Church Hill Hoop Jams every week @ Robinson Theater
chpn.netChurch Hill Hoop Jams are back!!! Every Wednesday starting today. 7:15-8:15 Robinson Theater, 2903 Q Street. Lots of indoor space, and awesome sound system. Let?s Hoop!! We have the hoops and the music. Bring yourself, your family and friends. FREE
Source: http://www.facebook.com/CHPN.RVA/posts/515226425167122
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Source: http://www.facebook.com/scoutingohio/posts/254808027986001
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50643082/
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MILAN |
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian carmaker Fiat-Chrysler (FIA.MI) is likely to miss its debt target when it reports 2012 earnings on Wednesday, making it harder to pay for an ambitious expansion and boost its stake in U.S. affiliate Chrysler.
As Fiat's management moves to increase spending, analysts are keeping a close watch on the debt for signs that its money-losing European operations are straining the group's finances.
Fiat's share price has outperformed rivals like Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and Peugeot (PEUP.PA) in the past 30 days, driven partly by hopes that Fiat will buy more Chrysler shares beyond its 58.5 percent stake or engineer a full-scale merger.
"We do not believe Fiat will reach its net industrial debt guidance due to overproduction in Europe in the fourth quarter," Commerzbank wrote in a preview note. "We are concerned by the high net debt pile which limits Fiat's options with regard (to) Chrysler and future investments."
Commerzbank has a "hold" rating on Fiat stock.
Fiat's year-end net industrial debt is seen at 6.61 billion euros, according to the median figure in a poll of 23 analysts published by the Turin-based automaker on its website. Their estimates ranged from 6.55 billion to 6.81 billion euros.
The company has been targeting net debt of 6.5 billion euros ($8.7 billion).
For the fourth quarter, the analysts are forecasting a trading profit of 1 billion euros, which includes 780 million euros from Chrysler.
Fiat sees a full-year loss of 700 million euros in Europe, where car sales are entering their sixth year of decline. It does not expect to break even in Europe before 2015.
Fiat trimmed its 2012 targets on October 30 to the lower end of a previous range, forecasting group trading profit of 3.8 billion euros, net debt of 6.5 billion euros and net profit of 1.2 billion euros.
In a new strategy to re-tool idled, money-losing factories in Europe, Fiat said late last year it would increase capital spending by 20 percent between 2012 and 2014 to 25.5 billion euros.
The company aims to be producing 16 Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Jeep models by 2016, mostly for export.
Fiat Chairman John Elkann and Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne will unveil a new Maserati factory in Turin on Wednesday, where two new models will be assembled.
Investors expect few surprises from the results, but they are keen to hear more from Marchionne, who also runs Chrysler, on the timing and financing of planned Chrysler share purchases.
Fiat's share price has been driven in the past month by "market expectations of a merger with Fiat and the listing of Chrysler in 2013," Banca IMI wrote in a note on January 28.
(Reporting by Jennifer Clark; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
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One of the high points of last week's DLD Conference in Munich was the What's Next? panel which explored the future of media in the digital age. Buoyantly chaired by DLD host Yossi Vardi, the panel included longtime media exec Jon Miller, whose illustrious career includes stints as Chairman and CEO of AOL and Chief Digital Officer at News Corp.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/bizs7t4_Y54/
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Rumors turned out to be correct, and Apple has launched a 128GB version of the fourth generation iPad with Retina Display. The 128GB version comes in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular versions, and will be available Tuesday, February 5 from Apple retail, Apple online and Apple authorized resellers in both black and white.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/F9M2w7fpVIw/
There?s nothing more important than our health, but should we trust the Internet when we seek information on medicines? In advance of a Polis seminar on social media and?pharmaceuticals?this Thursday Katherine Relle describes her new research looking at what we can learn from what people say about medicines in online forums.
Social media forums for healthcare contribute to the public knowledge base and offer practical value.
When pharmaceutical companies engage in social media forums to debate health issues, they must balance direct advertising messages toward patients with their unique social responsibilities for advancing medicine and public health.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledge that these tensions exist for the pharmaceutical industry. In December 2011, the FDA published long-awaited draft guidelines for a social media policy aimed at upholding a necessary degree of risk communication for online advertising by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.[1]
Social Media Policy
However, the FDA has been slow to issue formal regulations to provide an official social media policy, and a wooly relationship exists between leading pharmaceutical players and the market capture of social media.[2] Benefits of engaging in social media include enhancing reputation, customer service, and sales. Challenges include individual or corporate lawsuits, cyber-security regulations, and, most extremely, public health crises. Therefore, a balance must be struck for the pharmaceutical industry to appropriately harness online information. This is no easy task.
Original Research
My original research on Internet healthcare forums concludes that social media forums are more than mere talking shops. They provide a valuable point of reference for both patient-consumers and companies engaging in social media listening.
A ten-variable content analysis which looked at a total of 600 posts across three randomly selected online health-related forums, at 200 posts per forum, makes it apparent that, with more industry involvement in social media, the negative aspects of risk communication can be mitigated. The positive aspects of personal profiling, education, and sentiment can be strengthened.
The following is a summary of data-related evidence from my research, which allows me to make such conclusions:
First, nearly half (47 percent) of the online posts that were analysed involved risk messages. Online risk messaging threatens company branding because informal social media messages may be inaccurate when not vetted by industry experts. Big pharma needs to engage with social media to protect company brands.
Second, even though patient-consumers were reluctant to provide much personal information (i.e., gender or age), the information that was provided often elicited decipherable traits due to the nature of the posts. Personal information in these posts provided interesting characteristics based on legitimate profiling assumptions, which could help inform relevant marketing practices concerning which issues to convey and what tones to use in product advertising.
Third, a quarter of the analysed posts explicitly sought information, and a majority of the posts engaged in an informative dialogue about oral contraceptives. The educational nature of social media is apparent for the benefit of product development.
Fourth, positive and negative sentiment about a wide range of oral contraceptive brands was varied. Increased engagement in social media listening would allow companies to learn from these praises and dismissals, associating brand names with sentiment analyses to examine best practices within the industry.
Finally, the current lack of regulatory guidance tilts the public sphere toward the consumer, but consumer sovereignty is not necessarily the ideal.[3] When consumers fail to understand the complexity of science behind the development of drugs, the industry?s advertising motives, or the politics involved with industry funding, dangerous assumptions can be made. This negatively affects pharma and creates issues for public health.
