Random Musings:

Research to Blend Avian, Human Flu

Despite what we know about the good Professor Murphy and his law, an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports (in part) as follows. What's unclear is whether antiviral drugs cited in the article would be effective in preventing death should a killer virus somehow escape the BL-3 containment labs where the research is being conducted.

What health officials fear most about bird flu --- that it could trigger a pandemic by acquiring genes from a human flu virus and the ability to spread easily among people --- has not yet been known to happen naturally.

But scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are playing out a scenario that could actually create the dreaded pandemic strain. The dangerous work is just getting under way in a high level biosecurity laboratory off Clifton Road.

The CDC's lab is thought to be the only one in the world where genes from a regular flu virus are being mixed with avian influenza, also known as H5N1.

"We're trying to understand, if this does occur in nature, what the properties of the viruses would be and how serious the pandemic might be," said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC's influenza branch.

Economic Shock Waves From Avian Influenza Spreading Faster than the Disease

As reported in NewsTarget, consulting firm Bio Economic Research Associates ("bio-era") has published a study suggesting that the economic consequences of avian influenza are spreading faster than the disease itself.

“According to the quantitative measures we developed for assigning relative economic risk exposure to infectious disease outbreaks for countries in Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are especially vulnerable to the initial economic shock waves that would ensue from a pandemic,” said James Newcomb, Managing Director and principal author of the bio-era report. “However, the secondary impacts on other countries, especially China, could have far-reaching impacts for economies around the world, including the US,” he added.

Pandemics and Scenario Planning

Last month we pointed to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) article on Avian Influenza, or "bird flu," and to World Health Organization (WHO) article concerning bird flu vaccines.

Scenario planning is the tool of choice in dealing with uncertainty. This week we'll focus on key Events, Endstates, and news relating to the possibility of a new Influenza Pandemic. According to the CDC, there  have been 3 pandemics in recent modern times:

During the 20th century, the emergence of new influenza A virus subtypes caused three pandemics, all of which spread around the world within 1 year of being detected.

Bush Order Allows Isolation of Those with Bird Flu

According to a Reuters article on Friday, President George W. Bush issued a directive allowing authorities to detain or quarenteen

President Bush issued a directive on Friday allowing authorities to detain or isolate any passenger suspected of having avian flu when arriving in the United States aboard an international flight.

USNews Avian Influenza Articles

USNews.com is running articles on the bird flu and possible pandemic scenarios. The main article is here.
 

Those counting on the availability of vaccine may want to reconsider:

HHS Awards $97 Million Contract to Develop Cell Culture-Based Influenza Vaccine

According to information published in many news sources, including this Reuters article:

U.S. health officials awarded $97 million to Sanofi Pasteur on Friday for the vaccine maker to buy new technology that could cut influenza vaccine production time in half.

The contract comes on the heels of a chaotic flu season that started with a vaccine shortage but later left health officials scrambling to redistribute unused supplies.

The Future of Music - Part 5 - Scenario Planning

This week's theme is the future of the music industry. A major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution.

A major purpose of scenario planning is to empower people, organizations, and industries to  evaluate a diverse set of possible futures, decide which future they prefer, and to identify those key milestones or Events that lead logically to the desired outcome. In short, scenario planning provides a structured framework for strategy determination and implementation.

Participants can then monitor the environment using War Rooms and similar techniques to identify counter and confirming Events and trends. More importantly, participants can also organize and utilize available resources to pursue the Events that are key to the desired outcome.

We've considered four alternative futures for the music industry:

The Music Utility

10,000 Maniac MTV Channels

The Return of the Artist, and

The Empires Strike Back.

The Future of Music - Part 4 - The Empires Strike Back

This week's theme is the future of the music industry. A major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution.

I've been considering Endates that are alternative visions to the one proposed by Leonhard and Kusek, Music Like Water, which I call The Music Utility. The second installment of this series outlined the 10,000 Mainiac MTV Channels Endstate, an oversimplification of which is that music videos become far more important than simple audio. Yesterday's third installment, The Return of the Artists,  suggested that change in industry structure in which Artists and their agents are the most important players is the future of the industry. Today, naturally, The Empires Strike Back.

