Friday, December 18, 2009

A $5 footlong success story

Subway's $5 sandwich, the brainchild of an obscure Miami franchisee, is the fast-food success story of the recession.

[Related content: savings, save money, food prices, frugal, food]
By BusinessWeek

Stuart Frankel isn't what you'd call a power player in the world of franchising.

Can Subway challenge McDonald's?

Five years ago, he owned two small Subway sandwich shops at either end of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. After noticing that sales sagged on weekends, he came up with an idea: He would offer every footlong sandwich (the chain also sells 6-inch versions) on Saturday and Sunday for $5, about a buck less than the usual price.

"I like round numbers," says Frankel, a brusque New Yorker who moved to Miami in 1972 and owned a drugstore before opening his first Subway outlet in 1988.

Customers liked his round number, too. Instead of dealing with idle employees and weak sales, Frankel suddenly had lines out the door. Sales rose by double digits. Nobody, least of all Frankel, knew it at the time, but he had stumbled on a concept that has unexpectedly morphed from a short-term gimmick into a national phenomenon that has turbocharged Subway's performance.

"There are only a few times when a chain has been able to scramble up the whole industry, and this is one of them," says Jeffrey T. Davis, the president of restaurant consultancy Sandelman & Associates. "It's huge."

In fact, the $3.8 billion in sales generated nationwide by the $5 footlong alone placed it among the top 10 fast-food brands in the U.S. for the year ended in August, according to NPD Group. That puts the $5 menu's success just a notch behind Yum Brands' (YUM, news, msgs) KFC and ahead of Arby's (WEN, news, msgs) and Domino's Pizza (DPZ, news, msgs). It helped privately held Subway, of Milford, Conn., lift U.S. sales 17% last year at a time when most restaurant chains, save for industry leader McDonald's (MCD, news, msgs), struggled.

Actually, make that soon-to-be-former industry leader McDonald's. Subway's low-cost franchising model and mainstream appeal have allowed it to add 9,500 locations in the past five years, for a total of about 32,000 outlets. At its current growth rate of 40 new stores a week, Subway is poised to surpass McDonald's in worldwide locations sometime early next year.

Measured by total sales, McDonald's $30 billion still dwarfs Subway's $9.6 billion, although Subway has now supplanted both Wendy's and Burger King (BKC, news, msgs) in market share.

'A life of its own'

Frankel's $5 footlong idea illustrates how a huge company can wake up and eventually seize on a good idea that's not generated at headquarters. Frankel, along with two other local managers in economically ravaged South Florida, ceaselessly championed the idea to Subway's corporate leadership amid widespread skepticism. Once it was approved, Subway's marketing team quickly generated a memorable campaign that firmly established the $5 footlong nationwide. The promotion's success spawned imitators and created an unprecedented demand for staple ingredients such as turkey, ham and tuna.

"The whole thing took on a life of its own," says Jeff Moody, the CEO of Subway's franchise-owned advertising arm, the Subway Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust.

The fact that a sandwich, the quintessential American food, has grabbed the spotlight right now comes as no surprise to some. Its appeal goes beyond the low sticker price -- you can share a footlong with a co-worker or a friend (something that's not quite as easy with a Big Mac).

"People are not eating out as much anymore, so anything that brings people together through food is much more compelling nowadays," says Michelle Barry of the Hartman Group, a Seattle consultancy that employs anthropologists and sociologists to ferret out consumer perceptions for such companies as Kraft Foods (KFT, news, msgs) and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs).

For Frankel, the biggest surprise from his $5 promotion was that his profit margins didn't decline. Many promotions are so-called loss leaders designed to draw customers in the hope they'll buy higher-margin items alongside the featured specials. That's one reason most offers have a time limit. Frankel's food costs did rise as a percentage of sales, but that was offset by the overall boost in volume and the increased productivity of his employees, who had less down time. Even after adding two new staffers, Frankel made money on each $5 sandwich.

Frankel kept the weekend promotion going for more than a year. At the same time, Subway's top brass was growing tired of a national ad campaign that featured spokesman Jared Fogle, who had lost 245 pounds almost a decade earlier by eating Subway 6-inch subs for lunch and dinner. Company insiders envied the success of McDonald's dollar menu and wanted a "value" offering of their own.

In September 2007, Steve Sager, a Subway development agent who oversaw about 225 franchises across South Florida, heard about the success of Frankel's $5 deal. He decided to try it in a troubled Fort Lauderdale, Fla., outlet on Commercial Boulevard, a gritty thoroughfare dotted with strip malls. On the first day of the promotion, the store nearly ran out of bread and meat. Sales doubled.

Video: Subway's recession-friendly fare

Sager called Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca, who lives in the vicinity, and excitedly shared the news. An intrigued DeLuca came by the shop and, Sager says, "saw the potential instantly." (DeLuca declined to comment.) Charlie Serabian, the owner of 50South Florida Subways, decided to launch the promotion in some of his stores. To advertise, he slapped crude homemade signs in the windows that spelled out "ALL FOOTLONGS $5." DeLuca joked that they looked like ransom letters. It didn't matter: Sales rose as much as 35%. Some locations, such as those housed inside Wal-Mart stores, did even better.

Moody, the marketing chief, hopped a flight to Fort Lauderdale a month later. He arrived at one store at 11 a.m. to find a line out the door. Frankel and Sager, who accompanied him, jumped behind the counter to help make sandwiches, while Moody talked to customers. Most were buying footlongs, and some were saving half for later.

Clearly, the South Florida crew was onto something. The question was whether it would resonate elsewhere. "Unless it was in your store, you were skeptical," Moody says. At a meeting of the franchisee marketing board that fall, Frankel presented his idea. Many owners thought the promotion would send food and labor costs soaring, erasing any hope of profits. A motion to roll it out nationally failed.

Annoying jingle

But others picked up on Frankel's idea and tried it in locations ranging from Washington to Chicago. Right before Christmas 2008, the board voted again, and the motion passed. (Franchisees still had the option to not do it.)

Moody pushed ahead with a national campaign, despite having no market research to back up the idea. "It violated all our normal processes," says Moody, whose annual ad budget is around $500 million.

Subway soon brought in its ad agency, MMB of Boston. "Let's not overcomplicate this," MMB managing partner Chad Caufield recalls thinking. The idea was to use hand gestures and an irritatingly addictive jingle to convey both the price (five fingers) and the product (hands spread about a foot apart). MMB also shot on a soundstage, giving the commercial a stylized, campy look. "We wanted to create the feeling that this was a movement taking hold," Caufield says.

The campaign was launched on March 23, 2008 -- the same month that Bear Stearns collapsed into the arms of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs). "The timing could not have been better," says Dennis Lombardi, the executive vice president at restaurant consultancy WD Partners. Over the first two weeks, franchisees reported that sales shot up 25% on average. Within weeks, 3,600 videos of people performing the jingle appeared on YouTube. Fogle, attending the NCAA Final Four college basketball tournament soon after the launch, was serenaded with the song by students. The $5 footlong was mentioned on ESPN, "The Tonight Show" and celebrity gossip site TMZ. The North Carolina State Fair even held a $5 Footlong Song Challenge -- an "American Idol"-style event for the 4-H crowd.

The franchisee marketing board quickly voted to extend the four-week promotion to seven weeks. When that ended, Subway kept it going but limited the number of $5 sandwiches to just eight, removing items with high ingredient costs, such as the Chicken & Bacon Ranch sandwich.

Video: Subway's recession-friendly fare

Suddenly, Subway needed 50% more food supplies. Bread shortages became a problem, as the ratio of 6-inch sandwiches to footlong orders, normally 2-to-1, flipped. Subway's franchise-owned Independent Purchasing Cooperative, or IPC, had to scramble to find new sources of bread. Even mundane items, such as plastic sandwich bags from China, nearly ran out.

"I was in a panic," recalls IPC Chief Executive Jan Risi, who furiously worked the phones, cajoling her network of suppliers to run extra shifts.

Even cheaper

Soon, copycat offers emerged. Boston Market offered 11 meals for $5 each, while Domino's sold sandwiches for $4.99, and KFC launched $5 combo meals. T.G.I. Friday's began selling $5 sandwiches.

"Five dollars is the magic number now," restaurant consultant Malcolm Knapp says. "It's become a price point that consumers respond to," says Judy Cantrell, Boston Market's chief brand officer.

The question now is when the campaign will run out of steam. MMB's Caufield concedes the issue keeps him up at night: "Are we riding this pony too long?" Tony Pace, a senior executive who works with Subway's marketing arm, replies bluntly: "If you had a brand that represented nearly $4 billion in sales, would you plan an exit strategy for it?"

Can Subway challenge McDonald's?
Pace says the footlong will remain "as long as it makes good economic sense," so a decline in footlong sales could force price increases or limits, such as $5 after 4 p.m. only. (Serabian has gone the other way as the South Florida economy has worsened, offering footlongs for $4 in his stores.) There are also concerns that Subway's focus on the footlong could distract it from new growth areas, such as a planned push into breakfast items or international expansion. (Save for some tests in Australia and Canada, the $5 footlong hasn't gone beyond the U.S.)

