Category: News

  • Pegasus Tower Completes Asset Sale

    Pegasus Tower Development Co., a portfolio company of Primus Capital, has sold ten multi-tenant wireless communications towers. No financial terms were disclosed.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Pegasus Tower Development Company, LLC (”Pegasus”), a Primus Capital Fund V portfolio company, has completed the sale of ten multi-tenant wireless communications towers. The sale was part of the initial investment strategy of building a portfolio of towers and generating liquidity through the sale of all or portions of the towers based on their successful lease up, free cash flow generation, and purchase multiples available in the market. Primus co-led a $35 million growth financing in April 2006.

    Pegasus develops, acquires, and manages wireless communications towers across the nation. Pegasus continues to pursue new tower sites that have attractive economics and strong lease-up potential. The company currently has a portfolio of over 150 towers constructed or under development.

    About Primus

    Founded in 1983, Primus invests in established middle-market companies in the business services, healthcare and education industries. Primus partners with experienced management teams to accelerate growth and improve the operating performance of the companies in which it invests. The types of transactions pursued include buyouts, control and minority recapitalizations, and expansion financings. More information about Primus can be found at www.primuscapital.com

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  • Flexion Therapeutics Raises $33 Million

    Flexion Therapeutics, a Woburn, Mass.-based drug development startup, has raised $33 million in Series A funding. Versant Ventures led the round, and was joined by 5AM Ventures and Sofinnova Ventures. Flexion was formed in 2007 by Chorus co-founders Mike Clayman and Neil Bodick.

    PRESS RELEASE

    Flexion Therapeutics today announced the successful completion of a Series A financing round totaling $33 million. The funds will be used to advance a number of promising drug candidates through clinically meaningful proof of concept and beyond.

    The financing was led by Versant Ventures and included founding investors 5AM Ventures and Sofinnova Partners.

    “We’re delighted to have raised significant funds from top-tier investors, especially in this very tough financial climate,” said Mike Clayman, Chief Executive Officer of Flexion Therapeutics.

    Brad Bolzon, Managing Director at Versant Ventures added: “The clinical team at Flexion has developed a unique capability to assess the potential of a given drug candidate as efficiently as possible. We look forward to applying this approach toward building a strong product portfolio and a valuable company.”

    “We have been overwhelmed by the response from the pharmaceutical industry, which very much wants to partner with the proven team at Flexion,” commented Andrew Schwab, founder and Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures.

    “It normally takes about four years and up to $40 million to reach clinical proof of concept,” continued Rafaèle Tordjman, Partner with Sofinnova Partners. “Flexion can reach that all important milestone in about half the time and an eighth of the cost. That is an outstanding achievement and a paradigm shift in terms of productivity for the pharmaceutical industry.”

    The Flexion team has evolved the model it first established at Chorus in 2002 to meet the demands of a new environment for drug development. Its strategy includes the advancement of high-value specialty products to market.

    The team has taken multiple drugs through Phase 3 to market, including seven global submissions for Lilly. Flexion soon expects to announce deals with three major pharmaceutical companies.

    Veteran venture capitalist Sam Colella of Versant Ventures and entrepreneur Pat Mahaffy, Chief Executive Officer of Clovis Oncology, recently joined Flexion’s board of directors.

    About Flexion Therapeutics

    Flexion Therapeutics advances drug candidates through clinically meaningful proof of concept and beyond. The company was established in 2007 by Mike Clayman and Neil Bodick, the founders of Chorus, Lilly’s in-house proof-of-concept drug unit, which demonstrated a level of productivity far greater than the industry standard.

    By providing expertise and risk-sharing, Flexion effectively expands the development capabilities of its partners. For more information, please visit www.flexiontherapeutics.com

    About Versant Ventures

    Versant Ventures is a leading healthcare-focused venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investment in medical devices, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, healthcare services and healthcare information technology. The firm, founded in 1999, consists of a seasoned team of twelve managing directors with more than 130 years of venture capital investing experience and more than 150 years of operating experience.

    Versant Ventures currently manages in excess of $1.6 billion in committed capital and a portfolio of over 75 companies. For more information, see www.versantventures.com

    About 5AM

    5AM Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on building next-generation life science companies. Founded in 2002, 5AM Ventures has over $390 million under management and is actively investing its third fund, 5AM Ventures III. The firm has offices in Menlo Park, CA and Waltham, MA. For more information, visit www.5amventures.com

    About Sofinnova Partners

    Sofinnova Partners is an independent venture capital firm based in Paris, investing in early-stage companies, corporate spin-offs and turnaround situations in the technology and life sciences spaces, including cleantech. Sofinnova has financed 460 companies in Europe since 1972. Of those, over 20% have gone public, over 20% have been acquired and, on average, revenues have multiplied eight times between financing and exit. For more information, go to www.sofinnova.fr

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  • Do we need ILISU hydro electric power plant?

    Dear All

    PM told to the residents of Hasankeyf and to the nation that he would not allow the 12,000 year old Hasankeyf be buried under water with the building of the Ilısu Dam and Hydro Electric power plant and yet afterwards attended the cermonies for the start of construction of the dam.

