Favorite Quotes:
…..From a movie: “A flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all” Mulan
…..From my Dad: “Those of us with common sense must realize it’s not so common.”
…..From Grandpa: “The flexibility of your adaptability is the measure of your intelligence.”
…..From a good friend: “Those of you looking for a perfect “10” should make sure you aren’t a “2”.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
finger length - related to higher math/spatial for ring finger longer, language for index longer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance
Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance LiveScience Staff
LiveScience.com
Wed May 23, 1:25 AM ET
A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.
Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.
Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.
Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger.
To test the link to children's scores on the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (for which the name has changed a number of times in the past 100 years), Brosnan and his colleagues made photocopies of children's palms and measured the length of their index and ring fingers using calipers accurate to 0.01 millimeters. They used the finger-length ratios as a proxy for the levels of testosterone and estrogen exposure.
The researchers then looked at boys' and girls' test performances separately and compared them to finger-length ratio measurements. They found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, indicated by the longer index finger compared to the ring finger, and higher scores on the math SAT.
Similarly, they found higher literacy SAT scores for the girls among those who had lower prenatal testosterone exposure, as indicated by a shorter ring finger compared with the index finger.
The researchers also compared the finger-lengths ratios to all the children's SAT scores and found that a relatively longer ring finger—indicating greater prenatal exposure to testosterone—meant a wider gap in scores for math versus literacy (writing and critical reading).
"Finger ratio provides us with an interesting insight into our innate abilities in key cognitive areas," Brosnan said, in a prepared statement. The results will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the British Journal of Psychology.
In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia
Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance LiveScience Staff
LiveScience.com
Wed May 23, 1:25 AM ET
A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.
Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.
Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.
Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger.
To test the link to children's scores on the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (for which the name has changed a number of times in the past 100 years), Brosnan and his colleagues made photocopies of children's palms and measured the length of their index and ring fingers using calipers accurate to 0.01 millimeters. They used the finger-length ratios as a proxy for the levels of testosterone and estrogen exposure.
The researchers then looked at boys' and girls' test performances separately and compared them to finger-length ratio measurements. They found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, indicated by the longer index finger compared to the ring finger, and higher scores on the math SAT.
Similarly, they found higher literacy SAT scores for the girls among those who had lower prenatal testosterone exposure, as indicated by a shorter ring finger compared with the index finger.
The researchers also compared the finger-lengths ratios to all the children's SAT scores and found that a relatively longer ring finger—indicating greater prenatal exposure to testosterone—meant a wider gap in scores for math versus literacy (writing and critical reading).
"Finger ratio provides us with an interesting insight into our innate abilities in key cognitive areas," Brosnan said, in a prepared statement. The results will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the British Journal of Psychology.
In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia
Monday, May 21, 2007
Flip Your Body's Fat-Burning Switch - teach body that storing fat is ineffecient - short bursts of exercise
Flip Your Body's Fat-Burning Switch
Truth is, I have had more success with my patients by using a single exercise strategy than I've seen with all the dieting and supplement strategies combined. If you're a regular ETR reader, you've heard me talk about this strategy before: Exercise in short bursts. By exercising this way, you can burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish. Even while you sleep.
This type of exercise teaches your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient. Fat is a low-energy, slow-release fuel. It's not good for providing you with quick high energy. So if you don't exert yourself long enough to make good use of your stored fat during your actual exercise routine, your body gives it up afterward, during the recovery period.
You can use any number of exercises to turn your body into an automatic fat burner. The only rule is that the activity has to use enough muscle mass to challenge the rate at which you're using energy. I like bicycling and swimming, because they're low-impact and don't have as much risk of injuries as high-impact exercises like jogging. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness.
Here's how to get started:
Perform a light warm-up and stretch before each exercise session.
Begin with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day.)
Exercise at an easy pace at first, and increase it gradually.
As your fitness improves, increase the intensity of each session.
After a few weeks, break each session into two short bursts of exercise - two six-minute sets separated by six minutes of focused recovery at a gentle easy pace.
Eventually, you can go with even briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.
The most common error people make is assuming you must work at a higher level of perceived exertion to get results. This is not true. The point is to start with what is a comfortable level of exertion for you. Then, as that level of activity gets easier, you focus on increasing the level or resistance of the activity rather than the duration.
Truth is, I have had more success with my patients by using a single exercise strategy than I've seen with all the dieting and supplement strategies combined. If you're a regular ETR reader, you've heard me talk about this strategy before: Exercise in short bursts. By exercising this way, you can burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish. Even while you sleep.
This type of exercise teaches your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient. Fat is a low-energy, slow-release fuel. It's not good for providing you with quick high energy. So if you don't exert yourself long enough to make good use of your stored fat during your actual exercise routine, your body gives it up afterward, during the recovery period.
You can use any number of exercises to turn your body into an automatic fat burner. The only rule is that the activity has to use enough muscle mass to challenge the rate at which you're using energy. I like bicycling and swimming, because they're low-impact and don't have as much risk of injuries as high-impact exercises like jogging. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness.
Here's how to get started:
Perform a light warm-up and stretch before each exercise session.
Begin with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day.)
Exercise at an easy pace at first, and increase it gradually.
As your fitness improves, increase the intensity of each session.
After a few weeks, break each session into two short bursts of exercise - two six-minute sets separated by six minutes of focused recovery at a gentle easy pace.
Eventually, you can go with even briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.
The most common error people make is assuming you must work at a higher level of perceived exertion to get results. This is not true. The point is to start with what is a comfortable level of exertion for you. Then, as that level of activity gets easier, you focus on increasing the level or resistance of the activity rather than the duration.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
simple motto to live by
Live Simply, Love Generously, Care Deeply,
Speak Kindly, Leave the Rest to God
Speak Kindly, Leave the Rest to God
Create black amazonian soil "terra Preta". and sequester Carbon ! "Slash and Char' not Slash and Burn'
Amazonian Terra Preta Can Transform Poor Soil Into Fertile
Science Daily — The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe's richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil -- known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming. That's because terra preta is loaded with so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal.
"The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate," said Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today (Feb. 18) at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the first author of the 2003 book "Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management," the first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that the super-fertile soil was produced thousands of years ago by indigenous populations using slash-and-char methods instead of slash-and-burn. Terra preta was studied for the first time in 1874 by Cornell Professor Charles Hartt.
Whereas slash-and-burn methods use open fires to reduce biomass to ash, slash-and-char uses low-intensity smoldering fires covered with dirt and straw, for example, which partially exclude oxygen.
Slash-and-burn, which is commonly used in many parts of the world to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils.
"The result is that about 50 percent of the biomass carbon is retained," Lehmann said. "By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."
In addition, many biofuel production methods, such as generating bioenergy from agricultural, fish and forestry waste, produce bio-char as a byproduct. "The global importance of a bio-char sequestration as a byproduct of the conversion of biomass to bio-fuels is difficult to predict but is potentially very large," he added.
Applying the knowledge of terra preta to contemporary soil management also can reduce environmental pollution by decreasing the amount of fertilizer needed, because the bio-char helps retain nitrogen in the soil as well as higher levels of plant-available phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and organic matter. The black soil also does not get depleted, as do other soils, after repeated use.
"In other words, producing and applying bio-char to soil would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production, but also could provide a novel approach to establishing a significant, long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Lehmann. He noted that what is being learned from terra preta also can help farmers prevent agricultural runoff, promote sustained fertility and reduce input costs.
======================
Many scientists have studied the Amazonian dark soils known as the Terra Preta and many have gained amazing knowledge from it such as restoration of degraded or poor soils, improvement of crop yields and ability to improve crop-site suitability, and most recently, technologies that may address climate change through carbon sequestration.
According to Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University and author of the 2003 book Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management the book that gives a first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that Terra Preta soils have been produced thousands of years ago by residents of the Amazon who used slash-and-char methods of arming rather than the present slash-and-burn. Slash-and-char uses low-intensity fires covered with dirt and straw, instead of open fire slash-and-burn.
Scientists claim that slash-and-char reduces green house gas release while slash-and-burn produces a lot of green house gases. Professor Lehmann said that the slash-and-char technology has sequestered huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years. What happens is that about 50% of the biomass carbon is retained thus making this technique a longer and more significant carbon sink than other options, say long-term forestry (but I believe that only based on carbon dioxide "sequestered" and not additional benefits).
Professor Lehmann further says that "we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."
=================
Science Daily — The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of gold mine: some of the globe's richest soil that can transform poor soil into highly fertile ground.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil -- known as terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- and say it can pull substantial amounts of carbon out of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming. That's because terra preta is loaded with so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal.
"The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate," said Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today (Feb. 18) at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the first author of the 2003 book "Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management," the first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that the super-fertile soil was produced thousands of years ago by indigenous populations using slash-and-char methods instead of slash-and-burn. Terra preta was studied for the first time in 1874 by Cornell Professor Charles Hartt.
Whereas slash-and-burn methods use open fires to reduce biomass to ash, slash-and-char uses low-intensity smoldering fires covered with dirt and straw, for example, which partially exclude oxygen.
Slash-and-burn, which is commonly used in many parts of the world to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils.
"The result is that about 50 percent of the biomass carbon is retained," Lehmann said. "By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."
In addition, many biofuel production methods, such as generating bioenergy from agricultural, fish and forestry waste, produce bio-char as a byproduct. "The global importance of a bio-char sequestration as a byproduct of the conversion of biomass to bio-fuels is difficult to predict but is potentially very large," he added.
Applying the knowledge of terra preta to contemporary soil management also can reduce environmental pollution by decreasing the amount of fertilizer needed, because the bio-char helps retain nitrogen in the soil as well as higher levels of plant-available phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and organic matter. The black soil also does not get depleted, as do other soils, after repeated use.
"In other words, producing and applying bio-char to soil would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production, but also could provide a novel approach to establishing a significant, long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Lehmann. He noted that what is being learned from terra preta also can help farmers prevent agricultural runoff, promote sustained fertility and reduce input costs.
======================
Many scientists have studied the Amazonian dark soils known as the Terra Preta and many have gained amazing knowledge from it such as restoration of degraded or poor soils, improvement of crop yields and ability to improve crop-site suitability, and most recently, technologies that may address climate change through carbon sequestration.
According to Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University and author of the 2003 book Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management the book that gives a first comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that Terra Preta soils have been produced thousands of years ago by residents of the Amazon who used slash-and-char methods of arming rather than the present slash-and-burn. Slash-and-char uses low-intensity fires covered with dirt and straw, instead of open fire slash-and-burn.
Scientists claim that slash-and-char reduces green house gas release while slash-and-burn produces a lot of green house gases. Professor Lehmann said that the slash-and-char technology has sequestered huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years. What happens is that about 50% of the biomass carbon is retained thus making this technique a longer and more significant carbon sink than other options, say long-term forestry (but I believe that only based on carbon dioxide "sequestered" and not additional benefits).
Professor Lehmann further says that "we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char."
=================
The Worst Career Advice Parents Can Offer
The Worst Career Advice Parents Can Offer
by Penelope Trunk
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 12:00AM
For many young people today, the most trusted source of career advice is their parents. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are giving a lot of misguided advice to their kids.
Today's workplace is very different from the one baby boomers navigated. But often they don't realize that, and think the "classic" advice still applies. It doesn't. Here are the five worst pieces of advice that parents dole out:
1. Get a graduate degree
It used to be that people went to graduate school as a surefire way to achieve the American Dream. Today, graduate school generally makes young people less employable, not more employable.
For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities have little chance of getting a tenured teaching job.
And when it comes to an MBA, the value of the degree plummets if it's not from a top school, even though the cost of the degree continues to skyrocket. So instead of opening doors for you, the degree in many ways forces you to settle for a job that pays well enough to pay back your student loans.
Law school results in one of the few graduate degrees that can make you more employable. Unfortunately, it makes you more employable in a profession in which people are unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, while law practice rewards good sales skills.
This dichotomy, combined with the reality that practicing law isn't all that glamorous, means that law school should be something you do only if you're driven to -- it's not the safety net indecisive career seekers wish it was.
2. Don't job hop
The advice parents give about job hopping comes from the days when human resources people were in charge of job interviews, and hiring managers ruled the world. But today, job hopping is standard. Most people will have eight jobs before they turn 30, and that's a good thing.
Young candidates these days have more power than interviewers because there's a shortage of people to fill entry-level jobs. Unemployment among the college educated is less than 2 percent, young people routinely have more than one job offer, and 70 percent of hiring managers say they feel like they need to convince candidates to take their jobs. Clearly, this is a time when young people are in charge.
Job hoppers are bad for companies because high turnover is expensive, but switching jobs a lot is very good for employees. It builds skills faster, constructs a network more effectively, and helps you figure out what you like and what you don't like. Most important, regularly switching jobs helps you maintain passion in your career -- which, in the end, benefits companies as much as it benefits the passionate workers cycling through them.