Benefits of Engaging?
Big pharma should enter into the public sphere for the benefit of the industry and patient-consumers alike. The benefits of engaging in the online public sphere seem to outweigh the risks, and suggestions for doing so are vast.
For example, if pharmaceutical companies wish to engage with social media, stakeholders could create their own customized policies in a system of self-governance in lieu of widespread FDA regulations, so that individual companies may advance within the industry. In doing so, a pharmaceutical social media ombudsman role might be created in which registered physicians work impartially as appointed officers to police the communication between pharma and the online public sphere of patient-consumers. This would require that impartial and trained physicians be appointed to work within the industry as social media managers who proactively seek to rectify false information about prescription drugs.
Innovation of this sort is crucial if more pharma companies choose to engage with social media forums. Such a system of governance could also establish precedents for co-regulatory practices with the FDA. These steps will define the future of the pharmaceutical industry. Further research conducted via interviews and focus groups will contribute to the conclusions made in this research. For now, we can settle on the idea that the introduction of social media into the corporate world is changing industry governance in unique ways and on a grand scale.
For more:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/12/20/marketing-medicine-online-social-media-and-pharma/
?Marketing Medicine Online: Social Media and Pharma ? new event Thursday ?Jan 31st?
Thursday 31 January 2013, 6.30-8pm, Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building at Lincoln?s Inn Fields, LSE
Speakers include Katherine Relle, LSE alum and winner of the Human Digital Prize, Christian Gladwell? from Human Digital, Jamie Bartlett from Demos, and John Gerow from Astra Zeneca.
This event is free and open to all but?please RSVP?to?polis@lse.ac.uk?if you?d like to attend.
[1] Ringler, Jennifer. ?FDA Social Media Guidelines: Irresponsible???PharmExec.?n.p., 1 February 2012. Web. 26 February 2012. <http://www.pharmexec.com/pharmexec/Back+Page/FDA-Social-Media-Guidelines-Irresponsible/
ArticleStandard/Article/detail/757971>
[3] Sunstein, Cass. ?Television and the Public Interest.?California Law Review?88.2 (2000): 499. Print.
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Android/iOS: If you like to listen to music as you fall asleep, these apps for iOS and Android will monitor your slumber and stop the music once you've fallen into a deep sleep.
The two apps?free Music Off for Android (pictured above) and $2.99 Autosleep Music Timer for iOS?monitor your body movement using your phone's accelerometer to judge when you've fallen asleep (not unlike similar alarm clock apps). Once you do, it'll slowly turn down the volume over a few minutes and stop playing. Of course, you could always just set a timer, too.
Music Off (Free) | Google Play Store via WonderHowTo
Autosleep Music Timer ($2.99) | iTunes App Store via WonderHowTo
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All Critics (70) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (3)
Happy, sad, inspiring, infuriating, right and terribly wrong, all at the same time.
Berg's film is as much an indictment of the state of Arkansas' legal system as it is the prosecution.
Berg's film helps illuminate a case that should certainly be the shame of the state of Arkansas, and perhaps the criminal justice system of the entire United States.
Dubious evidence; suspicious confessions; conveniently located "poor white trash" (Echols' words) to take the rap: The case stank from the beginning, Berg's film argues.
Less an investigative report than a portrait of the community that forms around an ongoing court case, this conveys a patient understanding of the intricacies of law and human behavior that may be termed Kieslowskian.
"West of Memphis" is the fourth film about one of the most heinous cases of wrongful conviction in American judicial history. Do we need a fourth film? Yes, I think we do.
(Director Amy) Berg's doc is gripping, often infuriating, but in the end hopeful about the ability of truth and innocence to prevail thanks to the efforts of those who strive against all obstacles to uphold them.
The new film is largely a recap of the older ones, with more celebrity testimonials and fewer Metallica songs but little fresh insight into the miscarriage of justice it chronicles.
Extols the efforts of celebrities to win the release of three innocent men [and is] suspenseful when it's straightforward-the best CSI investigation that money can buy.
Nearly overwhelms you with hopelessness, if not an adrenaline rush of rage - even if you're familiar with the case.
It's a beautifully done piece of work in its own right, yet viewed beside the trilogy which preceded it, it comes across a bit like "Paradise Lost 3b - the Celebrity Edition."
A whodunit in which truth devastatingly becomes a luxury.
New evidence and a fresh perspective keep the subject matter compelling.
Filmmaker Amy Berg (Oscar nominated Deliver Us From Evil) has once again struck documentary gold with her hard-hitting journalistic feature, West of Memphis.
A lot of it is treading on ground that's been laid by other people, but there's a lot of great new stuff, too.
The infuriating facts in this famous case are illuminated with new human detail.
Diligent, complex and justly indignant.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/west_of_memphis/
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/d6Gn4CpO-OY/story01.htm
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TIP! Get the credentials of any person who will be doing an inspection on a property you are trying to buy. This is especially true of people who work with insect or pest removal, as there are many non-accredited people working in these fields.
Commercial property ownership is an exciting endeavor, but you must put in time and effort to be successful. All this can really make you confused about where exactly to get started so that you can make certain all your bases are covered. Learning everything about commercial property ownership can be overwhelming, but the following article will help you get started.
TIP! Develop a clear idea of the amount of available square footage. There are two different ways to measure square footage for commercial properties.
Seek the council of an experienced real estate attorney to help you with your commercial purchase. If something goes south in your property adventures, then you want the best backing you up to keep your reputation sound and protect you from threats.
TIP! Engaging in a commercial transaction often takes more time, and is more difficult than simply buying a home. The fact is that commercial real estate brings in a higher return, therefore the process must be more intense.
Think bigger when you are investing in commercial properties. You may find that upkeep and operations for a twenty-unit property may actually be comparable to those required of a five-unit property. A property with nine units requires the same amount of time put into the financing as a building with nineteen units requires, but the larger one has lower per unit average prices and more rental income streams for you.
TIP! There are many factors to consider as you view available properties. For example, you should take note of statistics regarding local employers, workforce availability and the accessibility of skilled labor.
One prospect investors in the commercial real estate market need to constantly keep in mind is the potential for rampant inflation in the near future. Years ago, it was common for leases to protect people from inflation via adjustments made through Consumer Price Index. However, in today?s commercial real estate market, you would be hard pressed to find anyone willing to make such an agreement, putting you at a higher risk of falling victim to higher inflation rates.
