Questions that You Should Ask Your Real Estate Professional | Fort ...

By Linda Soesbe on November 4th, 2012

BUYING A HOME? QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONAL

?????????????????????????????????Welcome, when buying a home when stationed at Fort Carson and the surrounding area of Colorado ? Springs,Colorado. If you?re like most people, buying a home will be one of the largest and biggest investment your ever make in your lifetime. From a financial standpoint, it may be a largest portion of your assets. With some individuals, it?s solely an investment, other homeowners their home is where they raise their families. But if you are like many families that we work with, it?s a place to hang your hat at the end of a long day and find peace and comfort. There is no better time to buy a home inColorado Springs. We believe in asking you questions to understand all your needs. We have helped many clients buy their past and present homes. Buying real estate successfully is a Team effort between the seller, buyer and the real estate professionals. It is important that everyone is on the same page, so before you choose the real estate professional to help you and your family, you should ask a series of qualifying questions during your first meeting. If one party has different goals than the other, chances are one side is going to be let down in the end and never find your dream home. The real estate professional that you chose should strive to make sure that they can meet your goals in finding your dream home.

Critical Questions to Ask A Real Estate ProfessionalBefore You Buy

  • ?Do you have a computerized follow-up system to?keep track the my transaction?
  • What referral networks for out-of-area and out-of-state buyers and sellers do you belong to?
  • Do you have a team in place to help you handle? the multitude of specialized details associated with each real estate?transaction?
  • Do you belong to the Multiple?Listing Service (MLS-cooperative information sharing network of REALTORS?that provide descriptions and details of the homes for sale in the area
  • Do you have a special notification system to? alert me of new homes on the market??
  • How will you help me accomplish my family?s goals?
  • Do you have a list of references to call?
  • Do you provide us with written activity report?for updates and details involved with my transaction?
  • Do you have full-time partners to assist me with my home buying on a moment?s notice?
  • Do you have full-time Buyer?s Real estate?professionals that can show me homes?
  • Do you do personal advertising to help find me?my dream home?
  • Do you have a web site that I can search all?the available homes in the area?
  • Do you have a system and give advice on how to? properly prepare offers for homes for sale?
  • How will you represent my interests?
  • Do you offer Buyer Agency?
  • Will you write an offer for me no matter what? your belief is about the house?
  • Do lenders work hard for your clients, or put?you on the back-burner because you?re hard to deal with?
  • Do you offer Full Representation, or simply transactional? representation?
  • How many years have you been selling real?estate on a full-time basis?
  • How long has your company been in business???How long have you been with the same company?
  • How long have you lived inColorado Springs?
  • What makes you different from other real estate professionals in your area?
  • Because many buyers come from out of town, does your company have national name recognition?
  • Who makes the decision of what homes we will?see? And where?
  • Will you be involved from beginning of viewing?homes to closing? Or will someone else be handling my transaction after my?contract is accepted?

We hope that this has been helpful and informative. We sincerely hope these tips and ideas are of value to you and if there is any way we can be of service please contact us? we would consider it a privilege to help you!

Source: http://fortcarsonblog.goarmyhomes.com/2012/11/04/questions-that-you-should-ask-your-real-estate-professional/

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How To Get Your Ex To Miss You - This Way!

How To Get Your Ex To Miss You  -  This Way!

If you find yourself constantly reliving the nostalgia of new love then being confronted by the reality that your relationship came to an end, it's not too late to get it back. No relationship stays in the "new-love" phase indefinitely. Relationships grow and evolve - and sometimes that means that the romance takes a backseat to the pressures of everyday life. All you want is to get your relationship back - and there are ways of making that dream a reality if you buckle down and decide to get to work the right way. You can't afford to just throw a deck of possibility cards into the air hoping that one will stick. You need to act decisively, not impulsively - and that means using your shared past to a mutual advantage and striving towards a more positive future.

