Michael Schumacher has dismissed rumors that he will seek the No 1 status within the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Actually, this was one of the main things he wanted to make very clear after signing a 3-year deal with the Brackley based team. His return to F1 will not mean teammate Nico Rosberg will become his lieutenant, a strategy that he used to pick up during his Ferrari days.
There were always these rumors that I always have a certain status. I can confirm that it was never the … (read more)
A yarn on the front page of this morning’s WSJ points to a broad gray area in medicine: What constitutes human experimentation? The issue can be especially tricky when it comes to approved medical devices, which can sometimes be modified without receiving new FDA approval.
A prominent heart surgeon implants a slightly modified version of a ring used to seal leaky heart valves. The ring is similar to one that’s already been approved. Is that experimentation? A lawyer who represents device companies told the WSJ that it “would be a nightmare for the FDA, and companies, if they had to apply for each tweak” to an already-approved device.
The surgeon who implanted the modified device was an author of a medical-journal article that described the “initial experience with a new ring” — language that suggests the doctors implanting the ring should have done so as part of a clinical trial, according to one doctor who didn’t perform the implants.
The surgeon said the article wasn’t a clinical trial report but part of a database of heart-surgery results, and patients consented to be in the database. And he said the modification — bending the ring into a new shape — didn’t introduce new materials.
A patient who had to have her ring removed, and who filed a lawsuit, says she wasn’t informed that the modified version of the ring wasn’t approved by the FDA at the time of her initial surgery. (It was approved later on.) “I didn’t want to be a guinea pig,” she said.
The story is complicated, and there’s a lot of back and forth that we won’t get into here. It’s worth reading the whole thing for yourself.
Photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr
In 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent 13 hours per week online. This number is down slightly from last year. Thanks to the large interest in the presidential election and the financial crisis, the average Internet user was online for roughly 14 hours per week in 2008. According to a new poll from Harris Interactive, users between the ages of 30 to 39 are the most active Internet users. On average, this group is online for 18 hours per week.
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Overall, the average time online for U.S. Internet users has gone up from seven hours in 1999 to close to nine hours in 2003 and up to 11 hours in 2007. We should note that these numbers only include adults. According to Nielsen, which looked at all U.S. Internet users, the average usage per week is closer to 17 hours.
The number of adults who are online has not changed since 2007. In total, 184 million adults regularly surf the Internet at work, home or school. While the number of adults who are online has not changed, the number of adults who access the Internet at home has increased from 66% in 2005 to 76% in 2009. Ten years ago, only 56% of all adults accessed the Internet from home. In total, 98% of all computer users are now online.
While users between 30 and 39 are the most active Internet users, those between 25 and 29 are the most likely to spend more than 24 hours per week online. 25% of 25- to 29-year-olds surf the Net between 24 and 162 hours per week – sadly, Harris Interactive doesn’t tell us how many of these users actually spend every minute of the week online.
With regards to online shopping, Harris found that 50% of adults bought something online in the last month. Not surprisingly, 30- to 39-year-olds are the most active online shoppers.
Given how popular online video and social networks have become over the last few years, chances are that the average number of hours spend online will continue to grow slowly over the next few years. U.S. Internet users who watch TV online watch close to 18 hours of online video per week already. In the U.K., the average Facebook user spends close to three full days per year on the site. Without doubt, however, there will be a natural limit to how much time per week people will spend online.
Since I’ve stated my desire for a Snapdragon-powered Android device for the past few months now, the Google Nexus One is definitely on my radar. But it’s not yet available, which means a current Android purchase would be for something like the HTC Hero or Motorola Droid. So just how does the Nexus One stack up in terms of size when compared with the Hero? HTC Nexus One has the goods and shows the physical difference between a Nexus One, a Hero and an Apple iPhone 3GS, just for good measure.
Even more exciting than the size comparisons is the above silent but telling video walk-through — it demonstrates the speed and fluidity of the user interface when paired with a speedy ARM processor like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. At this rate, I might as well make a 2010 prediction right now — there’s a good chance I’ll be grabbing a Nexus One next year.
PIMCO, and Bill Gross’s, new buzz term the ‘New Normal’ has officially exploded across the public consciousness.
Google News statistics show that ‘new normal’ is more prevalent than ever, despite a previous new normal bubble in the early 20th century.
Infectious Greed: The thing is out of control, having become the default construction in all economic discussions and right up there with “The West Coast Fed”
It’s thus little surprise that Bill Gross’s fund at PIMCO has had record inflows this year. He’ll be having a good Christmas.