Meanwhile, Frankel has moved on to a new idea. Now he's pushing for Subway loyalty cards that let purchasers accrue points toward free sandwiches. Driving down Interstate 95 on a cloudy autumn day, Frankel chronicles the frustrations he's had convincing DeLuca and others that this could be a hit. Maybe now that Frankel is the father of the $5 Footlong, they'll listen.

This article was reported by Matthew Boyle for BusinessWeek.

Comment

I eat $5 footlongs once or twice a week, and enjoy them.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Nano Cancer Cures?

December 15, 2009 9:15 PM PST

Can we diagnose and destroy cancer in one sitting?
by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore Font size Print E-mail Share 1 comment Yahoo!

Let's say you find a lump somewhere and decide to go in for an exam. And let's say there was a little box to check that allows you to get a shot that targets and kills cancerous cells right then and there, no surgery, no waiting, and possibly no radiation or chemo therapy down the road. Would you check the box?

These nanoshells target tumors in the lungs and, upon excitation with near-infrared light, destroy only the cancerous tissue.

(Credit: The Alliance for NanoHealth)
Since time matters when it comes to cancer, the creation of a single nanoparticle--traceable in real time via MRI--that tags and zaps cancer cells all in one procedure has a team of researchers raising their eyebrows in hopeful arches.

"Some of the most essential questions in nanomedicine today are about biodistribution--where particles go inside the body and how they get there," says Naomi Halas, a nanomedicine pioneer at Rice University in Houstin, Texas, whose findings have just been published in Advanced Functional Materials. "Noninvasive tests for biodistribution will be enormously useful on the path to FDA approval, and this technique--adding MRI functionality to the particle you're testing and using for therapy--is a very promising way of doing this."

The all-in-one particles are modeled on nanoshells, a cancer treatment Halas invented in the '90s that are now in human clinical trials. The shells harvest laser light that would typically pass through the body harmlessly and convert that light into heat that destroys cancerous cells.

Halas, who designed the new particle with assistant professor Amit Joshi of Baylor College of Medicine's Division of Molecular Imaging, added a fluorescent dye to the nanoshell so that it glows when hit by near-infrared (NIR) light.

Tracking the nanoparticles by their fluorescence, the team confirmed that the particles do indeed target cancer cells and kill them with heat. Even though human clinical trials are probably a few years out, the hope is that eventually patients will be able to get a shot with a cocktail of these nanoparticles and antibodies tailored to specific cancer types, and then sit back and watch the war on tumors in real time via MRI and/or NIR imaging.

Halas adds that the team has been careful to choose components that are either already approved for medical use or are already in clinical trials: "We're putting together components that all have good, proven track records."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Volunteering Computers for Science - Wall Street Journal

OCTOBER 20, 2009

Users Make Their Home PCs Available to Chase Medical By JEREMY SINGER-VINE
The next cure for a major disease is as likely to be discovered on a computer as on a laboratory bench—and scientists are enlisting ordinary citizens to volunteer to help crunch the data.

Advances in computer science have enabled medical researchers to test how proteins fold, genes interact and pandemics spread in complex digital simulations of natural environments. As these simulations become more intensive and widely used, however, computers at academic institutions and other research facilities can't keep up with the demand for medical processing power.

Indian border security guards, who regularly contract malaria, are required to carry repellents and masks. Instead, scientists are tapping into a vast network that allows the research to be parceled out in tiny workloads that can be performed on anyone's household computer when it's not otherwise being used. So far, hundreds of thousands of people in countries around the world have volunteered their computers' processing power to help advance the cause of medical research.

Here's how it works: Volunteers download an application onto their home computer that links them into a network that includes other citizen volunteers and research scientists. The network assigns each computer a small bit of a project's puzzle to solve. The process, which continues as long as the computer is turned on but idle, typically takes several hours, but can vary depending on the project and the individual computer's power. When complete, the results are automatically sent back to the network's server.

In 2003, epidemiology researcher Nicolas Maire and his colleagues at the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel began simulating how potential malaria vaccines would affect populations where the disease is most prevalent. They ran the program on a network of several dozen of their institute's computers. But as the research team graduated to the second phase of their project in 2006, adding more variables, complex interactions and data to their model, it became clear that they needed more processing power.

The new simulations could take months or years to complete on their network, and other local computing facilities had long waits or were too expensive, the team concluded. Instead they bet that, given the project's humanitarian appeal, they could recruit volunteers to crunch the data. The wager paid off: Today, nearly 35,000 users run malariacontrol.net's calculations while their computers are idle, allowing the team to complete simulations far more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. Some of the research group's findings, based on its network of home-computer users in the U.S., Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere, have been reported in leading journals like Parasitology and Malaria Journal.

Volunteer computing, as it's known, dates back to 1996, when a group of researchers enlisted participants in a search for ever-larger prime numbers, an effort that continues to break world records. Several years later, volunteers flocked to SETI@home, a project to sift through the static in radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life.

In Myanmar, medicine is distributed to control malaria, a disease that is easy to treat but remains one of the nation's biggest killers. The government's health-care spending is the lowest world-wide
In the last five years, biomedical researchers have caught on to the possibilities of volunteer computing, and so too have the volunteers. James Whitus, who describes himself as "just an average Joe helping out," had been contributing his home computer's processing power to SETI@home until late 2004. Then he heard about the World Community Grid, a not-for-profit IBM project that provides research support to a number of different medical and humanitarian studies.

"I figured why search for extraterrestrials when you can help with research?" Mr. Whitus says. "Something that could actually make a difference here on this planet."

Today, the 28-year-old car inspector in Lafayette, Ind., and his fiancee support the grid's projects—which range from cancer-drug research to improving crop yields in developing countries—on their two desktop computers and on an old laptop that they devote solely to the cause.

Such volunteer computing projects are generally based on open-source software called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure of Network Computing, or Boinc. Volunteers download the simple application from boinc.berkeley.edu, and sign up for the projects they want to support. (Not all projects have lofty goals: One searches for the Sudoku puzzle with the fewest initial entries.)

Security Risks

An open network of so many computers might seem a security risk, and it is. But David Anderson, the Berkeley scientist who founded Boinc in 2004, says he has taken two key precautions. The first uses a system of digital signatures so that hackers cannot hijack an existing project's network. The second cordons off, or "sandboxes," all Boinc activity from the rest of a host computer, so that even if a bug or malicious code did slip into a project, it would cause minimal damage.

Still, volunteers should learn more about projects before joining them, Dr. Anderson suggests. Several sites, including Boinc's official page, host message boards where volunteers can discuss projects. After five years and more than 300,000,000 tasks performed by volunteers' computers, "there have been zero security incidents," according to Dr. Anderson.

There's also the cost to volunteers, in a higher energy bill, from keeping a computer running at all times. According to an estimate on Boinc's community-edited Web page (from the Boinc home page, search Heat and Energy Considerations), running Boinc costs about $3 a month more than leaving a computer on but idle, and about $8.80 a month more than leaving it off all the time, based on typical U.S. energy costs. The typical cost in Europe is about 200% higher, the site says.

Helping Out

See some biomedical research projects enlisting volunteer computers at boinc.berkeley.edu.
Downloading, setting up and running Boinc is no more difficult than for most other software, although it lacks the polished interface and technical support of many higher-end applications. Users with older computers should be prepared for certain frustrations, as one reporter learned by trial. A few projects refused to send any work to this volunteer's 2004 mid-range laptop, for lack of computing power. What parcels of work that were received took up to 18 hours of idle time to complete. (System requirements for individual projects are usually available on their Web sites.) After upgrading to a newer laptop, work parcels flowed where they had previously been blocked, and each took closer to four hours to complete.

Advances in personal-computer and Internet speeds have helped to triple the combined power of the volunteer computing efforts over the past two years, according to data from the site boincstats.com. Today the approximately 60 projects using Boinc harness in total about 2,500 teraflops—or twice the operations per second of the world's most powerful computer—from four million computers owned by nearly two million users. About 20 of those projects are related to medical research, to which more than 300,000 volunteers contribute. That includes the various efforts that comprise the World Community Grid.

Any scientist with the skills to set up a server can become part of the Boinc network. Researchers in most cases must pay for the servers that dispatch, gather and analyze the volunteers' data. But those costs are a small fraction of the roughly $1 million a year it costs to run a low-end supercomputer. (IBM's World Community Grid is free of cost to researchers, but the projects must be approved by an external advisory board.)

The top-supported biomedical project on Boinc is Rosetta@home, which simulates how proteins fold and could lead to novel treatments for a range of diseases. The sequence of the amino acids that comprise a protein—what may look like a whirling, intertwined, chaotic mess—precisely determines its structure and biological function. But exactly how these proteins bend along each amino acid is a vastly complex problem, one that the project's 80,000 volunteered computers help to solve by testing various permutations looking, essentially, for the most stable structure.