    Ajda Pekkan gave a concert at Hasankeyf last Sunday pleading for stopping the construction of the dam as presently designed.

    Question, do we need ILISU?

    ILISU is required for more electricity generation for sure. However is it necessary at that point with that capacity? That is the real question

    ILISU could have been constructed a bit earlier with two individual hydroelectric dams instead of one unit , by this way you avoid unnecessary flooding of ancient sites, but that is costlier at this time. In future technology will obviously be improved and the construction will be cheaper, financing will be easier.

    It is not easy to declare that it is bad or good. You have choices. It is not so easy to judge from the other end of the globe that ILISU is bad.

    Although every action we take, every time we move or speak, has some effect on the environment, it is the major effects that must be addressed if we are to act as responsible citizens of an all-too-fragile world.

    We should design and supply which does have an appreciable effect on the environment around us. It should be our policy and our concern that any impact on the environment be minimized as best we know how.

    We should continue to apply the best technical solutions to these concerns, with maximized local engineering capability and make best use of our local hydro, wind, solar, fossil fuel resources. We will not compromise our designs with inefficient solutions when we know a better way.

    We should work with our customers and the community to provide the cleanest, safest, most up to date technology in the equipment that we supply.

    We are citizens of this world and intend to act responsibly in it.


    Haluk Direskeneli, Ankara based Energy Analyst

  • Qosmio G60: Toshiba unleashes new super-laptop

    toshiba_qosmio_g60

    Toshiba Japan has announced a slew of new and updated notebooks today, and one of them [JP] is a monster of a notebook (more will be posted later). The Qosmio G60/97J is basically a high-end computer, digital TV and Blu-ray player rolled into one.

    The notebook is powered by a Core 2 Duo P8700 processor (2.53GHz) and has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD, GeForce GT230M, Ethernet, IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi, Ethernet, an HDMI port, and Windows 7 on board.

    toshiba_qosmio_g60_2

    It also features  a 18.4-inch full HD LCD screen, not one but two TV tuners (so that you can record a TV program while watching another), a Blu-ray drive, harman/kardon speakers and Toshiba’s self-developed SpursEngine processor (which is supposed to boost the quality of video recordings). Toshiba also throws in a remote control.

    The Qosmio G60/97J weighs 5kg and is sized at 442.6×294.2×41.5mm. It will hit Japanese stores at the end of next month for $3,200. A trimmed down version, the GX/G8K, with weaker resolution (1,680×945), a 400GB HDD and no TV tuners or SpursEngine processor, will be available for $800 less.

    No word yet from Toshiba concerning a possible worldwide release.


  • Sonos s5: Mo’ money, mo’ powerful wireless speakers

    12_Sonos_S5_iPhone
    If you’re familiar with the Sonos system, then there isn’t too much news here. In fact, there’s not too much news even if you don’t know what Sonos does. Let me break it down for you: the Sonos system is a nice, comprehensive wireless music system for your house that you can control via your iPhone. If you haven’t heard of it before and you’re wondering how to get your music collection to various rooms in your house, check out the demo.

    The rest of you, think on your current Sonos speakers: are they good enough? No? Well, these ones are better. The focus groups they’ve been running must have gone something like “No, everything’s great, actually. I guess we could use a bit more power.” And that is how the Sonos S5 was born. Stereo tweeters and mid-range drivers, plus a sub in each unit.

    Trouble is, these fancy magic speakers cost $400 each. Zounds! Of course, some would say they’re worth it. Personally, I just turn up my speakers loud enough that I can hear them in the shower or while cooking, but that’s not really the most sophisticated solution (though I must say it is elegant).


  • Will ‘Paranormal Activity’ Teach The Movie Industry A Lesson?

    I have to admit I don’t usually like scary movies, and I didn’t like the Blair Witch Project at all. But I can’t help but be impressed that the Blair Witch movie cost just $60,000 and pulled in a cool $140 million back in 1999. That kind of return makes me wonder why more movies aren’t filmed on really small budgets. So it’s somewhat surprising to see that it took about a decade for another Blair Witch-like film to get promoted by a major studio… and that a perfect candidate was almost missed. The movie Paranormal Activity was apparently filmed for just $11,000 over 7 days, and it was bought by DreamWorks/Paramount — which originally planned to shelve the low-budget flick and re-make it with bigger stars and a much higher budget.

    Goodman also admitted that DreamWorks, formerly a leg of Paramount co-headed by Steven Spielberg, had swooped in and pocketed ‘Paranormal Activity’ with every intention of leaving it on the shelf and remaking it with a big budget and marquee stars. Then they wised up. 

    They wised up indeed, and they also started promoting this movie in an interesting way, too — by getting potential fans to demand it be shown in their neighborhoods and nationwide. Paramount promised to distribute the movie nationwide if a million requests for the movie were logged via Eventful. And it looks like they’ve already reached that goal.