The Secret to Missing Someone

It's obvious, really. Think about the people you surround yourself with. Your family, your friends, and your old college roommate - it's all about the people that really matter; the people you can depend on when you need them. Out of all the people in your life, who do you miss the most? Do you miss your coworker in the next cubicle that you spend 9 hours avoiding every day? Of course you don't. You miss the people that aren't a part of your daily reality - the people that you don't get to see as often as you'd like. The truth of the matter is that you can't miss someone unless there's some distance between you - and that is exemplified when it comes to an ex.

There are no magic words that can reverse a breakup in its tracks and get your ex back in your life. This is no easy fix, and there's no catch-all solution to mending broken ties and broken bonds. The key to making an ex miss you is to give them some distance so they have a chance to realize it. If you're constantly texting, calling or emailing, you're never giving them the opportunity.

Missing the Version of You they Fell For

It's not enough for your ex to simply miss you. Ideally, you want them to miss the person that they initially fell in love with. People change over time, it's simply a natural occurrence. Unfortunately, not all changes are positive. After the beginning phases of a relationship start to fade into every-day life, people become comfortable with their partner. They stop trying so hard to hide their less-positive qualities and the real them starts to come out.

While you should never change simply to please anyone else - even an ex - addressing your core issues can come in handy here. Some self-reflection can definitively work in your favor and win you some major points with your ex. If you're not positive that they're paying attention, take a deep breath. They are.

Use Positive Memory to Your Advantage

If the good old days seem like a pleasant but distant memory, you can bring them back to life. Your focus now should not just be on bringing things back to their past state - you want to make them better than ever, and that fairytale romance is within your grasp. You want to remind your ex of the way things used to be - but let them know that this doesn't necessarily mean going backwards to the past. There's a chance for a real, positive future between the two of you, and it's something that you value more than just a quick fix.

Life right now is a balancing act. You can't be too pushy but you can't be too laid-back either. You have to know what to say - and how to say it. You have to use every tool you possess to your advantage, but it's not as difficult as it sounds on paper. It's simply a matter of looking past what you hope to accomplish and understanding the position that your ex is in as well.

Time is a valuable asset and you don't have an endless supply. Waiting for the leaves to change is not going to turn things around in your favor - if you want to get your ex back, you need to act. Make sure that you're not simply acting on gut-feeling - know that you have a real basis for your choices, and you're using your brain to your advantage. When you do reconnect with your ex, make sure that it's not because of a strange twist of fate. You don't want to leave your future up to chance.

What To Do Next

Being dumped is never something that is easy to get over, the pain that comes with it is always real. Those who say "move on" or "get over it" have either never been on the receiving end of a break up or they are suppressing how it affected them. Knowledge is key, the more knowledge you can acquire about how to reverse the situation you find yourself in the better your position will be.

Two very important areas where you should gain knowledge are: break up mistakes and knowing how to manage contact with your ex. Arming yourself with knowledge is half the battle. Once you know what you are doing it will be a lot easier to achieve your ultimate goal - getting your ex back into your life and restarting your relationship.

Source: http://www.streetarticles.com/reconnecting/how-to-get-your-ex-to-miss-you-this-way

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The Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning - CRELL - tice

CRELL is sponsored by the European Commission Directorate General Education and Culture (DG EAC) and co-ordinated by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (DG JRC). The Centre is hosted by the Econometrics and Applied Statistics Unit of the Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen at the JRC in Ispra, northern Italy. More about CRELL...
ESCL - European Survey on Language Competences

Implemented in 2011 in 14 countries in a total of 16 educational systems, this pioneer study offers indicators on secondary students' foreign language achievement. Downloadable datasets are avaliable now at this page.
Education databases and catalogues
BEI-
British Education Index
Index to the contents of 300 education and training journals published in the British Isles, together with some internationally published periodicals. Includes: Education-line, a freely accessible database of the full text of conference papers, working papers and electronic literature which supports educational research, policy and practice; catalogue of professionally evaluated internet sites; conference programmes and papers.
CERUK - Current Educational Research in the UK