Don't Exist in Nature

The findings allow the Rosetta lab, run by David Baker at the University of Washington, to design proteins that don't exist in nature. Some new proteins could deactivate viruses such as the flu—as Dr. Baker's lab is trying to do for this year's H1N1 strain—by attaching to and smothering the sections of the pathogens that harm human cells. The project's biggest breakthroughs in the last couple of years have been in creating catalysts, which selectively speed up chemical reactions and which regulate almost every biological process, Dr. Baker said. One catalyst in development, for instance, is an enzyme that could slice apart genes in female mosquitoes, potentially preventing malaria transmission without using toxic chemicals.

Scientific studies that make use of the Boinc network have shown some promise, but no breakthroughs, researchers say. Findings from Rosetta@home have been published in the journals Science and Nature. But "what we haven't done yet is create enzymes that cure diseases," Dr. Baker said.

Similarly, projects associated with World Community Grid have generated dozens of research papers published in highly regarded journals. But, said Joseph Jasinski, an IBM engineer who works closely with the projects: "Have we discovered a new drug for curing AIDS? No. But we've found some great candidates."

Comment

I support this project and donate all my desktop time to it. It is my little contribution to science and research.

Gaps in DNA banks lead to tragedy

Tens of thousands of missing samples prevent police from solving crimes

Jeffrey Phelps / AP
Police say murder suspect Walter Ellis, shown in September, eluded capture for 20 years because authorities did not have his DNA on file.

Most viewed on msnbc.com

updated 5:40 p.m. ET, Mon., Dec . 14, 2009
MADISON, Wis. - During what police say was a 20-year killing spree in Milwaukee, Walter Ellis left his DNA behind all along the way — everywhere but the one place where it might have saved a life.

Ellis should have given a DNA sample to the state crime databank during a prison stint in the early part of this decade, but he had another inmate pose as him, authorities say. As a result, when analysts tried to identify DNA in bodily fluids from one of the slayings back in 2003, no matches turned up.

Investigators didn't connect Ellis to the crimes until this fall, when they seized genetic material from his toothbrush. By then, it was too late for the woman police say was Ellis' seventh and final victim.

"If they would have got his DNA when they were supposed to get it, maybe my cousin would still be here," said Sarah Stokes, whose cousin, 28-year-old prostitute Ouithreaun Stokes, was found beaten and strangled in an abandoned rooming house in 2007.

An Associated Press review found tens of thousands of DNA samples are missing from state databanks across the country because they were never taken or were lost. The missing evidence — combined with big backlogs at the nation's crime labs that result in DNA samples sitting on shelves for years without being analyzed and entered into the databanks — is preventing investigators from cracking untold numbers of cases. And some of those gaps have had tragic consequences.

"If you got missing samples, some of those people are out there raping your wives and abducting and murdering your children this week," said former Charlottesville, Va., police Capt. J.E. Harding, who helped uncover missing samples in that state during a search for a serial rapist.

Confusing laws blamed

Crime lab supervisors, state police and prison officials blame the failure to collect samples on new and confusing laws and a lack of coordination among the many different law enforcement agencies and institutions responsible for taking DNA.

"I would just about guarantee you every state has an issue with this," said Lisa Hurst, who tracks DNA convictions for Gordon Thomas Honeywell, an organization that lobbies on public safety and biotechnology issues.

The AP review found 27 states either failed to collect some DNA samples or are unable to say whether they took one from every offender who owes one.

The case against Ellis, who is set to go trial this spring, prompted an audit in Wisconsin that found 12,000 convict samples are missing. The AP review further found that Illinois failed to get DNA from about 50,000 offenders, Colorado from 2,000, and Virginia from about 8,400.

Exactly how many samples are missing across the country is unknown. The National Institute of Justice estimated in 2003 that offenders owed up to 1 million uncollected samples and as many as 300,000 samples may be waiting for processing. The backlog grew to about 450,000 by 2008. The institute had no updated estimate of uncollected samples.

Backlog at labs

At least 13 states are dealing with more samples than they can handle. Kansas, for example, has nearly 40,000 on its crime lab shelves, waiting for upload.

Police in Columbus, Ohio, say Robert N. Patton Jr. committed 37 rapes over a decade and a half. As with Ellis in Milwaukee, he could have been stopped earlier.

Patton had submitted his DNA in 2001 while behind bars for burglary, but it was not entered into the database until 2004, two days before he climbed through an apartment window and raped Diana Cunningham. Police say he attacked 13 women in all after supplying his DNA.

If Patton's genetic material "had been processed in a timely fashion, he never would have gotten to me or gotten to any of the others," said Cunningham, now 25. "It's scary how many more people are going to be victimized because their attackers aren't going to be caught. And it would be so easy for them to be caught if they could make the matches."

Patton is now serving a 68-year prison sentence.

Comment

QWhy donmt we spend some of the stimulus money to get up to date? That would create American jobs, right?

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Looking For Waste in the Health Care System? Try Anywhere

Francine Hardaway - Serial entrepreneurship veteran
Posted: December 1, 2009 12:00 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index
Looking For Waste in the Health Care System? Try Anywhere

Read More: Health Care, Maggie Mahar, Mammograms, Medicare Fraud Cost, Pharmaceutical Industry, Simivastin, Vitorian, Zetia, Living News

How much of our rising health care costs comes from fraud in the health care system by players who know how to game it for their own benefit? Enough to cloud the reform debate, that's for sure. And it can't be pinned on one player; it's up and down the value chain in medical care.

On the one hand, you have the recent 60-Minutes report on drug dealers in Miami who defraud Medicare by opening fake clinics and pharmacies. They get reimbursed for artificial limbs ordered for patients whose IDs they have bought on a black market for Medicare information.

Further up the line you have hospitals who bill Medicare for procedures that could be done in an outpatient setting where they would cost less, or for total care of a patient whose actual care is split between two hospitals, both of whom bill for the entire care. (Go look on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services web site for the Recovery Audit Contractor pilot program in which this was discovered.

And then there's the sweetheart deal the insurers got to participate in the Medicare Advantage program, which was started when CMS was afraid not enough providers would participate in Medicare. In Medicare Advantage, all the players get paid more than by regular Medicare for providing the same services. Medicare Advantage is targeted by the cost-cutting initiatives, but here's what the plans said: "many commenters contend that, if rates are reduced, MA organizations will have trouble maintaining their provider networks, because they will have to pay providers less, and will have to raise premiums, increase co-pays and deductibles, especially in rural areas, Puerto Rico, in the case of Special Needs Plans (SNPs), PACE plans, and plans that are in direct competition with cost plans."

Finally, we get to the pharmaceutical companies, where we learn that "by suppressing negative studies, relentlessly pursuing positive trial results, and paying academic researchers to promote their therapy, Merck Schering-Plough has managed to hold onto a $4.6 billion market for a drug that has never been proven to be better than cheaper generics in preventing heart attacks or death. "

That's a pretty shocking allegation from the HealthBeatBlog, where Maggie Mahar, maker of the film "Money-Driven Medicine," does her investigative work. It seems that Merck Schering-Plough holds the patents on Vitorin and Zetia, two widely advertised drugs that in studies have proven no more effective than the vitamin niacin and a generic statin, simivastin.

And this doesn't even begin to touch controversial issues like outcomes-based medicine, which might mean fewer mammograms, CT scans, and other procedures that irradiate us often unnecessarily as the doctor either tries to prevent malpractice allegations or perhaps even owns the imaging center.

Everywhere you look there is waste and downright fraud in the health care system, perpetrated by both payers and providers, public and private. I have no doubt that Obama is right that we could fund health care reform by cleaning up the waste, but the lobbyists for the staus quo don't want it cleaned up. They are profiting from waste and fraud, not from legitimate services, IMHO

Comment

cuppajoe
I would suggest that it is not all just out and out fraud. Here, in a community of about 80,000 where I currently reside, one can go to one hospital for a specific lab test, and Medicare is charged about $225.00; In a second hospital in the same basic community, the exact same test, bills Medicare approximately $80.00 for the same test.

And, to further look at this, there are an estimated 5,000 of these tests performed in this community each month; it is estimated that the more expensive hospital performs 75% of these tests. If my math is correct, 75% of 5000 is 3750. and the difference between $225. and $80 is $145.00 $145 x 3750 = $543,750 per month, or $6,525,000 per year, for one test, in one community. If these numbers apply, even remotely to the national picture, this one test, which is necessary, may well be costing Medicare more than a BILLION dollars more than it need cost.

It makes no sense to me. The test does not require the intervention of, nor the direct supervision of a physician, uses an inexpensive test strip, and one nurse can comfortably accomplish, with no rush, about 4 or 5 tests per hour. Without any degradation of nurses, is it really necessary to bill medicare approximately $1000 per hour for a nurse's time?

Loneliness can be contagious, new study finds

Feelings of isolation can spread through groups of friends as easily as a cold
Loneliness can not only make you feel more socially isolated, it can make you more anxious, more shy and cause you to believe you have poor social skills.