    As I said, I didn’t like Blair Witch very much, and I’m not exactly looking forward to this movie, either. But from a pure business angle, it seems a bit shocking that movie studios wouldn’t be trying to find/create more low-budget films that would appeal to moviegoers. Promoting the distribution of films in a way that actually target fans is a smart move, too. So with this example, there are about a million customers (or at least thousands, if you don’t believe the Eventful numbers) willing to pay to see this movie that was made for (much) less than a $1 per fan — and the movie studio’s first gut-instinct was to try to re-make the film and drive their own costs up? It’s a strange industry where insiders are always asking “how can we make a $200 million movie?” rather than how can they make good, but profitable movies, no matter what the cost. The industry seems so focused on what movies cost, that it so rarely seems to consider spending money more intelligently. Creating quality works for less, and targeting your best customers is a plan that’s foreign to Hollywood, but perhaps it’s about time they start exploring that plotline.

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  • Sixty million years of evolution says vitamin D may save your life from swine flu

    (NaturalNews) People still don’t get it: Vitamin D is the “miracle nutrient” that activates your immune system to defend you against invading microorganisms — including seasonal flu and swine flu. Two months ago, an important study was published by researchers at Oregon State University. This study reveals something startling: Vitamin D is so crucial to the functioning of your immune system that the ability of vitamin D to boost immune function and destroy invading microorganisms has been conserved in the genome for over 60 million years of evolution.

    As this press release from Oregon State University (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/osu-kfo081809.php) explains:

    The fact that this vitamin-D mediated immune response has been retained through millions of years of evolutionary selection, and is still found in species ranging from squirrel monkeys to baboons and humans, suggests that it must be critical to their survival, researchers say.

    “The existence and importance of this part of our immune response makes it clear that humans and other primates need to maintain sufficient levels of vitamin D,” said Adrian Gombart, an associate professor of biochemistry and a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.

    The announcement goes on to explain:

    In primates, this action of “turning on” an optimal response to microbial attack only works properly in the presence of adequate vitamin D, which is actually a type of hormone that circulates in the blood and signals to cells through a receptor. Vitamin D is produced in large amounts as a result of sun exposure, and is available in much smaller amounts from dietary sources.

    Vitamin D prevents the “adaptive” immune response from over-reacting and reduces inflammation, and appears to suppress the immune response. However, the function of the new genetic element this research explored allows vitamin D to boost the innate immune response by turning on an antimicrobial protein. The overall effect may help to prevent the immune system from overreacting.

    Without vitamin D, you’re a sitting duck
    What this study reveals is that without sufficient levels of vitamin D circulating in your blood, you’re a ripe, juicy target for influenza (H1N1 or otherwise). If you lack vitamin D, your immune system can’t “activate” to do its job. That’s why people who are deficient in vitamin D so frequently get winter colds.

    But people who are high in vitamin D have the nutritional power to activate their immune system so that it can respond to invading pathogens. Crucially, vitamin D also manages to balance immune response and prevent inflammation — the leading cause of death in the 1918 influenza pandemic.

    So not only does vitamin D protect you from the initial infection; it also prevents your body from over-reacting and killing you with inflammation (which typically gets expressed as bacterial pneumonia, an infection of the lungs).

    Smart people today are doing two things:

    1) Saying NO to vaccines.
    2) Saying YES to vitamin D.

    If you take vitamin D, you don’t need a vaccine!

    Sources for vitamin D
    Where can you get vitamin D? There’s some vitamin D naturally present in fish oils and marine omega-3 oils, but the two most abundant sources are:

    1) Sunlight
    2) Vitamin D supplements

    You can get sunlight for free by exposing your skin to the sun. You can get vitamin D supplements at www.Vitacost.com or just about any vitamin retailer (local or online).

    Vitamin D is easy to get. Your body actually manufactures it when you’re exposed to the sun.

    Why no vitamin D advice?
    The research supporting vitamin D’s ability to halt influenza is overwhelming. And yet the vaccine industry (and the doctors who push vaccines) don’t want you to know about vitamin D. Why is that?

    It’s because if people knew the truth about vitamin D, the vaccine industry would collapse. Who needs a vaccine if you’re got a powered-up immune system to do the job automatically? Plus, your immune system is natural, while vaccines are completely unnatural injections of toxic chemicals that are increasingly being linked to not just autism, but seizures, brain damage and death.

    Why risk a vaccine when vitamin D is so remarkably safe?

    You’ll need at least 4000 IU a day just to prevent deficiency, according to many nutrition experts. Some people I know take 8000 IU a day. I personally don’t take any vitamin D but I get at least 30 minutes of sunlight every day near the equator (which is a unique geographical situation, I understand, that not everybody can replicate).

    Our national “health” officials (if you can call them that) are making a crucial mistake with the swine flu. Instead of ordering more vaccines, they should be recommending vitamin D supplements to the population. For less than the cost of the vaccines, we could provide vitamin D supplementation to every man, woman and child in America. We would not only end the swine flu pandemic, we would also see cancer rates plummet!

    Perhaps that’s why our health authorities don’t dare recommend vitamin D — the financial impact on the cancer industry would just be too great. The vaccine makers would lose billions, and the cancer industry could lose tens of billions. Diabetes rates would fall, depression would fade away in many people, kidney function would improve and a long list of other diseases would be prevented or reversed following adequate vitamin D intake.

    Vitamin D is the answer to our national health care problems. Just one nutrient, if distributed freely to everyone, could probably slash our national health care costs by one-third within five years, I believe.

