A recent Pew Internet study estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. A new weblog is created every 7.4 seconds, which means there are about 12,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour. Two articles over the last few weeks have been asking why there is such a dearth of scientific blogs.

In the August 1 issue of The Scientist, writer David Secko interviews fellow chemist Derek Lowe. “As far as I know, I’m alone, and that surprises me,” says Lowe, whose blog is named In the Pipeline. It’s a surprise because blogging allows a competitive edge in finding information, getting in touch with customers and colleagues, and commenting on the pharmaceutical industry, says Lowe. (…) A second article, The Hunt for a New Drug: Five Views From the Inside appeared in the July 29 issue of Science. Again, Derek was featured as one of the Pharma industry insiders.

Being a scientist myself and author of a blog, I have often wondered why there are so few academic or pharmaceutical bloggers. Surely, there must be plenty of scientists with an opinion. However, while a freewheeling blog can (1) get people’s ideas going and (2) provide valuable context to the topic at hand, an industry as competitive as the pharmaceutical one is fairly risk-averse when considering a possible weakening of their IP position. Hence, I’ll doubt that you’re ever going to find a real in-depth discussion of late-breaking results in the the public domain.

What about blogs in a corporate setting? Could you set up corporate blogs for internal-use, to provide a venue to discuss the aforementioned late-breaking results at least with your colleagues inside the company? I suspect that legal departments across the pharmaceutical industry would clamp down on such blog use as well - in the wake of the recent Vioxx court proceedings, it has become amply clear just how damaging free expression in email, blogs or other documents can be. It’s a potential headache that pharmaceutical companies just don’t want.

Sparked by the movie “The Constant Gardener”, Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research published recently an article that took a look at the following vexing question: How did the industry most associated with saving life become so easily and obviously despised? Here’s a few of the key passages from his analysis of the pharmaceutical industry’s situation :

• “Despite advertising worth at least $10 billion a year, perceptions about the drug industry are often wildly inaccurate. Ten percent of the U.S. health-care budget is spent on pharmaceuticals, yet opinion leaders and the general public put the number at 50%, according to various surveys. They believe health care is controlled by big pharma and so assume that, by lowering drug costs, we can substantially reduce health-care bills.”
• “Ultimately, drug companies are caught in an impossible situation. Good health is seen as a basic human right, and the idea that a corporation would charge you for your rights, let alone deny them to you because you can’t afford its product, is seen as morally reprehensible. “
• “As the attacks on the (pharmaceutical) industry from politicians, entertainers and lawyers have intensified, it has sensibly retreated into the notion that actions speak louder than words: Drug companies have recently donated large supplies of their products to developing countries and instituted greater transparency in clinical trial data publication. Now all they can do is hope that Americans don’t believe everything they see at the movies.”

I had never consciously thought about the notion of good health as a basic human right, but it is true that the pharmaceutical industry has become a victim of its own success: patients have come to expect that there is a medicine for their every ailment, and that it is possible to mix and match countless prescription drugs without any untoward side effects. In many respects, today’s patients have less incentive for physical exercise and a well-balanced diet as they have access to cutting-edge medicines.

In contrast, patients in the 1970s seemed to be more grateful for the offerings of the pharmaceutical industry. According to my mother, a physician with 35 years of experience in intensive-care treatment - patients back then were facing a high mortality with just one major health issue - be it diabetes, hypertension or obesity - and their expectations were far from good health as a basic human right.

A recent keynote address by Merck’s ex-CEO Roy Vagelos examined similar territory of what the industry can do to correct the notion of “big bad pharma”. As head of research and later chairman and CEO of Merck, Dr. Vagelos led the company through an unprecedented period of drug discovery and financial success. In Fortune magazine’s annual surveys, Merck was voted “America’s most admired corporation” for seven consecutive Vagelos-led years. During his tenure, Merck developed such successful drugs as Mevacor (first statin approved in the world) and Zocor, cholesterol lowering agents;Vasotec, an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor for high blood pressure and heart failure; and Recombivax HB, a recombivant vaccine to protect against hepatitis B. Vagelos made two key points in his speech:

• Drug companies need to deliver value to the patient. Roy Vagelos pointed out that if a medicine delivers true and lasting value to a patient, companies will have the moral high ground.
• There is no better way to establish goodwill then to bring health to patients. Vagelos referred to the successful Ivermectin campaign that led to the wide-spread erradication of river-blindness and other parasitic diseases. By giving away the anti-worm medicine to poverty-stricken inhabitants of underdeveloped countries, Merck saved millions of lives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thus becoming “America’s most admired corporation”.