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By Diane Mapes
msnbc.com contributor
updated 8:40 a.m. ET, Tues., Dec . 1, 2009

We’re used to hearing about people spreading colds and flu. But according to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, there’s another human condition that’s equally contagious: loneliness.

“Loneliness spreads across time,” says John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of the study. “It travels through people. Instead of a germ, it’s transmitted through our behaviors.”

The longitudinal study, conducted by the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard, interviewed more than 5,000 people over the course of 10 years, tracking their friendship histories and their reports of loneliness. Participants were part of the Framingham Heart Study, which has studied cardiovascular risks in people in Framingham, Mass., since 1948 and has since been expanded to include other research topics such as loneliness and depression.

In the study, researchers found that lonely individuals tend to move to the fringes of social networks (and, no, we’re not talking about Facebook or Twitter here), where they have fewer and fewer friends.

But before they move to the periphery, they “infect” or “transmit” their feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends. With fewer close relationship, these friends then become lonely and eventually move to the fringes of the social network, again passing their loneliness on to others. Thus, the cycle continues.

“When people get lonely, they’re more likely to interact negatively with others they encounter,” says Cacioppo. “If you have two neighbors and they’re friends and one becomes lonely, they’ll start to treat the other less friendly. Ultimately, they’re less likely to be friends.”

Ironically, loneliness can not only make you feel more socially isolated, it can make you more anxious, more shy and cause you to believe you have poor social skills. Cacioppo says previous research also shows that loneliness can make people less trustful of others and can make the brain more “defensive.”

“Your brain tells you people are rejecting you,” he says. “Loneliness may warp the message that you’re hearing.”

A biological signal
While loneliness can be “contagious,” Cacioppo says it’s important to note it’s not a disease, nor is it a personal weakness. It’s actually a biological reaction, much like hunger or thirst or pain.

“Society tends to think of it as an individual characteristic — there are just loners,” he says. “But that’s the wrong conception of what loneliness is. It’s a biological signal motivating us to correct something that we need for genetic survival. We need quality relationships. We don’t survive well on our own.”

Studies, in fact, show loneliness can actually be harmful to both mental and physical health, leading to depression, high blood pressure, increases in the stress hormone cortisol, and compromised immunity.

Unfortunately, quality friendships can sometimes be difficult to find or maintain in our busy, BlackBerried society.

“I get lonely sometimes but I tend not to seek people out to do things because they’re all married or committed or need to find a babysitter and then it just turns into a circus,” says Tina Kurfurst, a 46-year-old database coordinator from Seattle. “I went out to dinner with some people from work the other night and one of the women kept saying, ‘Wow, you’re funny, why don’t we hang out more often?’ And I just thought, ‘Well, because you have a husband and a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old and it just doesn’t happen. You don’t have time for me.”

Stephanie Smith, a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Erie, Co., says she tries to encourage her lonely patients — which can range from college students to stay-at-home moms to high-powered CEOs — to find at least one friend in their same situation.

“If you have kids, know at least one other person who has kids,” she says. “Or if you don’t, find someone who doesn’t. It’s important to have people in your life who share your interests and your stage of life.”

But you don’t have to have a slew of BFFs.

“Sometimes people get overwhelmed and think ‘I need to have 15 best friends,’” she says. “But it doesn’t need to be that big. One friend, one relationship, can be very powerful.”

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Facebook and Twitter are no substitute for the real thing, though.

“If you’re isolated due to a disability or a spouse with Alzheimer’s, then Facebook can be a real boon,” says Cacioppo. “But if you’re spending your time on Facebook rather than face-to-face with friends, it increases your loneliness. It’s about quality. Lonely people use social networks as a substitute; non-lonely people use them to synergize the relationships they already have. The person with 4,000 friends on Facebook may well be a very lonely person.”

The secret, says Cacioppo, is realizing loneliness is nothing more than your body sending you a signal.

“All normal humans feel lonely at some point in time, just like they feel hunger and thirst and pain,” he says. “But while we have cupboards filled with food, taps for water and medications for pain, we don’t have anything comparable for loneliness. I’m not saying you need a cupboard full of friends, but if you feel lonely, pay attention and take the time to repair it.”

Comment

I cant remember who said it but somebody said they judge ones mental health by the quality and quantity of their friendships.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Advice From Grandma

Op-Ed Columnist
Advice From Grandma

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 21, 2009

President Obama’s visit to China this week inevitably invites comparisons between the world’s two leading powers. You know what they say: Britain owned the 19th century, America owned the 20th century, and, it’s all but certain that China will own the 21st century. Maybe, but I’m not ready to cede the 21st century to China just yet.

Times Topics: China -Why not? It has to do with the fact that we are moving into a hyperintegrated world in which all aspects of production — raw materials, design, manufacturing, distribution, fulfillment, financing and branding — have become commodities that can be accessed from anywhere by anyone. But there are still two really important things that can’t be commoditized. Fortunately, America still has one of them: imagination.

What your citizens imagine now matters more than ever because they can act on their own imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before — as individuals. In such a world, societies that can nurture people with the ability to imagine and spin off new ideas will thrive. The Apple iPod may be made in China, but it was dreamed up in America, and that’s where most of the profits go. America — with its open, free, no-limits, immigrant-friendly society — is still the world’s greatest dream machine.

Who would cede a century in which imagination will have such a high value to an authoritarian society that controls its Internet and jails political prisoners? Remember what Grandma used to say: Never cede a century to a country that censors Google.

But while our culture of imagination is still vibrant, the other critical factor that still differentiates countries today — and is not a commodity — is good governance, which can harness creativity. And that we may be losing. I am talking about the ability of a society’s leaders to think long term, address their problems with the optimal legislation and attract capable people into government. What I increasingly fear today is that America is only able to produce “suboptimal” responses to its biggest problems — education, debt, financial regulation, health care, energy and environment.

Why? Because at least six things have come together to fracture our public space and paralyze our ability to forge optimal solutions: 1) Money in politics has become so pervasive that lawmakers have to spend most of their time raising it, selling their souls to those who have it or defending themselves from the smallest interest groups with deep pockets that can trump the national interest.

2) The gerrymandering of political districts means politicians of each party can now choose their own voters and never have to appeal to the center.

3) The cable TV culture encourages shouting and segregating people into their own political echo chambers.

4) A permanent presidential campaign leaves little time for governing.

5) The Internet, which, at its best, provides a check on elites and establishments and opens the way for new voices and, which, at its worst provides a home for every extreme view and spawns digital lynch mobs from across the political spectrum that attack anyone who departs from their specific orthodoxy.

6) A U.S. business community that has become so globalized that it only comes to Washington to lobby for its own narrow interests; it rarely speaks out anymore in defense of national issues like health care, education and open markets.

These six factors are pushing our system, which was designed to have divided powers and to force compromises, into the realm of paralysis. To get anything big done now, we have to generate so many compromises — couched in 1,000-plus-page bills — with so many different interest groups that the solutions are totally suboptimal. We just get the sum of all interest groups.

The miniversion of this is California, which, as others have noted, is becoming America’s biggest “failed state.” Californians had hoped they could overcome their dysfunctional system by electing an outsider, a former movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He would slay the system, like the Terminator. But he couldn’t.

Mr. Obama was elected for similar reasons. People had hoped that his unique story, personality and speaking skills could bring the country together, overcome paralysis and deliver nation-building at home. A lot of the disappointment settling in among Obama voters today is prompted by their dawning realization that maybe, like Arnold, he can’t.

China’s leaders, using authoritarian means, still can. They don’t have to always settle for suboptimal. So what do we do?

The standard answer is that we need better leaders. The real answer is that we need better citizens. We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay, yes, higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble. A great power that can only produce suboptimal responses to its biggest challenges will, in time, fade from being a great power — no matter how much imagination it generates.

Grandma said that, too.

Supercomputing for the Masses

Supercomputing for the Masses

By ASHLEE VANCE
Published: November 22, 2009

PORTLAND, Ore. — For decades, the world’s supercomputers have been the tightly guarded property of universities and governments. But what would happen if regular folks could get their hands on one?

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Jaguar supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world's fastest, links thousands of mainstream chips.

The price of supercomputers is dropping quickly, in part because they are often built with the same off-the-shelf parts found in PCs, as a supercomputing conference here last week made clear. Just about any organization with a few million dollars can now buy or assemble a top-flight machine.

Meanwhile, research groups and companies like I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Intel are finding ways to make vast stores of information available online through so-called cloud computing.

These advances are pulling down the high walls around computing-intensive research. A result could be a democratization that gives ordinary people with a novel idea a chance to explore their curiosity with heavy computing firepower — and maybe find something unexpected.

The trend has spurred some of the world’s top computing experts and scientists to work toward freeing valuable stores of information. The goal is to fill big computers with scientific data and then let anyone in the world with a PC, including amateur scientists, tap into these systems.