    And yet they dare not mention it. “It’s not approved by the FDA,” they say. So the CDC won’t mention it. The WHO won’t recommend it. The FDA pretends it doesn’t exist, and the doctors aren’t allowed to prescribe it.

    Here it is — vitamin D — the great CURE for influenza. It’s here right now. It’s cheap, it’s safe, and it’s available. Yet it’s being utterly ignored.

    Let me go on the record to state the obvious: There is an agenda under way to keep the American people deficient in vitamin D and ignorant about its healing properties. This is a conscious, planned scheme that seeks to keep the people disinformed while pumping them full of vaccines, chemotherapy and prescription drugs instead of teaching them the simple nutritional cures that exist right now.

    Mark my words: With the swine flu or any future pandemic, the populations suffering the highest death rates will be those with the highest rates of vitamin D deficiency. And the vaccine? It offers no protection compared to the power of the vitamin D.

    The laws of biochemistry cannot be suspended by FDA bureaucrats
    To any doctor or health authority who scoffs at the notion of vitamin D being far more useful than vaccines, ask them this question: If vitamin D has no purpose in human health, then why have the immune system genes that are specifically activated by vitamin D persisted in the genome (which is now the human genome) for more than sixty million years?

    Why is the human immune system programmed to use vitamin D to activate itself?

    Why does human skin generate vitamin D in response to sun exposure?

    To hear mind-numbed doctors answer it, this is all just coincidence! There is no specific reason that vitamin D genes exist at all!

    But it gets even more bizarre: According to the FDA, vitamin D has no beneficial biological effects in the human body! It’s true: The FDA says that any substance that has a beneficial (therapeutic) effect in the human body must be a DRUG, not a nutrient. And vitamin D has never been approved as a drug. Therefore, it is inert.

    Do you follow that? Vitamin D has no benefit to the human body because the FDA says so. How’s that for bureaucratic arrogance? It’s like saying gravity doesn’t apply in our world because we haven’t yet “approved” the laws of physics. But one step off a high ledge reveals, indeed, that the laws of gravity are still in effect, and so are the laws of biochemistry.

    You need vitamin D, not a vaccine
    Your body doesn’t need a vaccine to combat the swine flu (or seasonal flu, for that matter). What it needs is vitamin D, restful sleep, adequate hydration with clean water, and good nutrition. These things make the vaccine obsolete.

    They’re safe, affordable, natural and readily available. You don’t have to wait in line to get vitamin D, and you don’t need a doctor’s prescription. There’s no needle involved, and there’s no risk of you suffering a seizure or permanent brain damage, either.

    With sufficient levels of vitamin D in your blood, your immune system will do its job to protect you from swine flu, bird flu, human flu or even the pandemic infectious nonsense being spread around by the CDC, FDA and WHO. Your immune system has all the technology it needs right now to keep you alive from almost any widely-circulating microorganism… as long as it has the biochemical tools (like vitamin D) to “activate” its adaptive response.

    Do you realize that without a functioning immune system, you would have been killed by microorganisms a thousand times over by now? Your immune system saves your life every day, quietly, behind the scenes. It is the reason you’re breathing right now as you read this article. Receiving a vaccine injection is the ultimate insult to your own body because it admits that you have no faith in the very same immune system that has already saved your life countless times.

    Don’t put your faith in chemical injections. Believe in your immune system — and give it the nutritional tools it needs to keep on saving your life.

    Additional resources for this story include:
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/osu-kfo081809.php

  • Proton pump inhibitor linked to pneumonia deaths in hospitalized patients

    (NaturalNews) Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs, for short) have become hugely successful money makers for Big Pharma over the past decade, with sales of these stomach-acid reducers adding up to about $25.6 billion last year alone. The drugs (like Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid and Aciphex) are sold both in prescription strength and over-the-counter to treat heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). As NaturalNews has previously reported, PPIs are not the safe and innocuous medications most physicians claim them to be and are increasingly linked to a host of side effects. Now comes word that one type of PPI in particular, pantoprazole (marketed under the name Protonix) has a particularly bad downside — causing potentially fatal pneumonia people who are already seriously ill and hospitalized.

    Seriously ill patients are frequently given PPIs to supposedly prevent them from developing stress ulcers. In a new study just published in the journal CHEST, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine compared treatment with pantoprazole (which has become the favorite drug of its kind in many hospitals because it is more powerful than other drugs in its class) to another PPI, ranitidine (sold under the name Zantac).

    “We conducted this study, in part, because we thought we were seeing more pneumonias than we were used to having,” study co-author Dr. Marc G. Reichert, pharmacy coordinator for surgery at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a statement to the press. The researchers wanted to see if there was a connection between the PPIs and the increasing pneumonia rate.

    In fact, the results showed a significant linkage. Both PPI drugs decreased stomach acid but when the scientists analyzed the charts of 834 patients, they found that hospitalized cardiothoracic surgery patients treated with pantoprazole were three times more likely to develop pneumonia.

    This is a critically important finding because hospital-acquired pneumonia increases hospital stays by an average of seven to nine days, greatly increases medical costs and ups the risk of other complications. But the most important point is that this kind of pneumonia is a killer.

