ABBA NETWORK

The Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Mumbai got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration - USFDA for its product Zetia (Ezetimibe), a cholestrol lowering drug will be useful for fat loss and cholestrol management. The approval is issued for 10 mg Ezetimibe tablets.

The drug got 6 months marketing exclusivity until the patent expires. In 2008 the Zetia pill was sold for an yearly turnover of $1.5 billion. The main patent of the drug will expire on 2014.

A set of new small and cheaper Netbooks are about to emerge the IT market in this year. The new netbooks will not use any traditionally used accessories such as Intel Processor and Windows OS.

The small netbooks will consume only little energy and that will be using a ARM processor platform. The chip is being licensed by the UK company ARM Holdings. Today 90% of the newly introduced mobiles are using the ARM technology.

In this year 2009 around 10 models of ARM netbooks are about to be launced. The ARM company refused to give any information about the manufacturers.

Facebook developers set up a campaign to find out a new ad platform that will allow marketers to track wherever the 50 million members of Facebook surf online and what they are interested to buy. The aim of tracking all this action is to help out advertisers reach the most “relevant” advertisement to customers-and eventually to market more products and services.

The Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg “For the last hundred years, media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be part of the conversation”. Facebook stated that the new ad platform, named as Facebook Ads, in the AdTech conference held at New York.

Caught in those millions of pages of information on Facebook is precisely the type of data that makes many brands dribble. Along with the top 10 questions Facebook inquire when do you make a profile and where do you shop and what do you buy.

At present the Facebook Ads will allow companies to obtain a part of all that allotment. The center of each member’s experience on Facebook is their own page and that’s the place to start the business, Zuckerberg added.

Facebook’s ad platform has three parts: The first one is “Social Ads,” the second one is “Targeting” and last one is “Insights.” Social Ads are small ads that will be enclosed to news feeds. It will be displayed on the news feeds which are subscribed by users and their friend circle. Advertisers will be able to bid for the authority to display their ads on the news feeds subscribed by the users with the exact preference that they target.

The genomes of man and dog have been joined in the scientific barnyard by the genome of the cow, an animal that walked beside them on the march to modern civilization.

A team of hundreds of scientists working in more than a dozen countries yesterday published the entire DNA message — the genome — of an 8-year-old female Hereford living at an experimental farm in Montana.

Hidden in her roughly 22,000 genes are hints of how natural selection sculpted the bovine body and personality over the past 60 million years, and how man greatly enhanced the job over the past 10,000.

As with other species, genes governing the immune system, the metabolism of nutrients and social interaction appear to be where much of the evolutionary action has occurred. The result is an animal that lives peacefully in herds and grows large on low-quality food, thanks to the billions of bacteria it carries around.

Selective breeding has exaggerated and spread some of those traits, producing hyper-passive Holsteins and muscle-bound Belgian Blues, and dozens of humpbacked breeds that combine characteristics of both.

“Are there signatures of the human hand in the cattle genome? The answer is plainly and clearly yes,” said Harris A. Lewin, head of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of one of three papers on the cow genome appearing today in the journal Science.

Although sheep and goats were domesticated earlier, cattle are the most important herd animals in the world. There are about 800 distinct breeds, and together they contribute to the nutrition or income of about 6.6 billion people.

The cow is the first livestock animal whose genome has been sequenced, part of an effort to read and analyze the DNA of organisms that have scientific, medical or economic importance. In addition to dozens of microbes and several plants, those sequenced so far include the chimpanzee, mouse, rat, dog, chicken, mosquito, fruit fly, opossum and platypus.

Of a cow’s 22,000 genes, versions of at least 14,000 have counterparts in other mammals. Cows appear to have about 1,000 genes that they share with dogs and rodents but that are not found in people.

The most recently evolved genes tend to be clustered in parts of the cow’s 31 chromosomes where stretches of DNA have been duplicated, copied and inserted upside down, or added to by invading viruses. Those events are usually catastrophic and often lead to the fatal breakage of chromosomes. Over evolutionary time, however, a few survive and provide the raw material for new genes — and new functions.

This clear relationship between chromosome instability and gene formation is giving scientists a new view of one way evolutionary change happens at the molecular level.

“Instead of having only a very slow and gradual change by mutation, you have the ability for much larger and dramatic changes because of these rearrangements,” Lewin said.