“It’s a good call to arms,” said Mark Barrenechea, the chief executive of Silicon Graphics, which sells computing systems to labs and businesses. “The technology is there. The need is there. This could exponentially increase the amount of science done across the globe.”

The notion of top research centers sharing information is hardly new. Some of the earliest incarnations of what we now know as the World Wide Web came to life so that physicists and other scientists could tap into large data stores from afar.

In addition, universities and government labs were early advocates of what became popularized as grid computing, where shared networks were created to shuttle data about.

The current thinking, however, is that the labs can accomplish far more than was previously practical by piggybacking on some of the trends sweeping the technology industry. And, this time around, research bodies big and small, along with brainy individuals, can participate in the sharing agenda.

For inspiration, scientists are looking at cloud computing services like Google’s online office software, photo-sharing sites and Amazon.com’s data center rental program. They are trying to bring that type of Web-based technology into their labs and make it handle enormous volumes of data.

“You’ve seen these desktop applications move into the cloud,” said Pete Beckman, the director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility in Illinois. “Now science is on that same track. This helps democratize science and good ideas.”

With $32 million from the Energy Department, Argonne has set to work on Magellan, a project to explore the creation of a cloud-computing infrastructure that scientists around the globe can use. Mr. Beckman argued that such a system would reduce the need for smaller universities and labs to spend money on their own computing infrastructure.

Another benefit is that researchers would not need to spend days downloading huge data sets so that they could perform analysis on their own computers. Instead, they could send requests to Magellan and just receive the answers.

Even curious individuals on the fringe of academia may have a chance to delve into things like climate change and protein analysis.

“Some mathematician in Russia can say, ‘I have an idea,” Mr. Beckman said. “The barrier to entry is so low for him to try out that idea. So, this really broadens the number of discoverers and, hopefully, discoveries.”

The computing industry has made such a discussion possible. Historically, the world’s top supercomputers relied on expensive, proprietary components. Government laboratories paid vast sums of money to use these systems for classified projects.

But, over the last 10 years, the vital innards of supercomputers have become more mainstream, and a wide variety of organizations have bought them.

At the conference, undergraduate students competed in a contest to build affordable mini-supercomputers on the fly. And a supercomputer called Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee officially became the world’s fastest machine. It links thousands of mainstream chips from Advanced Micro Devices.

Seven of the world’s top 10 supercomputers use standard chips from A.M.D. and Intel, as do about 90 percent of the 500 fastest machines. “I think this says that supercomputing technology is affordable,” said Margaret Lewis, an A.M.D. director. “We are kind of getting away from this ivory tower.”

While Magellan and similar projects are encouraging signs, researchers have warned that much work lies ahead to free what they consider valuable information for broader analysis.

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, researchers have developed software that can evaluate scans of the brain and heart, and identify anomalies that might indicate problems. To advance such techniques, the researchers need to train their software by testing it on thousands of body scans.

But it is hard to find a repository of such scans that a hospital or a government organization like the National Institutes of Health is willing to share, even if personal information can be stripped away, said George Biros, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Medical schools don’t make this information available,” he said.

Bill Howe, a senior scientist at the eScience Institute at the University of Washington, has urged research organizations to reveal their information. “All the data that we collect in science should be accessible, and that’s just not the way it works today,” he said.

Mr. Howe said high school students and so-called citizen scientists could make new discoveries if given the chance.

“Let’s see what happens when classrooms of students explore this information,” he said.

Comment

While I agree with the basic philosophy, there will always be those that will take that information and use it in destructive ways. Some method of checks must be in place to insure that destructive consequences dont happen. Perhaps levels of security could be put into place, or something along that line of thought. The VA has done thousands of body scans over the past 15 years or so, and they have been digitalized so they could be quickly accessed and utilized. All that would remain would be copying them without the identifying information. Medical research data like that might be a good place to start. I belong to a grid computing system that researches genomic links for the cure of cancer (Rosetta@home). I leave my computer on all day while I am at work so that that data can be analyzed.

On Single-Sex Buses, Relief From Unwanted Contact

Mexico City Journal
On Single-Sex Buses, Relief From Unwanted Contact
Jennifer Szymaszek for The New York Times
Women, who complain of harassment on Mexico City’s crowded transportation system, have found a haven in restricted buses.

By MARC LACEY
Published: February 11, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Body-to-body contact is inescapable on Mexico City’s crowded public transportation system. Get on a train or a bus during rush hour and a man in a business suit may have his arm resting against your shoulder, a woman toting a bulky shopping bag may have her back pressed against your flank, and a teenager listening to an iPod may tap his sneaker all over your newly shined left shoe.

VideoMore Video » But many women complain that not all the contact is incidental. Among the 22 million passengers who use the bus and subway system daily, women say, are lecherous men taking advantage of the cheek-to-jowl conditions to leer and grope and then quietly disappear.

“There are good men in Mexico, but they’re not the ones on public transport,” said Mariana Vasquez, 30, who waited to board a bus recently on her way to a job interview at a law firm. “They try to touch you. They don’t give you a seat. Where are the gentlemen?”

One place they are not is on new women-only buses that Mexico City began running in January to reduce the harassment. With pink placards and insistent drivers who growl at any man who tries to step aboard, the buses are quickly becoming a hit among women.

“Woo-hoo!” bellowed Catalina Garduño the other day as man after man was turned away from the bus she was riding. Her outbursts animated the other women on board, who joined in the celebration. As they rolled along Paseo de la Reforma on their way home from work, the atmosphere resembled a ladies’ night on wheels.

Their relief reached beyond their escape from being accosted physically.

“We don’t get paid as much as they, yet we work just as hard,” said Ms. Garduño, a saleswoman. “We are tired of their machismo. We don’t feel sorry for them at all.”

A few rows back, Abigail Llanes, 21, expressed a similar sentiment.

“We get to sit now,” she said, beaming. “It’s great.”

As complaints of harassment have grown, Mexico has experimented over the years with various remedies. Some subway cars have been reserved for women. Some buses allow women, disabled people and those with children to use designated entrances at the front. But the new buses may be the boldest approach so far.

Men’s reactions run the gamut. Some declare the program discriminatory. Some curse at the bus drivers who leave them standing at the curb.

Plenty of men, though, say they endorse the idea.

“We have no respect,” Adolfo Flores, 30, a law student, said of the unseemly way many men treat women.

Mr. Flores was getting his shoes shined as buses passed by behind him. The shoeshine man, Esteban Hernández, 57, piped in with his own theory about the groping.

“We have the animal instinct,” he said, smiling. Touching a woman, he said, “is a way of showing masculinity — it’s very bad.”

Just how bad the abuse problem — which is raised by women in cities the world over — has become in Mexico is difficult to say. Last year, just seven women lodged official complaints of harassment on Mexico City’s buses. There are more reports of sexual incidents on the subways, with roughly one a day filed with the authorities. But Mexican officials believe those figures do not reflect the full extent of the problem.

“Most women don’t report what happens to them,” said Ariadna Montiel, who directs the public bus system, noting that as a young architecture student years ago she traveled by public transportation and experienced the harassment firsthand. “I know it’s a serious problem.”

Ms. Montiel said she had no intention of neglecting men. “We have to guarantee that all users are taken care of,” she said, adding that coed buses roll along in close proximity to the women’s buses to ensure that nobody is waiting too long.

Passengers say the atmosphere aboard women’s buses is entirely different. As the buses become more popular, and crowded, some women politely offer their seats to others. And, they say, the lechers are gone.

Still, the experiment cannot solve the underlying problem of how the sexes interact in the metropolis. Only four of the city’s bus routes have women-only buses. That number will rise to 15 in the months ahead, but coed buses will remain the rule in most areas.

To complement the single-sex buses, the Institute of Women in Mexico City, a government body that promotes opportunities for women, is pushing a public education campaign to make clear to men that inappropriate touching is illegal. In March, a new ordinance will make it easier to prosecute those found harassing women in public places.

“This is not against men,” insisted Martha Lucia Micher Camarena, the institute’s director general. “This is positive discrimination that responds to the demands of women. And it’s also for men because it protects their daughters, sisters and mothers.”

Comment

There was another article about groping on the New York subways. The obvious answer is to put some undercover cops, males and females, on these subways and buses and catch these jerks. Prosecute a dozen or so and the word will get out.

4 signs you're in retirement denial

Portfolio and home values have tanked, but you won't see that reflected in most people's retirement plans. Here's how to tell if you need a reality check.

[Related content: retirement, retire well, financial planning, debt, home prices]
By U.S. News & World Report
Optimism is good; denial isn't. When it comes to retirement plans, the evidence is overwhelming: The recession will delay retirements for millions and reduce the standard of living of many people who are, or thought they were, near retirement.

A recent Pew Research Center survey, for example, says most middle-aged Americans are thinking about altering their retirement plans. Yet despite the short-term adjustments that consumers are making -- looking for bargains, saving more -- many continue to hold expectations about retirement that experts say are simply no longer realistic.