3. Don't ask about time off until you have the job
Everyone has a personal life that exists separately from their job. You can't schedule your cousin's bar mitzvah around a product launch, and you can't clear your calendar before you take a new job.
So when you're figuring out which job to take, be upfront about what sort of time you expect to be taking for yourself. If you want Tuesdays off for kickboxing class, then say so. If you have a vacation planned for two weeks after the proposed start date, then say that. Some jobs have unmovable start dates, and sometimes your personal life will preclude taking a job.
That's OK. Why bother with the absurd job-interview song-and-dance where you pretend that your personal life doesn't matter, and that only getting the job matters? You wouldn't want to work for anyone who had that attitude, so why pretend to have it yourself?
4. Don't have gaps in your résumé
It's so common for people to take time off to explore after earning their degree that universities have people who specialize in helping students find after-college non-work/non-school learning opportunities. As long as you're learning and growing -- and not endangering your life -- then gaps in your résumé are merely you finding another way to discover the world. In fact, you'll be a better employee for that.
The people who don't flounder at all after college and go straight into a career they stick with make up less than 12 percent of the population today. Research shows that they're generally less creative in picking a path that's right for them, and more willing to take paths someone else has established. But each of us needs different things from our work -- we have to make our own paths, and we need breathing room to do that.
If there are no gaps in your résumé, it probably means you didn't take any time in your life for reflecting. Sure, you can do your reflecting in the shower or during a boring meeting or on an invigorating run. But grand thinking requires grand amounts of time.
Often, we need to separate from everyday life in order to see possibilities far outside what we're doing. So make gaps, and talk about them in job interviews like the learning experiences they are.
5. Earn enough money to pay rent and buy food
One of the smartest career choices you can make after graduation is to move back in with your parents. This isn't possible for everyone, but those who can do it have a distinct advantage in their entrance into adult life. It's why more than half of college graduates are choosing to move back home.
At present, entry-level jobs don't pay enough to cover student loans, health insurance premiums, food, and rent in the kinds of cities young people like to live. Parents will say, "When I was a kid, everyone could pay their rent when they got their first job."
That's probably true, but since that time, real wages have fallen, school costs have outpaced inflation, and health care costs are astronomical for people who don't get insurance through work -- which is a large portion of fully employed young people.
Young people who need to support themselves without any help from family are necessarily limited in career choices -- they have to have a job that pays well in order to live. That's why 60 percent of graduating seniors move back in with their parents after college.
But the best way to figure out what you really love doing is to try things and worry about pay later, when you know what you like. Moving back in with your parents allows you to take a job purely because it's a good opportunity for personal growth and self-knowledge.
Many baby boomers stayed in careers they didn't like for 20 years. A good way to not repeat this in the next generation is to explore many careers before you choose one
by Penelope Trunk
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 12:00AM
For many young people today, the most trusted source of career advice is their parents. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are giving a lot of misguided advice to their kids.
Today's workplace is very different from the one baby boomers navigated. But often they don't realize that, and think the "classic" advice still applies. It doesn't. Here are the five worst pieces of advice that parents dole out:
1. Get a graduate degree
It used to be that people went to graduate school as a surefire way to achieve the American Dream. Today, graduate school generally makes young people less employable, not more employable.
For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities have little chance of getting a tenured teaching job.
And when it comes to an MBA, the value of the degree plummets if it's not from a top school, even though the cost of the degree continues to skyrocket. So instead of opening doors for you, the degree in many ways forces you to settle for a job that pays well enough to pay back your student loans.
Law school results in one of the few graduate degrees that can make you more employable. Unfortunately, it makes you more employable in a profession in which people are unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, while law practice rewards good sales skills.
This dichotomy, combined with the reality that practicing law isn't all that glamorous, means that law school should be something you do only if you're driven to -- it's not the safety net indecisive career seekers wish it was.
2. Don't job hop
The advice parents give about job hopping comes from the days when human resources people were in charge of job interviews, and hiring managers ruled the world. But today, job hopping is standard. Most people will have eight jobs before they turn 30, and that's a good thing.
Young candidates these days have more power than interviewers because there's a shortage of people to fill entry-level jobs. Unemployment among the college educated is less than 2 percent, young people routinely have more than one job offer, and 70 percent of hiring managers say they feel like they need to convince candidates to take their jobs. Clearly, this is a time when young people are in charge.
Job hoppers are bad for companies because high turnover is expensive, but switching jobs a lot is very good for employees. It builds skills faster, constructs a network more effectively, and helps you figure out what you like and what you don't like. Most important, regularly switching jobs helps you maintain passion in your career -- which, in the end, benefits companies as much as it benefits the passionate workers cycling through them.
3. Don't ask about time off until you have the job
Everyone has a personal life that exists separately from their job. You can't schedule your cousin's bar mitzvah around a product launch, and you can't clear your calendar before you take a new job.
So when you're figuring out which job to take, be upfront about what sort of time you expect to be taking for yourself. If you want Tuesdays off for kickboxing class, then say so. If you have a vacation planned for two weeks after the proposed start date, then say that. Some jobs have unmovable start dates, and sometimes your personal life will preclude taking a job.
That's OK. Why bother with the absurd job-interview song-and-dance where you pretend that your personal life doesn't matter, and that only getting the job matters? You wouldn't want to work for anyone who had that attitude, so why pretend to have it yourself?
4. Don't have gaps in your résumé
It's so common for people to take time off to explore after earning their degree that universities have people who specialize in helping students find after-college non-work/non-school learning opportunities. As long as you're learning and growing -- and not endangering your life -- then gaps in your résumé are merely you finding another way to discover the world. In fact, you'll be a better employee for that.
The people who don't flounder at all after college and go straight into a career they stick with make up less than 12 percent of the population today. Research shows that they're generally less creative in picking a path that's right for them, and more willing to take paths someone else has established. But each of us needs different things from our work -- we have to make our own paths, and we need breathing room to do that.
If there are no gaps in your résumé, it probably means you didn't take any time in your life for reflecting. Sure, you can do your reflecting in the shower or during a boring meeting or on an invigorating run. But grand thinking requires grand amounts of time.
Often, we need to separate from everyday life in order to see possibilities far outside what we're doing. So make gaps, and talk about them in job interviews like the learning experiences they are.
5. Earn enough money to pay rent and buy food
One of the smartest career choices you can make after graduation is to move back in with your parents. This isn't possible for everyone, but those who can do it have a distinct advantage in their entrance into adult life. It's why more than half of college graduates are choosing to move back home.
At present, entry-level jobs don't pay enough to cover student loans, health insurance premiums, food, and rent in the kinds of cities young people like to live. Parents will say, "When I was a kid, everyone could pay their rent when they got their first job."
That's probably true, but since that time, real wages have fallen, school costs have outpaced inflation, and health care costs are astronomical for people who don't get insurance through work -- which is a large portion of fully employed young people.
Young people who need to support themselves without any help from family are necessarily limited in career choices -- they have to have a job that pays well in order to live. That's why 60 percent of graduating seniors move back in with their parents after college.
But the best way to figure out what you really love doing is to try things and worry about pay later, when you know what you like. Moving back in with your parents allows you to take a job purely because it's a good opportunity for personal growth and self-knowledge.
Many baby boomers stayed in careers they didn't like for 20 years. A good way to not repeat this in the next generation is to explore many careers before you choose one
by Penelope Trunk
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 12:00AM
For many young people today, the most trusted source of career advice is their parents. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are giving a lot of misguided advice to their kids.
Today's workplace is very different from the one baby boomers navigated. But often they don't realize that, and think the "classic" advice still applies. It doesn't. Here are the five worst pieces of advice that parents dole out:
1. Get a graduate degree
It used to be that people went to graduate school as a surefire way to achieve the American Dream. Today, graduate school generally makes young people less employable, not more employable.
For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities have little chance of getting a tenured teaching job.
And when it comes to an MBA, the value of the degree plummets if it's not from a top school, even though the cost of the degree continues to skyrocket. So instead of opening doors for you, the degree in many ways forces you to settle for a job that pays well enough to pay back your student loans.
Law school results in one of the few graduate degrees that can make you more employable. Unfortunately, it makes you more employable in a profession in which people are unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, while law practice rewards good sales skills.
This dichotomy, combined with the reality that practicing law isn't all that glamorous, means that law school should be something you do only if you're driven to -- it's not the safety net indecisive career seekers wish it was.
2. Don't job hop
The advice parents give about job hopping comes from the days when human resources people were in charge of job interviews, and hiring managers ruled the world. But today, job hopping is standard. Most people will have eight jobs before they turn 30, and that's a good thing.
Young candidates these days have more power than interviewers because there's a shortage of people to fill entry-level jobs. Unemployment among the college educated is less than 2 percent, young people routinely have more than one job offer, and 70 percent of hiring managers say they feel like they need to convince candidates to take their jobs. Clearly, this is a time when young people are in charge.
Job hoppers are bad for companies because high turnover is expensive, but switching jobs a lot is very good for employees. It builds skills faster, constructs a network more effectively, and helps you figure out what you like and what you don't like. Most important, regularly switching jobs helps you maintain passion in your career -- which, in the end, benefits companies as much as it benefits the passionate workers cycling through them.
3. Don't ask about time off until you have the job
Everyone has a personal life that exists separately from their job. You can't schedule your cousin's bar mitzvah around a product launch, and you can't clear your calendar before you take a new job.
So when you're figuring out which job to take, be upfront about what sort of time you expect to be taking for yourself. If you want Tuesdays off for kickboxing class, then say so. If you have a vacation planned for two weeks after the proposed start date, then say that. Some jobs have unmovable start dates, and sometimes your personal life will preclude taking a job.
That's OK. Why bother with the absurd job-interview song-and-dance where you pretend that your personal life doesn't matter, and that only getting the job matters? You wouldn't want to work for anyone who had that attitude, so why pretend to have it yourself?
4. Don't have gaps in your résumé
It's so common for people to take time off to explore after earning their degree that universities have people who specialize in helping students find after-college non-work/non-school learning opportunities. As long as you're learning and growing -- and not endangering your life -- then gaps in your résumé are merely you finding another way to discover the world. In fact, you'll be a better employee for that.
The people who don't flounder at all after college and go straight into a career they stick with make up less than 12 percent of the population today. Research shows that they're generally less creative in picking a path that's right for them, and more willing to take paths someone else has established. But each of us needs different things from our work -- we have to make our own paths, and we need breathing room to do that.
If there are no gaps in your résumé, it probably means you didn't take any time in your life for reflecting. Sure, you can do your reflecting in the shower or during a boring meeting or on an invigorating run. But grand thinking requires grand amounts of time.
Often, we need to separate from everyday life in order to see possibilities far outside what we're doing. So make gaps, and talk about them in job interviews like the learning experiences they are.
5. Earn enough money to pay rent and buy food
One of the smartest career choices you can make after graduation is to move back in with your parents. This isn't possible for everyone, but those who can do it have a distinct advantage in their entrance into adult life. It's why more than half of college graduates are choosing to move back home.
At present, entry-level jobs don't pay enough to cover student loans, health insurance premiums, food, and rent in the kinds of cities young people like to live. Parents will say, "When I was a kid, everyone could pay their rent when they got their first job."
That's probably true, but since that time, real wages have fallen, school costs have outpaced inflation, and health care costs are astronomical for people who don't get insurance through work -- which is a large portion of fully employed young people.
Young people who need to support themselves without any help from family are necessarily limited in career choices -- they have to have a job that pays well in order to live. That's why 60 percent of graduating seniors move back in with their parents after college.
But the best way to figure out what you really love doing is to try things and worry about pay later, when you know what you like. Moving back in with your parents allows you to take a job purely because it's a good opportunity for personal growth and self-knowledge.
Many baby boomers stayed in careers they didn't like for 20 years. A good way to not repeat this in the next generation is to explore many careers before you choose one
by Penelope Trunk
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 12:00AM
For many young people today, the most trusted source of career advice is their parents. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are giving a lot of misguided advice to their kids.
Today's workplace is very different from the one baby boomers navigated. But often they don't realize that, and think the "classic" advice still applies. It doesn't. Here are the five worst pieces of advice that parents dole out:
1. Get a graduate degree
It used to be that people went to graduate school as a surefire way to achieve the American Dream. Today, graduate school generally makes young people less employable, not more employable.
For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities have little chance of getting a tenured teaching job.
And when it comes to an MBA, the value of the degree plummets if it's not from a top school, even though the cost of the degree continues to skyrocket. So instead of opening doors for you, the degree in many ways forces you to settle for a job that pays well enough to pay back your student loans.
Law school results in one of the few graduate degrees that can make you more employable. Unfortunately, it makes you more employable in a profession in which people are unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, while law practice rewards good sales skills.
This dichotomy, combined with the reality that practicing law isn't all that glamorous, means that law school should be something you do only if you're driven to -- it's not the safety net indecisive career seekers wish it was.
2. Don't job hop
The advice parents give about job hopping comes from the days when human resources people were in charge of job interviews, and hiring managers ruled the world. But today, job hopping is standard. Most people will have eight jobs before they turn 30, and that's a good thing.
