PhRMA Code’s revised guidelines take effect January 2009

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) released updates to its voluntary Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals on July 10. The new guidelines take effect January 2009.

In addition to prohibiting small gifts and reminder items, the revised Code:Prohibits company sales representatives from providing restaurant meals to healthcare professionals, but allows them to provide occasional meals in healthcare professionals’ offices in conjunction with informational presentations

1. Prohibits company sales representatives from providing restaurant meals to healthcare professionals, but allows them to provide occasional meals in healthcare professionals’ offices in conjunction with informational presentations

2. Includes new provisions requiring companies to ensure their representatives are sufficiently trained about applicable laws, regulations, and industry codes of practice.

3. Provides that each company will state its intentions to abide by the Code and that company CEOs and compliance officers will certify each year that they have processes in place to comply

4. Includes more detailed standards regarding the independence of continuing medical education

5. Provides additional guidance for speaking and consulting arrangements with healthcare professionals

Challenges

1. Tracking aggregate spending is one of the biggest challenges for pharmaceutical companies

2. Some companies do not have a system that will accurately record aggregate spending across the organization.

3. Training employees is another. It’s going to be a challenge getting everyone on the same page.

Benefits

1. The new guidelines could help the industry regain public trust after “just getting shelled” and constantly being accused of wrongdoing. In addition, some

2. Companies will be relieved they can reduce their spending on traditional marketing activities.

12 steps to shock-and-awe Pakistan's economy

FDA: Food Safety Tips for Healthy Holidays

Parties, family dinners, and other gatherings where food is served are all part of the holiday cheer. But the merriment can change to misery if food makes you or others ill.Typical symptoms of foodborne illness are stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea, which often start a few days after consuming contaminated food or drink.

1. Clean: The first rule of safe food preparation in the home is to keep everything clean.

Wash hands with warm water and soap for 20 seconds before and after handling food. “For children, this means the time it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice,” says Davidson.

Wash food-contact surfaces (cutting boards, dishes, utensils, countertops) with hot, soapy water after preparing each food item and before going on to the next item.

Rinse fruits and vegetables thoroughly under running water and use a produce brush to remove surface dirt.

Do not rinse raw meat and poultry before cooking. “Washing these foods makes it more likely for bacteria to spread to areas around the sink and countertops,” says

Salute the men who fight our battles for us and make a PLEDGE to fight terror with them

India's 9/11: Will this be its wake-up call?

Slain Major led from front: NSG chief

So where are you going to smoke after Oct, 2nd

Two Google Research Tricks

Tricks are really going to help everybody who is using Google for search here are they-:

The more terms you use, the more refined your search. Entering [volvo] will return 70,000,000 links. But try [volvo repair shop], and the number drops to 1,400,000 links. And [volvo repair shop los angeles] reduces that number to just 600,000.

Put your terms in quotes to be even more specific. Add quotation marks to search for phrases, and you’ll have a more precise search. Type in ["volvo repair shop" and "los angeles"], and Google will look for sites that feature both of those phrases, as opposed to individual words like "repair," "shop," "los" or "angeles" that may appear anywhere in the Web page. In our example, using quotes reduces the number of results to 31,000.

It only took a few more keywords and some quote marks to transform an overwhelming 70,000,000 links into a more manageable 31,000. And now you know how to narrow the results even more.

Be ready to hear Cricket Made In China..

Anything China does has serious impact across the world. Bloomberg reports on the silent diplomacy used by China to counter Taiwan’s influence in West Indies.

Big news in that post is what China is doing about that big Indian obsession called Cricket:

China aims to have 150,000 players, a league and a “credible'’ national team by 2020, says Calvin Leung, a spokesman for the Chinese Cricket Association. Athletic officials are introducing a training program in schools to meet those aims.

“It’s quite hopeful we’ll qualify for the 2019 World Cup,'’ Leung says. “If we move ahead at a quicker pace then maybe we can do it.'’

Searching beyond Google

Here are three Google alternatives that are refreshingly different from Google. Try them and see if they work better for you:

Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com):

This is a “metasearch” engine, offering simultaneous results from several search engines. It is fast, has a clean user interface, and presents information in “clusters” that narrow down your search results. Key in ‘Diwali’, for example, and you’ll get subfolders like ‘History of Diwali’, ‘Diwali gifts and cards’ and ‘Diwali Recipes’. Vivisimo also lets you restrict searches to publications such as Reuters, CNN and such.

Grokker (www.grokker.com):

This search engine touts visual search as its selling point. Here again you’d find you search results sorted in clusters of the topic, but instead of presenting them in subfolders, Grokker separates them into a ‘Map view’ that you can zook into. It’s easier to relate to and visually more appealing.