Cholesterol drugs taken to prevent heart attacks may also lower the risk of prostate cancer and impotence in aging men, researchers said.

Men taking any of several different statin drugs for their cardiovascular health had a threefold lower chance of being diagnosed with prostate cancer compared with those not taking the drugs, according to a 15-year study of men ages 40 to 79 by the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minnesota. Those taking any of the medicines, including Merck & Co.’s Zocor and Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor, also had a lower incidence in later years of erectile dysfunction, benign prostate enlargement and urinary problems.

Prostate cancer is the leading malignancy affecting men and the second deadliest, with 186,320 cases and 28,660 deaths in the U.S. in 2008, said the American Cancer Society. The new research may not reflect a true drop in prostate cancer, the authors said, because statins may merely lower the levels of one indicator, prostate specific antigen, rather than cancer itself.

“If you are taking a statin for a heart condition or to lower cholesterol, these studies suggest that statins could have other benefits,” said study author Jennifer St. Sauver, a Mayo Clinic epidemiologist. “It’s clear we need more information before men are advised to start taking statins for their urological health.”

The findings, being presented at the American Urological Association meeting in Chicago, came from a long-term observational study of 2,447 men in Olmstead County, Minnesota. Beginning in 1990, the study tracked the varied effects of statin use on men’s health as they age, researchers said.

Mixed History

An American Cancer Society official urged caution in interpreting the results, noting that statin cancer studies have a history of mixed results.

“We’ve had studies over the course of several years that suggested statins have a protective or preventive effect with respect to certain cancers. Subsequent studies failed to support that observation,” said J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the society in an April 24 telephone interview. “Are there other potential explanations for what you’re seeing? There may be an association but not causation.”

A previous study of 1 million people observed by the American Cancer Society’s CPS-II research found no effect of statins on cancer, he said.

Funding Disclosed

The Mayo Clinic research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and by the research unit of Merck, St. Sauver said.

One-third of the 2,447 men in the study were taking one of several statins. Of those, 38 men, or 6 percent, were diagnosed with prostate cancer. Men not taking statins were three times more likely to develop prostate cancer, researchers said.

Until now there has been limited evidence to support a theory that statins could protect against development of cancer, researchers said. “Our research provides evidence that statin use is associated with a threefold reduced risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer,” said study leader Rodney Breau, a Mayo urologic oncology fellow, in a statement.

While previous studies have suggested a link between statins and prostate cancer prevention, St. Sauver said the strength of the association found in the study was a surprise. “It’s very strong. I must say we were pretty excited,” she said in an April 24 telephone interview.

Preliminary

The findings are preliminary, said senior author Jeffrey Karnes, a Mayo Clinic urologist. He added that more medical trials are needed to determine whether statins prevent prostate cancer.

“In the United States, one in six men will develop prostate cancer,” Karnes said in a statement. “Far more will develop heart disease. I tell my patients to take care of their heart — because what’s good for the heart is also good for the prostate.”

The prostate, a chestnut-shaped gland beneath the bladder that makes semen to transport sperm, is enlarged in one in four men ages 40 to 50 and half of men ages 70 to 80.

Statins are known to lower prostate specific antigen, a protein that is tested in the blood to assess the chance of prostate cancer, St. Sauver said. In this study, statin drugs may have simply lowered PSA so the men were “less likely to go for a biopsy and get a diagnosis of prostate cancer,” rather than actually preventing tumors, she added.

Participants in the study group took an array of different statin drugs, St. Sauver said, with 40 percent being given simvistatin, marketed as Zocor by Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck, and 35 percent taking atorvastatin, marketed as Lipitor by New York-based Pfizer. Others took products such as lovastatin, sold by Merck as Mevacor, and pravastatin, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. as Pravachol.

Sexual Impact

Researchers also reported men’s ability to have erections benefited from statin use in those ages 60 or older, and in younger men as well on long-term statin use. Those who took statins for nine years were 64 percent less likely to develop erectile dysfunction than those who didn’t take the drugs, while men who took statins for fewer than three years showed no reduction in risk for that problem.

The study also found benign prostate enlargement was 57 percent less likely and urinary problems 63 percent less likely in men taking statins than in the others, researchers said.

“Statins have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects, and previous research suggests inflammation may be associated with benign prostate disease,” said St. Sauver.