Young candidates these days have more power than interviewers because there's a shortage of people to fill entry-level jobs. Unemployment among the college educated is less than 2 percent, young people routinely have more than one job offer, and 70 percent of hiring managers say they feel like they need to convince candidates to take their jobs. Clearly, this is a time when young people are in charge.
Job hoppers are bad for companies because high turnover is expensive, but switching jobs a lot is very good for employees. It builds skills faster, constructs a network more effectively, and helps you figure out what you like and what you don't like. Most important, regularly switching jobs helps you maintain passion in your career -- which, in the end, benefits companies as much as it benefits the passionate workers cycling through them.
3. Don't ask about time off until you have the job
Everyone has a personal life that exists separately from their job. You can't schedule your cousin's bar mitzvah around a product launch, and you can't clear your calendar before you take a new job.
So when you're figuring out which job to take, be upfront about what sort of time you expect to be taking for yourself. If you want Tuesdays off for kickboxing class, then say so. If you have a vacation planned for two weeks after the proposed start date, then say that. Some jobs have unmovable start dates, and sometimes your personal life will preclude taking a job.
That's OK. Why bother with the absurd job-interview song-and-dance where you pretend that your personal life doesn't matter, and that only getting the job matters? You wouldn't want to work for anyone who had that attitude, so why pretend to have it yourself?
4. Don't have gaps in your résumé
It's so common for people to take time off to explore after earning their degree that universities have people who specialize in helping students find after-college non-work/non-school learning opportunities. As long as you're learning and growing -- and not endangering your life -- then gaps in your résumé are merely you finding another way to discover the world. In fact, you'll be a better employee for that.
The people who don't flounder at all after college and go straight into a career they stick with make up less than 12 percent of the population today. Research shows that they're generally less creative in picking a path that's right for them, and more willing to take paths someone else has established. But each of us needs different things from our work -- we have to make our own paths, and we need breathing room to do that.
If there are no gaps in your résumé, it probably means you didn't take any time in your life for reflecting. Sure, you can do your reflecting in the shower or during a boring meeting or on an invigorating run. But grand thinking requires grand amounts of time.
Often, we need to separate from everyday life in order to see possibilities far outside what we're doing. So make gaps, and talk about them in job interviews like the learning experiences they are.
5. Earn enough money to pay rent and buy food
One of the smartest career choices you can make after graduation is to move back in with your parents. This isn't possible for everyone, but those who can do it have a distinct advantage in their entrance into adult life. It's why more than half of college graduates are choosing to move back home.
At present, entry-level jobs don't pay enough to cover student loans, health insurance premiums, food, and rent in the kinds of cities young people like to live. Parents will say, "When I was a kid, everyone could pay their rent when they got their first job."
That's probably true, but since that time, real wages have fallen, school costs have outpaced inflation, and health care costs are astronomical for people who don't get insurance through work -- which is a large portion of fully employed young people.
Young people who need to support themselves without any help from family are necessarily limited in career choices -- they have to have a job that pays well in order to live. That's why 60 percent of graduating seniors move back in with their parents after college.
But the best way to figure out what you really love doing is to try things and worry about pay later, when you know what you like. Moving back in with your parents allows you to take a job purely because it's a good opportunity for personal growth and self-knowledge.
Many baby boomers stayed in careers they didn't like for 20 years. A good way to not repeat this in the next generation is to explore many careers before you choose one
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
the end of Cancer - it's in the telomeres
The End Of Cancer
By bill walker
by Bill Walker
Cancer is doomed. the FDA bureaucracy has protected and nurtured cancer from the
Biologists have known for decades that there are other mammal species that control cancer a thousand times better than our shorter-lived simian-derived bodies. Bowhead whales weigh 500 times as much as a human being, and live over twice as long. Bowhead cells have been grown and studied to a limited degree at the University of Southern Maine and other academic labs. But cells from the USM repository are not made available to commercial biotech companies, thanks to Endangered Species Act regulations.
Looking at how Bowhead cells work (for instance, by using a protein-expression chip and comparing the expression patterns in the Bowhead to those of human cells) would make it too easy to cure cancer (and possibly less patentable… maybe The Krill Diet is all we need?). But even without helpful hints from our fellow mammals, the weak points of cancer cells are becoming known.
Why Cancer Exists
You exist as a sort of cellular economy. Your individual cells specialize and trade with each other; some process food, some fight viruses and bacteria, some become academic specialists (brain cells). The metabolic economic benefits of specialization allow you to maintain the billions of neurons that contain the relatively stable meme patterns that are "you". Until one day, an error (actually, at least four errors) in just one cell's DNA returns your system to the "nasty, brutish, and short" state of the war of all against all. Dividing uncontrollably, using resources while producing nothing, the criminal progeny of this one rogue cell can destroy the whole body.
Sometimes cells are subverted by outside agitators. Many viruses use cancer-causing factors to make infected cells divide uncontrollably. Sure, it eventually kills the host, cancer gives a genetic advantage to the virus. Removing these outside agitators (such as papilloma viruses) through vaccination is one approach to reducing cancer rates.
To prevent the overthrow of the body by rogue terrorist sleeper cells, most mammals turn off the telomerase gene in their somatic cells. This allows the telomeres of body cells to shorten at each division. So, most cells can only divide a limited number of times, meaning that they cannot usually accumulate enough mutations to become malignant.
For example, "BJ fibroblast" human skin cells can divide about 90–100 times in cell culture before they senesce (stop dividing). But cancer cells that turn on their telomerase gene can go on to be fully "immortalized" and divide forever; telomerase-positive HeLa cancer cells have been growing in culture since the 1950s. Normal BJs and other normal body cells that have had telomerase added via retrovirus can also divide forever (or at least 400 times so far with no sign of slowing down, which is multiple human lifetimes’ worth).
For a cell to lose its respect for other cell’s property rights, at least four to six genetic mutations have to occur. These mutations make cells cancerous, but they also make them different from normal cells, and are thus the Achilles’ heels of all cancers. The odds of any particular mutation are quite low, so each mutation must first occur in one cell, that precancerous cell must divide twenty times or so until the next mutation occurs within that mutated population, and so on. And so they use up all their TTAGGG repeats, their telomeres run out, and the cells flatten out and "senesce"… Unless before the cells senesce they turn their telomerase gene back on. 90% of malignant tumors have active telomerase.
Telomerase As A Target
The problem with most "cancer therapies" is that they use the baseball bat principle: hit the patient with a baseball bat, and maybe the impact will kill more of the cells that are dividing than those that aren’t. Radiation and conventional chemotherapy do kill more dividing cells, but cancer cells have already lost many of their error-checking systems. Thus they change and evolve to evade the baseball bat strategies.
Another problem with the baseball bat approach is that you NEED your cells to divide: immune system cells, gut cells, etc. Also, these therapies induce more DNA damage in normal dividing cells, producing fresh generations of future cancer cells. (Just as bombing of normal civil populations produces more terrorist recruits).
So the goal is to find targets that normal cells don’t use, or can do without for a while. Telomerase is such a target. It is especially vulnerable because of its tight regulation; even wildly growing cancer cells only have about three active telomerase molecules per cell.
Where is telomerase used in normal cells? Germline cells (sperm and egg-producing cells) obviously must have active telomerase; otherwise the whole human race would run out of telomere and senesce. Lab mice that have their telomerase gene knocked out of all their cells including the germline are normal for six generations, then senesce all at once.
Stem cells turn telomerase on at a low level while they are producing new daughter cells; this is one reason that stem cells are suspected by some of being the progenitors of most cancer. But most normal cells don’t use telomerase at all (believe me, I’ve looked; I grew BJ fibroblasts in fetal serum for weeks trying to get them to switch on enough telomerase to pick up in a TRAP assay on 10,000 cells; no dice).
The good news is that telomerase-positive cancer cells stabilize their telomeres at short lengths, typically 3–7,000 base pairs. Once their telomerase is knocked out they will run out of telomere long before normal cells would; normal cells typically have 15–25,000 base pairs at birth. And cancer cells tend to have unstable genomes and a high casualty rate from errors during division. (This is why many cancer cells are vulnerable to caffeine; they can’t repair the DNA breaks induced by the toxic trimethylxanthine). Without active telomerase, many quick-dividing cancer cell lines are doomed to quick extinction.
Also good news is that according to cell-culture results, stem cells will survive telomerase suppression for the time that it takes to kill off the cancer, then rebuild their telomeres to their preset length when the telomerase inhibitor is removed.
So if we can use a drug to inactivate telomerase, we could kill off the cancer, then allow the stem- and germline cells to recover. This has already been done in a dish via a variety of methods. Geron Corporation has a variety of oligomers that bind to the RNA site of telomerase and inactivate it. There are also small-molecule telomerase inhibitors, which will probably prove to be more effective in reaching every tumor cell.
For a long time studies have shown that populations who drink green tea are less susceptible to cancer. A team of Japanese researchers elucidated one possible anti-cancer mechanism of green tea in 1998.1 It turns out that green tea, or rather the epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) that it contains, is a telomerase inhibitor. When they treated cancer cell cultures with EGCG at levels found in heavy green tea drinkers, the cultures grew but the cells lost telomere length at each division. After a couple months of treatment, the cells ran out of telomere and stopped dividing. So it turns out that green tea might not just prevent cancers… maybe it has been curing some of them. But of course we want a stronger, more controllable effect. The Japanese group that demonstrated the anti-telomerase effect of green tea has since developed new synthetic molecules, based on EGCG, that inhibit telomerase more thoroughly and at lower doses.2
Other classes of telomerase inhibitor have been demonstrated, as have other telomere-affecting strategies. Soon (I mean next month soon; these screening systems already exist) robotic screens will be done to find more. Modern biology is depending more and more on Nature’s way of doing things: don’t try to think, just try every possible combination. Cells will be infected with a telomerase and a luciferase driven by the same promoter. Thousands of 96-well cell culture plates will be treated with hundreds of thousands of chemicals; those that switch off the glowing luciferase (and therefore also the telomerase) without killing the cells will be further investigated. The silicon-based march of knowledge far outclasses the limited DNA-change options of mere carbon-based cancers. Metastasis is irrelevant. Resistance is irrelevant. They will be assimilated.
An interesting byproduct of these robotic screens will be the discovery of better telomerase stimulators (the resveratrol in red wine is already known to activate telomerase in some cells). After cancer is eliminated, some people will live long enough to want telomerase temporarily activated to rejuvenate their cells’ capacity to divide.
The Limits Of Telomerase Inhibitors
Telomerase inhibitors can’t completely eliminate all cancers. A minority of cancers use an alternative pathway for lengthening telomeres, creatively named the ALT pathway (Alternative Telomere Lengthening). ALT uses the recombination mechanisms in the cell to lengthen short telomeres by matching them to long telomeres and duplicating the long telomere onto the short-telomere chromosome. ALT cells don’t grow quite as fast as telomerase-competent cancer cells, and it’s not clear whether they can be as effectively invasive. To exterminate ALT cells will require treatments based on other molecular differences between normal and ALT cells. These are starting to be elucidated; normal cells don’t need to recombine their telomeres when they divide, so molecular targets for inhibition of ALT should be identified soon.
The End Of Cancer, Or The End Of You
If telomerase inhibitors were a new kind of computer chip, they would have been on every Wal-Mart pharmacy shelf and selling for ten dollars a bottle by now. However, in the US it has been decided that only computers may benefit from the free market. Technologies that enhance mere humans, like medicine, education, communication, transportation, etc. are kept firmly within the control of guilds and government. So before telomerase inhibitors get down to the level of your doctor, they will have to run the 19-year, $897 million regulatory gauntlet while it is decided which large pharmaceutical company will be granted a patent for something which probably came out of some pathetic starving Lebanese grad student’s work.
Meanwhile, if you or your child get most types of cancer you will die a slow, agonizing (but very profitable) death. You’ll be all: "Make it stop! Make it stoooop!" And the doctor will be all: "The DEA won’t let me give you too many pain drugs. You don’t want me to lose my license, do you?" And you’ll be all: "AHHHHH! AHHHH AUUUGH!" And so on, for several years of immeasurable pain. Sound good to you?
A New Paradigm: We Own Ourselves
Even if you are a committed Socialist, it makes no sense to give the FDA power to suppress free speech about drug effects, or to keep the terminally ill from trying "unapproved" medications for incurable diseases. For anyone who believes in any form of human freedom, there can be no objection to allowing individuals to opt out from the FDA "protection" of pharmaceutical interests.
People are taught to fear free choice. They are told that their food will be poisoned and their medicines ineffective (maybe as bad as Vioxx? Or calcium-channel blockers? Or…) In the absence of an FDA with power to force the commercial use or disuse of any particular chemical, companies would struggle to produce the most effective medicine and the cleanest food, under the watchful eyes of numerous independent labs. Fraudulent or harmful drugs would be subject to lawsuit, and "but it’s FDA-approved" would no longer be any defense.