TIP! Establish the needs of your business before looking at buildings. You should know precisely what your business?s office space requirements are.
As you have read, to be really successful, you do have to do your proper research, and then put in a decent amount of work and effort into it. Note that you cannot take a break from it, you have to always keep at it. By applying the advice of the previous paragraphs, you can start easily and safely down the path to commercial property ownership.
Source: http://nhlmicke.com/ways-to-make-buying-and-selling-commercial-properties-easier/
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I LOVE being a mom and I ?LOVE having a business.
Many moms at on time or another ponder the idea of working for an income in addition to working for their families.
I am a HUGE proponent of direct sales businesses because they can blend so well in families and provide income.
After a 14 year successful run as a leader in a company I decided to back to full-time outside of the home employment. That lasted 18 months. You see as our kids get older, they often still need a mom whose work schedule is flexible enough to meld around their ever changing needs.
I jumped back into a new direct sales company, Clever Container, one year ago.
With over 15 years of direct sales leadership experience, I have zeroed in on two key ingredients missing in most consultants? training:
??Organizing your business
and Branding Yourself ?
will set you apart from the crowd.
Organizing the Business of Direct Sales is a book I wrote in 2007 that answers the questions?
Why do I need office hours?
When and where can I hold office hours?
What do I do with all this paper?
When and How should I hire an assistant?
and more.
Since 2007 I have been speaking to women in direct sales about their home offices, business, and helping them create a personalized marketing strategy. I would love to come speak to your group or conduct a conference call! Contact me.
{My book about branding yourself will be released in March}
I am giving away 10 copies of Organizing your Direct Sales Business?this weekend!
This giveaway is open for US residents ages 18+.? It ends on 1/28/13 at 9 am ET.
Prize Giveaway: 10 copies of Organizing the Business of Direct Sales
To enter:?Tell us what home based business you are in or want to be in.
Bonus Entries:
Like?Stockpiling Moms?and?Organize365?on facebook.? Make a comment that you did.
**Like?Stockpiling Moms?and?Organize365?on twitter.? Make a comment that you did. {There will be a twitter party soon!}
Tweet:? Enter to win Organizing the Business of Direct Sales?#giveaway from?@organize365?at@stockpilingmoms http://bit.ly/VnqRXr
For an additional entry read Melissa?s post Gift Giving by Hosting a Direct Sales Party and make a comment on that post and then come back and make one here.
Lisa Woodruff is a professional organizer, author and speaker. Over the past 15 years Lisa has created systems and encouraged hundreds of women as they have organized their time, home and businesses.
Lisa?s latest book, 10 Steps to Organized Paper, is a step by step tutorial to help busy women organize EVERY paper in their homes. Lisa?s unique classifications of paper into: active, reference and daily paper is revolutionizing how women manage their paper.
Check out?Lisa?s professional organization services?and how you?can become a professional organizer?too!
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the National Rifle Association's senior lobbyists said an ad by the nation's leading gun-rights group after a school shooting in Connecticut that refers to President Barack Obama's children was "ill-advised."
Jim Baker, head of the federal affairs division at the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said he had made his views known to others at the powerful gun-rights organization.
The ad, which cast Obama as hypocritical for having expressed skepticism about putting armed guards in schools, when "his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools," drew widespread criticism when it first became public on January 15.
Nationwide outrage over the shooting of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14 moved gun violence and gun control to the center of the U.S. political debate.
"I don't think it was particularly helpful, that ad," Baker told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I thought it ill-advised."
"I think the ad could have made a good point, if it talked about the need for increased school security, without making the point using the president's children," he said. The NRA has advocated putting armed guards in schools
Baker was the NRA's representative at a meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden on January 10 to discuss the administration's plans to reduce gun violence in the wake of the school shooting.
He said he was not involved in creating the ad, and once it appeared, he had let others at the NRA know what he thought. "I got to say my piece," he said.
Baker gave no details of the their response to him, but said, "Believe it or not, there are occasionally differences of opinion in this building."
In the ad, a narrator asks, "Are the president's kids more important than yours?" Obama's daughters, 14-year-old Malia and 11-year-old Sasha, attend private school in Washington and receive Secret Service protection, as is routine for children of presidents.
The White House has called the NRA ad "repugnant and cowardly," while New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said it was "reprehensible" and undermined the NRA's credibility by bringing the president's children into the debate. Christie is considered a possible Republican presidential contender in 2016.
Susan Eisenhower, the daughter of the late President Dwight Eisenhower who had Secret Service protection as a child, wrote in the Washington Post that she was "disgusted" by the ad.
The NRA's president, David Keene, objected to the White House criticism earlier this month, saying "We didn't name the president's daughters ... What we said is that these are people who think that their families deserve protection that yours don't."
The president's critics also have noted that when Obama announced his plan to respond to the gun violence, he was flanked by four children. Obama proposed renewing a U.S. assault weapons ban, as well as banning high-capacity magazines and more stringent background checks for gun purchasers.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Jackie Frank)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-nra-senior-lobbyist-says-attack-ad-ill-181051948.html
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Genome sequencing data once regarded as junk is now being used to gain important clues to help understand disease. The latest example comes from the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital ? Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, where scientists have developed an approach to mine the repetitive segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes for insights into cancer.
These segments, known as telomeres, had previously been ignored in next-generation sequencing efforts. That is because their repetitive nature meant that the resulting information had defied analysis and the data were labeled as junk. But researchers have now traced changes in the volume of telomeric DNA to particular types of cancer and their underlying genetic mistakes. Investigators found that 32 percent of pediatric solid tumors carried extra DNA for telomeres, compared to just 4 percent of brain tumors and none of the leukemia samples studied. The findings were published recently in the journal Genome Biology.
Using this new approach, the investigators have linked changes in telomeric DNA to mutations in the ATRX gene and to longer telomeres in patients with a subtype of neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. Telomere length limits how many times cells can divide. Mechanisms that maintain or lengthen telomeres contribute to the unchecked cell division that is a hallmark of cancer.
"This paper shows how measuring the DNA content of telomeres can enhance the value of whole- genome sequencing," said Matthew Parker, Ph.D., the paper's first author and a St. Jude postdoctoral fellow. "In the case of the ATRX mutation, the telomere findings gave us information about the mutation's impact that would have been hard to get through other means."