CERUK aims to provide a complete record of current or on-going research in education and related disciplines.
EENEE -
European Expert Network on the Economics of Education
Network on economics of education with a directory of experts and researchers by field and country, journal databases and other information.
EPPI-Centre -
Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordination Centre
EPPI-Centre supports the writing of systematic reviews of research evidence in the field of education. Seventeen review groups undertake reviews of individual topics, and a series of reviews commissioned by the Teacher Training Agency is also produced. All the reviewed research is included in a database.
ERIC -
Education Resources Information Centre
Sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the US Department of Education, hosts a large database of journal and non-journal education literature.
ETV Library - European Training Village

The ETV library maintains a host of databases and catalogues on VET, including: European Research Overview (ERO Base); bibliographical database; VET internet resources; training institutions database; collection of 300 electronic-journals.
Eurostat -
Eurostat

The statistical office of the European Communities, with extensive data collections in the area of education and training (Population and Social Conditions).
Eurydice
- Eurydice
Information network on education in Europe. Includes several databases on education systems, Key Data publications and thesauri.
INCA -
International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks Internet Archive
INCA provides?descriptions of government policy on education in Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland (forthcoming), Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA and Wales. It focuses on?curriculum, assessment and initial teacher training frameworks for pre-school, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education?in schools?(3-19 age range).
NCES - National Centre for Education Statistics (US)

Database of US education statistics and analysis. The Education Statistics Quarterly is also available - an overview of all work carried out at NCES, including publications and data products.
PERINE - Pedagogical and Educational Research Information Network for Europe

The 'PERINE Internet Resource Catalogue' is a collection of information about national and cross-national resources supporting educational research in Europe. The catalogue will contain references produced by partners, presented within a multilingual search environment utilising the European Education Thesaurus. Initially the catalogue is experimental, providing information on themes identified by educational researchers connected with the European Educational Research Association (EERA).
VOCED - Vocational Education and Training Research Database

VOCED is the UNESCO/NCVER research database for technical and vocational education and training, an international database of research abstracts, in English.
WIFO -
Gateway to Research on Education in Europe
This website has emerged in the context of European research projects carried out by the Research Forum WIFO (Wissenschaftsforum Bildung und Gesellschaft). It is an free information service provided by researchers for researchers. Focus on vocational education, recently also including human resource development. The database also includes a ?search by method/approach? facility.
See also About CRELL (Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning).

Source: http://blog.univ-provence.fr/blog/coordination-rgionale-paca/ftlv/2012/11/02/the-centre-for-research-on-lifelong-learning-crell

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Briton admits plot to sell parts to Iran after US sting

By NBC News wire services

A British millionaire accused of trying to buy missile parts from undercover American agents and resell them to Iran pleaded guilty Thursday in a deal that would carry nearly three years in prison but could allow him to serve much of that time in his native United Kingdom.

Christopher Tappin, 66, a retired shipping magnate, had faced charges of conspiracy to illegally export defense articles, aiding and abetting the illegal export of defense articles and conspiracy to conduct illegal financial transactions.

He pleaded guilty to one count of the indictment Thursday at a hearing in El Paso, Texas. The deal calls for 33 months in prison, but as part of the agreement, prosecutors agreed not to oppose his request to be transferred back to his home country. He had faced up to 35 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge David Briones will decide Tappin's sentence Jan. 9. He has been living in an upscale Houston neighborhood since his release on a $1 million bond in April.

Federal prosecutors said Tappin, of the town of Orpington, southeastern England, and two other men sought to ship zinc/silver oxide batteries for Hawk Air Defense Missiles to Iran via the Netherlands.

Risked US national security
U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman said in a statement that ?the defendant put at risk the national security of the United States and its allies by trying to sell to Iran the batteries that make the Hawk Missiles operational."

The federal indictment filed in 2007 said a cooperating defendant provided computer files showing Tappin was involved in the attempted battery deal and that he and the cooperating defendant had illegally sold U.S. technology to Iran in the past.