In a free system, life insurance companies, consumer magazines, and other competing interests would provide medical databases. Maybe even the AMA would become a force for "truth-in-medicine," as it was to some degree before the creation of the FDA. Under common law but free of arbitrary regulation, drug development would be as fast as computer development. Cancer would be extinct and human beings would finally, really, own their own bodies.
Cancer Delenda Est, Ergo FDA Delenda Est
Notes
1. Naasani, I., Seimiya, H., and Tsuruo, T. Telomerase inhibition, telomere shortening and senescence of cancer cells by tea catechins. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 249: 391–396, 1998.
2. Seimiya H et al. Telomere Shortening and Growth Inhibition of Human Cancer Cells by Novel Synthetic Telomerase Inhibitors MST-312, MST-295, and MST-199. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Vol. 1, 657–665, July 2002
May 3, 2005
By bill walker
by Bill Walker
Cancer is doomed. the FDA bureaucracy has protected and nurtured cancer from the
Biologists have known for decades that there are other mammal species that control cancer a thousand times better than our shorter-lived simian-derived bodies. Bowhead whales weigh 500 times as much as a human being, and live over twice as long. Bowhead cells have been grown and studied to a limited degree at the University of Southern Maine and other academic labs. But cells from the USM repository are not made available to commercial biotech companies, thanks to Endangered Species Act regulations.
Looking at how Bowhead cells work (for instance, by using a protein-expression chip and comparing the expression patterns in the Bowhead to those of human cells) would make it too easy to cure cancer (and possibly less patentable… maybe The Krill Diet is all we need?). But even without helpful hints from our fellow mammals, the weak points of cancer cells are becoming known.
Why Cancer Exists
You exist as a sort of cellular economy. Your individual cells specialize and trade with each other; some process food, some fight viruses and bacteria, some become academic specialists (brain cells). The metabolic economic benefits of specialization allow you to maintain the billions of neurons that contain the relatively stable meme patterns that are "you". Until one day, an error (actually, at least four errors) in just one cell's DNA returns your system to the "nasty, brutish, and short" state of the war of all against all. Dividing uncontrollably, using resources while producing nothing, the criminal progeny of this one rogue cell can destroy the whole body.
Sometimes cells are subverted by outside agitators. Many viruses use cancer-causing factors to make infected cells divide uncontrollably. Sure, it eventually kills the host, cancer gives a genetic advantage to the virus. Removing these outside agitators (such as papilloma viruses) through vaccination is one approach to reducing cancer rates.
To prevent the overthrow of the body by rogue terrorist sleeper cells, most mammals turn off the telomerase gene in their somatic cells. This allows the telomeres of body cells to shorten at each division. So, most cells can only divide a limited number of times, meaning that they cannot usually accumulate enough mutations to become malignant.
For example, "BJ fibroblast" human skin cells can divide about 90–100 times in cell culture before they senesce (stop dividing). But cancer cells that turn on their telomerase gene can go on to be fully "immortalized" and divide forever; telomerase-positive HeLa cancer cells have been growing in culture since the 1950s. Normal BJs and other normal body cells that have had telomerase added via retrovirus can also divide forever (or at least 400 times so far with no sign of slowing down, which is multiple human lifetimes’ worth).
For a cell to lose its respect for other cell’s property rights, at least four to six genetic mutations have to occur. These mutations make cells cancerous, but they also make them different from normal cells, and are thus the Achilles’ heels of all cancers. The odds of any particular mutation are quite low, so each mutation must first occur in one cell, that precancerous cell must divide twenty times or so until the next mutation occurs within that mutated population, and so on. And so they use up all their TTAGGG repeats, their telomeres run out, and the cells flatten out and "senesce"… Unless before the cells senesce they turn their telomerase gene back on. 90% of malignant tumors have active telomerase.
Telomerase As A Target
The problem with most "cancer therapies" is that they use the baseball bat principle: hit the patient with a baseball bat, and maybe the impact will kill more of the cells that are dividing than those that aren’t. Radiation and conventional chemotherapy do kill more dividing cells, but cancer cells have already lost many of their error-checking systems. Thus they change and evolve to evade the baseball bat strategies.
Another problem with the baseball bat approach is that you NEED your cells to divide: immune system cells, gut cells, etc. Also, these therapies induce more DNA damage in normal dividing cells, producing fresh generations of future cancer cells. (Just as bombing of normal civil populations produces more terrorist recruits).
So the goal is to find targets that normal cells don’t use, or can do without for a while. Telomerase is such a target. It is especially vulnerable because of its tight regulation; even wildly growing cancer cells only have about three active telomerase molecules per cell.
Where is telomerase used in normal cells? Germline cells (sperm and egg-producing cells) obviously must have active telomerase; otherwise the whole human race would run out of telomere and senesce. Lab mice that have their telomerase gene knocked out of all their cells including the germline are normal for six generations, then senesce all at once.
Stem cells turn telomerase on at a low level while they are producing new daughter cells; this is one reason that stem cells are suspected by some of being the progenitors of most cancer. But most normal cells don’t use telomerase at all (believe me, I’ve looked; I grew BJ fibroblasts in fetal serum for weeks trying to get them to switch on enough telomerase to pick up in a TRAP assay on 10,000 cells; no dice).
The good news is that telomerase-positive cancer cells stabilize their telomeres at short lengths, typically 3–7,000 base pairs. Once their telomerase is knocked out they will run out of telomere long before normal cells would; normal cells typically have 15–25,000 base pairs at birth. And cancer cells tend to have unstable genomes and a high casualty rate from errors during division. (This is why many cancer cells are vulnerable to caffeine; they can’t repair the DNA breaks induced by the toxic trimethylxanthine). Without active telomerase, many quick-dividing cancer cell lines are doomed to quick extinction.
Also good news is that according to cell-culture results, stem cells will survive telomerase suppression for the time that it takes to kill off the cancer, then rebuild their telomeres to their preset length when the telomerase inhibitor is removed.
So if we can use a drug to inactivate telomerase, we could kill off the cancer, then allow the stem- and germline cells to recover. This has already been done in a dish via a variety of methods. Geron Corporation has a variety of oligomers that bind to the RNA site of telomerase and inactivate it. There are also small-molecule telomerase inhibitors, which will probably prove to be more effective in reaching every tumor cell.
For a long time studies have shown that populations who drink green tea are less susceptible to cancer. A team of Japanese researchers elucidated one possible anti-cancer mechanism of green tea in 1998.1 It turns out that green tea, or rather the epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) that it contains, is a telomerase inhibitor. When they treated cancer cell cultures with EGCG at levels found in heavy green tea drinkers, the cultures grew but the cells lost telomere length at each division. After a couple months of treatment, the cells ran out of telomere and stopped dividing. So it turns out that green tea might not just prevent cancers… maybe it has been curing some of them. But of course we want a stronger, more controllable effect. The Japanese group that demonstrated the anti-telomerase effect of green tea has since developed new synthetic molecules, based on EGCG, that inhibit telomerase more thoroughly and at lower doses.2
Other classes of telomerase inhibitor have been demonstrated, as have other telomere-affecting strategies. Soon (I mean next month soon; these screening systems already exist) robotic screens will be done to find more. Modern biology is depending more and more on Nature’s way of doing things: don’t try to think, just try every possible combination. Cells will be infected with a telomerase and a luciferase driven by the same promoter. Thousands of 96-well cell culture plates will be treated with hundreds of thousands of chemicals; those that switch off the glowing luciferase (and therefore also the telomerase) without killing the cells will be further investigated. The silicon-based march of knowledge far outclasses the limited DNA-change options of mere carbon-based cancers. Metastasis is irrelevant. Resistance is irrelevant. They will be assimilated.
An interesting byproduct of these robotic screens will be the discovery of better telomerase stimulators (the resveratrol in red wine is already known to activate telomerase in some cells). After cancer is eliminated, some people will live long enough to want telomerase temporarily activated to rejuvenate their cells’ capacity to divide.
The Limits Of Telomerase Inhibitors
Telomerase inhibitors can’t completely eliminate all cancers. A minority of cancers use an alternative pathway for lengthening telomeres, creatively named the ALT pathway (Alternative Telomere Lengthening). ALT uses the recombination mechanisms in the cell to lengthen short telomeres by matching them to long telomeres and duplicating the long telomere onto the short-telomere chromosome. ALT cells don’t grow quite as fast as telomerase-competent cancer cells, and it’s not clear whether they can be as effectively invasive. To exterminate ALT cells will require treatments based on other molecular differences between normal and ALT cells. These are starting to be elucidated; normal cells don’t need to recombine their telomeres when they divide, so molecular targets for inhibition of ALT should be identified soon.
The End Of Cancer, Or The End Of You
If telomerase inhibitors were a new kind of computer chip, they would have been on every Wal-Mart pharmacy shelf and selling for ten dollars a bottle by now. However, in the US it has been decided that only computers may benefit from the free market. Technologies that enhance mere humans, like medicine, education, communication, transportation, etc. are kept firmly within the control of guilds and government. So before telomerase inhibitors get down to the level of your doctor, they will have to run the 19-year, $897 million regulatory gauntlet while it is decided which large pharmaceutical company will be granted a patent for something which probably came out of some pathetic starving Lebanese grad student’s work.
Meanwhile, if you or your child get most types of cancer you will die a slow, agonizing (but very profitable) death. You’ll be all: "Make it stop! Make it stoooop!" And the doctor will be all: "The DEA won’t let me give you too many pain drugs. You don’t want me to lose my license, do you?" And you’ll be all: "AHHHHH! AHHHH AUUUGH!" And so on, for several years of immeasurable pain. Sound good to you?
A New Paradigm: We Own Ourselves
Even if you are a committed Socialist, it makes no sense to give the FDA power to suppress free speech about drug effects, or to keep the terminally ill from trying "unapproved" medications for incurable diseases. For anyone who believes in any form of human freedom, there can be no objection to allowing individuals to opt out from the FDA "protection" of pharmaceutical interests.
People are taught to fear free choice. They are told that their food will be poisoned and their medicines ineffective (maybe as bad as Vioxx? Or calcium-channel blockers? Or…) In the absence of an FDA with power to force the commercial use or disuse of any particular chemical, companies would struggle to produce the most effective medicine and the cleanest food, under the watchful eyes of numerous independent labs. Fraudulent or harmful drugs would be subject to lawsuit, and "but it’s FDA-approved" would no longer be any defense.
In a free system, life insurance companies, consumer magazines, and other competing interests would provide medical databases. Maybe even the AMA would become a force for "truth-in-medicine," as it was to some degree before the creation of the FDA. Under common law but free of arbitrary regulation, drug development would be as fast as computer development. Cancer would be extinct and human beings would finally, really, own their own bodies.
Cancer Delenda Est, Ergo FDA Delenda Est
Notes
1. Naasani, I., Seimiya, H., and Tsuruo, T. Telomerase inhibition, telomere shortening and senescence of cancer cells by tea catechins. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 249: 391–396, 1998.
2. Seimiya H et al. Telomere Shortening and Growth Inhibition of Human Cancer Cells by Novel Synthetic Telomerase Inhibitors MST-312, MST-295, and MST-199. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Vol. 1, 657–665, July 2002
May 3, 2005
Monday, May 14, 2007
the $5 million club - how they got there, lump sums small companies/entrepreneurs — risk takers
Reaching the $5 Million Club Takes an Open Mind
by Anne Kadet
Monday, May 14, 2007
provided by
The Old Saying is true: The rich are different. But not only do their values and habits set them apart from the hoi polloi, they're different from their wealthy predecessors of a generation ago. For those interested in joining their ranks, it helps to understand why.
To enter the nation's top 1%, you need more than $5 million. And if you get there, you'll have plenty of newly-arrived company: The number of U.S. "pentamillionaires" has quadrupled in the past 10 years, to more than 930,000. Indeed, 70% of the nation's big family fortunes are less than 13 years old, according to research and marketing firm The Harrison Group. And the people who amassed them are, first and foremost, entrepreneurs — risk takers for whom wealth is a byproduct of pursuing their passion.
What got them to the highest level? It isn't necessarily stock-market savvy: On average, folks who recently hit the $5 million mark report that only 10% of their money came through passive investments. And only 10% of pentamillionaires inherited their wealth. One might think that good fortune would play a role, but even luck is largely a matter of one's own making. Psychologist Richard Wiseman has found that people who describe themselves as lucky share common habits that account for their success: They're friendly and fond of new experiences, traits that put them on a collision course with new opportunities. In addition, "lucky" folks simply have higher expectations of success — they're too pigheadedly optimistic to heed the long odds and call it quits.
Not to say that getting rich is simply a matter of having a swell attitude. The path to riches usually involves the kind of risk that would make most people feel a little queasy. Harrison Group head Jim Taylor recently persuaded more than 3,000 pentamillionaires to discuss their path to success. Perhaps not surprisingly, none of them had a cushy union job down at the DMV. The vast majority — 80% — either started their own business or worked for a small company that saw explosive growth. And almost all of them made their fortune in a big lump sum after many years of effort.