The results stem from the largest study yet of whole-genome sequencing to measure the content of telomeric DNA. The effort involved whole-genome sequencing of normal and tumor DNA from 235 pediatric patients battling 13 different cancers. For comparison, normal DNA from 13 adult cancer patients was included in the research.
"There's been a lot of interest among cancer researchers into telomere length," said Richard Wilson, Ph.D., director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "While more research remains, we think it's important to begin to characterize the genetic sequences that make up the telomeres. That's a crucial first step to understanding more precisely any role they may play in cancer."
The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project sequenced the complete normal and cancer genomes of more than 600 children and adolescents with some of the most aggressive and least understood cancers. Investigators believe the project's findings will lay the foundation for a new generation of clinical tools. Despite advances, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease of U.S. children age 1 and older.
The human genome is stored in the four-letter chemical alphabet of DNA, a molecule that stretches more than 3 billion characters in length and provides the instructions for building and sustaining life. Those instructions are the genes that are organized into the 46 chromosomes found in almost every cell.
Each chromosome ends with the same six-letter DNA sequence that is associated exclusively with telomeres. The DNA sequence does not vary, but the number of times it is repeated does, affecting the length of the telomeres. Telomeres shorten each time cells divide, which explains why their length declines naturally with age.
Researchers have known cancer cells use several mechanisms to circumvent the process and keep dividing. But until now the repetitive nature of the telomeric DNA sequence meant they had little to offer researchers using whole-genome sequencing to map the human genome. Other genes can be assigned to a particular spot on a particular chromosome; telomeres cannot.
"For scientists analyzing whole-genome sequencing data the telomeres were just a headache," said the study's corresponding author Jinghui Zhang, Ph.D., an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Computational Biology. "We could not properly map them to a position on the human genome, so we didn't really use them."
Then listening to a colleague's presentation, Parker had an idea: "Why not just count the telomeric DNA and look for changes between the normal and cancer cells of patients?"
Zhang said the question was a conceptual leap in thinking about how to use whole-genome sequencing data to study telomeres and cancer. "This is the classic story of how one person's problem is another person's gold," she said.
Parker and his colleagues developed an approach that correctly distinguished between older and younger individuals based on the amount of telomeric DNA in their blood or bone marrow cells. Researchers used three other methods to confirm that whole-genome sequencing could be used to reliably capture telomeric DNA differences between normal and cancer cells. Additional supportive evidence came when investigators found that the method yielded similar estimates of the telomeric DNA content of twins with leukemia who shared similar genetic alterations.
When investigators used the method to study pediatric cancer patients, they found tumors that gained telomeric DNA were also more likely to contain chromosomal abnormalities, including rearrangements within and between chromosomes. Researchers also found that different cancers had distinct patterns of telomeric DNA change. In some cases, the change offered clues about the mechanism responsible for lengthening the telomeres, pointing to a process called alternative lengthening of telomeres.
###
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital: http://www.stjude.org
Thanks to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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A bartender dances on the bar at a Coyote Ugly in Tampa, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
NEW YORK?Liliana ?Lil? Lovell was just 25 when she walked away from an up-and-coming career on Wall Street to open her bar Coyote Ugly in New York?s East Village in 1993. The bar marks its 20th anniversary this weekend, and Lovell has more than a few stories to tell.
Lovell, who had just graduated with a degree in psychology and communications from New York University, was struggling to live on a $250 weekly salary as an apprentice at an investment bank and had picked up bartending shifts to make ends meet.
Soon, Lovell was earning the equivalent of her weekly salary in tips in a single night working at a grungy dive called The Village Idiot, where the owner was known to drink Guinness by the gallon and pass out by the front door. When a tax issue closed that bar temporarily, Lovell scrounged up her tips and found an investor to help her open her own place in a vacant Italian restaurant directly across the street.
Her business plan at the time was shockingly simple: ?Beautiful women and booze,? Lovell recalled in an interview. ?It seemed like the most obvious way in the world to make money.?
But it was also groundbreaking. As Coyote Ugly prepares to mark its 20th anniversary, it?s easy to forget Lovell?s dingy little honky-tonk?which eventually spawned a Jerry Bruckheimer film, a chain of spin-off nightclubs around the world and, briefly, its own CMT reality show?was once a rarity in the nightlife world.
In those days, even in New York, it was unusual for a bar to be staffed entirely by female bartenders?even more so for one of those bartenders to be the owner and manager of the place.
?It was virtually unheard of for a woman to be bartending. There were very few women on the scene. It was almost impossible to get a job,? Lovell recalls. ?[But] what I found were that women were better sellers. I can get them with practice to be fast, but they were able to chat with the customers and created better sales. But it was considered very odd at the time by most people.?
That impression didn?t last long. Soon, Lovell?s tiny First Avenue joint was attracting big crowds?largely because of the legend of Lovell herself.
Cute and petite with the tenacity of a fearless drill sergeant, Lovell laid down strict rules for what was allowed at her bar.
For one, there was to be no girly drinks?a tough call during the coming of age of Cosmopolitans and other fruity concoctions made popular by ?Sex and the City.?
What was permitted was a jukebox of loud country music, endless shots of Jack Daniels and Patron, and a stream of constant torment aimed at the bar?s male clientele by a staff of scantily clad, gorgeous bartenders?known as Coyotes?who were encouraged to dance on the bar and make the scene as lively as possible.
It?s a business model that Lovell has fiercely perfected and protected. In expanding her business around the world, she has become something of an eternal Coyote guarding a brand that is as much her own identity as anything else.
?She was born to run an empire, with an iron first, a wickedly charismatic smile and a unique vision,? says writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who, before her ?Eat Pray Love? days, worked as a bartender at Coyote Ugly.
?I was shocked at how young she was and how terribly sexy,? Gilbert recalled of her first meeting with Lovell. ?And how commanding she was for somebody who was quite dainty and feminine. ? I think she is one of the powerful people I have ever met. We became friends over time, but I was initially very intimidated by her.?
Gilbert was 23 when she began working as a Coyote and was initially lured through the door by the sound of the blaring jukebox. Back then, Gilbert said, she lived in constant fear of being canned by Lovell, whom she says ?was not shy about firing people who did not satisfy her.?