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Sehr geehrte Kontaktlinsenträger, sehr geehrte Kunden und Interessierte
Herzlichen Dank für das Vertrauen, dass sie uns im Jahr 2009 entgegen gebracht haben. Wir haben unser bestes gegeben, damit sie wieder mit scharfem Blick durch die Welt gehen konnten. Haarsträubende Situationen gefolgt von traumhaften Erlebnissen, haben uns das ganze Jahr hin durch begleitet. Viele neue Produkte sind auf dem augenoptischen Markt erschienen, ebenso viele haben sich vom Markt wieder verabschiedet. Genauso ist es mit den vielen Onlineshops. Viele sind gekommen und haben uns zu kopieren versucht und ebenso sind sie wieder in der Versenkung verschwunden.
Der exzellente Service bei McLinsen bleibt unser Markenzeichen auch im neuen Jahr. Auch wenn es viele Konkurrenten versuchen zu kopieren, aber den Service kann man nicht kopieren. Der Service und der Kundennutzen bleiben für uns an erster Stelle. Auch im neuen sind sie, werter McLinsen Kunde unser wichtigstes Anliegen. Wir sind immer da, sorry fast immer für sie da. 6 Tage in der Woche!
Darum wünschen wir Ihnen besinnliche Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!
Ihre McLinsen.ch Kontaktlinsen Discount
For a little while now, Broadband Reports has been doing a good job highlighting how Verizon Wireless has been charging a phantom $1.99 fee for “accessing the internet” even when users claim they did no such thing. Despite a growing amount of press coverage, Verizon Wireless had been silent on the issue. However, once David Pogue at the NY Times reported on it, finally the FCC got involved and asked Verizon Wireless to explain. The company apparently delayed for a while and then sent a reply (pdf). While much of the press coverage focused on a separate question (about why Verizon Wireless had doubled its early termination fees), what may be more interesting is the company’s non-response to the phantom $1.99. It basically said it doesn’t do what lots and lots of people are saying it does. David Pogue noticed how odd this is and why Verizon Wireless is not being upfront:
How about the 400 people who chimed in to say, “Me too!” in the comments of my original post? Are they all idiots? How about me? I found several of those $1.99 charges on my own bills. How about the Verizon whistleblower who has begged his managers to change this greedy scheme, and been told to shut up? Is he mistaken?
Even more amusing is that Pogue contacted the Verizon Wireless PR person who had initially scolded him for not getting a comment from the company for his original story:
“I’m going to let the letter to the F.C.C. speak for us,” he said. “I’m not able to comment further.”“But you’re saying that you don’t charge that $1.99 fee!” I told him. “Yet it’s happened to hundreds of my readers, and it’s happened to me. So what are we missing?”
“I’m going to let the letter to the F.C.C. speak for us.”
“But it just says Verizon isn’t doing it!”
“I’m going to let the letter to the F.C.C. speak for us.”
Comforting, right? It amazes me that companies actually think this sort of approach makes sense, when it’s almost guaranteed that the details will eventually come out. Update: FCC isn’t buying Verizon Wireless’ response.
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For the last 3 years + I have been able to live on about 20-25 units of Novorapid per day, covering both my basal and bolus needs. Now, all of a sudden, I’m up to 35-40 units per day. My ratios used to be about 1 unit for 20/25 carbs. Now I’m at 1 unit for about 5 to 10 carbs. For me that is an unusually high volume. It’s scary because in the past, taking 6 units of insulin for a meal would most certainly mean having a low. I was nervous at anything over 4 units and would dual wave anything higher. Now, 6 units is seemingly nothing. Even 8-10 units per meal, without and dual or square waving, is fine. But I don’t get what would have happened in my body over such a short period of time.
Autoblog picked up on an interesting story about Ford Motor Company’s efforts to create middleware that will let future cars interact with mobile devices, including iPhones. Sync, developed in conjunction with Microsoft, aims to not only give you access to your phone book and playlists, but also wants to allow you to use all those third-party apps you’ve downloaded.
Think about it: hands-free access to iPhone Apps as you drive. Sign us up.
One of the biggest hurdles creating an interface like this is getting developers to start working on apps that mobile device owners would want to use in their vehicles. “So Ford has to reach out to people eager to develop apps for cars, and make the process fun for the developers. Long approval periods and heavy layers of corporate interference will just turn would-be Sync app writers off,” says Autoblog’s Jonny Lieberman.