Here are four signs that you may be in denial about how the Wall Street and housing meltdowns have changed your retirement prospects.

Find the best places to retire

1. Your retirement plans haven't changed. This is the big one, and most people are kidding themselves if this is their view. McKinsey & Co. has developed what it calls a retirement readiness index (.pdf file). It measures changes in the values of retirement assets -- Social Security, pensions and financial holdings -- to determine the financial preparedness of households for retirement.

An index value of 100 means a household can maintain its current standard of living in retirement. A reading below 80, McKinsey says, "calls for large reductions in spending on basic needs, such as housing, food, and health care." The current index reading for a typical household is 63.

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2. Your retirement age hasn't changed. Hello! McKinsey says its polling finds that only about 25% of consumers are thinking about postponing retirement. If you're in the other 75%, stop and think about what would happen to your standard of living in retirement. You don't need a retirement readiness index.

First, add up Social Security and any pensions. Next, total up any retirement accounts and other financial assets and assume conservatively that 4% of that amount is available to you each year for spending needs. How does the total compare with what you're spending now?

Some financial planners say you can live for less in retirement, but health-care expenses likely will be steeper, and if you want to travel and enjoy leisure-time activities, your spending could rise, not fall.

Retirement out of reach for many

3. Your home is still your castle. Housing values fell sharply in most markets, and many experts say it easily could take a decade for them to return to the inflation-adjusted values of 2007. Yet McKinsey found that the percentage of consumers expecting to finance their retirements by tapping the equity in their homes actually has risen.

If you retire before your mortgage does

Take a serious look at the likely equity you'll have in your home when you reach your planned retirement age. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says those trillions in lost housing values will be a drag on the economy and retirements for years.

"I remain a pessimist on the prospect for a recovery anytime soon," he says.

Your retirement could last decades. Here are tips for living well for as long as you need.

4. You expect to be debt-free in retirement. While consumers generally have held steady on debt levels in the past year, debt among baby boomers actually has been rising, according to a survey from Securian Financial.

More than 60% of nonretirees polled said they expect to have no debt other than a mortgage when they retire, and only about 20% expected to have some debt. But more than half the retirees in the survey said they carried debts, excluding mortgages, into retirement.

Likewise, less than a quarter of nonretirees believe they will still owe money on a mortgage when they retire, but twice as many people who already have retired said they were still making mortgage payments when they stopped working.

8 ways to botch your retirement

This article was reported by Philip Moeller for U.S. News & World Report.

Comment

After five years of retirement I have gone back to work part-time. The value of my house has dropped 150k and my rentals, 200k. Of course that was only paper money but it still hurts. I can easily see myself working at least part-time for the next five years or so. Its not all bad as I am in a field where there are jobs available, in pretty good health, and at the top of my game professionally, after 28 years on the job!

Seven reasons to expect a slow-growth U.S. economy ahead

Seven reasons to expect a slow-growth U.S. economy ahead
Joseph Lazzaro
Nov 22nd 2009 at 3:00PMText SizeAAAFiled under: Economy

Is the U.S. headed for a "new normal" -- a slow-growth economy that lasts perhaps for as long as a decade? The evidence supporting the new-normal argument, predicting a future in which the U.S. GDP grows at no more than 2.0% to 2.5% per year, is compelling. That low growth rate would constrain corporate revenue, earnings growth and stock prices, among other consequences.

The U.S. has already registered below-trend GDP growth at this recovery's start -- just 3.5% in the third quarter, versus the more than 6% GDP growth typically registered in an expansion's initial stage. Here's why the slow-growth conditions might continue:

Housing sector doldrums: The massive overbuilding and the subsequent bust mean it will take at least another year to work off excess inventories in single-family homes, condos, co-ops, etc. Further, slumping prices will cause some families who would typically trade-up to stay put -- eliminating additional sector activity. As a result, housing won't be as strong a growth engine as it has been during previous expansions.

Frugal consumers: Americans are in the midst of making up for a decade of unsustainable overconsumption -- spending fueled in many cases by debt -- by increasing their savings. Currently, Americans are saving at about a 3% annual rate, but it did approach 5% earlier in the year. Also, asset declines in stock portfolios and homes are further impressing upon Americans the need to save: People have realized that they can't count on their 401(k) or their home appreciation being quite as large bonanzas as they had hoped for. Because consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of the U.S. economy, a sustained reduction in consumption will weigh on GDP growth.

Demographics: The U.S. population is aging, and its largest segment, the post-World War II baby boom generation, is starting to retire. That implies even less consumer spending, as adults typically decrease spending in their retirement years.

Export traffic jam: In general, U.S. multinational corporations are well-positioned for the next global economic expansion from the standpoints of product quality and distribution networks. The problem is, so are are many of their foreign-based competitors. Moreover, dozens of formidable emerging-market nations have export-dominant economies: They must export to grow. Hence, the current global expansion will probably feature a surplus of goods (at least initially) and intense competition. That's likely to keep U.S. export revenue below what it would be without those surplus goods, limiting the tailwind from exports to U.S. GDP.

U.S. budget deficit reduction: Spending for the bank bailout, related financial system measures and the fiscal stimulus package will have to repaid at some point. So will spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which currently totals $934 billion, not counting interest. Health-care reform will limit entitlement spending growth in Medicare and Medicaid, but additional spending cuts and tax increases will be needed, and more resources will be removed from the private sector. Net result? Historically, tax increases have constrained U.S. GDP growth.

Workforce reduction: The current recession has resulted in the loss of more than 7.6 million jobs, and more than 15 million Americans are looking for work. Basically, current nonfarm payrolls are about at the level they were in early 2000. The nation needs to create 100,000 to 125,000 jobs each month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Further, even assuming a return to 200,000 to 225,000 monthly gains in jobs -- and that's a big assumption, given current demand conditions -- it would take the nation more than six years to replace all of the jobs lost so far during this recession. That suggests the U.S. will not nearly have the demand characteristics of previous expansions, with constrained household formation another damper on GDP growth.

Wage stagnation: The aforementioned slack in the labor force -- and the competition from lower-cost production centers abroad -- has led to another problematic trend: stagnant wages in many U.S. job segments. Simply, if this trend continues, it does not bode well for consumer spending.

Two Rays of Hope

PIMCO's Bill Gross, who heads the world's largest bond fund, has forecast a new era -- a period of "capitalism with limits" that will feature lower returns on equity, lower GDP growth and reduced job creation. He's not the only one forecasting a mild, U-shaped economic recovery.

Is there any chance that the U.S. can avoid this slow-growth future? What factors might counterbalance those mentioned above and enable the country to experience robust GDP growth again -- say, 6% in the expansion's initial stage, and above 3% thereafter? That's a good question. No economists have 6% initial expansion-stage forecasts out there now, but the key to achieving strong growth lies in the appearance of a domestic catalyst – a growth engine that really adds to job creation. Green technology holds promise, but it's not likely to create millions of new jobs, at least not initially.

However, two historical precedents -- macroeconomic "rays of light," if you will -- present counterarguments to the slow-growth forecast.

First, the U.S. economy has never fallen into a double-dip recession after an 18-month downturn.

Second, historically, once momentum has begun to increase in the U.S. economy, the economy has kept accelerating until the Fed "took the punch bowl away," i.e., until it increased short-term interest rates (and in the post-financial crisis era, that will include removing quantitative easing funds). This suggests that, as long as the Fed keeps interest rates low and quantitative easing in place, it will at least create conditions that are ripe for an increase in demand and commercial activity. Whether that increase in demand appears remains an open question.

Financial editor Joseph Lazzaro is writing a book on the U.S. presidency and the U.S. economy.

9 Car-Care Myths You Should Ignore

A reality check on car-care myths
By the Editors of Consumer Reports

Bing: Common Myths of Car Care
Read: The Truth About No-Cost Maintenance
Consumer Reports: Save Hundreds on Auto Service

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's not what you don't know that can come back to bite you; it's what you know for sure that ain't true. When it comes to maintaining your car, misconceptions abound. And even the best intentions can lead you to spend more money than necessary or even compromise your safety. Here are common myths that can do more harm than good:

Myth: Engine oil should be changed every 3,000 miles.
Reality: Despite what oil companies and quick-lube shops often claim, it's usually not necessary. Stick to the service intervals in your car's owner's manual. Under normal driving conditions, most vehicles are designed to go 7,500 miles or more between oil changes. Changing oil more often doesn't hurt the engine, but it can cost you a lot of extra money. Automakers often recommend 3,000-mile intervals for severe driving conditions, such as constant stop-and-go driving, frequent trailer-towing, mountainous terrain, or dusty conditions.

Myth: Inflate tires to the pressure shown on the tire's sidewall.
Reality: The pounds-per-square-inch figure on the side of the tire is the maximum pressure that the tire can safely hold, not the automaker's recommended pressure, which provides the best balance of braking, handling, gas mileage, and ride comfort. That figure is usually found on a doorjamb sticker, in the glove box, or on the fuel-filler door. Perform a monthly pressure check when tires are cold or after the car has been parked for a few hours.

