Sylvia Pagán Westphal wrote:
These days, when I least expect it, an e-mail pops into my inbox that I can’t ignore. It announces that someone is following me on Twitter. I’m still figuring out how it works (I have a measly 4 tweets to my name), which explains why, upon reading one of those e-mails, I usually succumb to curiosity and with some degree of giddiness I click on the link to find out who my new follower is.
It’s a little bit embarrassing to admit this recently acquired character flaw. But that’s exactly what makes Twitter work. It thrives on its power to make people feel connected and cleverly taps into the primal, if not exactly venerable, human need for adulation. You follow me, I follow you, and thus we go on to build ourselves a set of nifty bully pulpits, 140 characters at a time.
Given that I just started tweeting about a month ago, I consider myself a fairly late adopter of the technology. I’m still not sure, in fact, whether one year from now I will have totally embraced it. But I was surprised to find out I’m not the only one hesitating
In life sciences, many companies have still not cozied up to Twitter-mania. Notable examples of companies without a Twitter presence are Abbott Labs and Biogen Idec. While companies in other industries have long since embraced Twitter to put out word of their products, initiatives, or latest sales, navigating the social media space is a matter of much debate for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. For many of their communication and marketing needs, the challenges posed by Twitter are only beginning to be understood.
Let me see if I can come up with a Twitter-worthy way to summarize the crux of the matter:
It’s hard to present balanced effectiveness and safety information for any drug in fewer than 140 characters, risking trouble with the FDA.
(I am tweeting those 140 characters today, just so I can have five tweets.)
Twitter is such a fantastic tool to spread news and information about a company, yet the reason why it’s so successful-the fact that people communicate in short and often cryptic sentences-is what makes it so hard to use for drug manufacturers. The FDA has long-standing rules for drug marketing that require companies to present fair and balanced information in advertising materials for a particular drug-meaning that effectiveness and risks must be properly explained. The agency has now asked companies and other interested parties to submit opinions on how it might regulate the promotion of products using social media and the Internet.
It’s an issue everyone is taking seriously. Research suggests that environments like Twitter might make it easier to skew the risk/benefit information linked to a drug. As pointed out in the March issue of Pharma Marketing News, the communications company WCG recently presented data to the FDA regarding online communications, and it found some interesting trends.
In its report, available here, the group analyzed over 100,000 online conversations involving 22 different drug brands. First, WCG looked at regular news articles and found a ratio of 60/40 benefit-to-risk mentions, meaning the news was skewed somewhat on the benefits side. When the group looked across social media sites, the ratio was 66.5/33.5 for the same drugs during the same time period. And when the sites were broken down by type, here’s what WGG found: in user forums the ratio was 67/33, blogs were 66/34, and Twitter was much higher: 74/26. In other words, tweets mentioning a drug, on average, tended to be more focused on benefits, and less on risks, when compared to other online communication tools—and were even more heavily skewed towards benefits than regular news articles.
To avoid some of these issues, many of the companies that have opened a Twitter account are staying away from possible regulatory trouble zones. Johnson & Johnson’s Marc Monseau has …Next Page »
UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS
With word out that top Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will replace Megan Fox on the set of Tranformers 3, we were wondering what all this had to do with cars, given the auto blogging world’s interest in the story. Apart from the fact that Transformers is sort of about cars, we forget that Rosie already knows about this kind of stuff, having been a model for the 2010 Pirelli calendar. So there you go – that’s the link. Megan Fox gets booted off Tranformers, a movie about cars, and gets replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a top model in the world’s most famous tyre calendar.
Source | Blogdolcevita
There’s a common belief that the weather affects our mood, that we tend to become more depressed in the winter and that summer brings an emotional lift. This has been researched before in small studies that have found inconsistent results but a new study published in Psychiatry Research tested the idea on almost 14,500 people and found no link to weather, while the seasonal effects did not follow the common belief: depression was more common in summer and autumn.
The researchers, led by Dutch psychologist Marcus Huibers, tested both the effect of daily changes in weather and the influence of the season. They sent out thousands of invitations to to people in Holland to complete a standard depression diagnosis questionnaire on the internet, in waves of a few thousand every week, over 18 months.