I attended this weekend the Semi-Permanent05 conference at New York’s Lincoln Center. The event was a fantastic gathering of some of the most talented and diverse creative minds - artists who flourish in many different mediums with knowledge and abilities far beyond their specific disciplines. Their versatility and ingenuity makes them stronger designers, and it definitely broadened my horizons and appreciation for their work as illustrators, painters and grafitti artists.

Chicago-based Chuck Anderson appeared as one of the speakers in the Saturday session, giving a pep-talk on how to approach your career. In itself, this probably wouldn’t strike you as an unusual topic at a conference for creative professionals. However, Anderson, at just 20-years old and without a college degree, has landed major gigs with corporate clients such as Absolute and McDonalds.

You gotta give this guy some credit and acknowledge his unique perspective - untarnished by the academic teachings of college. Here’s some of his views, and how I would put it into context:

• “… move forward, take (artistic) risks, it’s sink or swim…” Anderson must have been thinking about competition, or evolution. In today’s world, there are so many mediums to work with, coupled with widely available, inexpensive distribution channels - you really have to make it a point to deliver something new, something unique, to stand out from the masses. His call to “move forward” obviously acknowledges past influences, yet demands unyielding novelty.
• “…work hard, sweat, show some determination…” Ah, how true, for every entrepreneurial opportunity. Another artist, James Jean, commented in an interview for The Royal that “even with the best teachers, improvement and learning has to come from self-study and personal initiative.”
• “…what goes around, comes around. Help people…” Without an artist sacrificing his/her livelihood, Chuck pointed out that it’s always a good idea to collaborate and interact with new people, people that you can learn from, people that open unexpected doors for you. “In business and in life, it’s all about service… Give good service and assist others and you will be rewarded with a healthy business.” (Rev Run)
• “…put yourself out there…” A question on many people’s mind: How do you put yourself out there, and how much publicity is too much publicity? Anderson related how he used to go to book stores and browse through stacks of design, photography and music magazines - in an effort to identify unusual art campaigns and the art directors behind them. His advice was to assemble a continuously updated web-based portfolio, and contact key decision makers.
• “…be patient, cool things will happen…” Another very valid point - Chuck was referring to the need to be prepared, and to set up one’s artistic ventures on a sustainable basis. Things like invoicing, bookkeeping, the legal basis of your company - everything needs to be in place so that once opportunity strikes, you are ready to execute without distractions.
• “…be proud of your work…” Chuck’s last and maybe most important point of the talk dealt with attitude. Unless you stand 100% behind your work, you won’t be taken seriously and you probably won’t invest all the resources necessary to make your artistic career work (see point #2, work hard, sweat)

Read more

• Chuck Anderson’s website (www.nopattern.com)
• Cool Hunting Interview with Chuck

Designers can be found in many fields - from engineering, the arts to architecture. With any new client and project, designers have to evaluate how far they can push the envelope of innovation. Oftentimes, innovation is required to address some unmet needs or to realize financial savings - something concrete that calls for a practical solution, without expending any more efforts than necessary. But practical solutions don’t have to be drab, as a recent article in the Architect’s Newspaper shows.

In the case of the New York Times Company, building a gleaming new headquarters near Central Park, “the architecture and construction teams (…) devised a range of cutting-edge design elements that make the building one of the most technologically progressive in the country. Because the headquarters includes almost no back-office operations and is thus for editorial and higher-level business staff, a premium was placed on innovation.”