Myth: If the brake fluid is low, topping it off will fix the problem.
Reality: As brake pads wear, the level in the brake-fluid reservoir drops a bit. That helps you monitor brake wear. If the fluid level drops to or below the Low mark on the reservoir, then either your brakes are worn out or fluid is leaking. Either way, get the brake system serviced immediately. You should also get a routine brake inspection when you rotate the tires, about every 6,000 to 7,000 miles.

Myth: If regular-grade fuel is good, premium must be better.
Reality: Most vehicles run just fine on regular-grade (87 octane) fuel. Using premium in these cars won't hurt, but it won't improve performance, either. A higher-octane number simply means that the fuel is less prone to pre-ignition problems, so it's often specified for hotter running, high-compression engines. So if your car is designed for 87-octane fuel, don't waste money on premium.

Myth: Flush the coolant with every oil change.
Reality: Radiator coolant doesn't need to be replaced very often. Most owner's manuals recommend changing the coolant every five years or 60,000 miles. Of course, if the level in the coolant reservoir is chronically low, check for a leak and get service as soon as possible.

Myth: After a jump-start, your car will soon recharge the battery.
Reality: It could take hours of driving to restore a battery's full charge, especially in the winter. That's because power accessories, such as heated seats, draw so much electricity that in some cars the alternator has little left over to recharge a run-down battery. A"load test" at a service station can determine whether the battery can still hold a charge. If so, some hours on a battery charger might be needed to revive the battery to its full potential.

Myth: Let your engine warm up for several minutes before driving.
Reality: That might have been good advice for yesteryear's cars but is less so today. Modern engines warm up more quickly when they're driven. And the sooner they warm up, the sooner they reach maximum efficiency and deliver the best fuel economy and performance. But don't rev the engine high over the first few miles while it's warming up.

Myth: A dealership must perform regular maintenance to keep your car's factory warranty valid.
Reality: As long as the maintenance items specified in the vehicle owner's manual are performed on schedule, the work can be done at any auto-repair shop. If you're knowledgeable, you can even do the work yourself. Just keep accurate records and receipts to back you up in case of a warranty dispute on a future repair.

Myth: Dishwashing and laundry detergents make a good car wash.
Reality: Detergent can strip off a car's wax finish. Instead, use a car-wash liquid, which is formulated to clean without removing wax

Government wants faster airport screening

In test, travelers cut average waiting time from 10 minutes to 3

Getty Images The Big Apple
Long referred to as the center of American business, New York is a melting pot of cultures and landscapes. Take a visual tour of some of the Big Apple’s most famous attractions.

Lonely Planet Images National spectacles
Nearly 400 national parks can be found all across America, and feature breathtaking vistas, rock formations millions of years old, and more.

Flight attendant jets from gray to gorgeous
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updated 5:54 p.m. ET, Thurs., Nov . 19, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department wants to expand speedy screening of preapproved, low-risk air travelers arriving in the United States to most international airports in the country.

For more than a year, the department has been testing this program at seven airports across the country and found that participating travelers cut their average waiting time to be screened from 10 minutes to three.

The voluntary program, called Global Entry, would be open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents at least 14 years old. They would have to pay a $100 fee and undergo a background check. If accepted into the program, they can go through expedited screening when they fly into the United States. Ultimately, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a homeland security agency, plans to expand the program to include foreign travelers whose countries have an acceptable prescreening process. For instance, people from the Netherlands who are part of that country's Privium program have been accepted into the pilot program.

The program will begin at seven airports testing the pilot program and expand to most major international airports. The seven are New York's Kennedy, Houston's George Bush, Washington's Dulles, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, Chicago's O'Hare, Los Angeles International and Miami International.

The program allows registered participants to use a self-service kiosk to report their arrival, scan their passport or permanent residency card, submit their fingerprints for biometric verification and make a declaration at the touch-screen kiosk. The kiosk then takes a digital photograph of the traveler as part of the transaction record, issues a receipt and directs the traveler to baggage claim and the exit. Global Entry participants may still be selected randomly by customs officers for additional screening at any time in the process.

The Homeland Security Department published the proposed rule in Thursday's Federal Register. The public has until Jan. 19 to comment on the proposal.

Used shoes take giant steps in poor countries

Ill. woman's charity has been putting footwear on needy kids for 10 years
Mona Purdy, founder and executive director of Share Your Soles, straightens rows of shoes at her warehouse in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, Ill., on Nov. 5.

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updated 6:23 p.m. ET, Sun., Nov . 15, 2009
ALSIP, Ill. - Mona Purdy, a Chicago hairdresser, has seen what a pair of used shoes can do to change the lives of poor children.

At a Jamaican orphanage, girls suffering from deformities and burns couldn't believe the shoes Purdy had given them were theirs to keep.

"They had not had Christmas, ever. Christmas was giving them these used shoes in March," said Purdy, the founder of the charity, Share Your Soles, her voice cracking with emotion.

"I'm thinking, 'I shouldn't be here. I should be home with my kids.' After I saw these kids I realized I am so supposed to be here."

The impetus for the charity began 10 years ago when Purdy participated in a race in Guatemala, where local children put hot tar on the bottom of their feet and ran along the side of rocky course.

It was fortified when she learned that in many countries having shoes is a prerequisite for attending schools, and how walking in bare feet can cause injuries and infections that can lead to amputation.

"It blew my mind. I didn't know kids didn't have shoes anywhere," said Purdy, a divorced mother of three, recalling what led her to start the charity in her suburban Chicago home.

Sandals to gym shoes

With more and more shoes being donated, it later moved to bigger warehouses and expanded to more countries with the help of donated space and shipping.

Now volunteers from all walks of life help sort the footwear that arrives in bags, boxes and barrels at the 400,000-square-foot warehouse in Alsip, Ill., from shoe drives and drop-off centers across the U.S.

Elegant sandals, sturdy hiking boots, gym shoes and tiny baby shoes are cleaned or polished and sent to countries such as Uganda, Peru and Lithuania.

"If you see anything that you have to think twice about throw it out," Purdy told high school volunteers recently, emphazing the importance of respecting the dignity of the shoe recipients.

The students are taught to sort the footwear — snow boots go to American Indian reservations in South Dakota, rubber boots are destined for people scavenging garbage dumps in Haiti and slip-on water shoes are headed for the Amazon.

Soccer cleats go everywhere.

"I'm trying to teach these kids that if you do something small you won't save someone's life, but you can change someone's life," Purdy said.

Mona Purdy
Mona Purdy poses with a boy in Haiti who got two pairs of used shoes through Purdy’s Share Your Soles charity.

Taking baby steps

Collecting and distributing 900,000 pairs of used shoes over the past decade has changed Purdy's life. She is now the executive director of a charity which has no religious or government affiliation and has helped the needy in at least 29 countries and several U.S. states.

She has resorted to bribes in some countries to ensure the shoes aren't sold, been infected with parasites and suffered from fevers. But whatever adversity she encountered, it has been diminished by the joy she witnessed.

At an all-boys orphanage in Ecuador, even a mismarked box of girls shoes was welcomed.

"The boys were so happy that they got some shoes even though they were little girls' leather school shoes. Some had straps and little bows on them," she explained.

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With the 10-year anniversary of Share Your Soles behind her, Purdy would like to become a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. She also wants to apply for federal grants to bolster the charity's $975,000 annual budget.

"It might begin with shoes," she said. "But it doesn't end there."

Cmment

In my recent move from my 4-3 house to my apt. I discovered I have accumulated 50 or 60 shoes, over the years, most of which could be donated if I knew where to send them.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

U.S., Mexico align against brutal narcotics trade

After long era of mistrust, nations merge training, intelligence, technology

Guillermo Arias / AP file
Police officers examine a patrol truck struck by bullets after a shooting between gunmen and police in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sept. 30.

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By William Booth and Steve Fainaru

updated 3:35 a.m. ET, Sun., Nov . 22, 2009
MEXICO CITY - To avenge the arrest of their leader, Mexican drug cartel commandos went on a rampage this summer across the lawless state of Michoacan, seizing 12 Mexican police officers and dumping their bound and stripped corpses in a pile beside a busy highway.

The slaughtered federal agents, it later emerged, had something in common: All had been vetted and trained by the U.S. government to work alongside its anti-narcotics agents. Officials said the American connection made them high-value targets for the cartels, which are lashing back ruthlessly against a military crackdown involving unprecedented cooperation between the two countries.

After decades of mistrust and sometimes betrayal, Mexican and U.S. authorities are increasingly setting aside their differences to unite against a common enemy. According to interviews in Washington and Mexico City, the two countries are sharing sensitive intelligence and computer technology, military hardware and, perhaps most importantly, U.S. know-how to train and vet Mexican agents. Police and soldiers secretly on the cartels' payroll have long poisoned efforts at cross-border cooperation against some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations.