Limitations of Olmstead County study included the fact that all participants were white, making it hard to extend the findings to other ethnic groups, she said in the interview. - bloomberg.com

Here are some facts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how swine flu spreads in humans:

• Swine flu viruses typically sicken pigs, not humans. Most cases occur when people come in contact with infected pigs or contaminated objects moving from people to pigs.

• Pigs can catch human and avian or bird flu. When flu viruses from different species infect pigs, they can mix inside the pig and new, mixed viruses can emerge.

• Pigs can pass mutated viruses back to humans and they can be passed from human to human. Transmission among humans is thought to occur in the same way as seasonal flu - by touching something with flu viruses and then touching their mouth or nose, and through coughing or sneezing.

• Symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to those of seasonal influenza - sudden fever, coughing, muscle aches and extreme fatigue. This new strain also appears to cause more diarrhea and vomiting than normal flu.

• Vaccines are available to be given to pigs to prevent swine influenza. There is no vaccine to protect humans from swine flu although the CDC is formulating one. The seasonal influenza vaccine may help provide partial protection against swine H3N2, but not swine H1N1 viruses, like the one circulating now.

• People cannot catch swine flu from eating pork or pork products. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.

California took aim Thursday at the oil industry and its impact on global warming, adopting the world’s first regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the fuel that runs cars and trucks.

The Air Resources Board voted 9 to 1 in favor of the complex new rule, which is expected to slash the state’s gasoline consumption by a quarter in the next decade. It seeks to expand the market for electric and hydrogen-fueled vehicles and jump-start a host of futuristic biofuels to replace corn-based ethanol, as well as oil.
Trying to cut emissionsGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the “first-in-the-world low carbon fuel standard,” noting that 16 other states are looking to California as a model and that President Obama has called for a national standard.

It will “not only reduce global warming,” he said, “it will reward innovation, expand consumer choice and encourage the private investment we need to transform our energy infrastructure.”

The regulation requires producers, refiners and importers of gasoline and diesel to reduce the carbon footprint of their fuel by 10% over the next decade. And it launches the state on an ambitious path toward ratcheting down its overall heat-trapping emissions by 80% by mid-century — a level that some scientists deem necessary to avoid drastic global climate disruption.

Experts say California faces droughts, fresh water shortages, rising sea levels and widespread extinction of plants and wildlife species from growing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

Scores of industry executives and environmental activists testified on the hotly debated fuel regulation at a daylong public hearing in Sacramento before the vote. Corn ethanol producers complained that the rule unfairly exaggerated the effects of using food crops for energy. Cattlemen argued that diverting corn to ethanol has upped their feed costs.

Canada’s consul general in San Francisco charged that the rule discriminates against oil from Alberta tar sands. And former Gen. Wesley Clark, testifying for the ethanol industry, said the board failed to account for carbon-intensive effects of U.S. military forces protecting oil reserves in the Middle East.

The regulation calculates the life cycle of fuels from their extraction — or cultivation, in the case of biofuels — to their combustion. But the indirect effect of replacing cropland used for energy will also be included, and the board’s calculations of those land-use effects is strongly disputed by corn ethanol producers.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil industry representatives were also divided. The Western States Petroleum Assn. opposed the rule, disputing the air board’s contention that it will lower the cost of fuel to consumers.

“This is the most transforming regulation any of us has ever undertaken,” said Catherine Reihis-Boyd, the group’s Sacramento lobbyist, noting that it involved “fuels that haven’t even been envisioned and certainly not commercialized.”

But James Uihlein, a Chevron representative, endorsed the standard, and its indirect land-use provisions, as “sending the right signal to innovators” to produce advanced fuels.

Not all of the alternative fuel companies were in sync, however. An executive from Fulcrum BioEnergy, a Pleasanton, Calif., company that makes cellulosic ethanol from post-recycled garbage, said it will “create a market” for his product. But a representative of Verenium, a cellulosic ethanol company with offices in San Diego, asked the board to hold off on counting land-use effects.

Board members acknowledged that the science of evaluating the carbon footprint of all fuels is still developing. It asked staff to further study the land-use issue and report back in January 2011. The standard is scheduled to take effect in 2012, gradually ramping up to the 10% reduction by 2020.

“We have done a lot to make cars cleaner and more efficient, but the petroleum industry, which has a lot more reserves, has gotten off scot-free with respect to greenhouse gases,” said board Chairwoman Mary D. Nichols. “Now we are creating the framework for a new way of looking at automotive fuels. No longer will petroleum be the only game in town.”

