notes that technology certainly can help combat human trafficking, but that there are very human and complex factors that need to be considered before just building a system like, presumably, one would for serving targeted ads.

“On too many occasions, I’ve watched well-intentioned technologists approach the space with a naiveté that comes from only knowing about human trafficking through media portrayals. While the portraits that receive widespread attention are important for motivating people to act, understanding the nuance and pitfalls of the space are critical for building interventions that will actually make a difference.”

You can read the full four-page primer on her site, but here are the 10 points she addresses. She learned these lessons in part from discussions with leading scholars – some of whom Microsoft funded — researching the role that technology plays in facilitating human trafficking:

1. Youth often do not self-identify themselves as victims.
2. “Survival sex” is one aspect of CSEC.
3. Previous sexual abuse, homelessness, family violence, and foster care may influence youth’s risk of exploitation.
4. Arresting victims undermines efforts to combat CSEC.
5. Technologies should help disrupt criminal networks.
6. Post-identification support should be in place before identification interventions are implemented.
7. Evaluation, assessment, and accountability are critical for any intervention.
8. Efforts need to be evidence-based.
9. The cleanliness of data matters.
10. Civil liberties are important considerations.

A global network, backed by some data heavyweights

Then there’s Google, which awarded $3 million to three anti-trafficking organizations based in the United States, Asia and Europe in order to establish a Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network. The goal of the network, Google’s blog post explains, is to “collect data from local hotline efforts, share promising practices and create anti-trafficking strategies that build on common patterns and focus on eradication, prevention and victim protection.” This is critical: As the team at SumAll pointed out, one of the hardest things to do is facilitate effective data sharing across organizations so everyone has a clearer picture of what’s actually happening.

Here’s how Google explains the role of data sharing:

“Appropriate data can tell the anti-trafficking community which campaigns are most effective at reducing slavery, what sectors are undergoing global spikes in slavery, or if the reduction of slavery in one country coincides with an increase right across the border.”

This isn’t Google’s first foray into funding anti-trafficking efforts. In 2011, the company donated $11.5 million to the cause. This time, though it’s joined by the intelligence sector’s favorite data-analysis startup, Palantir, as well as Salesforce.com, which is helping to scale the call-tracking infrastructure.

And of course I understand that advertising and other commercial efforts are a necessary part of the economy, but watching data-analysis technology do little else but line the pockets of already rich individuals and corporations does get a bit old. However, when the money these efforts generate and the technologies they inspire help fund and fight some of the most egregious abuses on the planet — abuses that affect individuals from demographics no advertiser really cares about, and abuses that sometimes help corporations drive larger profits — the whole discussion around the importance of data starts to seem a lot more meaningful.

Here’s Google’s three-minute video explaining the problem and how it thinks its hotline network can help:

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Karuka.

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