Surprisingly, today's very rich say that money itself wasn't much of a motivator. Once you've got food in your belly and a big-screen TV, the mere prospect of more Benjamins isn't enough to get you leaping out of bed at 5 a.m. Rather, rich folks often make their fortunes after they make up their minds to solve a problem or do something better than it's been done before. When Frank Darras graduated from law school, all he wanted in terms of material wealth was a middle-class life for his wife and kids. But while working as a doctor's assistant to put himself through school, he developed a burning desire to help the folks he saw struggling with unpaid insurance claims. "It was the David and Goliath aspect that attracted me more than anything," says the Ontario, Calif., attorney. Once he had his degree, Darras was like a cruise missile aimed at the insurance industry. By 1990 Darras had his first million-dollar year, and today he oversees one of the nation's largest disability and long-term-care practices. "I never thought I'd make $5 million in two lifetimes," he says. "I just loved the work."
Getting rich also requires a certain amount of stubbornness and clarity of purpose. Consultant Joel Kurtzman, who evaluated 350 startups for his book Startups That Work, found that successful outlets usually have a team of two or three founders who share a common vision; the success rate for this model was a remarkable 50%. The odds for solo founders were more like the oft-quoted one in 10, in part because they often found themselves working at cross-purposes with hired guns who see things differently. That's what 34-year-old Justin Jarvinen learned the hard way. The entrepreneur saw two promising business ventures go down the tubes after he took on partners who tweaked his ideas beyond recognition. But three years ago he started VerveLife, a service that helps companies promote online marketing efforts with free music downloads. Knowing that his success depended on his enthusiasm for bringing the idea to market, he carefully chose partners who supported his vision.
Jarvinen is now the majority shareholder in two dot-coms, and he claims an eight-figure net worth. But what really excites him is his freedom to explore and support new ideas; his current passion is mentoring younger entrepreneurs. "I'm interested in doing whatever I want, whenever I want," he says. And chances are you feel similarly. When people dream of getting rich, it's about more than nice clothes and fancy vacations. Being rich means freedom: to spend your time as you please, to pursue your real interests and to take a chance without courting utter ruin. Paradoxically, the road to riches often means acting as if you already have that freedom.
by Anne Kadet
Monday, May 14, 2007
provided by
The Old Saying is true: The rich are different. But not only do their values and habits set them apart from the hoi polloi, they're different from their wealthy predecessors of a generation ago. For those interested in joining their ranks, it helps to understand why.
To enter the nation's top 1%, you need more than $5 million. And if you get there, you'll have plenty of newly-arrived company: The number of U.S. "pentamillionaires" has quadrupled in the past 10 years, to more than 930,000. Indeed, 70% of the nation's big family fortunes are less than 13 years old, according to research and marketing firm The Harrison Group. And the people who amassed them are, first and foremost, entrepreneurs — risk takers for whom wealth is a byproduct of pursuing their passion.
What got them to the highest level? It isn't necessarily stock-market savvy: On average, folks who recently hit the $5 million mark report that only 10% of their money came through passive investments. And only 10% of pentamillionaires inherited their wealth. One might think that good fortune would play a role, but even luck is largely a matter of one's own making. Psychologist Richard Wiseman has found that people who describe themselves as lucky share common habits that account for their success: They're friendly and fond of new experiences, traits that put them on a collision course with new opportunities. In addition, "lucky" folks simply have higher expectations of success — they're too pigheadedly optimistic to heed the long odds and call it quits.
Not to say that getting rich is simply a matter of having a swell attitude. The path to riches usually involves the kind of risk that would make most people feel a little queasy. Harrison Group head Jim Taylor recently persuaded more than 3,000 pentamillionaires to discuss their path to success. Perhaps not surprisingly, none of them had a cushy union job down at the DMV. The vast majority — 80% — either started their own business or worked for a small company that saw explosive growth. And almost all of them made their fortune in a big lump sum after many years of effort.
Surprisingly, today's very rich say that money itself wasn't much of a motivator. Once you've got food in your belly and a big-screen TV, the mere prospect of more Benjamins isn't enough to get you leaping out of bed at 5 a.m. Rather, rich folks often make their fortunes after they make up their minds to solve a problem or do something better than it's been done before. When Frank Darras graduated from law school, all he wanted in terms of material wealth was a middle-class life for his wife and kids. But while working as a doctor's assistant to put himself through school, he developed a burning desire to help the folks he saw struggling with unpaid insurance claims. "It was the David and Goliath aspect that attracted me more than anything," says the Ontario, Calif., attorney. Once he had his degree, Darras was like a cruise missile aimed at the insurance industry. By 1990 Darras had his first million-dollar year, and today he oversees one of the nation's largest disability and long-term-care practices. "I never thought I'd make $5 million in two lifetimes," he says. "I just loved the work."
Getting rich also requires a certain amount of stubbornness and clarity of purpose. Consultant Joel Kurtzman, who evaluated 350 startups for his book Startups That Work, found that successful outlets usually have a team of two or three founders who share a common vision; the success rate for this model was a remarkable 50%. The odds for solo founders were more like the oft-quoted one in 10, in part because they often found themselves working at cross-purposes with hired guns who see things differently. That's what 34-year-old Justin Jarvinen learned the hard way. The entrepreneur saw two promising business ventures go down the tubes after he took on partners who tweaked his ideas beyond recognition. But three years ago he started VerveLife, a service that helps companies promote online marketing efforts with free music downloads. Knowing that his success depended on his enthusiasm for bringing the idea to market, he carefully chose partners who supported his vision.
Jarvinen is now the majority shareholder in two dot-coms, and he claims an eight-figure net worth. But what really excites him is his freedom to explore and support new ideas; his current passion is mentoring younger entrepreneurs. "I'm interested in doing whatever I want, whenever I want," he says. And chances are you feel similarly. When people dream of getting rich, it's about more than nice clothes and fancy vacations. Being rich means freedom: to spend your time as you please, to pursue your real interests and to take a chance without courting utter ruin. Paradoxically, the road to riches often means acting as if you already have that freedom.
Geron GERN looks born to run - June announcement
Geron Looks Born to Run
By Melissa Davis
Senior Writer
5/14/2007 7:04 AM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/businessnews/10356385.html
Investors in Geron (GERN) -- the stock market's largest player in embryonic stem cell research -- could feel good long before the company discovers any miracle cures.
In the eyes of some, in fact, Geron seems to be dropping hints that it's doing well already. Experts point to two looming events, both set for June, as signs of a possible breakout.
First, Geron will follow through on a promise made months ago to establish the exercise price on 4.125 million warrants for its stock. The warrants, issued in December and February, will be priced based on the stock's value during a narrow trading window ending June 12. Holders can cash in those warrants, beginning June 13, by paying 120% of the average stock price during the previous five sessions, with an upper limit set at $12.14 a share.
Geron's stock, while lifted a week ago by exposure in a prominent Barron's article, fetches just $7.18 a share right now.
"Are those warrant holders keeping a lid on the price right now?" asks Robert Lawton, managing partner of New York's Catoosa Fund. "I can think of 4.125 million reasons why they might."
Lawton, for one, has never seen a company arrange to price warrants during a specific period months after their grant date. When questioned by TheStreet.com, Geron itself declined to explain the arrangement or identify who the warrant holders might be. Meanwhile, partly because of this odd scenario, Lawton's firm has invested heavily in Geron -- a biotechnology company that it likes anyway -- in anticipation of a quick return.
"I have seldom directed my firms to take significant long positions in the biotech sector," Lawton admits. But we "have found some significant success on those rare occasions when we have done so."
Meanwhile, Lawton wonders if the warrant pricing period was established with some measure of forethought. Importantly, he notes, that pricing period starts just ahead of a medical conference featuring a key update on the company's cancer drug.
For its part, Geron recently gave investors some reason for hope.
"I can tell you that we are proceeding well," Geron CEO Thomas Okarma assured during the company's first-quarter conference call. But "the real interesting activity or information about the drug ... we are going to reserve for the presentation in June -- which will be an important milestone in the development of this drug."
At that conference, Geron will offer widely anticipated updates on GRN163L -- an agent thought to attack the enzyme needed for cancer stem cells to thrive -- for the treatment of leukemia and solid tumors. By now, the company has discovered evidence of the drug's safety and its ability to shrink myeloma stem cells already.
"GRN163L may have the potential to cure (multiple myeloma) by targeting the cancer stem cells," Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ren Benjamin explained earlier this month. Thus, "encouraged by the potential of eliminating cancer stem cells, the company plans to initiate two GRN163L phase II trials in 2Q/3Q07" to expand tests on myeloma and treat a common type of lung cancer.
Around that same timeframe, Geron plans to launch clinical trials of a new cancer vaccine. The company's vaccine program, which has led to a partnership with heavyweight drug-maker Merck (MRK) , has offered some hope for the prevention of prostate cancer already.
Geron now wishes to replicate the success seen in its early prostate cancer studies, targeting myeloma this time around.
"What we have demonstrated in the prostate cancer trials is really robust and reproducible cellular immune responses to the vaccine that generate killer T-cells that kill the patient's tumor," Okarma stated during the company's latest conference call. "This occurs reproducibly throughout the patient population; it is not anecdotal, and it is not one out of 10 patients.
"This is completely different from the vast majority of the more advanced cancer vaccine programs" currently underway.
Experts look for some preliminary results on Geron's myeloma vaccine, as well as fuller results on GRN163L, by the end of the year.
After that, in a groundbreaking study, Geron plans to use embryonic stem cells for the treatment of damaged spinal cords. Already, the company's technique has scored banner headlines -- and attention by 60 Minutes -- because it enabled partially paralyzed rats to start walking again.
Lawton views those looming human trials as perhaps "the sexiest aspect" of the entire Geron story. In a cover story published last week, Barron's took some notice of that coming study -- and the dashing scientist behind it -- as well.
"If there's a face from stem-cell research that's made for primetime, it's the one belonging to Hans Keirstead," Barron's reported, noting that a Calvin Klein-clad Keirstead has already been hailed as something of a miracle worker in a publication of Men's Vogue. "Based on his research, Geron is applying to the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to begin ... potentially the first government-approved test using human embryonic stem cells.
"That would be a key milestone" for the company.
But at the same time, Barron's noted, investors have assigned Geron a handsome value already. Geron boasts a market capitalization of half-a-billion dollars, despite its faraway cures, although more than one-third of that does appear on its balance sheet as cash. Yet Geron's other assets could be worth far more. Notably, thanks to a prescient move about a decade ago, the company holds valuable -- if hotly contested -- patents that give it vast control over embryonic stem cell treatments in the U.S.
Still, Benjamin sees no reason for investors to make their move right now.
"We are maintaining our market-perform/speculative-risk rating on Geron based on the company's current valuation," wrote Benjamin, whose firm makes a market in the company's securities. "While we acknowledge that Geron is developing new modalities of treatment that address large areas of unmet clinical need -- and, therefore, may deserve to trade at a premium to its peers -- we await additional clinical data and peer-reviewed publications, as well as additional clarity regarding the timing of the company's clinical programs, before re-evaluating our rating of the company."
Meanwhile, however, some investors have decided to pounce on the stock already. During the fourth quarter, when Geron issued a big block of warrants, Rock Hill Investment Management bought so much stock in Geron that it emerged as the company's second-largest shareholder. Indeed, a Nasdaq filing indicates, Rock Hill owns far more common stock in Geron than it does in all other companies combined.
Lawton believes there is a reason why Rock Hill has placed that huge bet on Geron. He points to Dendreon (DNDN) , which briefly soared despite questions about the effectiveness of its own prostate cancer vaccine, for comparison. Dendreon, hit by a devastating regulatory ruling last week, has since crashed.
But Lawton feels that Geron is, by far, the better play.
"All Dendreon did is discover a drug that might extend lives for four months," Lawton says. "If Geron has discovered a cancer-fighting agent that works -- and really prolongs life -- then, in my opinion, it's a $50 stock."
By Melissa Davis
Senior Writer
5/14/2007 7:04 AM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/businessnews/10356385.html
Investors in Geron (GERN) -- the stock market's largest player in embryonic stem cell research -- could feel good long before the company discovers any miracle cures.
In the eyes of some, in fact, Geron seems to be dropping hints that it's doing well already. Experts point to two looming events, both set for June, as signs of a possible breakout.
First, Geron will follow through on a promise made months ago to establish the exercise price on 4.125 million warrants for its stock. The warrants, issued in December and February, will be priced based on the stock's value during a narrow trading window ending June 12. Holders can cash in those warrants, beginning June 13, by paying 120% of the average stock price during the previous five sessions, with an upper limit set at $12.14 a share.
Geron's stock, while lifted a week ago by exposure in a prominent Barron's article, fetches just $7.18 a share right now.
"Are those warrant holders keeping a lid on the price right now?" asks Robert Lawton, managing partner of New York's Catoosa Fund. "I can think of 4.125 million reasons why they might."