This allowed the researchers to check the exact day’s weather against people’s mood states.
Neither that day’s temperature, the amount of sunshine or rainfall had any immediate effect on mood, and the seasonal changes were not what you’d expect from ‘common knowledge’: men had seasonal peaks of major depression and sad mood in the summer, while women had seasonal peaks in the autumn.
Although there are some people who do seem to have depression triggered when winter arrives (a condition diagnosed as ‘seasonal affective disorder’ or SAD) this link doesn’t seem to exist in the public as a whole.
I currently live in Medellín, a city without seasons, to the point where it is nicknamed as ‘the city of eternal spring’. The locals says it used to be possible to tell the difference between the rainy seasons and dry seasons but over the last few years it’s simply been impossible to make any distinctions.
Interestingly, this has an effect on how we assess people for dementia. One of the ‘orientation’ questions for the widely used ‘Mini-mental state examination’ or MMSE evaluation is ‘what season is it?’.
As no-one knows what season it is, the assessment has to be scored out of 29 rather than 30, or it has to be replaced with something ad-hoc like ‘what part of the day is it?’.
However, it would be also interesting to find out whether depression varies here by time of year to understand whether this effect is really to do with season, or perhaps to do with the significance of the date.
For example, self-harm and suicide has been found to vary more by significant public holidays than by time of year.
Link to PubMed entry for depression, weather and season study.
Party some more? no more for Lindsay Lohan when she was in Cannes and she should have been in court that trigger the court to put some ankle bracelet called SCRAMx which can supposedly detect any alcohol in her sweat. YES Lohan can party but the question is can the device be tricked and will Lindsay Lohan continue his partyholic well it depends to her. Will Lindsay Lohan do all the tricks to Party without knowing if she is drunk or not?
The ancle bracelet that Lindsay Lohan wear is for alcoholic people which is develop by Breathalyzer Technology. For the time being, the ankle bracelets are only sold to the courts, probation officers and others who want to make sure drunken drivers or anyone involved in alcohol-related offenses don’t drink again.
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Reader jjmsan alerts us to a story that shows that various luxury brands suing service providers rather than those actually responsible doesn’t just happen online, but can happen offline as well. Apparently, luxury goods maker Coach is suing the city of Chicago, because some vendors were selling counterfeit goods at the Maxwell Street Market. I’m at a loss as to why suing the city makes any sense at all. In response to the original complaints, the city sent police officers to the market, and actually arrested those selling counterfeit goods (why this is a criminal, rather than a civil, matter is left as an exercise to the reader). Either way, rather than recognize that the city appeared to be more than willing to work with Coach, the company sent a legal threat letter demanding that the city proactively crackdown on counterfeits. When that failed, Coach sued the city. Hopefully the courts will recognize the ridiculousness of suing the city, rather than focusing on the vendors actually responsible.
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A Fiat Automóveis confirma sua participação na Hospitalar 2010 apresentando diversas novidades em ambulâncias e transportes no setor de saúde no maior evento do segmento na América Latina, que acontece entre os dias 25 e 28 de maio, no Expo Center Norte, São Paulo.
Entre as novidades apresentadas no estande 260m² da marca, dois modelos terão grande destaque: o Fiat Ducato ambulância de resgate do Corpo de Bombeiros, uma homenagem da Fiat aos 130 anos de profissionalismo do Corpo de Bombeiros de São Paulo, e o Fiorino para transporte de lixo hospitalar. Também estará exposta no estande da marca sua já conhecida linha de ambulâncias: Ducato Maxicargo versão UTI e Dobló Cargo ambulância de simples remoção.
O Fiat Fiorino para remoção de lixo hospitalar, desenvolvido em parceria com a Greencar, tem revestimento interno de PRFV (Poliéster Revestido em Fibra de Vidro) que facilita a limpeza do interior do veículo, prevenindo assim a contaminação pelos materiais transportados.