?I was so afraid of being fired for not making enough money for Coyote Ugly that I used to steal money out of my own tip jar and put it in the cash register, so Lil would think I was attracting more customers than I actually was,? Gilbert said. ?I cannot imagine another boss so formidable that you would embezzle from yourself in order to keep her happy.?
It was an experience Gilbert later chronicled in a 1997 GQ article?a piece that made the bar famous outside New York City and attracted the attention of Bruckheimer, who optioned Gilbert?s article and used it as the basis for the 2000 film ?Coyote Ugly.?
It also made Lovell famous?who then found herself in the position of trying to protect her brand from others eager to replicate the bar?s image and success in other cities.
?I never sought fame or celebrity,? Lovell says. ?I just wanted to be financially successful. I never imagined what this would turn out to be.?
Soon, she took the Coyote Ugly bar national?eventually licensing outposts all over the world, including Las Vegas, New Orleans, Germany and Romania. With profits in revenues and licensing fees at one point exceeding an estimated $20 million a year, Crain?s named Lovell one of its top entrepreneurs under 40 in 2003.
Over the past decade, Lovell admits the business ?hasn?t always been easy.?
Many businesses besides the Coyote Ugly franchise make money off sexy strong-willed bartenders and people dancing on the bar. As a result, some of the Coyote Ugly bars, licensed to independent operators, have closed.
But many have been replaced by outposts in other cities, including three new locations in Russia that opened last year. All told, the company has 21 licensed Coyote Ugly locations all over the world?and Lovell is looking to open a new location in Los Angeles later this year.
?I always saw bartending as a means to an end,? Lovell says. ?But I think it never really hit me how far this thing had gone until I was sitting in the middle of Siberia in one of the bars I had just opened. Only then was I really like, ?Wow.??
Lovell, who now lives in New Orleans with her 13-year-old son, has ceded day-to-day management of the business to others. But she still plays a direct role as president of Ugly Inc., making sure that the bars adhere to the strict style she has laid down.
She admits changing some of those rules over the years. Before the movie, Lovell says, there wasn?t choreographed dancing?but when customers came into her bar looking for the experience they had seen in the film, she put more emphasis on hiring people who could actually move.
?I was like, well, we have to Hollywood it up!? she says.
And she continues to pay close attention to the numbers each bar generates on a daily basis. When new outposts open, Lovell is usually there to help coach the new Coyotes on how to do their jobs.
Over the years, Lovell has rejected criticism of the style of her franchise?which critics, especially women, have derided as everything from a ?flashier Hooters? or a ?PG-13 strip club? because of the way the employees use their sexuality to make money. But Lovell insists that Coyote Ugly should be viewed as a form of ?female empowerment.?
?My brand of feminism is that I am an empowered woman. I have never had to rely on a man to make money for me. And I think sexy is powerful. I think funny is powerful,? Lovell says. ?You combine all of this, and you are powerful as a woman."
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Art Liscano knows he's an endangered species in the job market: He's a meter reader in Fresno, Calif. For 26 years, he's driven from house to house, checking how much electricity Pacific Gas & Electric customers have used.
But PG&E doesn't need many people like Liscano making rounds anymore. Every day, the utility replaces 1,200 old-fashioned meters with digital versions that can collect information without human help, generate more accurate power bills, even send an alert if the power goes out.
"I can see why technology is taking over," says Liscano, 66, who earns $67,000 a year. "We can see the writing on the wall." His department employed 50 full-time meter readers just six years ago. Now, it has six.
From giant corporations to university libraries to start-up businesses, employers are using rapidly improving technology to do tasks that humans used to do. That means millions of workers are caught in a competition they can't win against machines that keep getting more powerful, cheaper and easier to use.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: Second in a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, and the role of technology.
___
To better understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs and workers who are competing with smarter machines.
The AP found that almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. Jobs that form the backbone of the middle class in developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia.
In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, and the numbers are even more grim in the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency. A total of 7.6 million midpay jobs disappeared in those countries from January 2008 through last June.
Those jobs are being replaced in many cases by machines and software that can do the same work better and cheaper.
"Everything that humans can do a machine can do," says Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Things are happening that look like science fiction."
Google and Toyota are rolling out cars that can drive themselves. The Pentagon deploys robots to find roadside explosives in Afghanistan and wages war from the air with drone aircraft. North Carolina State University this month introduced a high-tech library where robots ? "bookBots" ? retrieve books when students request them, instead of humans. The library's 1.5 million books are no longer displayed on shelves; they're kept in 18,000 metal bins that require one-ninth the space.
The advance of technology is producing wondrous products and services that once were unthinkable. But it's also taking a toll on people because they so easily can be replaced.
In the U.S., more than 1.1 million secretaries vanished from the job market between 2000 and 2010, their job security shattered by software that lets bosses field calls themselves and arrange their own meetings and trips. Over the same period, the number of telephone operators plunged by 64 percent, word processors and typists by 63 percent, travel agents by 46 percent and bookkeepers by 26 percent, according to Labor Department statistics.
In Europe, technology is shaking up human resources departments across the continent. "Nowadays, employees are expected to do a lot of what we used to think of as HR from behind their own computer," says Ron van Baden, a negotiator with the Dutch labor union federation FNV. "It used to be that you could walk into the employee affairs office with a question about your pension, or the terms of your contract. That's all gone and automated."
Two-thirds of the 7.6 million middle-class jobs that vanished in Europe were the victims of technology, estimates economist Maarten Goos at Belgium's University of Leuven.
Does technology also create jobs? Of course. But at nowhere near the rate that it's killing them off ? at least for the foreseeable future.
Here's a look at three technological factors reshaping the economies and job markets in developed countries:
BIG DATA
At the heart of the biggest technological changes today is what computer scientists call "Big Data." Computers thrive on information, and they're feasting on an unprecedented amount of it ? from the Internet, from Twitter messages and other social media sources, from the barcodes and sensors being slapped on everything from boxes of Huggies diapers to stamping machines in car plants.
According to a Harvard Business Review article by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more information now crosses the Internet every second than the entire Internet stored 20 years ago. Every hour, they note, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. collects 50 million filing cabinets' worth of information from its dealings with customers.