Lawton, for one, has never seen a company arrange to price warrants during a specific period months after their grant date. When questioned by TheStreet.com, Geron itself declined to explain the arrangement or identify who the warrant holders might be. Meanwhile, partly because of this odd scenario, Lawton's firm has invested heavily in Geron -- a biotechnology company that it likes anyway -- in anticipation of a quick return.
"I have seldom directed my firms to take significant long positions in the biotech sector," Lawton admits. But we "have found some significant success on those rare occasions when we have done so."
Meanwhile, Lawton wonders if the warrant pricing period was established with some measure of forethought. Importantly, he notes, that pricing period starts just ahead of a medical conference featuring a key update on the company's cancer drug.
For its part, Geron recently gave investors some reason for hope.
"I can tell you that we are proceeding well," Geron CEO Thomas Okarma assured during the company's first-quarter conference call. But "the real interesting activity or information about the drug ... we are going to reserve for the presentation in June -- which will be an important milestone in the development of this drug."
At that conference, Geron will offer widely anticipated updates on GRN163L -- an agent thought to attack the enzyme needed for cancer stem cells to thrive -- for the treatment of leukemia and solid tumors. By now, the company has discovered evidence of the drug's safety and its ability to shrink myeloma stem cells already.
"GRN163L may have the potential to cure (multiple myeloma) by targeting the cancer stem cells," Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ren Benjamin explained earlier this month. Thus, "encouraged by the potential of eliminating cancer stem cells, the company plans to initiate two GRN163L phase II trials in 2Q/3Q07" to expand tests on myeloma and treat a common type of lung cancer.
Around that same timeframe, Geron plans to launch clinical trials of a new cancer vaccine. The company's vaccine program, which has led to a partnership with heavyweight drug-maker Merck (MRK) , has offered some hope for the prevention of prostate cancer already.
Geron now wishes to replicate the success seen in its early prostate cancer studies, targeting myeloma this time around.
"What we have demonstrated in the prostate cancer trials is really robust and reproducible cellular immune responses to the vaccine that generate killer T-cells that kill the patient's tumor," Okarma stated during the company's latest conference call. "This occurs reproducibly throughout the patient population; it is not anecdotal, and it is not one out of 10 patients.
"This is completely different from the vast majority of the more advanced cancer vaccine programs" currently underway.
Experts look for some preliminary results on Geron's myeloma vaccine, as well as fuller results on GRN163L, by the end of the year.
After that, in a groundbreaking study, Geron plans to use embryonic stem cells for the treatment of damaged spinal cords. Already, the company's technique has scored banner headlines -- and attention by 60 Minutes -- because it enabled partially paralyzed rats to start walking again.
Lawton views those looming human trials as perhaps "the sexiest aspect" of the entire Geron story. In a cover story published last week, Barron's took some notice of that coming study -- and the dashing scientist behind it -- as well.
"If there's a face from stem-cell research that's made for primetime, it's the one belonging to Hans Keirstead," Barron's reported, noting that a Calvin Klein-clad Keirstead has already been hailed as something of a miracle worker in a publication of Men's Vogue. "Based on his research, Geron is applying to the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to begin ... potentially the first government-approved test using human embryonic stem cells.
"That would be a key milestone" for the company.
But at the same time, Barron's noted, investors have assigned Geron a handsome value already. Geron boasts a market capitalization of half-a-billion dollars, despite its faraway cures, although more than one-third of that does appear on its balance sheet as cash. Yet Geron's other assets could be worth far more. Notably, thanks to a prescient move about a decade ago, the company holds valuable -- if hotly contested -- patents that give it vast control over embryonic stem cell treatments in the U.S.
Still, Benjamin sees no reason for investors to make their move right now.
"We are maintaining our market-perform/speculative-risk rating on Geron based on the company's current valuation," wrote Benjamin, whose firm makes a market in the company's securities. "While we acknowledge that Geron is developing new modalities of treatment that address large areas of unmet clinical need -- and, therefore, may deserve to trade at a premium to its peers -- we await additional clinical data and peer-reviewed publications, as well as additional clarity regarding the timing of the company's clinical programs, before re-evaluating our rating of the company."
Meanwhile, however, some investors have decided to pounce on the stock already. During the fourth quarter, when Geron issued a big block of warrants, Rock Hill Investment Management bought so much stock in Geron that it emerged as the company's second-largest shareholder. Indeed, a Nasdaq filing indicates, Rock Hill owns far more common stock in Geron than it does in all other companies combined.
Lawton believes there is a reason why Rock Hill has placed that huge bet on Geron. He points to Dendreon (DNDN) , which briefly soared despite questions about the effectiveness of its own prostate cancer vaccine, for comparison. Dendreon, hit by a devastating regulatory ruling last week, has since crashed.
But Lawton feels that Geron is, by far, the better play.
"All Dendreon did is discover a drug that might extend lives for four months," Lawton says. "If Geron has discovered a cancer-fighting agent that works -- and really prolongs life -- then, in my opinion, it's a $50 stock."
Friday, May 4, 2007
interval train - good fast - out of breath, then slow but not to resting HR
A Healthy Mix of Rest and Motion
By PETER JARET
SOME gymgoers are tortoises. They prefer to take their sweet time, leisurely pedaling or ambling along on a treadmill. Others are hares, impatiently racing through miles at high intensity.
Each approach offers similar health benefits: lower risk of heart disease, protection against Type 2 diabetes, and weight loss.
But new findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to be both tortoise and hare — alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.
Weight watchers, prediabetics and those who simply want to increase their fitness all stand to gain.
This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.
But new evidence suggests that a workout with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and raise the body’s potential to burn fat.
Best of all, the benefits become evident in a matter of weeks.
“There’s definitely renewed interest in interval training,” said Ed Coyle, the director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that after just two weeks of interval training, six of the eight college-age men and women doubled their endurance, or the amount of time they could ride a bicycle at moderate intensity before exhaustion.
Eight volunteers in a control group, who did not do any interval training, showed no improvement in endurance.
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, had the exercisers sprint for 30 seconds, then either stop or pedal gently for four minutes.
Such a stark improvement in endurance after 15 minutes of intense cycling spread over two weeks was all the more surprising because the volunteers were already reasonably fit. They jogged, biked or did aerobic exercise two to three times a week.
Doing bursts of hard exercise not only improves cardiovascular fitness but also the body’s ability to burn fat, even during low- or moderate-intensity workouts, according to a study published this month, also in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Eight women in their early 20s cycled for 10 sets of four minutes of hard riding, followed by two minutes of rest. Over two weeks, they completed seven interval workouts.
After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent, said Jason L. Talanian, the lead author of the study and an exercise scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Cardiovascular fitness — the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles — improved by 13 percent.
It didn’t matter how fit the subjects were before. Borderline sedentary subjects and the college athletes had similar increases in fitness and fat burning. “Even when interval training was added on top of other exercise they were doing, they still saw a significant improvement,” Mr. Talanian said.
That said, this was a small study that lacked a control group, so more research would be needed to confirm that interval training was responsible.
Interval training isn’t for everyone. “Pushing your heart rate up very high with intensive interval training can put a strain on the cardiovascular system, provoking a heart attack or stroke in people at risk,” said Walter R. Thompson, professor of exercise science at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
For anyone with heart disease or high blood pressure — or who has joint problems such as arthritis or is older than 60 — experts say to consult a doctor before starting interval training.
Still, anyone in good health might consider doing interval training once or twice a week. Joggers can alternate walking and sprints. Swimmers can complete a couple of fast laps, then four more slowly.
There is no single accepted formula for the ratio between hard work and a moderate pace or resting. In fact, many coaches recommend varying the duration of activity and rest.
But some guidelines apply. The high-intensity phase should be long and strenuous enough that a person is out of breath — typically one to four minutes of exercise at 80 to 85 percent of their maximum heart rate. Recovery periods should not last long enough for their pulse to return to its resting rate.
Also people should remember to adequately warm up before the first interval. Coaches advise that, ideally, people should not do interval work on consecutive days. More than 24 hours between such taxing sessions will allow the body to recover and help them avoid burnout.
What is so special about interval training? One advantage is that it allows exercisers to spend more time doing high-intensity activity than they could in a single sustained effort. “The rest period in interval training gives the body time to remove some of the waste products of working muscles,” said Barry A. Franklin, the director of the cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.
To go hard, the body must use new muscle fibers. Once these recent recruits are trained, they are available to burn fuel even during easy-does-it workouts. “Any form of exercise that recruits new muscle fibers is going to enhance the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and fat,” Dr. Coyle said.
Interval training also stimulates change in mitochondria, where fuel is converted to energy, causing them to burn fat first — even during low- and moderate-intensity workouts, Mr. Talanian said.
Improved fat burning means endurance athletes can go further before tapping into carbohydrate stores. It is also welcome news to anyone trying to lose weight or avoid gaining it.
Unfortunately, many people aren’t active enough to keep muscles healthy. At the sedentary extreme, one result can be what Dr. Coyle calls “metabolic stalling” — carbohydrates in the form of blood glucose and fat particles in the form of triglycerides sit in the blood. That, he suspects, could be a contributing factor to metabolic syndrome, the combination of obesity, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and elevated triglycerides that increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
By recruiting new muscle fibers and increasing the body’s ability to use fuel, interval training could potentially lower the risk of metabolic syndrome.
Interval training does amount to hard work, but the sessions can be short. Best of all, a workout that combines tortoise and hare leaves little time for boredom.
By PETER JARET
SOME gymgoers are tortoises. They prefer to take their sweet time, leisurely pedaling or ambling along on a treadmill. Others are hares, impatiently racing through miles at high intensity.
Each approach offers similar health benefits: lower risk of heart disease, protection against Type 2 diabetes, and weight loss.
But new findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to be both tortoise and hare — alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.
Weight watchers, prediabetics and those who simply want to increase their fitness all stand to gain.
This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.
But new evidence suggests that a workout with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and raise the body’s potential to burn fat.
Best of all, the benefits become evident in a matter of weeks.
“There’s definitely renewed interest in interval training,” said Ed Coyle, the director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that after just two weeks of interval training, six of the eight college-age men and women doubled their endurance, or the amount of time they could ride a bicycle at moderate intensity before exhaustion.
Eight volunteers in a control group, who did not do any interval training, showed no improvement in endurance.
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, had the exercisers sprint for 30 seconds, then either stop or pedal gently for four minutes.
Such a stark improvement in endurance after 15 minutes of intense cycling spread over two weeks was all the more surprising because the volunteers were already reasonably fit. They jogged, biked or did aerobic exercise two to three times a week.
Doing bursts of hard exercise not only improves cardiovascular fitness but also the body’s ability to burn fat, even during low- or moderate-intensity workouts, according to a study published this month, also in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Eight women in their early 20s cycled for 10 sets of four minutes of hard riding, followed by two minutes of rest. Over two weeks, they completed seven interval workouts.
After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent, said Jason L. Talanian, the lead author of the study and an exercise scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Cardiovascular fitness — the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles — improved by 13 percent.
It didn’t matter how fit the subjects were before. Borderline sedentary subjects and the college athletes had similar increases in fitness and fat burning. “Even when interval training was added on top of other exercise they were doing, they still saw a significant improvement,” Mr. Talanian said.
That said, this was a small study that lacked a control group, so more research would be needed to confirm that interval training was responsible.
Interval training isn’t for everyone. “Pushing your heart rate up very high with intensive interval training can put a strain on the cardiovascular system, provoking a heart attack or stroke in people at risk,” said Walter R. Thompson, professor of exercise science at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
For anyone with heart disease or high blood pressure — or who has joint problems such as arthritis or is older than 60 — experts say to consult a doctor before starting interval training.
Still, anyone in good health might consider doing interval training once or twice a week. Joggers can alternate walking and sprints. Swimmers can complete a couple of fast laps, then four more slowly.
There is no single accepted formula for the ratio between hard work and a moderate pace or resting. In fact, many coaches recommend varying the duration of activity and rest.
But some guidelines apply. The high-intensity phase should be long and strenuous enough that a person is out of breath — typically one to four minutes of exercise at 80 to 85 percent of their maximum heart rate. Recovery periods should not last long enough for their pulse to return to its resting rate.
Also people should remember to adequately warm up before the first interval. Coaches advise that, ideally, people should not do interval work on consecutive days. More than 24 hours between such taxing sessions will allow the body to recover and help them avoid burnout.
What is so special about interval training? One advantage is that it allows exercisers to spend more time doing high-intensity activity than they could in a single sustained effort. “The rest period in interval training gives the body time to remove some of the waste products of working muscles,” said Barry A. Franklin, the director of the cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.
To go hard, the body must use new muscle fibers. Once these recent recruits are trained, they are available to burn fuel even during easy-does-it workouts. “Any form of exercise that recruits new muscle fibers is going to enhance the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and fat,” Dr. Coyle said.
Interval training also stimulates change in mitochondria, where fuel is converted to energy, causing them to burn fat first — even during low- and moderate-intensity workouts, Mr. Talanian said.