No estande há também um Fiat Doblò Ambulância que foi desenvolvido para quem precisa de rapidez e eventuais transportes de pacientes O ponto forte do Doblò é sua assepsia, devido a todo interior ser revestido também em PRFV.
Serviço:
Hospitalar 2010 – 17ª Feira Internacional de Produtos, Equipamentos, Serviços e Tecnologia para Hospitais, Laboratórios, Farmácias, Clínicas e Consultórios.
Data: 25 a 28 de maio de 2010
Horário: 12h às 21h
Local: Pavilhões do Expo Center Norte
Rua José Bernardo Pinto, 333 – Vila Guilherme – São Paulo
Como chegar:
CARRO: o estacionamento pago é em frente à entrada principal, localizada na Rua José Bernardo Pinto, 333
METRÔ: utilize o ônibus gratuito da Estação Tietê (a mais próxima do Expo Center Norte) para o Pavilhão.
Fonte: Fiat
Lindsey Lohan has been ordered by the court to wear an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet called SCRAM.
The actress is obliged to wear the anklet ankle bracelet will monitor the alcohol in her system because she extended her Cannes stay (due to a “missing passport”) and failed to appear at a mandatory hearing five days earlier.
The SCRAM or Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring uses the technology of Breathalyzer. The device measures the alcohol level through the skin. If Lindsay drinks alcohol, a small amount is expelled through her skin once it enters her bloodstream and the device transmits the information to Lohan’s probation officer.
The ankle bracelets are only sold to the courts, probation officers and others who want to make sure drunken drivers like Lohan or anyone involved in alcohol-related offenses don’t drink again.
This is already the second time for Lindsay to wear a SCRAM. Besides the ankle bracelet, she will also be forced to submit to random drug testings. Lohan is scheduled to appear back in court on July 6th.
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In an economic downturn many investors turn to dividend stocks which are sometimes referred to as defensive stocks. These stocks offer sustainable dividends providing the investor with a minimum level of positive return, which helps buffer the downward pressure from the market. But what happens when the market turns up?
Beta (β) is a quantitative measure of the volatility of a given security or portfolio relative to the overall market, usually the S&P 500. By definition, the market has a beta of 1.0 and securities are ranked according to how much they deviate from the market. Thus, securities with a beta above 1 are more volatile than the overall market, while those with a beta below 1 are less volatile. High-beta stocks are considered more risky, but provide a potential for higher returns. Low-beta stocks normally provide less risk and lower opportunities for capital gains.
Dividend stocks tend to have low betas. That means during a market downturn, they tend to decline less than the total market. Hence, the term defensive stocks. It is also important to note that many defensive stocks are non-cyclical. Examples would include food, tobacco, oil, and utilities where demand is remains stable under difficult economic conditions.
Here are several dividend stocks with betas (as provided by Google Finance) less than 1.00:
Company Analysis Beta % Yield Cardinal (CAH) Link 0.80 2.35 AT&T (T) Link 0.68 6.83 Meridian (VIVO) Link 0.63 3.63 Coca-Cola (KO) Link 0.60 3.41 Becton, Dickinson (BDX) Link 0.58 2.06 Procter & Gamble (PG) Link 0.58 3.12 Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) Link 0.57 3.54 Kimberly-Clark (KMB) Link 0.48 4.29 Harleysville Group (HGIC) Link 0.38 4.15 Wal-Mart (WMT) Link 0.24 2.36 Abbott Laboratories (ABT) Link 0.18 3.69
When the market turns up, low beta stocks normally won’t increase as fast as the market in total. However, as a long-term dividend investor, my goal is an ever-increase stream of dividend income, not to maximize capital appreciation.
Full Disclosure: Long ABT, HGIC, JNJ, KMB, KO, PG, T, WMT. See a list of all my income holdings here.
As if whacking GPS, 3G, an accelerometer and optical touchpads onto the new Vaio P wasn’t enough, Sony’s only gone and painted it with crocodile skin now. More »
Sony – Sony VAIO P series – VAIO – Netbook – Global Positioning System
Este fin de semana es el primero en el cual los compradores (por ahora los italianos nada más, tendremos que esperar un poco para poder ir a los concesionarios españoles y verlo allí) han podido ir a reservar su Alfa Romeo Giulietta, la nueva y hermosa creación de Alfa Romeo para luchar en el saturado mercado de los compactos.