    “As best we can tell, patients who develop hospital-acquired pneumonia or ventilator-acquired pneumonia have about a 20 to 30 percent chance of dying from that pneumonia. It is a significant event,” senior study author Dr. David L. Bowton, professor and head of the Section on Critical Care in the Wake Forest Department of Anesthesiology, said in the media statement.

    So why would a PPI cause someone to develop pneumonia in the hospital? The researchers point out that acid-reducing drugs turn the stomach into a more hospitable environment for disease-causing bacteria to colonize. And when hospital patients are placed on breathing machines, stomach secretions containing these bacteria can regurgitate into their lungs, resulting in life-threatening pneumonia.

    Currently, doctors and nurses are advised to raise the heads of patients’ beds when they are on breathing machines so that refluxed stomach secretions are less likely to get into the lungs. However, the Chest study suggests another way to keep critically sick patients from coming down with possibly fatal ventilator-associated pneumonia: don’t give PPIs to them at all.

    In the media statement, Dr. Bowton explained that the incidence of stress ulcer bleeding has gone down in recent years. This most likely is a result of hospitalized patients on breathing tubes being fed earlier after surgery than in years past — having food in their stomachs most likely neutralizes or reduces the effects of stomach acid naturally, without the use of drugs.

    When doctors insist on putting patients on PPIs, the researchers said using an acid reducer other than the super strong pantoprazole is best in order to decrease the risk of developing pneumonia. But the bottom line is patients should not be on these drugs or, if they are, should be taken off PPIs as soon as they are off the breathing machine and eating. “Stopping the drugs earlier appears to be the best thing for patients,” Dr. Reichert said.

    In addition to putting hospitalized patients at increased risk for pneumonia, researchers have found PPIs may cause health problems ranging from dizziness and osteoporosis (http://www.naturalnews.com/025369_drugs_medication_osteoporosis.html) to an increased risk of heart attacks and even worse GERD symptoms (http://www.naturalnews.com/026836_heartburn_GERD_drugs.html).

    For more information:
    http://www1.wfubmc.edu/News/NewsARticle.htm?ArticleID=2711
    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601246.html

  • UCLA gets $4.8M to create Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center

    The UCLA School of Public Health has received a major grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a center that will facilitate research to strengthen the ability of federal, state and local public health agencies to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural and human-induced disasters, including terrorism.
     
    The award, which totals $4.8 million over four years, will allow the school’s Center for Public Health and Disasters (CPHD) to build on more than two decades of experience in addressing the critical issues faced when a disaster impacts a community. The new Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center (PERRC) will be directed by Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the CPHD and an associate professor of community health sciences.
     
    The grant will support three independent research projects designed to explore the interorganizational cooperation necessary to create and sustain a public health system that is resilient to disasters. These research projects will:
    • Improve collaboration between local school systems and public health agencies to enhance preparedness.
    • Build effective public health partnerships with community-based and faith-based organizations for disaster readiness.
    • Conduct community-based participatory research to develop environmental health emergency resilience.
    “A coordinated public health system is critical to ensure an effective, timely response to public health emergencies and disasters,” Shoaf said. “This new center will enable UCLA to develop evidence-based tools to help local, state and federal entities prepare for, respond to and recover from natural and human-induced disasters.”
     
    The UCLA School of Public Health is one of nine accredited U.S. schools of public health to receive CDC funding to conduct research that will evaluate the structure, capabilities and performance of public health systems for preparedness and emergency response activities. The establishment of the new PERRCs is mandated by the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006, which calls for research to improve federal, state, local and tribal public health preparedness and response systems.
     
    The UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters was established in 1997 to address the critical issues faced when disaster impacts a community. The center facilitates interaction between public health and medicine, engineering, physical and social sciences, and emergency management. The CPHD collaborates with state and local public health agencies, community-based organizations, schools, hospitals and agencies in the public and private sector.  
     
    The UCLA School of Public Health is dedicated to enhancing the public’s health by conducting innovative research, training future leaders and health professionals, translating research into policy and practice, and serving local, national and international communities.
     
    For more information, visit the UCLA Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.

  • Uncharted 2 Fortune Hunter Edition hunted down on eBay

    I just reported earlier that there will be a weekend full of opportunities for you to win yourself a Fortune Hunter Edition for Naughty Dog’s Uncharte…

  • Pachter: This holiday will wake up to sleeper hit, Brutal Legend

    Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan is betting on Electronic Arts’ Jack Black starrer, Brutal Legend (PS3, Xbox 360) to be this holiday’s sleeper hit. H…

  • Environmental Capital Buys Cascade Drilling

    Environmental Capital Partners has acquired a majority stake in Cascade Drilling LP, a provider of environmental drilling services for water and soil assessment, monitoring and remediation purposes on the West Coast. No pricing terms were disclosed. PNC Business Credit arranged the leveraged financing, while Cascade was advised by Morgan Stanley.