No human could make sense of so much data. But computers can. They can sift through mountains of information and deliver valuable insights to decision-makers in businesses and government agencies. For instance, Wal-Mart's analysis of Twitter traffic helped convince it to increase the amount of "Avengers" merchandise it offered when the superhero movie came out last year and to introduce a private-label corn chip in the American Southwest.
Google's automated car can only drive by itself by tapping into Google's vast collection of maps and using information pouring in from special sensors to negotiate traffic.
"What's different to me is the raw amount of data out there because of the Web, because of these devices, because we're attaching sensors to things," says McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT's Center for Digital Business and the co-author of "Race Against the Machine."
"The fuel of science is data," he says. "We have so much more of that rocket fuel."
So far, public attention has focused on the potential threats to privacy as companies use technology to gather clues about their customers' buying habits and lifestyles.
"What is less visible," says software entrepreneur Martin Ford, "is that organizations are collecting huge amounts of data about their internal operations and about what their employees are doing." The computers can use that information to "figure out how to do a great many jobs" that humans do now.
Gary Mintchell, editor in chief of Automation World, recalls starting work in manufacturing years ago as a "grunge, white-collar worker." He'd walk around the factory floor with a clipboard, recording information from machines, then go back to an office and enter the data by hand onto a spreadsheet.
Now that grunge work is conducted by powerful "operations management" software systems developed by businesses such as General Electric Intelligent Platforms in Charlottesville, Va. These systems continuously collect, analyze and summarize in digestible form information about all aspects of factory operations ?energy consumption, labor costs, quality problems, customer orders.
And the guys wandering the factory floor with clipboards? They're gone.
THE CLOUD
In the old days ? say, five years ago ? businesses that had to track lots of information needed to install servers in their offices and hire technical staff to run them. "Cloud computing" has changed everything.
Now, companies can store information on the Internet ? perhaps through Amazon Web Services or Google App Engine ? and grab it when they need it. And they don't need to hire experts to do it.
Cloud computing "is a catch-all term for the ability to rent as much computer power as you need without having to buy it, without having to know a lot about it," McAfee says. "It really has opened up very high-powered computing to the masses."
Small businesses, which have no budget for a big technology department, are especially eager to take advantage of the cheap computer power offered in the cloud.
Hilliard's Beer in Seattle, founded in October 2011, bought software from the German company SAP that allows it to use cloud computing to track sales and inventory and to produce the reports that federal regulators require.
"It automates a lot of the stuff that we do," owner Ryan Hilliard says. "I know what it takes to run a server. I didn't want to hire an IT guy."
And the brewery keeps finding new ways to use the beefed-up computing power. For example, it's now tracking what happens to the kegs it delivers to restaurants and retrieving them sooner for reuse. "Kegs are a pretty big expense for a small brewery," Hilliard says.
Automated Insights in Durham, N.C., draws on the computing power of the cloud to produce automated sports stories, such as customized weekly summaries for fantasy football leagues. "We're able to create over 1,000 pieces of content per second at a very cost-effective rate," says founder Robbie Allen. He says his startup would not have been possible without cloud computing.
SMARTER MACHINES
Though many are still working out the kinks, software is making machines and devices smarter every year. They can learn your habits, recognize your voice, do the things that travel agents, secretaries and interpreters have traditionally done.
Microsoft has unveiled a system that can translate what you say into Mandarin and play it back ? in your voice. The Google Now personal assistant can tell you if there's a traffic jam on your regular route home and suggest an alternative. Talk to Apple's Siri and she can reschedule an appointment. IBM's Watson supercomputer can field an awkwardly worded question, figure out what you're trying to ask, retrieve the answer and spit it out fast enough to beat human champions on the TV quiz show "Jeopardy!" Computers with that much brainpower increasingly will invade traditional office work.
Besides becoming more powerful and creative, machines and their software are becoming easier to use. That has made consumers increasingly comfortable relying on them to transact business. As well as eliminated jobs of bank tellers, ticket agents and checkout cashiers.
People who used to say "Let me talk to a person. I don't want to deal with this machine" are now using check-in kiosks at airports and self-checkout lanes at supermarkets and drugstores, says Jeff Connally, CEO of CMIT Solutions, a technology consultancy.
The most important change in technology, he says, is "the profound simplification of the user interface."
Four years ago, the Darien, Conn., public library bought self-service check-out machines from 3M Co. Now, with customers scanning books themselves, the library is processing more books than ever while shaving 15 percent from staff hours by using fewer part-time workers.
So machines are getting smarter and people are more comfortable using them. Those factors, combined with the financial pressures of the Great Recession, have led companies and government agencies to cut jobs the past five years, yet continue to operate just as well.
How is that happening?
?Reduced aid from Indiana's state government and other budget problems forced the Gary, Ind., public school system last year to cut its annual transportation budget in half, to $5 million. The school district responded by using sophisticated software to draw up new, more efficient bus routes. And it cut 80 of 160 drivers.
When the Great Recession struck, the Seattle police department didn't have money to replace retiring officers. So it turned to technology ? a new software system that lets police officers file crime-scene reports from laptops in their patrol cars.
The software was nothing fancy, just a collection of forms and pull-down menus, but the impact was huge. The shift from paper eliminated the need for two dozen transcribers and filing staff at police headquarters, and freed desk-bound officers to return to the streets.
"A sergeant used to read them, sign them, an officer would photocopy them and another drive them to headquarters," says Dick Reed, an assistant chief overseeing technology. "Think of the time, think of the salary. You're paying an officer to make photocopies."
Thanks to the software, the department has been able to maintain the number of cops on the street at 600.
The software, from Versaterm, a Canadian company, is being used by police in dozens of cities, including Denver, Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas.
?In South Korea, Standard Chartered is expanding "smart banking" branches that employ a staff of three, compared with an average of about eight in traditional branches. The bank has closed a dozen full-service branches, replacing them with the smart branches, and expects to have 30 more by the end of this year. Customers do most of their banking on computer screens, and can connect with Standard Chartered specialists elsewhere by video-conference if they need help.
Comerica, a bank based in Dallas, is using new video-conferencing equipment that lets cash-management experts make pitches to potential corporate clients from their desks. Those experts, based in Livonia, Mich., used to board planes and visit prospects in person. Now, they get Comerica colleagues in various cities to pay visits to local companies and conference them in.