No le ha ido nada mal, como si de una gran película comercial de Hollywood se tratase, en su primer fin de semana de estreno. 2.700 usuarios no sólo se han acercado a ver el vehículo en cuestión sino que han reservado una unidad, lo tenían todo bien pensado, con lo que en su estreno vende casi 3.000 unidades, que no está nada mal.
Un aspecto curioso es que el color blanco es el que más se ha comprado, por encima del mítico color rojo Alfa Romeo. Es muy posible que el hecho de que la campaña de publicidad se haya hecho con este color y no con el rojo haya ido calando entre los usuarios y se hayan decidido por variar esta vez.
El motor más comprado ha sido el motor diésel 1.6 JTD de 105 CV, seguido de cerca por el 2.0 JTD de 170 CV, un motor bastante potente para los tiempos de crisis que corren, no sólo por el gasto del motor en sí sino por el precio del carburante. A ver qué tal se porta en España.
Vía | Autoblog
Italy lets loose with $30 billion in budget cuts. It’s ‘a good start’. Riots in 3..2…1…
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Updates in Trina’s Leaked Photos, Trina the Miami rapper, NBA star Kenyon Martin’s Girlfriend has a picture exposing her breasts with a clear shot of her face in one. Many other pictures which has Trina in many different angle and poses. Trina said that the picture that leaked is in her cellphone which she lost several days ago and it might be the reason of her photographs that leaked. There are many other shots with her boyfriend in private, also close up shots of her arms with nasty rash or some sort of allergic reaction.
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The final three contestants of the Biggest Loser 2010 on the May 25th show came down to Ashley Johnston of Knoxville, Tennessee, Michael Venrella of Chicago, Illinois and Daris George of Ardmore, Oklahoma.
George was voted in to the final three by voters over the other option, Koli Palu, 20, of Rohnert Park, Calif., who won the $100,000 prize for biggest percent weight loss of all season.
But who is crowned to be the Biggest Loser? It’s no other than Michael Ventrella who lost 264 pounds with a 50.19% weight-loss percentage. That’s a big loss, but not as big as the grand prize he won which is $250,000!
The 30-year-old from Chicago was crowned The Biggest Loser’s ninth-season champion during last night’s live finale broadcast of the NBC reality weight-loss series.
Ashley Johnston, a 27-year-old manager/esthetician from Knoxville, TN finished as the runner-up. Daris George, a 25-year-old salesman/deliveryman from Ardmore, OK, finished third.
The Biggest Loser does amazing work on these contestants for helping them lose weight without compromising their health. Let’s just hope that the contestants maintain their body shapes and weight.
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Morgan Stanley is calling for investors to overweight emerging markets equities, perhaps emboldened by a contrarian streak after the investor exodus from the BRICs. It’s their first change to Asia/Global Emerging Markets (GEM) asset allocation since June 2009:
Morgan Stanley:
Here it is, their new allocation weightings. Their cash weighting is now almost non-existent:
Here’s the most interesting chart from their piece. It basically shows how despite the global concerns which have emerged recently, strong earnings results have lead to rapidly increasing 2010 earnings per share (EPS) growth forecasts for the full year. The underlying earnings fundamentals have become far stronger in the last two months despite the gloom out of Europe and concerns regarding China tightening.
As a result, forward price to earnings ratios (PE) have fallen to historically low levels.
Our caveat though will be that emerging markets stocks are one giant cyclical play, thus PE’s based on a single year’s forecast can change quite quickly if the global economy doesn’t deliver as expected.
Yet still, even on a more stable price to book value (PB) valuation metric, emerging markets don’t look expensive.
And keep in mind that while developed world is facing growth challenges, esp. Europe and Japan, emerging markets are still powering ahead. BRICs are leading the way:
(Via Morgan Stanley, Asia/GEMs Strategy, Jonathan Garner, 26 May 2010)
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Luke Timmerman wrote:
One of Vancouver, BC’s big biotech success stories, QLT, was clobbered by Genentech a few years ago in the market for treating age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness among elderly people. But during its heyday, QLT spawned a few cool R&D projects, and now some of them are being packaged into a new spinoff, Valocor Therapeutics.