The Future of Music - Part 3 - The Return of the Artist

This week's theme is the future of the music industry. A major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution.

I've been considering Endstates that are alternative visions to the one proposed by Leonhard and Kusek, Music Like Water, which I call, the Music Utility. The second installment of this series outlined the 10,000 Maniac MTV Channels Endstate, an oversimplification of which is that music videos become far more important than simple audio.

The Music Utility Endstate is mainly about the evolution of the supporting technology infrastructure and business models, principally wireless and audio-enabled devices and subscription based streaming music rather than file downloads. In the Kusek and Leonhard version, Music Like Water, artists have much more power and leverage compared with other actors in the industry, such as the major music labels.

The Music Utility Endstate does not depend, in my view, on this fundamental change in the structure of the music industry. The majors, viewed as dinosaurs by some) could very well morph their service and business models and by doing so, avoid extinction. More on this point tomorrow.

What about artists?

The Future of Music - Part 2 - 10,000 Maniac MTV Channels

The theme of this week is the music industry. As noted yesterday, the impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution.

The central organizing vision of the book is a future for the music industry that they refer to as "Music Like Water." Some of the essential elements of this Endstate are that for a fixed fee, consumers get access to a virtually unlimited music library. One important difference between this future and the present time is that Kusek and Leonhard expect that streaming music will be far more important than music distribution based on files and downloading.

Here I want to begin suggesting some other Endstates for the music industry. Today's Endstate might be called "10,000 Maniac MTV Channels". The hallmark of this Endstate is that music video is far more important than plain old music. A majority of music is experienced through video. Watching is more important than simply listening. And MVideo tastes change rapidly; attention spans are extremely short.

The Future of Music - Part 1

As noted in today's Event of the Day, this week's theme is the future of the music industry. A major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard's The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the music business.

Scenario planning entails defining 4-6 disparate visions of the future of an industry, a company, strategic business unit, or global challenge issue, such as global warming. The Future of Music book defines one vision of the future that the authors call "Music Like Water," by which they mean that streaming music is available everywhere, much like water. They envision the evolution of business models, distribution channels, industry structure, and network and computing technologies such that music is available all the time in virtually all places on all devices. In The Music Like Water future, musicians are more empowered than today because the quintessential relationship is between the artist and the fan or consumer, which is to say that music is an experience rather than a physical product or a file to be download. The music experience is king (or queen).

Part of the support they offer for Music Like Water future is a discussion of 10 key truths about the music industry that reinforce the notion of music as experience and the primacy of the artist:

When In Doubt, Ask The Net - More on EPIC 2014

Regarding the EPIC 2014 video mentioned earlier today, thanks to those who commented here (AdamH) and the folks who responded on the Online News discussion list at Poynter.org.

The EPIC video mentioned here was done by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson while they were Fellows at the Poynter Institute. Their current SnarkMarket blog is here.

As the Brits might say (or used to say), "Jolly good show"

Future of Newspapers and Google

If you're interested in the future of newspapers and the Net, go to this link and click on "click here to view." What you'll find is an 8 minute video on the future of news and Google. Well done.

I couldn't find any information regarding the source and history of this video. If anyone knows, please let us know via a comment or by email.

[tip o' the hat to Felix who provided the pointer.]

World Health Organization - Human "Bird Flu" Vaccine

Here is a World Health Organization (WHO) report on the development of a human "bird flu" vaccine published in February:

Availability of H5N1 prototype strains for influenza pandemic vaccine development

February 2005

The WHO Influenza Surveillance Network has characterized H5N1 influenza viruses isolated from humans and animals from several countries affected by the 2004/2005 H5N1 outbreak in Asia. WHO has also made recommendations on the antigenic and genetic characteristics of H5N1 viruses which are suitable for vaccine production.

Avian Influencza - Possibility of Pandemic

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an article back in March reviewing the status of avian influenza and the prospects for a human pandemic. Here is a portion of that article:

Recent Avian Influenza Outbreaks in Asia
March 18 , 2005

Background

Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) occurred among poultry in 8 countries in Asia (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam) during late 2003 and early 2004. At that time, more than 100 million birds either died from the disease or were culled.