"The technology for delivering (high quality) video over a public Internet connection was unavailable 12 or 18 months ago," says Paul Obermeyer, Comerica's chief information officer. "Now, we're able to generate more revenue with the same employee base."
The networking equipment also allows video to be delivered to smart phones, so the experts can make pitches on the run, too.
?The British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans last year to invest $518 million in the world's first long-haul, heavy-duty driverless train system at its Pilbara iron ore mines in Western Australia. The automated trains are expected to start running next year. The trains are part of what Rio Tinto calls its "Mine of the Future" program, which includes 150 driverless trucks and automated drills.
Like many technologically savvy startups, Dirk Vander Kooij's furniture-making company in the Netherlands needs only a skeleton crew ? four people. The hard work at the Eindhoven-based company is carried out by an old industrial robot that Vander Kooij fashioned into a 3D printer. Using plastic recycled from old refrigerators, the machine "prints" furniture ? ranging in price from a $300 chair to a $3,000 lamp ? the way an ordinary printer uses ink to print documents. Many analysts expect 3D printing to revolutionize manufacturing, allowing small firms like Vander Kooij's to make niche products without hiring many people.
?Google's driverless car and the Pentagon's drone aircraft are raising the specter of highways and skies filled with cars and planes that can get around by themselves.
"A pilotless airliner is going to come; it's just a question of when," James Albaugh, retired CEO of Boeing Commercial Airlines, said in 2011, according to IEEE Spectrum magazine. "You'll see it in freighters first, over water probably, landing very close to the shore."
Unmanned trains already have arrived. The United Arab Emirates introduced the world's longest automated rail system ? 32 miles ? in Dubai in 2009.
And the trains on several Japanese rail lines run by themselves. Tokyo's Yurikamome Line, which skirts Tokyo Bay, is completely automated. The line ? named for the black-headed sea gull that is Tokyo's official bird ? employs only about 60 employees at its 16 stations. "Certainly, using the automated systems does reduce the number of staff we need," says Katsuya Hagane, the manager in charge of operations at New Transit Yurikamome.
Driverless cars will have a revolutionary impact on traffic one day ? and the job market. In the United States alone, 3.1 million people drive trucks for a living, 573,000 drive buses, 342,000 drive taxis or limousines. All those jobs will be threatened by automated vehicles.
?Phone companies and gas and electric utilities are using technology to reduce their payrolls. Since 2007, for instance, telecommunications giant Verizon has increased its annual revenue 19 percent ? while employing 17 percent fewer workers. The smaller work force partly reflects the shift toward cellphones and away from landlines, which require considerably more maintenance. But even the landlines need less human attention because Verizon is rapidly replacing old-fashioned copper lines with lower-maintenance, fiber-optic cables.
Verizon also makes it easier for customers to deal with problems themselves without calling a repairman. From their homes, consumers can open Verizon's In-home Agent software on their computers. The system can determine why a cable TV box isn't working or why the Internet connection is down ? and fix the problem in minutes. The program has been downloaded more than 2 million times, Verizon says.
And then there are the meter readers like PG&E's Liscano. Their future looks grim.
Southern California Edison finished its digital meter installation program late last year. All but 20,000 of its 5.3 million customers have their power usage beamed directly to the utility.
Nearly all of the 972 meter readers in Southern California Edison's territory accepted retirement packages or were transferred within the company, says Pat Lavin of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. But 92 workers are being laid off this month.
"Trying to keep it from happening would have been like the Teamsters in the early 1900s trying to stop the combustion engine," Lavin says. "You can't stand in the way of technology."
___
NEXT: Will smart machines create a world without work?
___
Bernard Condon and Jonathan Fahey reported from New York. AP Business Writers Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington, Youkyung Lee in Seoul, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report. You can reach the writers on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BernardFCondon and www.twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP. Join in a Twitter chat about this story on Thursday, Jan. 24, at noon E.S.T. using the hashtag (hash)TheGreatReset.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Second in a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, and the role of technology.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
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The band premiered the brand-new, synth-heavy song on Friday, to the surprise of pretty much everybody.
By James Montgomery
Julian Casablancas of The Strokes
Photo: Shirlaine Forrest/Getty Images
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1700818/the-strokes-one-way-trigger.jhtml
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Acer just added another smartphone to its Liquid E line of mid-range handsets, and it's called, unsurprisingly enough, the Liquid E1. Device specs aren't bad for a phone of this caliber: you get a 4.5-inch qHD (960 x 540) IPS display, a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of built-in storage, a microSD card slot, a 5-megapixel camera and a decent 1,760mAh battery. It ships with Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, though we would've preferred the latest Android 4.2 on board instead. While the specs didn't wow us, the curved design does look quite handsome at first blush -- it measures 132 x 68.5 x 9.9mm and weighs in at 4.59 ounces (130g), so it appears quite lightweight as well. We'd be inclined to like it even more if the price was low enough, but Acer hasn't announced that just yet. We hope to get a closer look at this smartphone at Mobile World Congress, but until then you'll just have to make do with the picture above.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Acer
Via: Phone Arena
Source: Weibo (Acer), Eurodroid
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/acer-liquid-e1/
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Canadian carrier Rogers started its OTA rollout for the One X earlier this month, and now Telus has started pushing it as well. Stated on the official HTC Canada twitter account, the update should start coming OTA (Over The Air) to users as of last night. It will be pushed automatically, but eager users can always check in manually and should have the update waiting at that point as well. These big updates tend to roll out in groups or phases, but usually don't take long to hit everyone.
One user in our forums, guyfrombc, has the update downloading on their device, so we know it's out there in the wild at least in some capacity. Are you seeing it on your own Telus One X yet? Head to the forums and let others know what your experience is.
Source: @HTCCanada; More: HTC One X Forums
 |  |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/fTZarf3uiMA/story01.htm
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Public release date: 24-Jan-2013
Share ] Contact: Leslie Shepherd
shepherdl@smh.ca
416-864-6094
St. Michael's Hospital
TORONTO, Jan. 24, 2013Up to one-third of patients undergoing surgery in Ontario have a treatable form of anemia but are not optimally treated for it.
A paper published online today in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia says that hospitals that do treat patients with anemia have better outcomes, including fewer blood transfusions and infections and shorter hospital stays.
A common option for management of anemia has been blood transfusion. But blood transfusions are expensive and are associated with higher death and complication rates.