    PRESS RELEASE

    Environmental Capital Partners (“ECP”), a New York based private equity firm, with its affiliates announced today that it has made an investment in Cascade Drilling, L.P. in order to fund the Company’s future growth initiatives. Bruce Niermeyer, the Company’s founder, remains a significant shareholder and will continue as President and CEO of the Company. Mr. Niermeyer has been a leader in the drilling industry for decades and has been instrumental in developing Cascade Drilling into one of the largest independent drilling companies in North America focused on the environmental sector. The transaction enables the Company to expand significantly while affording it the ability to continue to service its customers at the highest level. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

    “We are delighted with our investment in Cascade Drilling. By providing environmental drilling services for water and soil assessment, monitoring, and remediation purposes, Cascade Drilling is a perfect fit with our broader mission to promote the growth of companies that enhance environmental sustainability,” said Robert Egan, a Managing Partner of ECP. “Our investment provides the business with the flexibility to grow beyond existing locations in Seattle, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Portland and for expanded service offerings while maintaining its keen focus on safety and customer service. Technological advances in remediation, an ever increasing need to assess and clean up contaminated sites, and the improved economics of applications such as geothermal heat transfer will provide secular growth in Cascade Drilling’s core sectors. Bruce Niermeyer has built an industry leading company through deep knowledge and outstanding leadership; we look forward to partnering with Bruce in developing Cascade Drilling in the coming years.”

    “Our relationship with ECP will provide us with a long-term partner to promote future growth and enable us to build upon our leadership position by expanding the locations in which we offer clients the highest level of service and safety,” Cascade Drilling President and CEO Bruce Niermeyer said. “I view the transaction as a natural progression within Cascade Drilling’s lifecycle. We have grown without outside resources to cover the entire West Coast and are now at the point where it makes sense to team with an institutional partner to take the Company to the next level. ECP has shown a strong commitment to Cascade Drilling’s core values of safety first and quality while demonstrating the skills and track record I was looking for in a partner.”

    Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Capital Strategies Group served as exclusive financial advisor to Cascade Drilling in this transaction. PNC Business Credit arranged the financing for the transaction. O’Melveny & Myers LLP and Karr Tuttle Campbell provided legal advice to ECP and the Company, respectively.

    About Cascade Drilling
    Cascade Drilling is a leading provider of environmental drilling services for water and soil assessment, monitoring, and remediation purposes on the West Coast. The Company is a recognized regional leader in auger and direct push drilling, standard drilling methods for assessing the extent of subsurface contamination. Cascade Drilling also provides rotary, sonic and other drilling methods, which allows it to offer a wide range of environmental drilling services. The Company drills holes for a wide range of reasons, including providing samples of water and soil, installation of devices through drilling that facilitate monitoring, and subsurface application of chemicals or other agents for in situ remediation. Cascade Drilling’s core beliefs are safety first, customer service and quality. For more information about Cascade Drilling, visit www.cascadedrilling.com.

    About Environmental Capital Partners
    ECP provides long-term capital and management support to leading middle-market companies in the environmental industry with a focus on companies that provide goods and services to prevent, limit, or correct environmental damage to water, air, soil, or human health. Based in New York, ECP typically seeks to invest $5 to $25 million of its own capital in companies with sales of $20 to $150 million. ECP’s model is to invest in established businesses with strong growth potential that can benefit from its financial, operational and strategic resources. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ecpcapital.com.

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  • Friends Don’t Let Friends Use FCC Broadband Competition Data

    For many years, we’ve been among those (helped along by the usually excellent GAO) pointing out that the FCC’s “broadband competition” stats were totally bogus. They relied on a rather bizarre way of counting competition. First, if a single household in an entire zipcode got broadband (er, actually not really broadband, but we’ll get to that), then everyone in that zip code was counted. On top of that, the definition of broadband was ridiculously low. This has been known for years, and the FCC kept putting out the same bogus stats every years — sometimes even admitting that it knew the stats were bogus, but it didn’t have anything better. More recently, to its credit, the FCC is trying to get better about both how it defines broadband and how it counts things — but that’s just opened up opportunities for the telcos to simply tell the government what sort of coverage they offer, without having to reveal any actual data.

    But, still, with the bogus FCC data out there, many folks are trying to claim that there’s robust competition in broadband in the US. Thankfully, Julian Sanchez is pointing out that friends shouldn’t let friends use FCC broadband data to discuss competition, and highlights the ridiculousness of the claim that 88% of zip codes have “four or more” broadband providers. It’s even worse than Julian notes. While he points out that in many cases, some of the providers in question are mobile broadband providers offering up pokey EVDO connections, he neglects to mention that most of these connections cost a ton and come with ridiculously low usage caps — such that they’re not really broadband offerings at all. In fact, most 3G broadband data offerings have explicit limits in their contracts saying they cannot be used as primary broadband connections. But, it doesn’t stop the same lobbyists who happen to be paid by the same telcos who make these policies from claiming that there’s robust broadband competition.

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  • Pedal power in the desert: OLPC in Afghanistan

    afghan-crankOne of the issues with the OLPC project has always been power. There’s just not electricity in all the parts of the world where the OLPC is intended to be used. There is a solution available, however, and it’s being tested in Afghanistan. We have just seen pictures of the first pedal power conversion for the OLPC.