Improved fat burning means endurance athletes can go further before tapping into carbohydrate stores. It is also welcome news to anyone trying to lose weight or avoid gaining it.
Unfortunately, many people aren’t active enough to keep muscles healthy. At the sedentary extreme, one result can be what Dr. Coyle calls “metabolic stalling” — carbohydrates in the form of blood glucose and fat particles in the form of triglycerides sit in the blood. That, he suspects, could be a contributing factor to metabolic syndrome, the combination of obesity, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and elevated triglycerides that increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
By recruiting new muscle fibers and increasing the body’s ability to use fuel, interval training could potentially lower the risk of metabolic syndrome.
Interval training does amount to hard work, but the sessions can be short. Best of all, a workout that combines tortoise and hare leaves little time for boredom.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Sell in May and Stay Away? Investment strategy - two funds to help execute on this play
Re-enter the dragon
Commentary: Sell in May and stay away? You bet!
By Jim Lowell, MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:36 AM ET May 1, 2007
WATERTOWN, Mass. (MarketWatch) -- Last year at this time and place I put forward a strategy based on the old saw: "Sell in May and stay away." Since that time, the markets at home and abroad have done little more than roll to higher highs, rendering May, 2006 through November, 2006, an anomalously good patch for sowing and harvesting gains.
Still, as the numbers below reveal, this strategy has panned out well in the past, and even fared well enough over the last 12 months, making it a natural pitch in our arsenal of fast balls, sinkers, and sliders.
Moreover, while the ball park remains the same the field has changed. Thanks to nuanced spins, not outright sea changes, the economic landscape and calendar of concerns makes hitting singles, let alone home runs, harder to do.
There's no doubt that the U.S. economy is still growing, but unlike last year's first quarter, wherein our economy grew at its fastest rate in nearly three years, this time around it's different.
Depending upon whom you most listen to, our economy is either slowing to a crawl, or crawling before it walks -- but no one disputes the measurable fact that it has slowed considerably over the past 12 months. There's also no doubt that the global economy is growing like gangbusters. At the end of April, just like they did in April last year, China's central bank announced a modest but symbolic rate hike designed to help manage their economy's combustible growth.
Like last year at this time, I find the overall economic and earnings facts on the ground belie a better fundamental picture of the markets at home and abroad than one might imagine.
And while I don't think we've reached the peak of the markets here, just a peak in an ascending range of where the market will end up for the year, there's reason enough to want to hunker down here for traders (as distinct from investors) who aren't concerned about taking gains or looking much beyond the next four weeks or few months of market activity. Why? Simple: It's May.
Re-enter the dragon
While most adages have some grounding in reality, this Sell in May saw has investment teeth. The adage and all studies focus on the large-cap group of stocks found in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index SPX what happens if you sold whatever S&P 500 device suits yours fancy (i.e., an index fund or an ETF like the SPDR Trust (SPY at the end of April and stayed away until the beginning of November, and then bought back again and hung on through the end of the next April, ad infinitum. The result of doing so: over the past 6 years, you would have made 35.0% vs. 27.2% for those that bought and held throughout the time period. (Note: the trend holds up for mid-cap and small-cap stocks, too.)
That 35% return isn't bad; Not bad at all, you say. However, what if you didn't just take the field for one seasonal sprint and then sit on the sidelines the next, but instead purchased an inverse index fund or, better yet, Profunds Ultra Bear fund (URPIX : ProFunds:UltraBear;) in May, sold it in October, and bought the Profunds Ultra Bull (ULPIX : ProFunds:UltraBull) in November and held through April? You'd have made 44.0% vs. the 27.2% buy and hold index huggers, and the 35.0% made by those traitorous trading indexers making both camps look like they're money's doing nothin' more than pushin' up daisies. Nice!
Enter the trade
While I am a firm believer in, and advocate of another maxim -- time in the markets, not market timing -- I know a good trade when I see one. This sure looks like that trade -- so long as you're a trader, and not an investor.
Commentary: Sell in May and stay away? You bet!
By Jim Lowell, MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:36 AM ET May 1, 2007
WATERTOWN, Mass. (MarketWatch) -- Last year at this time and place I put forward a strategy based on the old saw: "Sell in May and stay away." Since that time, the markets at home and abroad have done little more than roll to higher highs, rendering May, 2006 through November, 2006, an anomalously good patch for sowing and harvesting gains.
Still, as the numbers below reveal, this strategy has panned out well in the past, and even fared well enough over the last 12 months, making it a natural pitch in our arsenal of fast balls, sinkers, and sliders.
Moreover, while the ball park remains the same the field has changed. Thanks to nuanced spins, not outright sea changes, the economic landscape and calendar of concerns makes hitting singles, let alone home runs, harder to do.
There's no doubt that the U.S. economy is still growing, but unlike last year's first quarter, wherein our economy grew at its fastest rate in nearly three years, this time around it's different.
Depending upon whom you most listen to, our economy is either slowing to a crawl, or crawling before it walks -- but no one disputes the measurable fact that it has slowed considerably over the past 12 months. There's also no doubt that the global economy is growing like gangbusters. At the end of April, just like they did in April last year, China's central bank announced a modest but symbolic rate hike designed to help manage their economy's combustible growth.
Like last year at this time, I find the overall economic and earnings facts on the ground belie a better fundamental picture of the markets at home and abroad than one might imagine.
And while I don't think we've reached the peak of the markets here, just a peak in an ascending range of where the market will end up for the year, there's reason enough to want to hunker down here for traders (as distinct from investors) who aren't concerned about taking gains or looking much beyond the next four weeks or few months of market activity. Why? Simple: It's May.
Re-enter the dragon
While most adages have some grounding in reality, this Sell in May saw has investment teeth. The adage and all studies focus on the large-cap group of stocks found in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index SPX what happens if you sold whatever S&P 500 device suits yours fancy (i.e., an index fund or an ETF like the SPDR Trust (SPY at the end of April and stayed away until the beginning of November, and then bought back again and hung on through the end of the next April, ad infinitum. The result of doing so: over the past 6 years, you would have made 35.0% vs. 27.2% for those that bought and held throughout the time period. (Note: the trend holds up for mid-cap and small-cap stocks, too.)
That 35% return isn't bad; Not bad at all, you say. However, what if you didn't just take the field for one seasonal sprint and then sit on the sidelines the next, but instead purchased an inverse index fund or, better yet, Profunds Ultra Bear fund (URPIX : ProFunds:UltraBear;) in May, sold it in October, and bought the Profunds Ultra Bull (ULPIX : ProFunds:UltraBull) in November and held through April? You'd have made 44.0% vs. the 27.2% buy and hold index huggers, and the 35.0% made by those traitorous trading indexers making both camps look like they're money's doing nothin' more than pushin' up daisies. Nice!
Enter the trade
While I am a firm believer in, and advocate of another maxim -- time in the markets, not market timing -- I know a good trade when I see one. This sure looks like that trade -- so long as you're a trader, and not an investor.
Emerging Markets, companies, Don't be afraid to invest in them - a steel mill moved from Germany to China
CHINA TAKES THE RUHR
by Chris Mayer
The Ruhr Valley was the heart of Germany’s industrial might. For more than
200 years, the smokestacks in this northwest corner of Germany pounded out
the steel and iron that would form the backbone of the nation’s industry.
And when the war drums rumbled, these factories supplied imperial Germany
with its field guns, armored tanks and shells.
Prosperous communities grew up around these old blast furnaces and mills.
People took pride in the stuff they could make with their hands. Tens of
thousands found work in the factories of the Ruhr. Generations passed with
the knowledge that their sons and daughters could make a life here and
carry on the legacy of such a place. For a long time, that was the way it
went.
But the winds of change patiently grind away at even the most impressive
of advantages. In the early 1990s, the industrious workers of Asia powered
the mortar and pestle that would crush the Ruhr’s traditional way of
life.
It was a slow process, but the endgame was not hard to see. While the
South Koreans became the most efficient producers of steel in the world,
German workers were agitating for a 35-hour workweek. While the Chinese
worked all day in their mills and new factories sprouted up like spring
peepers all through China, Germany increased taxes and expanded its
bloated government programs.
By the turn of the millennium, no one could ignore the stark reality any
longer. The mills and factories of the Ruhr started to close - forever. In
his terrific book China Shakes the World, James Kynge tells the story of
ThyssenKrupp’s steel mill in Dortmund, one of the largest in Germany. The
Germans called it the Phoenix, inspired by its rise from the ashes of
bombing raids in World War II.
Within a month of ThyssenKrupp closing the mill, a Chinese company bought
it with the idea of disassembling the entire mill and taking it to China,
near the mouth of the Yangtze River. Soon after this Chinese company
bought the mill, 1,000 Chinese workers arrived in Germany to begin the
process of taking the plant apart and bringing it to China.
The Germans got an up-close lesson in why they could not compete. The
Chinese worked seven days a week for 12 hours a day. The Germans started
to complain. So the Chinese, in deference to local law, took one day off.
In the end, the Chinese dismantled the mill in less than one year - a full
two years ahead of the time ThyssenKrupp initially thought it would take.
When the Chinese departed, they left the makeshift dormitories and
kitchens they occupied for a year neat and clean. There was, however, a
single pair of black boots left in one of the dormitories. The boots
carried the brand name Phoenix, which was the same name of the plant the
Chinese just took apart. The boots also carried the label “Made in China.”
Kynge writes, “Nobody could tell, however, whether the single pair of
forgotten boots was an oversight or an intentional pun.”
Over 5,000 miles away, the Chinese rebuilt the steel mill exactly as it
was in Germany. As Kynge writes: “Altogether, 275,000 tons of equipment
had been shipped, along with 44 tons of documents that explained the
intricacies of the reassembly process.” Doing all of this was still
cheaper - by about 60% - than building a new mill. Plus, in China, the
demand for steel was such that the mill could start producing steel
immediately at full capacity.
As recently as 1975, China’s entire output of steel could not match this
one mill in Dortmund. Now, the Dortmund plant itself stands in China. And
in Germany, you have a dying industrial city, unemployed steelworkers and
the scarred earth where the mill once stood. Germany is thinking of
turning the site into parkland and perhaps creating a lake and marina. But
as one burly steelworker says in Kynge’s book: “Do we look like yachtsmen
to you?”
This remarkable vignette captures, on many levels, how the game has
changed. Comfortable workers in the factories and mills of America and
Western Europe have no idea what they are up against. Even so, the nature
of global competition keeps shifting.
We tend to think of emerging markets, such as China, as occupying a place
down on the food chain of the global economy. We tend to think of these
places as sources for cheap labor and natural resources. But more and
more, these emerging markets are home to world-class companies in all
kinds of industries.
This is the thesis of Antoine van Agtmael, author of a new book called The
Emerging Markets Century. Agtmael is the man who coined the phrase
“emerging markets” to describe growing, but less-developed economies such
as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Thailand and other places.
Before him, we called these markets “third-world” - which brings to mind
many negative associations. To sell the idea, Agtmael came up with
“emerging markets.”
I saw Agtmael give a presentation in Washington, D.C., one evening. I’ve
also since read the book. Agtmael spent 30 years in these kinds of
markets. “I have helped IranAir lease airplanes and hire crews in
Ethiopia, was involved in financing Ghana’s cocoa exports,” he writes,
“and grew wise to the ways - many of them laughably one-sided - that
developed nations interacted with what were in many cases recent European
colonies.”
Agtmael selected 25 companies to profile in his book. All of them
exemplify best practices and are widely recognized as leaders in their
industries. All of them call an emerging market home.
Agtmael writes about spending time in High Tech Computer Corp.’s research
lab in Taiwan in 2005 and how “Suddenly, my BlackBerry looked like a Model
T.” He writes about how the regional jets we fly are made in Brazil (by
Embraer). How computers are now not just made in China, but designed
there. How Indian and Slovenian labs produce proprietary new drugs. And on
and on it goes.
The world has changed in a profound way, but the typical investor probably
doesn’t appreciate this fully. One more nugget from Agtmael: In 1988, when
he started his fund, there were only 20 emerging market companies with
sales of more than $1 billion. Most of these were banks or commodity
companies. (Overwhelmingly, they were located in Taiwan.) Today, there are
over 270 companies with over $1 billion in sales, and 38 with more than
$10 billion.
Many of them are high-tech companies or provide consumer products and
services. This bolsters Agtmael’s point that many of today’s emerging
market stars do not rely on cheap labor, abundant natural resources or
protective government policies. Instead, they have developed competitive
advantages in technology, design, logistics and other areas.
Agtmael also gives his tips for investing in emerging markets. The most
important of these may simply be this: “Don’t be afraid to invest in
them.”
by Chris Mayer
The Ruhr Valley was the heart of Germany’s industrial might. For more than
200 years, the smokestacks in this northwest corner of Germany pounded out
the steel and iron that would form the backbone of the nation’s industry.
And when the war drums rumbled, these factories supplied imperial Germany
with its field guns, armored tanks and shells.
Prosperous communities grew up around these old blast furnaces and mills.