Dr. Gregory Hare, an anesthesiologist at St. Michael's Hospital, reported in today's paper that hip and knee replacement patients who had blood transfusions stayed in hospital about two days longer than those who did not have transfusions. The stay was about three days longer for coronary artery bypass graft patients who had transfusions. The risk of infection more than doubled for patients who had transfusions.
Dr. Hare called anemia a "silent killer." Severe anemia can cause low oxygen levels in vital organs and may result in heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. He said early diagnosis of anemia is important to give doctors sufficient time to treat it before surgery.
For example, 10.4 per cent of knee replacement patients diagnosed with anemia less than seven days before surgery required transfusions, compared to 7.3 per cent diagnosed more than 21 days in advance. He said 41.3 per cent of coronary artery bypass grafts patients needed blood transfusions if diagnosed with anemia less than seven days before surgery, compared with 22.8 per cent diagnosed more than 21 days in advance.
"If given time to treat anemia, we can avoid unnecessary transfusions and thereby improve quality of patient care," Dr. Hare said.
St. Michael's is developing a Centre of Excellence for Patient Blood Management, which would be one of the first of its kind in Canada and a global leader in patient care and in training, research and education for health care professionals.
Under patient blood management, physicians might prescribe certain drugs or dietary supplements to raise a patient's hemoglobin level before surgery.
During surgery, doctors may use a variety of state of-the-art technologies and techniques to minimize blood loss, such as minimally invasive surgery, electrocautery (using heat to stop vessels from bleeding), an argon beam coagulator, which coagulates or clots blood to minimize blood loss, or intravenous iron and erythropoietin, which stimulate bone marrow to produce red blood cells.
The number of patients requiring blood transfusions after undergoing knee replacement surgery in Ontario in 2011 was less than half the number in 2002.
2002 was when the provincial government set up the Ontario Transfusion Coordinators (ONTraC), a province-wide blood management program administered by St. Michael's Hospital. The goal of the program is to promote blood conservation and alternatives to transfusions for problems such as anemia, a condition where a person has a reduced number of red blood cells or hemoglobin, the part of the red blood cell that carries oxygen.
ONTraC figures published for the first time today show the number of patients requiring blood transfusions after undergoing knee surgery fell from 24.5 per cent in 2002 to 10.1 per cent in 2011. The number requiring transfusions after undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting fell from 60.2 per cent to 25.2 per cent in the same time.
###
The research was funded by the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society, St. Michael's Departments of Anesthesia, Laboratory Medcine and Medicine. Dr. Hare has been supported by a Merit Award from the Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto, with salary support from Johnson and Johnson Medical Companies.
About St. Michael's Hospital
St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
For more information or to interview Dr. Hare, please contact:
Leslie Shepherd
Manager, Media Strategy
St. Michael's Hospital
Phone: 416-864-6094 or 647-300-1753
shepherdl@smh.ca
www.stmichaelshospital.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stmikeshospital
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 24-Jan-2013 Share ] Contact: Leslie Shepherd
shepherdl@smh.ca
416-864-6094
St. Michael's Hospital
TORONTO, Jan. 24, 2013Up to one-third of patients undergoing surgery in Ontario have a treatable form of anemia but are not optimally treated for it.
A paper published online today in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia says that hospitals that do treat patients with anemia have better outcomes, including fewer blood transfusions and infections and shorter hospital stays.
A common option for management of anemia has been blood transfusion. But blood transfusions are expensive and are associated with higher death and complication rates.
Dr. Gregory Hare, an anesthesiologist at St. Michael's Hospital, reported in today's paper that hip and knee replacement patients who had blood transfusions stayed in hospital about two days longer than those who did not have transfusions. The stay was about three days longer for coronary artery bypass graft patients who had transfusions. The risk of infection more than doubled for patients who had transfusions.
Dr. Hare called anemia a "silent killer." Severe anemia can cause low oxygen levels in vital organs and may result in heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. He said early diagnosis of anemia is important to give doctors sufficient time to treat it before surgery.
For example, 10.4 per cent of knee replacement patients diagnosed with anemia less than seven days before surgery required transfusions, compared to 7.3 per cent diagnosed more than 21 days in advance. He said 41.3 per cent of coronary artery bypass grafts patients needed blood transfusions if diagnosed with anemia less than seven days before surgery, compared with 22.8 per cent diagnosed more than 21 days in advance.
"If given time to treat anemia, we can avoid unnecessary transfusions and thereby improve quality of patient care," Dr. Hare said.
St. Michael's is developing a Centre of Excellence for Patient Blood Management, which would be one of the first of its kind in Canada and a global leader in patient care and in training, research and education for health care professionals.
Under patient blood management, physicians might prescribe certain drugs or dietary supplements to raise a patient's hemoglobin level before surgery.
During surgery, doctors may use a variety of state of-the-art technologies and techniques to minimize blood loss, such as minimally invasive surgery, electrocautery (using heat to stop vessels from bleeding), an argon beam coagulator, which coagulates or clots blood to minimize blood loss, or intravenous iron and erythropoietin, which stimulate bone marrow to produce red blood cells.
The number of patients requiring blood transfusions after undergoing knee replacement surgery in Ontario in 2011 was less than half the number in 2002.
2002 was when the provincial government set up the Ontario Transfusion Coordinators (ONTraC), a province-wide blood management program administered by St. Michael's Hospital. The goal of the program is to promote blood conservation and alternatives to transfusions for problems such as anemia, a condition where a person has a reduced number of red blood cells or hemoglobin, the part of the red blood cell that carries oxygen.
ONTraC figures published for the first time today show the number of patients requiring blood transfusions after undergoing knee surgery fell from 24.5 per cent in 2002 to 10.1 per cent in 2011. The number requiring transfusions after undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting fell from 60.2 per cent to 25.2 per cent in the same time.
###
The research was funded by the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society, St. Michael's Departments of Anesthesia, Laboratory Medcine and Medicine. Dr. Hare has been supported by a Merit Award from the Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto, with salary support from Johnson and Johnson Medical Companies.
About St. Michael's Hospital
St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
For more information or to interview Dr. Hare, please contact:
Leslie Shepherd
Manager, Media Strategy
St. Michael's Hospital
Phone: 416-864-6094 or 647-300-1753
shepherdl@smh.ca
www.stmichaelshospital.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stmikeshospital
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/smh-rsi012413.php
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