“What’s more, much of the original impetus for the innovations came from the newspaper itself, which pushed the architects and engineers to develop new solutions. Here are some of the building’s most notable design elements:

• Facade Lighting: “The facade is lit by an Erco lighting system, with lights installed at various floor levels, giving the building the appearance of being lit from the ground up. This gradation system means that the 250-watt lights consume only 25 percent of the energy normally required for a building this size.” (…)
• Natural Light: “The Times took things one step further by entering a partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, a leader in lighting studies, to evaluate and select a dynamic lighting and daylight harvesting system. “The philosophy is to maximize natural light coming in, maximize the connection to the outdoors, maximize the view, but not cross over into glare,” said Glenn Hughes, director of construction and real estate for the Times. (…) Based on data culled from a mockup [building], the Times expects a 35-percent energy savings from the shading system alone.” (…)
• Interior Lighting: “Only 2 percent of all office space in the United States is dimmable but the Times wanted to take things a step further, to have a system that would respond to incoming daylight and adjust itself automatically (…). According to Pekka Hakkarainen, “as sunlight enters the space, we had a requirement to dim the electric lighting so that the desk illumination is within the target settings in any given department on any given floor.” (…)
• Air Circulation: “Virtually every office building in the United States is equipped with ceiling HVAC systems. But once again, the Times decided to be different and placed the air conditioning in the floor—an idea borrowed from European office buildings, where natural ventilation is more commonly accepted. (…) The project designers realized that they could achieve remarkable energy efficiencies by piping cold air through the floor. (…) The supply air is coming through diffusers in floor, and it picks up heat as it rises. This is more efficient than dropping it from overhead ducts, which require lower temperatures in order to fully circulate the air.The diffusers are then covered with a specially designed carpet piece which has miniscule holes in it for the air.” (…)
• Backup Power: Because a national newspaper can’t stop for things like power failures, the Times required that its new building come with a backup power system capable of running its vital newsroom functions. (…) The solution came in the form of a co-generation plant, running continuously on natural gas and completely isolated from the city power grid. The plant’s two engines generate 1.4 megawatts continually, (enough) to (…) cool the data center and (…) run all of the newsroom.” (…)

Read the full article…

What a week. It’s hard to imagine how it must feel when you’re losing everything you owned except the shirt that you wear. I’ll leave that kind of commentary to the thousands of other bloggers, and focus on two other points related to technology and communication.

• Lawlessness Not Anticipated: No kidding. Watching the 24-7 news coverage on TV, it’s amazing that apparently few officials thought it necessary to have sufficient boots on the ground come Monday evening, before frustrated citizens took to the streets and started acting out, inflicting violence on everyone in sight, including rescue workers doing their heroic work. If Iraq serves as an example, the US government should have known that you need to have security personnel in place as soon as the hurrican has passed by. Here’s an AP story along the same lines:
  

  The head of the federal disaster relief agency said Friday it’s “heartbreaking and very, very frustrating” to witness the virtual anarchy in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and defended the Bush administration’s response.

  Interviewed on several network morning news shows, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, blamed emergency assistance delivery problems on “the total lack of communications, the inability to hear and have good intelligence on the ground about what was actually occurring there.”

  Brown appeared the morning after the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, charged that administration officials “don’t have a clue” about what’s going on in the devastated city that long has been among the nation’s premier tourist attractions. (…)

  But Brown also acknowledged that little in the government’s preparedness plan took into account the likelihood of lawlessness in such dire straits.

  Just like in Iraq, I might add. Read the full AP article…

• Collapsing Communication, Collapsing Society: Especially after the events of September 11, I would think that the folks at FEMA would have updated their plans to foresee a disaster scenario like the one happening right now in New Orleans: no electricity for weeks on end, and no functioning cell phone towers. As it is amply clear from the news coverage, officials and citizens alike have a hard time figuring out what’s going on — ahh, the marvels of modern technology - that is, 21st century technology. Here’s an AP story along the same lines:
  

  When the phones don’t work, improvise. That’s what emergency responders and civilians were forced to do in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which trashed the telephone system on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi.

  Police in New Orleans, their main communications system knocked out, have been taking turns talking on a single radio channel with their walkie talkies. The Mississippi National Guard even resorted to ancient battlefield tactics, sending runners back and forth among commanders with information. (…)

  Though government officials have never before had to contemplate a communciations breakdown of this magnitude, it was not immediately clear — with $8.6 billion in federal money handed out to states since September 11 for emergency preparedness — why more satellite communciations systems were not in place. Read full AP article…

Common to both stories: Without means of communication for the broad population - cell phones and Internet access - our “technologically advanced” society is quickly returned to the ranks of a developing nation, with all its ugly side effects.