    It’s still a prototype, but it’s looking promising. The builders have created a pedal power alternative to the hand cranks used on the standard OLPC, and it definitely makes sense to do so. The human body can certainly pedal easier then it can a crank, and the creators of the modification have stated that it’s easy enough to use that a 3rd or 4th grader can power it. Might be hard to type while you’re doing that, but at least you’ll have a full charge.


  • Army of Two: The 40th Day new viral video: Slacker-fighter duo

    Here’s a new viral video for Electronic Arts’ Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3, Xbox 360, and PSP), featuring the live Rios and Salem wreaking stealthy …

  • Uncharted 2 GameStop midnight launch now, full weekend of Fortune Hunter Edition opportunities ahead

     Tonight’s the night, guys! Over 800 GameStop branches will be opening their stores at midnight with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves sitting prettily …

  • WikiReader packs all of Wikipedia in a power-sipping portable

    wr_hand2_small

    The new WikiReader is a $99 portable device from the Openmoko group that stuffs every Wikipedia article into a pocket-friendly traveling companion. While those of us entrenched in technology day in and day out may scoff at the idea of having Wikipedia at the ready (we all have smartphones, remember?), this is something that might be able to make some waves with baby boomers and/or the technically petrified.

    I’ll have a hands-on/review this week but the basic gist is that the unit uses two AAA batteries, a low-power CPU and monochrome touchscreen, and standard microSD cards to house all the articles. It’s not a connected device, either. Everything’s completely offline.

    Updated microSD cards can be sent out via snail mail every few months for a yearly fee of $29 or the entire multi-gigabyte file (specially compressed for the WikiReader) can be downloaded and installed manually for the more technically-inclined.

    Photos aren’t shown on the device, unfortunately, but the easy-to-use interface, months-long battery life, and straightforward updating process ought to entice certain consumers interested in all the information that Wikipedia provides without the hassle of full-fledged computers or complicated mobile devices.

    The WikiReader will be available shortly on Amazon.com or directly from theWikiReader.com — the official company site.


  • Health Reform Proposals Enhance Children’s Dental Care

    Pediatric dental care, long a concern of children’s health advocates, is poised to get a major boost with each of the Democratic health reform proposals.

    “The silver lining of all this heated debate, for children at least, is that in almost every conversation, in every version of a bill, there’s some provision for children’s oral health,” said Amir Moursi, chair of the department of pediatric dentistry at New York University’s College of Dentistry.

    Yet in a surprising twist, some insurance industry experts worry that the legislation may create unintended consequences and disruptions for adult and family dental coverage.

    While he calls the children’s benefit “an unbelievable mark of progress,” Jeff Album, the vice president for public and government affairs for Delta Dental insurance company, fears that adults and employers may drop their dental coverage because of the legislation’s treatment of dental plans and taxation of insurance benefits.

    Children’s Dental Health, By The Numbers

    A Surgeon General’s report on oral health, released in May 2000, found:

    • Tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood disease and is five times more common than asthma.
    • More than half of all children aged 5 to 9 have at least one cavity or filling. More than three quarters of all those who are 17 years old have a cavity or filling.
    • Poor children have twice as many cavities as children with more resources and their disease is more likely to be untreated.
    • For each child without medical insurance, there are at least 2.6 children without dental insurance.
    • Children lose more than 51 million school hours because of dental problems.


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    Many dental experts say the proposed mandate for children’s coverage addresses a serious need, one that gained national attention in 2007 when Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who lacked access to dental care, died after bacteria from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain. Currently, about twice as many children are without dental coverage as those without medical insurance.

    “Silent Epidemic”

    Furthermore, pediatric dental issues represent children’s most common unmet health care need, according to the Surgeon General’s first report on oral health in 2000. It found that tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood disease, five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than hay fever.

    The report described dental disease as a “silent epidemic” that created significant social, financial and health burdens disproportionately affecting low-income, minority and rural populations. It also said research suggests intriguing associations between chronic oral infections and diabetes, stroke and heart and lung disease.

    Dental coverage lags for adults, too, despite significant gains in the past 20 years. According to the most recent information from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in 2004 54 percent of Americans had private dental coverage, 12 percent had coverage through government programs such as Medicaid and 35 percent had no dental coverage. Dental industry estimates suggest that the number of insured has increased only slightly since then.

    Adult coverage, however, is not mandated in the reform proposals.

    All the major bills in Congress require that pediatric dental care be included in the coverage guaranteed to anyone purchasing insurance through the government-sponsored marketplace for health plans, also called an insurance exchange or gateway. The House bill also calls for that benefit to be extended to the private market, including employer-provided plans, in five years.

    One of the issues for legislators was what plans would be considered qualified to provide the children’s pediatric dental benefit. Currently, 97 percent of dental coverage comes from stand-alone plans that are separate from medical health insurance.

    Decoupling Dental From Medical Insurance

    Initially all the bills called for pediatric dental care to come from plans that also offer medical insurance. But the Senate Finance Committee’s bill and the House bill have been amended to allow stand-alone dental insurance companies to provide that coverage. Dental insurance experts said, however, it is not clear if those amendments will survive in the full House and Senate.

    But Jim Crall, a professor of pediatric dentistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, said it is important that reform take into consideration how the dental industry works now so that the changes can be implemented smoothly and not lead to problems for families that have dental insurance. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’re going to end up with a hollow promise.”