From December 30, 2003 to March 17, 2004, 12 confirmed human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) were reported in Thailand and 23 in Vietnam, resulting in a total of 23 deaths.

By late February, however, the number of new human H5 cases being reported in Thailand and Vietnam slowed and then stopped. Within a month, countries in Asia were reporting that the avian influenza outbreak among poultry had been contained. No conclusive evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission was found.
Recent Developments

Beginning in late June 2004, new lethal outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry were reported by several countries in Asia: Cambodia, China , Indonesia , Malaysia (first-time reports), Thailand and Vietnam. There has not been a resurgence of avian influenza in South Korea and Japan, and the outbreaks are reported to be controlled in those countries. It is unknown to what extent H5N1 outbreaks in the other countries may be ongoing. For more information about outbreaks in poultry, visit the World Organization for Animal Health website.

Retailers Balk At Search Ads Prices

According to a Dow Jones article published on excite.com here, rates may have peaked for buying certain search terms on services such as Google:

It's no secret that the golden age of dirt-cheap search terms has passed and that we're now in the era of steadily rising search term prices. Although for many advertisers paid search still pays off, returns on investment are diminishing and some retailers have cut back on paid search budgets.

"In the early days we were bidding 10 cents, probably a dollar 18 months ago and now $2.50," said Whitney Anderson, chief executive of Mother Nature Inc., a natural products e-tailer.

The company's ROI has dropped for terms it's been bidding on for four to five years, especially following Google Inc.'s (GOOG) IPO, when an influx of new advertisers saturated the market, said Anderson. Even some second-tier search engines have raised minimum bids from 5 cents to 10 cents - enough toaffectexpenses. So the company decided to freeze its paid search budget early this year at somewhere north of $1 million.

"The absolute number is set," said Anderson, "and not growing as fast as the rest of our ad budget."

Even eBay Inc. (EBAY), one of the biggest paid search advertisers, is feeling the effects of price increases. Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, said at a meeting with financial analysts last month that the company was surprised by key word prices and viewed current pricing as being "a little wild." The auctions company is watching prices closely.

"If the ROI isn't what we're expecting, it doesn't matter what the marketing program is," eBay spokesman Hani Durzy told Online Retail Report. "We'd pull back."

U.S. Oil Gas Companies Reduce Climate Change Risk

According to the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire Service, CSRWire, U.S. oil and gas companies have taken action to reduce global climate change risk:

After extensive negotiations with shareholders, Anadarko Petroleum, Apache, ChevronTexaco and three other leading U.S. oil and gas companies have taken far-reaching actions in recent months to disclose their potential financial exposure from climate change and develop strategies to improve their strategic positioning as international pressure grows to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote renewable energy sources.

The company actions come in the wake of record-high voting support last year for shareholder resolutions seeking more climate risk disclosure from oil and gas companies, which face growing regulatory, competitive and public pressure to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emitting energy sources. Shareholder resolutions with Apache Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. all received record voting support last year, with support at Apache reaching 37 percent.

Cold Fusion Redux

So the future of energy just might include Cold Fusion, this according to the latest issue of  New Scientist [issue 2491, 19 March 2005, page 30]:

AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers.

The Future of Google

Since at least the early 1990s, the proverbial pendulum swings between some form of central services / thin client computing and distributed / peer-to-peer / grid computing. The pendulum is still swinging. Molly Wood's article on Google's strategic intent suggests server / thin client computing is where the G folks are heading as a way of directly challenging Microsoft for the hearts and minds of computer users. Here's her major point:

Everyone seems to agree that Google's showing signs of building some sort of operating system. One of Microsoft's key Windows architects, Marc Lucovsky, recently defected to Google, and so far, his duties at Google haven't been detailed. Google's also been rapidly expanding onto the desktop--Google Desktop is the company's only other Google-developed product that's not in beta. They've acquired the photo-organizing software Picasa, along with the 3D mapping software Keyhole. There's e-mail client extraordinaire Gmail and Google Deskbar, which lets you search for and display Google results without opening a browser (a first step toward rendering IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and company obsolete?). Meanwhile, a walk through Google Labs shows you personalized search projects, mobile solutions such as Google SMS and Froogle Wireless, and, of course, Google Maps.