CHICAGO– Placebos are a surprisingly common prescription, according to a U.S. study in which nearly half of the doctors surveyed said they had doled out a dummy pill at some point. Researchers at the University of Chicago said on Thursday the study raises ethical questions and suggests a need for greater recognition and understanding of placebo use. ‘It illustrates that doctors believe expectation and belief have therapeutic potential,’ said Rachel Sherman, a medical student at the University of Chicago, whose study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The idea behind placebos is that when patients think they are getting an effective treatment, they sometimes feel better, even though the pill has no proven benefit. They are often used in clinical trials to compare the benefits of drugs, and many times patients taking placebos show some improvement. But few studies have shown how doctors use placebos in routine practice. Sherman and Dr. John Hickner, a family medicine professor at the University of Chicago, sent surveys to 466 internists at three Chicago-area academic medical centers. About half, or 231, responded. Of those, 45 percent said they had used a placebo during their clinical […]
This was news to me — news that defense contracting conglomerate United Technologies (NYSE: UTX) intends to use to ride the same wave of solar fever that has lifted firms like First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) and Suntech (NYSE: STP), Trina (NYSE: TSL) and SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR) to prominence … and profits. According to a press release, United Tech has stumbled upon a new way to profit from ‘free’ energy: It’s not going to compete with the solar panel makers, but complement them. As you probably know, the second-biggest knock against solar (second to the fact that it costs more than most alternatives) is that when the sun goes out, so too does the power source. United Tech’s solution: Store the energy. The firm’s Hamilton Sundstrand subsidiary aims to partner with private equity shop ‘US Renewables Group’ to establish a new company called ‘SolarReserve.’ The aim of the new company: Commercializing a new form of solar power generation that can fill the gaps between sunrise and sunset left by the solar panel makers. Power how? With sun … and salt. SolarReserve aims to construct concentrated solar power towers filled with a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate […]
DES MOINES, Iowa — An unprecedented swell of money is flooding into Iowa for tomorrow’s caucuses, with campaigns on track to spend roughly $50 million – a record-setting figure that doubles the staggering per-vote amount billionaire Mayor Bloomberg shelled out in 2005. The shocking expenditures: about $200 per vote for each of the roughly 250,000 caucus-goers expected to turn out. When all is said and done, the per-vote cost for caucus-goers of all stripes will easily double the $103 apiece that Bloomberg – who’s mulling a presidential race of his own – spent from his own fortune for every vote he got in 2005. The mayor’s $78 million campaign was considered the best that money could buy. The spending numbers are significant given the outsized importance Iowa plays in the nomination process – especially in a year where both parties are considered a toss-up, and in which there’s a truncated primary calendar. The $50 million figure includes more than $30 million for TV ads, more than $1 million for radio ads, and more than $10 million for direct mail. Then there are ‘robocalls,’ automated calls directly into people’s homes, which can cost between 8 cents […]
All that glitters isn’t gold. On Wednesday, it was black gold as well. Crude oil and gold hit record highs, in part reflecting the depreciation of the dollar. Crude crossed the $100 mark for the first time, with a barrel in New York ending at $99.62, a record close that was up $3.64 on the day. While swelling economies in China and India have increased global demand for oil and consequently put pressure on prices in the past year, many are attributing the record high reached on Wednesday to violence in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer. On Tuesday, armed rebels invaded Port Harcourt, the center of Nigeria’s oil industry. The insurgents attacked two police stations and raided the lobby of a major hotel. Analyst John Gerdes of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey said that while the Nigerian violence has not impacted the oil flow out of the country, it as ‘reignited supply concerns as militant attacks have reduced Nigeria’s crude output by roughly 20.0% since 2006.’ While international tumult may have contributed to Wednesday’s record high, the weakness of the greenback has made energy seem signicantly more expensive in dollar terms. While the price of oil rose 38.6% in […]
The German weekly Der Spiegel reported in mid-December that at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Allied Joint Force Command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, and at NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, top-secret strategy games have been held about worst-case scenarios in Afghanistan. That may turn out to be smart forward thinking. The computer simulations assumed that if the situation in Pakistan were to spin out of control, the Taliban would get a free run on the border regions with Afghanistan, and NATO’s supply lines through Pakistan might be jeopardized. In November, USA Today quoted Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell as saying that the US military was reviewing contingency plans in case unrest in Pakistan began to affect the flow of supplies for American troops fighting in Afghanistan. He underscored that the supply lines were ‘very real areas of concern’, since three-quarters of the supplies for the 26,000-strong US military deployment in Afghanistan flowed via Pakistan by land and air. ‘Clearly, we do not like the situation we find ourselves in right now,’ Morrell commented. Asked how long US commanders would take to switch to alternate supply lines, he responded he didn’t know, but that ‘if we needed […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