Sync’s open API allows developers to create apps for virtually any type of phone, but Ford selected iPhones as its research model because of its popularity. Sync developers met with a group of computer science students from the University of Michigan and asked them to build a couple of iPhone Apps so researchers could test their viability as a truly mobile app.
The first, FollowMe, lets users track each other’s locations so no one gets lost traveling caravan-style from place to place. SyncCast, the other app the students came up with, allows users to play any radio station in the U.S through the car stereo via their iPhone. It only took the students three months to develop the apps and, by all accounts, working with the Sync API was a piece of cake. Ironically, it was the iPhone’s Apple-specific toolkit that gave developers the most grief.
There’s no word when this technology will be ready for the open market but when it is, will you want it on it? Would the ability to interact hands free with your iPhone influence your car-buying decisions? Let us know in the comments.
The 99g/km CO2 output version of the Audi A3 1.6 TDi was introduced in the UK market this week, priced at £18,005 on the road. The hatchback has a combined economy of 74.3 mpg and is fitted with engine start-stop and energy recuperation systems.
The A3 1.6 TDI can draw on the same 105 hp power output and 250 Nm torque peak as all other versions, and consequently can match them on performance, doing sixty in 11.4 seconds and offering the option to reach a top speed of 121mph where… (read more)
| Published: | December 23, 2009 |
| Paper Released: | December 2009 |
| Authors: | Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen |
When and why do multinationals group together overseas? Do they agglomerate in the same fashion abroad as they do at home? An answer to these questions is central to the long-standing debate over the consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI). It is critical to understand interdependencies of multinational networks and how multinationals influence one another in their activities at home and overseas. HBS professor Laura Alfaro and George Washington University professor Maggie Chen examine the global network of multinationals and study the significance and causes of multinational agglomeration. Their results provide further evidence of the increasing separation of headquarters services and production activities within multinational firms. The differential specialization of headquarters and subsidiaries leads to distinct patterns of agglomeration. Key concepts include:
In this paper we characterize the topology of global multinational networks and examine the macro and micro patterns of multinational activity. We construct indices of network density at both pairwise industry and establishment level and measure agglomeration in a global and continuous metric space. These indices exhibit distinct advantages compared to traditional measures of agglomeration including the independence on the level of geographic aggregation. Estimating the indices using a new worldwide establishment dataset, we investigate both the significance and causes of multinational firm co-agglomeration. In contrast to the conventional emphasis of the literature on the role of input-output linkages, we assess the effect of various agglomeration economies. We find that, relative to counterfactuals, multinationals with greater factor-market externalities, knowledge spillovers, and vertical linkages exhibit significant co-agglomeration. The importance of these factors differs across headquarters, subsidiary, and employment networks, but knowledge spillovers and capital-market externalities, two traditionally under-emphasized forces, exert consistently strong effects. Within each macro network, there is a large heterogeneity across subsidiaries. Subsidiaries with greater size and higher productivity attract significantly more agglomeration than their counterfactuals and become the hubs of the network. 59 pages.
Filed under: Hybrid, Sedan, Performance, Ford
There’s seemingly no end to the lists and awards that can be dolled out to (sometimes questionably) deserving cars and trucks at the end of the year. Take, for instance, the Urban Automobile of the Year Award by On Wheels Media. This is the 14th year in a row the award has been passed out, and this year top billing goes to the 2010 Ford Taurus SHO.
Athletic, upscale, class-leading, confident, engaging and impressive are all words that seem befitting of an award winner, and you’ll find all of them in the press release after the break describing the new SHO. But wait – there’s more! We have a second Urban AOTY, this one on the green side of the coin. With the latest Toyota Prius and Honda Insight obvious choices for such an award, Ford is surely happy to see that its 2010 Fusion Hybrid – the most fuel efficient midsize sedan in America at 41 city, 36 highway – earned the trophy, giving the Blue Oval a total sweep of the ceremony.
So, what qualifies a vehicle to be an Urban Automobile of the Year, anyway? Glad you asked. According to Randi Payton, president and publisher of On Wheels Media, “The Urban Automobiles of the Year resonate with the majority of new car buyers who live in urban and suburban areas. The vehicles chosen are cost and fuel-efficient and have performance and safety characteristics relevant to consumers in metropolitan areas.” So, there you have it.