"The recognition by both sides, at the highest levels, that we have a shared responsibility for drug trafficking and serious crime in Mexico is a watershed change," said John Feeley, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

The newly robust partnership is still risky, uneasy and freighted with old suspicions. U.S. law enforcement officials said it is being forged with the assurance by the U.S. State Department that Mexico's weak law enforcement agencies will overcome a history of incompetence and corruption, and that the closed ranks of the Mexican military, which operates with virtual impunity, can get past its hostility to outsiders.

A gamble
U.S. officials also acknowledge that the growing cooperation is still a gamble. With their almost limitless resources, drug traffickers have corrupted top crime fighters in President Felipe Calderón's administration, including the head of the attorney general's organized-crime unit. A cartel spy penetrated the Interpol office here and claims to have worked inside the U.S. Embassy to steal secrets from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The new relationship goes well beyond, and builds upon, the Merida Initiative, the $1.4 billion U.S. anti-narcotics package to Mexico launched by the Bush administration. That three-year agreement includes the promise of Black Hawk helicopters, night-vision goggles and gamma-ray scanners to search for guns and cash at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But now, for the first time, the U.S. and Mexican armed forces regularly exchange classified intelligence in real time, often through Mexican officers embedded at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs and at an interagency task force in Key West, Fla. The task force, which is responsible for military satellite and maritime surveillance over the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, relays information to the Mexican navy and air force to interdict drugs moving north.

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‘This will make us proactive’

In addition, Mexican technicians are using U.S. government software to help build Platform Mexico, a computer network housed in a new five-story bunker at the edge of Mexico City. When the facility opens next week, the network will connect Mexican authorities with U.S. law enforcement databases. The most useful information, such as traces of weapons used in crimes, is being translated into Spanish.

"This is one of our most important reforms because if you don't have the intelligence, the information, you are just reacting. This will make us proactive," said José Francisco Niembro González, director of Platform Mexico.

While hardware and technology are important, senior officials in both governments describe the vetting program as the linchpin for their new levels of information sharing. Under an agreement with the Mexican government, U.S. agencies administer lie-detector tests and background checks for hundreds of Mexican agents now working with U.S. counterparts. These vetted units, which include elements in the Mexican military, are cleared to receive U.S. intelligence, including access to undercover agents and confidential informants.

The murder of the 12 agents in Michoacan represents the deadliest attack against the Mexican federal police in the modern era. The officers were ambushed just as they were about to launch an operation against a leader of La Familia, one of Mexico's newest and most violent drug mafias. Instead, in the middle of the night, 20 heavily armed men, dressed in stolen uniforms and impersonating federal officers, burst into their rented house and kidnapped them.

The Mexican agents were betrayed by local residents and captured by the trafficker they sought, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez-Martinez, who then ordered the 12 officers executed, according to an account given to The Washington Post by Ramon Eduardo Pequeno, a top official in the federal police who commanded the slain agents.

These were not the first federal police officers vetted by the United States to have been assassinated by traffickers, said a U.S. source familiar with the program. But U.S. and Mexican officials remain convinced of its effectiveness.

Key assets in fight
Last month, vetted Mexican agents provided information that helped lead to the arrest of more than 300 U.S.-based suppliers for La Familia, according to U.S. officials.

"I would take an oath in court that those vetted units have been the key to a number of arrests in Mexico and the United States," said Anthony Placido, the DEA's chief of intelligence. "What it's basically enabled us to do is play Ping-Pong: They share information with us, we share it with them, and we all use it to make cases. We arrest people and flip them, and then pass information down to them."

Prosecutors say that Mexican traffickers fear life sentences in U.S. prisons more than death.

Mexican authorities are now arresting their own citizens in drug trafficking cases developed by the U.S. Justice Department and transferring defendants north for trial -- which would have been seen as an unthinkable breach of Mexican sovereignty just a few years ago. Mexico has extradited a record 284 defendants for prosecution in the United States over the past three years, fulfilling a treaty obligation that was ignored until Calderón took office in December 2006.

The reputed leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cárdenas, was flown to Houston in shackles in 2007. This summer his trial was abruptly cancelled without explanation, as rumors swirl that Cárdenas, known as "the Killer of Friends," cut a deal with the DEA to provide information.

Desperate for more agents on the street
As the drug wars rage, leaving more than 16,000 dead in three years, the United States and Mexico are desperate to get more federal agents on the streets. By spring, the two governments hope to graduate more than 10,000 cadets from a new U.S.-funded training academy in San Luis Potosi.

The cadets are required to complete a seven-week crash course in basic detective work taught by instructors from the United States, Canada and Colombia working alongside Mexican agents.

The academy recruits college graduates, and classrooms and firing ranges on the manicured campus are filled with young lawyers, engineers, biochemists and computer scientists who study a curriculum developed by retired FBI agents and taught by active-duty officers borrowed from the Secret Service, DEA, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"Our new training will create a new, better federal police force with new values," said Mauricio Sanchez Rincon, 23, who has a college degree in computer science and is one of the 3,259 fresh-faced cadets. "Those values are discipline, respect, and honesty. That's going to be important in convincing people they can have faith in us, that they can approach us and not be afraid."

U.S. and Mexican officials trace the change in the relationship to Calderón, who put the Mexican army in charge of fighting the drug war and approached the Bush administration with the proposal for a partnership that became the Merida Initiative.

For the first time, the Mexican navy participated in joint military exercises with the United States earlier this year. Frank Mora, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemispheric affairs, said the military-to-military cooperation has expanded to include counternarcotics, intelligence analysis and helicopter pilot training.

"It's not just the Mexicans needing us," he said. "It is us needing the Mexicans."

Comment

Apparently there are elements of the Mexican drug gangs all over the USA. We will be far more effective with the help of the Mexican government.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Fired therapist: Stressed Marines got bad care

Fired therapist: Stressed Marines got bad care
Camp Lejeune patients had to use trailers near live-fire training exercises

Jim R. Bounds / AP
Dr. Kernan Manion was fired after he complained about conditions for his patients at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.
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updated 1:22 p.m. ET, Sat., Nov . 21, 2009
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist.

The eight trailers were used for nearly two years, until a permanent clinic was completed in September in another location on the base, said a Camp Lejeune medical spokesman, Navy Lt. Mark Jean-Pierre.

The noise from training exercises "shook me up real bad. I couldn't take it. I almost ran out of there a couple of times," said a Marine patient who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media. "My mind couldn't focus on the treatment. I couldn't tell the difference between the combat zone and the non-combat zone."

The allegations became public after the dismissal of Dr. Kernan Manion, a civilian psychiatrist who says he was fired for writing memos to his military superiors complaining of shoddy care of Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a condition that can make patients jumpy, fearful of loud noises and prone to flashbacks.

"These guys are saying, 'I'm fried and I can't get out,'" Manion said in an interview. Referring to the Fort Hood shooting rampage in which an Army psychiatrist who counseled PTSD victims allegedly killed 13 people earlier this month, he said: "Is there potential for another blowup? Yes, indeed."

In e-mails shown to The Associated Press, Manion complained, among other things, that the military was not dealing with PTSD properly and that the trailers were infested with bugs and noisy.

"Given that PTSD is the most frequent diagnostic group we see, one would question the sense of locating a clinic in such close proximity to the booming of bombs that shake the trailer, the ratta-tat-tat of machine gun fire and the almost daily occurrence of grunts yelling war cries," Manion wrote.

In an interview with AP, Manion said the military should have rented a building off base.

Manion was fired in September after working for eight months for a company that has a contract with the military to provide mental health care on the North Carolina base. He said that when he asked the contractor why he was being fired, he was told it was ordered by the Navy.

Tom Greene, a regional manager with the contractor, Spectrum Healthcare Resources, said in an e-mail statement to the doctor that Manion "did not meet the government's requirements in accordance with the contract." Greene offered no specifics and did not respond to e-mails seeking further comment.

Review said to be in works
The inspector general for the Navy's Bureau of Medicine is reviewing the allegations of inadequate care, a military official said Friday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it.

Jean-Pierre said artillery fire can be heard nearly everywhere on the 240-square-mile (620-square-kilometer) base, which has 80 live-fire ranges.

In an e-mail, the spokesman said: "We are confident that our medical services are of the highest quality." He would not comment directly on why Manion was fired, but said that civilian doctors have to adapt to the "rapid evaluation and short-term treatment" that the military offers.

Three of Manion's patients told the AP that being so close to the sounds of gunfire made it hard to concentrate and made them jumpy and nervous. The patients, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to media, said they were making progress and were shocked when Manion was fired. All three patients said they trusted Manion after months of treatment and now found it hard to get help from other doctors.

Manion, 59, has 25 years of experience as a psychiatrist with a specialty in traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

He told the AP his Marine patients told him they were ostracized and sometimes punished by superiors for seeking treatment. He said one unit at the base made all of its soldiers suffering from PTSD sit in a room and read infantry manuals.

"How do we help a guy make sense of all that and heal from that when the Marine Corps is saying to get treatment means you're weak?" Manion said.