Some environmentalists who favor a stronger emphasis on electric vehicles said the rule did not go far enough in questioning the land-use effects of ethanol from nonfood crops such as switch grass or farmed trees. Others urged the board to monitor the construction of advanced fuel facilities so they would not increase inner-city air pollution.

Roland Hwang, transportation director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, criticized the board’s delay of final action on land-use impacts, which he said were “critical safeguards for our native forests . . . and scenic wild lands.”

But he added that the new standard means “the handwriting is on the wall: Big Oil needs to stop investing in dirty, high-carbon fuels and move to produce more advanced biofuels.”
-Latimes

The economic and financial crisis imperils the preservation of existing assets and the continuation of financing of good infrastructure projects.

Previous crises have demonstrated the impacts on sustainable economic growth of the lack of finances to infrastructure, with severe consequences for countries’ development agendas.

Preliminary research by the Bank Group indicates that roughly US$110 billion worth of new projects risk delay or postponement and about US$70 billion worth of existing projects face financing or refinancing risk.

Poorer developing countries are being crowded out as private investors focus on the largest emerging markets.

The MDGs will not be met in the absence of continuous advancement in the provision of infrastructure services, particularly in Africa and the LDCs.

——————————————————————————–
OUR CRISIS RESPONSE FOR INFRASTRUCTURE

The World Bank Group is establishing a platform to bridge infrastructure financing, project preparation, and capacity gaps in developing countries that are facing financial distress as a result of the crisis.

The INFRA platform comprises a rapid diagnostic tool to identify at-risk infrastructure projects, a concessional financing window to support the preparation and financing of such projects, initiatives for parallel and donor-financing, and a common reporting system.

Participation in INFRA allows donors to coordinate infrastructure sector efforts more efficiently and quickly reach the poor.

INFRA is one of the three pillars of the Vulnerability Framework: safety nets to the poorest and most vulnerable, support to infrastructure, and support to the private sector. Developed countries are invited to allocate 0.7% of their stimulus packages to support developing countries under distress.

——————————————————————————–
WORLD BANK GROUP AND INFRASTRUCTURE
The WBG has also taken measures to preserve the infrastructure portfolio and is allocating extra funding for infrastructure expenditure to support countercyclical measures to generate employment and growth.

As of June 2008, the Bank Group’s total active infrastructure portfolio was US$49 Billion.

Infrastructure commitments for FY2008 were US$12 Billion.

A round of better-than-expected earnings reports pushed stocks higher ahead of the government’s criteria for its stress test, expected at 2 p.m. EDT.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 125 points at 8083, within 50 points of turning positive for the seventh consecutive week, helped by gains in two of its components that posted results late Thursday. Microsoft was up 8.4% despite reporting that its earnings fell 32%, hurt by its first decline in sales as a public company. American Express’s net income fell 56% on an 18% decline in sales. Its shares were up 20%.

Outside the Dow, Ford Motor climbed 17% after it said it lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter but burned through less cash as it continued to restructure without government aid.

Online retailer Amazon.com was up 6.7% after it posted a better-than-expected 24% rise in first-quarter profit, fueled by strong sales of its Kindle device. Amazon’s gains helped spur the technology-oriented Nasdaq Composite Index, which was recently 2.2% higher at 1689, its highest intraday level since Nov. 5, 2008. If it closed for the month here, it would be the strongest two-month gain since October and November 2002, which turned out to be the beginning of the last bull market.

The relative strength of the generally smaller technology and consumer stocks on the Nasdaq represents a growing bet on an economic recovery, traders say.

“This is a breakout and it looks like it has more legs to it,” said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. For the broader market, “you want technology leadership,” Detrick said. “When you have a true - I don’t want to say bull market yet - but a strong trending market, technology is one thing you want to perform.”

The S&P 500 was up 1.5%, led by gains of more than 3% each in its consumer and materials sectors and came within a point of turning positive for its seventh straight weekly gain.

The financial sector was also gaining by about 1.9%. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to detail the methodology of the “stress tests” regulators have given to the 19 largest U.S. financial institutions. Bank stocks have traded erratically all week as investors await more information on the tests. Thursday, a late bounce in the sector helped drive stock indexes higher in the final half hour of trade.

