Roland Piquepaille writes “A major challenge in public health is that people don’t take their medications, a phenomenon known as ‘medication non-adherence.’ In the US alone, it is estimated that this accounts for 10% of all hospital visits and costs the healthcare system $100 billion per year and $60 billion to the pharmaceutical industry. Now, an MIT research team thinks it has a solution to this problem that will save lives worldwide. They’ve developed the uBox, a convenient, palm-sized, intelligent pill dispenser, ‘which reminds a patient when it is time to take his medication, records when a patient has taken a dose, and prevents a patient from double-dosing.’ The first large-scale trial with 100 uBoxes is scheduled to start in Might in Bihar, India, in a 6-month long tuberculosis treatment program.”
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bhmit1 writes “BusinessWeek is reporting about Science Debate 2008, an attempt to put the scientific issues front and center in the US Presidential race. After 12,0000 scientists signed on in support of the idea of a debate focused on science, no campaign has replied to an invitation to such a debate. The article notes that only one candidate has said much about science issues in the campaign, and that some who are running are sufficiently anti-science as to deny evolution. There’s a link to a comparison of the candidates’ positions on issues informed by science. (Yes, Ron Paul is included.)”
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conlaw writes to share that according to Discovery.com scientists have found a way to extract energy from rain. A new technique could utilize piezoelectric principles of a special kind of plastic to generate power from falling water in rainstorms or even commercial air conditioners. “The method relies on a plastic called PVDF (for polyvinylidene difluoride), which is used in a range of products from pipes, films, and wire insulators to high-end paints for metal. PVDF has the uncommon property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it’s mechanically deformed.”
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Posted by: in Housing
Filed under: Industry, Japan, Housing, Recession
The New York Times reports that Japan’s decade-long economic slump following the bursting of its 1980s economic bubble offers important lessons for the U.S. Of these, the most important one seems to be that banks and others exposed to bad loans should write them off fast and move on. It was Japan’s unwillingness to bite the bullet that kept it stuck for a decade.
Last month, I compared Japan’s negative interest rates to the ones we’ve now. But what caused the predicament that led Japan to cut its rates so much? In Japan, housing prices in the major metropolitan regions almost tripled from 1985 to 1991, then proceeded to lose two-thirds of their value over the next 14 years. In the U.S., the price run up was less extreme: house prices rose 82% from November 2001 to their peak in June 2006. Since the peak, home prices have fallen 10% with 10% to 15% further to go.
Japan was slow to write-down its bad loans. That’s because its industrial groups, or keiretsu, had tight links with banks, so when a bank got in trouble it was often quietly bailed out temporarily with loans or investments from other members of the corporate group. In the U.S., banks are quicker to take write-downs and so far we’ve used Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) to recapitalize the banks.
The lesson we should learn from Japan is that the sooner we face reality, the sooner we can solve our problems and move on to the next period of growth. A larger question is whether we have the ability to grow without creating another bubble.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also instructs management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.
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New Scientist is reporting that, BP Piscium, an unusual star recently under scrutiny from astronomers may have swallowed a nearby companion and spewed out a planet-forming dust cloud as a result. The team has also identified a similar scenario with another star which they hope will offer more answers to the puzzling questions.
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