Gallery: Review: 2010 Ford Taurus SHO
Gallery: Review: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid
[Source: Ford]
Continue reading Ford Taurus SHO and Fusion Hybrid awarded 2010 Urban Autos of the Year
Ford Taurus SHO and Fusion Hybrid awarded 2010 Urban Autos of the Year originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sales of homes across America rose a whopping 44.1% in November compared to November of 2008 according to the National Association of Realtors.
Sequentially sales wre up 7.4%.
Below, the full release:
NAR: Existing-home sales rose again in November as first-time buyers rushed to close sales before the original November 30 deadline for the recently extended and expanded tax credit, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – rose 7.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 6.54 million units in November from 6.09 million in October, and are 44.1 percent higher than the 4.54 million-unit pace in November 2008. Current sales remain at the highest level since February 2007 when they hit 6.55 million.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the rise was expected. “This clearly is a rush of first-time buyers not wanting to miss out on the tax credit, but there are many more potential buyers who can enter the market in the months ahead,” he said. “We expect a temporary sales drop while buying activity ramps up for another surge in the spring when buyers take advantage of the expanded tax credit, which hopefully will take us into a self-sustaining market in the second half of 2010. In all, 4.4 million households are expected to claim the tax credit before it expires and balance should be restored to the housing sector with inventories continuing to decline.”
An NAR practitioner survey2 shows first-time buyers purchased 51 percent of homes in November, compared with an upwardly revised 50 percent of transactions in October.
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage fell to 4.88 percent in November from 4.95 percent in October; the rate was 6.09 percent in November 2008. Last month’s mortgage interest rate was the second lowest on record after bottoming at 4.81 percent in April 2009.
NAR President Vicki Cox Golder, owner of Vicki L. Cox & Associates in Tucson, Ariz., said conditions are optimal for buyers in the current market. “Inventories have steadily declined and are closer to balanced levels, which indicate home prices in many areas are either stabilizing or could soon stabilize and return to normal appreciation patterns,” she said. “This means buyers still have good choices but are purchasing near the bottom of the price cycle with historically low mortgage interest rates. Throw a tax credit on top and it really doesn’t get any better for buyers with secure jobs and long-term ownership plans.”
Total housing inventory at the end of November declined 1.3 percent to 3.52 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 6.5-month supply3 at the current sales pace, down from an 7.0-month supply in October.
Raw unsold inventory figures are 15.5 percent below a year ago. The last time there was a lower supply of homes on the market was April 2006 when it was at a 6.1-month supply.
“Nearly all markets experienced a solid sales gain from one year ago,” Yun said. “The only markets with measurably lower sales were in San Diego, Riverside, and Sacramento, where inventory shortages for lower priced homes are limiting sales.”
For the second month in a row, sales have risen in all price classes from a year earlier. Prior to October, the only consistent gains were in the lower price ranges.
The national median existing-home price4 for all housing types was $172,600 in November, which is 4.3 percent below November 2008. Distressed properties, which accounted for 33 percent of sales in November, continue to downwardly distort the median price because they generally sell at a discount relative to traditional homes in the same area.
Single-family home sales jumped 8.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.77 million in November from a level of 5.32 million in October, and are 42.1 percent above the pace of 4.06 million in November 2008. The median existing single-family home price was $171,900 in November, down 4.4 percent from a year ago.
Existing condominium and co-op sales in November were unchanged from a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 770,000 in October, but are 60.1 percent above the 481,000-unit pace a year ago. The median existing condo price5 was $178,000 in November, which is 3.1 percent below November 2008.
Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast rose 6.6 percent to an annual level of 1.13 million in November, and are 52.7 percent higher than November 2008. The median price in the Northeast was $223,400, down 13.1 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the Midwest increased 8.4 percent in November to a pace of 1.55 million and are 53.5 percent above a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $140,800, a decline of 0.4 percent from November 2008.
In the South, existing-home sales rose 4.8 percent to an annual level of 2.39 million in November and are 44.8 percent higher than a year ago. The median price in the South was $151,400, down 1.4 percent from November 2008.
Existing-home sales in the West increased 10.6 percent to an annual rate of 1.46 million in November and are 28.1 percent above November 2008. The median price in the West was $231,100, which is 4.1 percent below a year ago.
The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
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We had already reported that Times Square is going to be bringing in 2010 with a green bang. But what’s even better is that every year, for the past 10 years Royal Philips Electronics has been the source of lighting up the New Year numerals. While over the years the progress has been made from halogen to incandescent to the recent LUXEON LED for 2007 and 2008, the year 2010 will be brought in with the new white-light LED retrofit bulbs that will also be made available to the consumers, yes you and me.