    For example, dental insurers are worried that if Congress goes forward with proposals to tax high-cost, or Cadillac, insurance plans, some of those plans may ditch their adult dental coverage to help keep the overall premiums below the tax threshold.

    Album said dental insurers also fear that parents may be less likely to buy the stand-alone coverage for themselves if their children have coverage that comes as part of comprehensive medical insurance package.

    According to a 2008 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 percent of employers that offer health benefits also offer or contribute to dental coverage. (KHN is a program of the foundation.)

    Some dental experts suggest that securing the pediatric benefit in the overhaul package should be the top priority and that more narrow issues, such as the best means to provide the coverage, should be addressed later.

    Burt Edelstein, the founding director of the Children’s Dental Health Project, stressed that the inclusion of dental experts in the board overseeing the insurance exchange would help to make sure important delivery issues are addressed.

    The House has already recognized the need for an oral health expert to sit on any health benefits advisory committee, while Rep. G. K. Butterfield, D-N.C., has called for a federal study on the need for affordable adult dental coverage.

    Edelstein said getting the dental benefit is important and advocates on the issue should not focus on concerns “that could in any way cause the dental benefit to be revisited” and stripped from the proposals.

    Many of the current concerns are caused by the dental industry’s unique history and structure. Dentistry’s separation from medical care makes integration a formidable task.

    Dentists are trained separately from doctors while dental insurance developed much later than medical insurance with a different set of diagnostic code, billing system and benefit structure. As such, dental contracts are generally created separately from medical ones and people often consider dental insurance to be more elective than medical, according to dental experts.

    This separation can cause problems for patients, such as when serious dental needs require work in a hospital’s operating room. In such instances, it’s often unclear whether dental or medical insurance will cover the costs.

    The Tragedy of Deamonte Driver

    The case of Deamonte Driver illustrates the medical dangers of untreated dental problems. Driver and his brother had erratic dental care because their Medicaid coverage would sometimes lapse and their mother had difficulty finding a dentist who would accept Medicaid payments.

    Driver’s death led to congressional hearings that showed how children face many difficulties in accessing care despite Medicaid’s requirement that states provide pediatric dental services. It also helped prompt the inclusion of eight specific pediatric dental provisions in the law signed last February that reauthorizes the Children’s Insurance Health Program (CHIP), which covers poor children whos family incomes are too great to qualify for Medicaid.

    A Government Accountability Office report released last month found that such barriers, which include extensive bureaucracy, low dental reimbursement rates and shortages of dentists who will take Medicaid reimbursements, still exist.

    Medicaid rates vary by state, but a 2008 study found that dental reimbursements are often 30 to 50 percent of the usual and customary fees charged locally. The dentists got paid as little as $15 to see a Medicaid patient. The study was published by the National Academy for State Health Policy.

    The GAO report found that the number of children on Medicaid getting dental care has improved in recent years, but is still low. The number has grown from 27 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2007, and only one state reported a rate above 50 percent.

    Allen Finkelstein, chief dental officer at AmeriChoice, suggested that the paucity of dentists accepting Medicaid may be because “we don’t reward physicians and dentists for prevention.”

    Finkelstein considers Driver’s death a wake-up call for policymakers to use a more holistic approach to health care and suggests integrating medical and dental care in simple ways, such as having a dental visit be part of a child’s immunization record or having physicians do fluoride varnishes.

    He points out that AmeriChoice, which provides both dental and medical care, already reimburses physicians who put fluoride on children’s teeth.

    “You really have to imbed dentistry with medicine. … We have to change the way we think,” said Finkelstein, who considers the pediatric dental benefit a move to greater integration. “It’s an adjustment phase, but it’s a wonderful start.”

    Related resource: The Children’s Dental Health Project’s side-by-side comparison of dental provisions in the proposed legislation

  • Children’s Dental Health, By The Numbers

    A Surgeon General’s  report on oral health, released in May 2000, found:

    –Tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood disease and is five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than hay fever.

    –More than half of all children aged 5 to 9 have at least one cavity or filling. More than three quarters of all those who are 17 years old have a cavity or filling.

    –Poor children have twice as many cavities as children with more resources and their disease is more likely to be untreated.

    –For each child without medical insurance, there are at least 2.6 children without dental insurance.

    –Children lose more than 51 million school hours because of dental problems. 

    A September 2009 report by the General Accountability Office found:

    –The number of children on Medicaid who were getting dental care grew from 27 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2007.

    The 2004 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) found:

    –Approximately 54 percent of the entire U.S. population had private dental coverage in 2004. Another 12 percent was covered by public programs, such as Medicaid, and 35 percent had no dental coverage.

    The 2009 National Association of Dental Plans/Delta Dental Plans Association Enrollment Report says:

    –The number of Americans with dental benefits nearly doubled from the mid-1980s, and is now relatively stable at 57 percent.

    The Kaiser Family Foundation 2008 Survey of Employer Benefits found:

    –44 percent of employers offering health benefits also offer or contribute to dental insurance that is separate from the medical insurance.

    The Children’s Dental Health Project:

    A side-by-side comparison of dental provisions in the proposed legislation