“The bank stress program is about how much banks have written down the securities that have plagued their balance sheets. It’s the remaining open question and if bank balance sheets continue to be a rat’s nest, we’ll continue to languish,” said Larry Smith, chief investment officer for Third Wave Global Investors.

Shares of major banks were mixed in recent action. The KBW Banks Index rose 1.2%. Bank of America was up 4.4%, Citigroup slipped 0.3%, J.P. Morgan Chase rose 2.2% and Wells Fargo added about 5.3%.

Oil futures rose $1.92, pushing them back above the psychologically important $50 a barrel level. Though new inventory data this week showed U.S. stockpiles of crude at historic highs, traders and analysts say the market is beginning to reflect early bets on summer driving season.

Fadel Gheit, energy analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York, said gasoline demand has held up fairly well this year despite a deep global recession, though other refined fuels, like diesel, have lagged due to weakness in the industrial sector.

“You have to remember that gasoline prices are about half what they were a year ago,” said Gheit. “For the consumer, that helps to offset the effects of job losses,” which tend to weigh on fuel demand.

In another supportive development for oil prices on Thursday, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri said he doesn’t expect the oil cartel to cut production when the group meets next month.

In recent action, the dollar was weaker against the yen and euro. The U.S. Dollar Index was off 1%.

In economic news, manufacturers’ orders for long-lasting goods slid 0.8% last month, the Commerce Department said, a smaller-than-expected slide. The department also reported that new home sales dipped 0.6% in March, beating analyst expectations.

Gold futures built on recent gains, up nearly $4 an ounce, as China built reserves, while oil futures were up 30 cents a barrel as OPEC’s secretary-general said compliance with production is running at about 80%. Treasurys were lower, pushing up yields.

Overseas, Tokyo stocks saw a minor fall while those in Hong Kong edged higher. Stocks in Europe rose amid an improving level of business confidence in Germany.

-WSJ

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has joined a group of information technology giants to report earnings that beat industry expectations. Samsung, the world’s largest maker of television and liquid-crystal display panels and the second-largest maker of semiconductor chips and mobile phones, on Apr. 24 posted a first-quarter operating profit of $349 million, swinging back to the black from a loss of $550 million in the previous quarter.

“The results were a surprise,” says Brian Park, electronic analyst at Prudential Investment & Securities. “What’s assuring is that Samsung displayed its ability to squeeze its costs to improve profitability at a time of crisis.” The profit, nevertheless, is less than a fifth of $1.9 billion Samsung earned the year before. First-quarter sales also fell 13% to $21.3 billion from the previous quarter although it represented a 10% gain from the year before.

The star performer was its mobile-phone business. Rejecting analysts’ criticisms that Samsung is bent on increasing its market share at all costs, the Korean company said it earned $833 million on sales of $7.26 billion in its telecom business. The profit came as Samsung’s global market share topped 18% in the first three months, up from 16.4% the year before.

The profitability of the handset business caught virtually everybody by surprise. That’s because Samsung’s large profit margin of 11.5% for the quarter beat the 8.9% margin reported by Nokia (NOK), the unquestioned king in the handset industry. Samsung’s average selling price for its handsets-a key indicator for demand and profitability-rose 2% to $122 from the previous quarter, whereas Nokia’s average selling price fell to $86 from $94, though Nokia unit sales are more than double Samsung’s.

Cautious Forecast
But like executives from Apple (AAPL), IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), and Google (GOOG), which all reported quarterly profits that beat Wall Street expectations, Samsung officials were cautious in forecasting for the rest of the year. “We can’t say with confidence that profitability will increase in the second quarter,” says Robert Yi, the vice-president heading Samsung’s investor relations team. “Also, we cannot rule out the possibility of a repeat of last year when we had a good first half and a disappointing second half.”

Things looked bad even in the first quarter for two of Samsung’s main businesses. Its chip and LCD panel divisions, traditionally the company’s money makers, kept bleeding red ink. With prices of memory chips remaining below manufacturing costs, Samsung lost 13¢ for every $1 of revenue in the first quarter from its chip business. Sharp price declines also meant it lost 8¢ for every dollar of LCD panel sales. In a thin-margin business of television, Samsung remained profitable, with its brand accounting for one in every five LCD TVs sold on the planet.

Industry officials say the worst appears to be over for LCD panels and the memory chips used in storing data for computers and mobile gadgets, but recovery would be slow.