The consumer version of the LED lighting that will be used for the Times Square Ball and its numerals is called the Philips Ambient ED PAR 30 Longneck, which seems perfect for home use. The bulbs consume about 11 watts of energy. For its consumer line, Philips has also launched a series of other lightings such as floodlight, spotlight and candle bulb.
[GoodCleanTech]
Now even Dubai can hold up its head high when it comes to caring for the environment. With the whole Copenhagen summit on, it was high time everyone took energy saving and environment consciousness seriously. The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry is now the first ever building in the Arab region to be globally recognized with green credentials. It has been the first building there to have achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). Intelligently planned, the buildings efforts in going eco-friendly include reducing water and energy consumption by approximately 77% and 47% respectively between 1998 and 2008, leading to significant carbon emission reductions and accumulated savings of around seven million. Other efforts include recycling of paper, plastic and other electronic waste and free valet parking for visitors using fuel efficient vehicles.
[Edie]
British carmaker Lotus announced today the release of a commemorative edition of the Exige, dubbed S Type 72. The car has been built to celebrate the black and gold Lotus Type 72 livery which was driven by Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Ronnie Peterson and Jacky Ickx and won three Formula One Constructors’ Championships (1970, 1972 and 1973) and two Drivers’ World Championships (1970 and 1972).
The Lotus Exige S Type 72 is an evocative sportscar, combining cutting edge handling… (read more)
The 21st Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motor Sport to be held March 19-21, 2010, will be celebrating the Alfa Romeo Centenary, with more than 100 examples of the Italian marque taken to the Grand Prix circuit to be a part of several events.
Various important Alfa Romeo race cars will be featured at the event, including Alfa’s first genuine single-seater Grand Prix car, the 1931 P3 Tipo B monoposto, a 1932 model Alfa Romeo 8C 2300, as well as a 1963 TZ1 (Tubolare Zagato) ra… (read more)
The Christmas star or the Star of Bethlehem has a very special significance attached to it and hence it has got to be the most shining one, especially on the eve of Christmas. Keeping this in mind, Siemens has powered a LED-equipped Christmas Star called ‘Superstar’ that is supposed to be the largest in the world. This star will revolve and will give out a glow that is equivalent to 20,000 Christmas candles, and will yet consume electricity as much as a hair dryer would. This has been made possible with the 900 LED’s that makes the Christmas star energy saving.
The revolving attraction has been designed by the Munich multimedia artist Michael Pendry.
[Ecofriend]
As the U.S. becomes less capitalist, Libya is becoming more so.
Mark Mobius is investigating the country as his next potential frontier market.
Even if he doesn’t end up investing in the nation, stints to off the radar places like this at worst help Mr. Mobius maintain his emerging markets branding.
Mark Mobius via Investment Postcards:
After a long period of strained relations with the West, Libya has made considerable efforts since 2003 to normalize and improve diplomatic ties. These include abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programs and paying compensation to the families of victims of the bombings of Pan Am flight 103 (in 1988) and UTA Flight 772 (in 1989). As a result, most international sanctions against the country were lifted in 2004, and in 2006, the U.S. removed Libya from its state-sponsored terrorism list on which Libya had stayed for 27 years. Since then, Libya has attracted a wave of interest from international companies operating mainly in energy and construction. Our hotel was full of business people, particularly oil company executives and oil field employees working on the country’s extensive oil and gas deposits – Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa.
More importantly for us as investors, the government is moving to privatize state enterprises and develop a capital market. We visited the nascent stock exchange and were impressed by the good systems in place. Only a handful of stocks are listed now, but with many more state-owned companies in areas such as infrastructure, power and telecoms destined to be privatized and listed, we expect that the opportunities to invest in this market will expand. Since 2003, more than 100 government-owned companies have been privatized in the oil refining, tourism and real estate areas.
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Germany will have a dream team inside Formula One for the upcoming few seasons, just as McLaren secured their British fans an all-Englishman lineup for the next 3 years. Nico Rosberg was officially joined in the Mercedes GP lineup by 7-time world champion Michael Schumacher, as the announcement was made during a press conference earlier today.
Having Schumacher as a teammate is never easy, as past experiences have taught us that the German driver, when managed by Ross Brawn (as th… (read more)