People took pride in the stuff they could make with their hands. Tens of
thousands found work in the factories of the Ruhr. Generations passed with
the knowledge that their sons and daughters could make a life here and
carry on the legacy of such a place. For a long time, that was the way it
went.
But the winds of change patiently grind away at even the most impressive
of advantages. In the early 1990s, the industrious workers of Asia powered
the mortar and pestle that would crush the Ruhr’s traditional way of
life.
It was a slow process, but the endgame was not hard to see. While the
South Koreans became the most efficient producers of steel in the world,
German workers were agitating for a 35-hour workweek. While the Chinese
worked all day in their mills and new factories sprouted up like spring
peepers all through China, Germany increased taxes and expanded its
bloated government programs.
By the turn of the millennium, no one could ignore the stark reality any
longer. The mills and factories of the Ruhr started to close - forever. In
his terrific book China Shakes the World, James Kynge tells the story of
ThyssenKrupp’s steel mill in Dortmund, one of the largest in Germany. The
Germans called it the Phoenix, inspired by its rise from the ashes of
bombing raids in World War II.
Within a month of ThyssenKrupp closing the mill, a Chinese company bought
it with the idea of disassembling the entire mill and taking it to China,
near the mouth of the Yangtze River. Soon after this Chinese company
bought the mill, 1,000 Chinese workers arrived in Germany to begin the
process of taking the plant apart and bringing it to China.
The Germans got an up-close lesson in why they could not compete. The
Chinese worked seven days a week for 12 hours a day. The Germans started
to complain. So the Chinese, in deference to local law, took one day off.
In the end, the Chinese dismantled the mill in less than one year - a full
two years ahead of the time ThyssenKrupp initially thought it would take.
When the Chinese departed, they left the makeshift dormitories and
kitchens they occupied for a year neat and clean. There was, however, a
single pair of black boots left in one of the dormitories. The boots
carried the brand name Phoenix, which was the same name of the plant the
Chinese just took apart. The boots also carried the label “Made in China.”
Kynge writes, “Nobody could tell, however, whether the single pair of
forgotten boots was an oversight or an intentional pun.”
Over 5,000 miles away, the Chinese rebuilt the steel mill exactly as it
was in Germany. As Kynge writes: “Altogether, 275,000 tons of equipment
had been shipped, along with 44 tons of documents that explained the
intricacies of the reassembly process.” Doing all of this was still
cheaper - by about 60% - than building a new mill. Plus, in China, the
demand for steel was such that the mill could start producing steel
immediately at full capacity.
As recently as 1975, China’s entire output of steel could not match this
one mill in Dortmund. Now, the Dortmund plant itself stands in China. And
in Germany, you have a dying industrial city, unemployed steelworkers and
the scarred earth where the mill once stood. Germany is thinking of
turning the site into parkland and perhaps creating a lake and marina. But
as one burly steelworker says in Kynge’s book: “Do we look like yachtsmen
to you?”
This remarkable vignette captures, on many levels, how the game has
changed. Comfortable workers in the factories and mills of America and
Western Europe have no idea what they are up against. Even so, the nature
of global competition keeps shifting.
We tend to think of emerging markets, such as China, as occupying a place
down on the food chain of the global economy. We tend to think of these
places as sources for cheap labor and natural resources. But more and
more, these emerging markets are home to world-class companies in all
kinds of industries.
This is the thesis of Antoine van Agtmael, author of a new book called The
Emerging Markets Century. Agtmael is the man who coined the phrase
“emerging markets” to describe growing, but less-developed economies such
as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Thailand and other places.
Before him, we called these markets “third-world” - which brings to mind
many negative associations. To sell the idea, Agtmael came up with
“emerging markets.”
I saw Agtmael give a presentation in Washington, D.C., one evening. I’ve
also since read the book. Agtmael spent 30 years in these kinds of
markets. “I have helped IranAir lease airplanes and hire crews in
Ethiopia, was involved in financing Ghana’s cocoa exports,” he writes,
“and grew wise to the ways - many of them laughably one-sided - that
developed nations interacted with what were in many cases recent European
colonies.”
Agtmael selected 25 companies to profile in his book. All of them
exemplify best practices and are widely recognized as leaders in their
industries. All of them call an emerging market home.
Agtmael writes about spending time in High Tech Computer Corp.’s research
lab in Taiwan in 2005 and how “Suddenly, my BlackBerry looked like a Model
T.” He writes about how the regional jets we fly are made in Brazil (by
Embraer). How computers are now not just made in China, but designed
there. How Indian and Slovenian labs produce proprietary new drugs. And on
and on it goes.
The world has changed in a profound way, but the typical investor probably
doesn’t appreciate this fully. One more nugget from Agtmael: In 1988, when
he started his fund, there were only 20 emerging market companies with
sales of more than $1 billion. Most of these were banks or commodity
companies. (Overwhelmingly, they were located in Taiwan.) Today, there are
over 270 companies with over $1 billion in sales, and 38 with more than
$10 billion.
Many of them are high-tech companies or provide consumer products and
services. This bolsters Agtmael’s point that many of today’s emerging
market stars do not rely on cheap labor, abundant natural resources or
protective government policies. Instead, they have developed competitive
advantages in technology, design, logistics and other areas.
Agtmael also gives his tips for investing in emerging markets. The most
important of these may simply be this: “Don’t be afraid to invest in
them.”
Well said about Cheney and Utah/lds church supporting republicans
As Cheney goes down in flames, BYU lights a candle to honor him
Warner P. Woodworth
Article Last Updated: 05/01/2007 11:27:00 PM MDT
Dick Cheney came to Brigham Young University last week to speak at commencement exercises. It was a disappointing contrast to past graduation events when we had speakers such as Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor who condemns human evil; Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent his life fighting poverty through microcredit; and Gordon B. Hinckley, LDS Church president and our beloved prophet.
While the vice president attempted to offer a message of hope for the graduates, most of what he said fell on deaf ears. It was as if the great American Ralph Waldo Emerson was standing behind Cheney yelling out: "What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say!"
Violence and war, false justifications for U.S. aggression, obscene language habits, acceptance of human torture, spying on citizens, disconnects from reality, and intolerance of dissent - these were the underlying elements of the speech to our students.
My views are not a criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its leaders or BYU administrators. They certainly have the right to invite anyone to campus they prefer. My concerns have been about Dick Cheney, his values and politics, and the destructive outcomes of the current administration which have seared the conscience of America, including the cultures of college campuses, which unfortunately include my own school in Provo.
I have been surprised by the hundreds of e-mails, letters and phone calls from people who learned in the media of my criticisms of Mr. Cheney coming to speak at BYU commencement. On the positive side, three-quarters or more of those messages have been extremely positive. They include e-mails from LDS Church leaders in Latin America and Africa, European Latter-day Saints, and Mormons from across the United States, including many BYU alumni, important donors to our institution, converts to the church, as well as parents of past and current students.
However, the small minority of negative messages was quite vitriolic. A number of them copied the dean and/or university administrators, demanding that I be fired. Others were outright hate mail, and some were full of obscenities, much like those frequently used by Dick Cheney himself. About half of those could probably be termed as mere "ranting and raving" because the individuals were evidently so out of control they could not compose a coherent sentence, or even spell correctly. It was apparent that most of those did not receive their education at BYU.
Among the negative e-mails from Utahns, a number expressed outrage that I, a BYU professor, could have the gall to communicate any positive attitudes toward Democratic leaders in America. I was quite surprised about such logic. According to national studies, I admittedly reside in the most conservative city of America, Provo. My voting district is among the most Republican in the nation.
But much of this is merely a recent trend. Were they not aware that for many years in Utah and Mormon history, most Utahns voted with Democrats, locally, in state offices, and nationally? Apparently these people hadn't noticed that our state largely began shifting toward the right in the 1970s as thousands of conservatives moved here from Republican hotbeds like California's Orange County. Indeed, many old-timers in the state still talk about the "Californication" of Utah elections which started the decline of the Democratic Party.
While this trend has continued up to the present, apparently few LDS members here seem aware of the numerous cases of corruption that have occurred since the Right took control of national politics in 2000.
Sure, the earlier Clinton-Monica Lewinsky case was offensive. But look at Republican evils leading right up to last fall's elections: House Whip Tom DeLay was indicted along with others for abuse of power and illegal money matters; Bob Ney of Ohio pleaded guilty to conspiracy; the Abramoff scandal caused at least four other Republicans to lose their offices; two conservatives lost their congressional seats because of assaults on women; Republican presidential candidate George Allen of Virginia was destroyed over racial slurs before the election. Thankfully, the majority of honest Americans could not be manipulated at the last minute in 2006 to vote Republican like they were in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
All in all, the record is obvious. Dick Cheney is a colossal failure, as confirmed by recent public opinion polls of 28-32 percent. Some 36 cities have passed resolutions calling for Bush/Cheney impeachments, and the Vermont Senate voted for the same, while the states of Washington and Wisconsin are pushing similar action.
Now Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is formally filing articles of impeachment against the vice president. While his few supporters still hope for a turnaround, we at BYU now have the dubious distinction of having honored a U.S. official who is going down in flames before our very eyes.
---
* WARNER P. WOODWORTH, Ph.D, is a social entrepreneur and professor at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of business.
Warner P. Woodworth
Article Last Updated: 05/01/2007 11:27:00 PM MDT
Dick Cheney came to Brigham Young University last week to speak at commencement exercises. It was a disappointing contrast to past graduation events when we had speakers such as Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor who condemns human evil; Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent his life fighting poverty through microcredit; and Gordon B. Hinckley, LDS Church president and our beloved prophet.
While the vice president attempted to offer a message of hope for the graduates, most of what he said fell on deaf ears. It was as if the great American Ralph Waldo Emerson was standing behind Cheney yelling out: "What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say!"
Violence and war, false justifications for U.S. aggression, obscene language habits, acceptance of human torture, spying on citizens, disconnects from reality, and intolerance of dissent - these were the underlying elements of the speech to our students.
My views are not a criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its leaders or BYU administrators. They certainly have the right to invite anyone to campus they prefer. My concerns have been about Dick Cheney, his values and politics, and the destructive outcomes of the current administration which have seared the conscience of America, including the cultures of college campuses, which unfortunately include my own school in Provo.
I have been surprised by the hundreds of e-mails, letters and phone calls from people who learned in the media of my criticisms of Mr. Cheney coming to speak at BYU commencement. On the positive side, three-quarters or more of those messages have been extremely positive. They include e-mails from LDS Church leaders in Latin America and Africa, European Latter-day Saints, and Mormons from across the United States, including many BYU alumni, important donors to our institution, converts to the church, as well as parents of past and current students.
However, the small minority of negative messages was quite vitriolic. A number of them copied the dean and/or university administrators, demanding that I be fired. Others were outright hate mail, and some were full of obscenities, much like those frequently used by Dick Cheney himself. About half of those could probably be termed as mere "ranting and raving" because the individuals were evidently so out of control they could not compose a coherent sentence, or even spell correctly. It was apparent that most of those did not receive their education at BYU.
Among the negative e-mails from Utahns, a number expressed outrage that I, a BYU professor, could have the gall to communicate any positive attitudes toward Democratic leaders in America. I was quite surprised about such logic. According to national studies, I admittedly reside in the most conservative city of America, Provo. My voting district is among the most Republican in the nation.
But much of this is merely a recent trend. Were they not aware that for many years in Utah and Mormon history, most Utahns voted with Democrats, locally, in state offices, and nationally? Apparently these people hadn't noticed that our state largely began shifting toward the right in the 1970s as thousands of conservatives moved here from Republican hotbeds like California's Orange County. Indeed, many old-timers in the state still talk about the "Californication" of Utah elections which started the decline of the Democratic Party.
While this trend has continued up to the present, apparently few LDS members here seem aware of the numerous cases of corruption that have occurred since the Right took control of national politics in 2000.
Sure, the earlier Clinton-Monica Lewinsky case was offensive. But look at Republican evils leading right up to last fall's elections: House Whip Tom DeLay was indicted along with others for abuse of power and illegal money matters; Bob Ney of Ohio pleaded guilty to conspiracy; the Abramoff scandal caused at least four other Republicans to lose their offices; two conservatives lost their congressional seats because of assaults on women; Republican presidential candidate George Allen of Virginia was destroyed over racial slurs before the election. Thankfully, the majority of honest Americans could not be manipulated at the last minute in 2006 to vote Republican like they were in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
All in all, the record is obvious. Dick Cheney is a colossal failure, as confirmed by recent public opinion polls of 28-32 percent. Some 36 cities have passed resolutions calling for Bush/Cheney impeachments, and the Vermont Senate voted for the same, while the states of Washington and Wisconsin are pushing similar action.
Now Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is formally filing articles of impeachment against the vice president. While his few supporters still hope for a turnaround, we at BYU now have the dubious distinction of having honored a U.S. official who is going down in flames before our very eyes.
---
* WARNER P. WOODWORTH, Ph.D, is a social entrepreneur and professor at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of business.
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