Valocor emerged from stealth mode yesterday with a technology license from QLT for dermatology drug candidates, plus an undisclosed amount of seed financing from the Working Opportunity Fund managed by GrowthWorks Capital. Valocor is led by a quartet of founders, including Julia Levy, one of the driving forces behind QLT’s light-activated verteporfin (Visudyne), a drug for macular degeneration.
The idea at Valocor is to take some of what QLT learned about light-activated drugs, and apply it to the skin. The lead program will explore whether the company can develop a light-activated lotion that destroys the glands that produce excess skin oil that clogs up pores and causes acne. If this technique can clear up pimples, without damaging the underlying skin tissue, Valocor expects it could tap into a huge potential market that’s currently underserved. Roche’s isotretinoin (Accutane) is an effective oral pill for severe acne, but has long been controversial because of its link to birth defects. If Valocor’s treatment can offer a similar effect in a safer product, it could have a viable new option for 5 million people in the U.S. who seek medical treatment for acne each year.
“There’s a huge need because of the lack of innovation in dermatology,” says Valocor CEO Dan Wattier. “Big Pharma basically walked away from dermatology 25 years ago. And these are big markets.”
Dan Wattier
The story of how Valocor set sight on those markets can be traced back about five years. QLT was riding high then on sales of Visudyne, and was looking for new applications of light-activated drugs that could be effective in localized organs, like for urology or dermatology. Then in July 2006, Genentech won FDA approval for a new treatment, ranibizumab (Lucentis), that blew away eye disease specialists and made the QLT product look obsolete. Predictably, QLT’s sales and market share plummeted, forcing it to unload some of its R&D projects and secondary products, Wattier says. (If you want to see QLT’s pain, check out these annual financial trends.)
One of those projects that got shelved during the cost-cutting effort was a drug called lemuteporfin. There were reasons to put it on the back burner. It had failed to show an advantage over placebo in a trial of patients with enlarged prostate.
But the R&D guys saw another use for it, as a light-activated acne treatment. And it made some sense from a marketing standpoint. Acne is currently treated with over-the-counter lotions for a lot of people. Dermatologists often use ultraviolet light to zap the microscopic sebaceous glands that produce too much skin oil. Sometimes they prescribe oral antibiotics to kill bacteria that congregate around the hair follicles and clogged-up pores, Wattier says. But both of those treatments are only temporary, and in the case of antibiotics, over-use can lead to bacterial resistance. Roche’s Accutane, as mentioned above, can be extremely effective, but risky.
Here’s how Valocor plans to tackle this problem. The company has developed an alcohol-based lotion that gets prepared at the doctor’s office. It’s inactive until it comes into contact with a certain wavelength of light, Wattier says. The drug gets absorbed just a couple of millimeters into the skin, where the sebaceous glands are, and the light is focused there, but not deep enough to go below the epidermal layers or into the bloodstream, Wattier says. The goal is to essentially destroy the sebaceous glands, stopping them from secreting excess oils. Since this drug doesn’t go into the blood like Accutane, it shouldn’t …Next Page »
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More than just a heart rate monitor, the lightweight Suunto T3 helps you train with confidence by providing real-time information on the aerobic benefit of each workout. Runners, bikers, kayakers, and other sports enthusiasts will appreciate the Suunto T3’s combination of robust technology and versatile style.
What if you could glance at your wrist and see the total aerobic benefit of your workout in real-time? You’d know how much harder to push and for how long. Based on your personal fitness profile, the Suunto T3 delivers essential feedback on your aerobic activities, including heart rate, calories burned, and zone training information. You can also add real-time speed and distance data by combining the Suunto T3 with optional Suunto PODs (available separately). To ensure your workout data is accurate, the Suunto T3 is digitally coded for interference-free transmission.