Rollyo (www.rollyo.com):

This isn’t a separate search engine; it’s a tool that lets you create your own domain-specific search engine on the fly. What it basically does is, run on top of Yahoo! search and let your “roll your own” searches. So, any individual can set up a custom ‘searchroll’ such as ‘Medicine’ or ‘News’, which searches within anywhere from one to 25 different sites.

This basically means that instead of sorting through thousands of sites, you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust.

Topix (www.topix.net):

The service takes a crawl-and-index approach to a vast array of internet news sources, such as news sites and blog sites. Topix then runs the resultant data through an engine that tags every news story with location and topic.
It then builds more than 180,000 subject- and location-specific pages, pages
that reside comfortably between the bulk of your search results. However, Topix won’t dump the results all in one place.

For instance, it is not interested in every web result that might be rendered for a search on “news Mumbai”. Instead, it searches a limited set of web pages—in this case thousands of news sites and blogs. It then generates something of an ‘encyclopedia page’ for Mumbai, putting together news, weather, advertising, politics—making your own personal local newspaper in real time.

Source: Times Of India

Microsoft forges ties with open source maker Zend

Microsoft Corp. and open source software maker Zend, whose products create programs that compete with ones built for Windows, said on Tuesday the two companies have struck a long-term partnership.

Twelve-year-old PHP runs on more than 22 million Web sites and is used inside 15,000 companies.

Source: Reuters

The growing world of Google Earth

Google, the world's biggest Web search engine, has launched Google Earth in different languages including Japanese, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Jones is a great fan of Japan.

The engineers at Google, which generates almost all of its $6 billion revenue from advertisement, work with a concept.

Americans perfer Laptops during vacations...

The number of Americans who work during their vacations has nearly doubled in the last decade, with the laptop computer replacing the cellular phone as the most useful tool for working on holiday.

Some 43 percent of office workers said they work on vacation, compared with 23 percent in a survey taken in 1995, said the poll conducted for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Steelcase Inc., a designer and maker of office furniture.

Overall, roughly one in four employees said they spent three or more hours working during vacation. Most said they were committed to the job or had a pressing assignment, while 10 percent cited an inability to relax until things were taken care of.

Mumbai Blasts suspects photos

Helpline Numbers -7 BLASTS ROCK MUMBAI; 146 DEAD, 403 INJURED

Mumbai Blasts

Mumbai Helpline Number: 022-22005388

Western Railway helpline numbers: STD Code:022 - 23004000, 23014373

IBNLIVE

NDTV

The Mumbai Blasts - SMS Message Board

To post your emergency message on this page sms SOS followed by your message to 7333

Rediff

Sun Microsystems plans to lay off as many as 5,000 employees WHY?

Sun Microsystems plans to lay off as many as 5,000 employees, sell real estate, and "simplify" its product line in an effort to boost profits, its newly appointed CEO Jonathan Schwartz said.

The reason given by CEO was

Schwartz CEO said Sun "will be simplifying our product line and reducing duplicative R&D" and highlighted products key to the company's future, such as its eight-core processor Niagara server. But he didn't explain what research and development the company now considered duplicative or how that product line would be simplified.

Google.com blocked in China why????

The Google.com search engine has been blocked in most parts of China, as Beijing steps up its efforts to restrict the public access to information, a Paris-based media watchdog said.

Internet users in many major Chinese cities have had difficulty connecting to the international version of Google for the past week, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. Aside from the Google.com search engine, Reporters Without Borders said the blocking was being gradually extended to the Google News and Google Mail services.

“Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is deplorable that Chinese Internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content.”

What Else you can Expect from your President who leads us from the Front

On Thursday, President A P J Abdul Kalam, supreme commander of the armed forces, fulfilled a childhood dream when he became the first Indian Head of State to fly a fighter plane.

"I always wanted to be an Air Force pilot but was rejected in 1958 and therefore I became a scientist," the 74-year-old Kalam said soon after his 40-minute supersonic flight on a Sukhoi-30 MKI at the Lohegaon Air Force base in Pune on July 8. The President's flight marked the airbase�s 50th anniversary.

The G-Suit is an anti-gravitational suit and helps in proper blood circulation when the flight flies at supersonic speeds.


Some photos

Just Before take off



Get Set



AND GO



Source - rediff

Winzip most popular download of the week

WinZip, and most other Zip programs use identical compression code, originating from the same source. However, FreeZip has the advantage of costing you nothing. This compression/decompression utility integrates with Windows Explorer and uses file associations and context menus to zip or unzip files and subdirectories. This small program also offers file encryption features. If you want to protect your zip files with a password, download the encryption patch (freezipe.exe).