By monitoring your Training Effect (TE), the T3 takes the guesswork out of effective training. Using data from your personal fitness profile, the watch analyzes your physiological progress and translates the data into a simple, one-to-five TE scale. For example, if you want to improve your aerobic fitness at a moderate tempo, you should exercise until your TE meter reads between 3.0 and 3.9, two to four times per week. To improve your aerobic condition more rapidly, but without the risk of over-training, you should push yourself harder once or twice per week, so your TE meter reads 4.0 to 4.9, with a few recovery sessions in the TE 1.0 to 2.0 range.
View Suunto T3 Heart Rate Monitor and Fitness Trainer Watch (Black with Orange Strap) details
Who is Dancing with the Stars 2010 winner? Lets find out, this year the Dancing with the stars, give the audience all the entertainment this season is the shows most successful season this year. The wife of the CEO of the network Leslie Moonves said that although she did not make it, she picked Nicole Scherzinger to be the DWTS (Dancing With The Stars) winner.This season winner finally being announce and the show ending will be tonight.
Celebrity contestant Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Dolls and Derek Hough were consistently at the top of the leaderboard throughout the season. Watch the Season Finale of Dancing With The Stars.
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American rapper Trina has recently spoken out on the ordeal she suffered when her naked photos stored in her phone circulated the web. Her phone was stolen months ago.
Hiphop artist Trina became very upset after finding out her that her private photos were leaked. According to her some jealous people want to disturb her and want ruin to popularity but some people thinks that these photos are planned program to become famous. The culprit uploaded some of her naked pictures in several websites and even tried to ask money.
She was furious about what happened. “You stole my phone, leaked pictures of me and then tried to extort money from me, and that was just taking it too far. I turned it over to the authorities and let them deal with it. I didn’t even want to be a part of it until you tell me that you have a suspect and were ready to prosecute. Actually, it was my lawyer that handled things. He went to all of the websites and sent out cease-and-desist letters. So I let the attorneys and authorities take care of everything and I just stayed out of it,” she said.
Some of the photos were already taken out of the web.
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Size matters in auto company survival, Renault and Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn told an audience in Detroit on Tuesday.
To cope with the escalating costs and scope of a global industry, successful automakers must complete a trifecta–be able to compete in every technology, every market and every segment, Ghosn said during a luncheon speech at the Detroit Economic Club
“No 3 million-unit carmaker can make it,” Ghosn said, explaining why his Renault-Nissan alliance forged an alliance with Germany’s Daimler AG.
Competency in one or two of the three skills is not enough, and only very large companies can afford all three, he said.
Technology is getting more expensive. Automakers must simultaneously develop gasoline, diesel, hybrid and electric vehicle technology because they can’t predict which technologies will prevail, Ghosn said.
“You also must be in every market–and it’s not just Japan, Europe and the United States anymore but also Brazil, Russia, China and India. And you better be in Indonesia, too,” he said.
“And you can’t be viable as a niche player, so you need to be in the upper, lower, 4-by-4 and crossover segments.”
‘Technologies are expensive’
France-based Renault and Japan’s Nissan do not consolidate their financial results and in some ways remain separate companies, but they cooperate on platforms and powertrains and some manufacturing. Through a holding company, Renault owns about 42 percent of Nissan.
That type of alliance is more flexible than a conventional merger, Ghosn said. He also cited the new alliance with Daimler–initially to cooperate on developing a replacement small platform for Daimler’s Smart division–as a better way to cooperate.
“Technologies are expensive and you need a partner because nobody can afford to do it all alone.” Ghosn said.
Major players … someday
He predicted that as the Chinese auto market develops, domestic Chinese automakers eventually will emerge as major players.
“Right now, there is not one global Chinese automaker,” he said. “Not one has the scope of a company like Renault-Nissan or Volkswagen.”
But soon, a Chinese automaker–or perhaps an Indian company–will “buy something nobody else wants” and become a worldwide force, Ghosn predicted. “It could happen much faster than everybody expects.”
Much like the Koreans did in recent years, emerging-market automaker powerhouses can develop by constantly “benchmarking and copying best practices,” he said. “Nothing is ever unchanging in our industry.”
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