Complete Mideast & N. Africa coverage on NBCNews.com

The U.S. government alleged Tappin provided undercover agents with false documents to deceive authorities and circumvent the requirement for the batteries to be licensed by the government before being exported.

Tappin's extradition in February touched a nerve in Britain, where many contend the fast-track extradition arrangements between the United Kingdom and the United States are unfairly weighted in Washington's favor.

Iran's regular army has begun two days of ground and air military exercises. Iranian authorities say they want to increase combat readiness and deterrence against attack. NBC's Ali Arouzi reports.?

But Tappin's attorney, Dan Cogdell, said Thursday that he didn't see much room for argument.

"He pled guilty because he was guilty," Cogdell said.

Tappin remained free on bond pending his sentencing. Cogdell said he expected Tappin to serve several months in a U.S. prison while authorities decided where to send him.

Western intelligence sees 'small signs of wavering' on Iran nuclear policy

Tappin fought extradition to the United States for two years until being denied a petition to take the case to Britain's Supreme Court. After he was brought to Texas, Tappin was held at the Otero County Jail for about two months, where he initially was put in solitary confinement at his request.

Two men have already been sentenced to prison for charges stemming from the indictment. Robert Gibson, another British national, pleaded guilty in April 2007 and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. Robert Caldwell, from Oregon, was found guilty in July of that year and received a 20-month sentence.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

More content from NBCNews.com:

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/02/14874307-uk-millionaire-admits-plot-to-sell-missile-parts-to-iran-after-us-sting-operation?lite

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Tom Conrad On Pandora's Future - Business Insider

LinkedIn

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad is remarkably calm for someone who has two of the largest tech companies in the world gunning for him.

He joined the Internet streaming music service in 2004 and helped create its namesake app, which has 58.3 million people listening in every month.?

The popularity of Internet music isn't lost on Apple or Microsoft. Apple bought Lala, a Pandora competitor, a couple of years ago, and is rumored to be adding music streaming to iTunes any day now.

And Microsoft has introduced Xbox Music, a Pandora-like service that's built into new Windows PCs, phones, and tablets. Pandora shares dipped after the announcement.

Why isn't Conrad worried?

He professes ignorance about Apple's plans. But he actually worked for Apple early in his career, building key features of the Mac OS. (Spring-loaded folders? He's got a patent for that.) And Pandora is a hugely important iPhone app?part of the ecosystem that makes Apple's smartphones so hot.?

Microsoft has recognized that, giving Windows Phone 8 users a free year of Pandora One, the ad-free premium subscription that normally goes for $36.?

Meanwhile, Conrad's team keeps improving the product?with its latest release, perhaps its biggest update ever, Pandora 4.0.

The new version adds more social features, like following and profiles. Subtle design changes make the app feel faster and fresher.

A bigger issue for Pandora is the regulatory structure under which it operates. Internet radio services get to avoid wrangling with labels over licenses by paying set fees. But regulators have made those prices much higher for Internet radio than for other audio broadcasters. In 2011, the streaming radio service paid over 50% of its revenues out as performance royalties, while SiriusXM paid less than 10%. So it's supporting a bill called the Internet Radio Fairness Act which would reform that pricing. Record labels are fighting it, naturally.

Through it all, Conrad exudes a calm confidence about Pandora's future.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation we had with Conrad.

Business Insider:?The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both reported last week that Apple was in talks with record labels to create what they called a "Pandora killer." What do you think about those reports?

Tom Conrad:?I don't know anything about what Apple's doing, so i can't speculate on that.

Pandora has faced competition from the first days of the service, all the way back in 2005, when we launched and Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL were the biggest Internet radio players. Over the years we competed with MySpace Music, too.?

Through it all we've managed to stick with over 70% of all internet radio listeners. We've just announced that there are 75 million registered Pandora listeners.

But my sense about Apple entering streaming radio is that Pandora will continue to do the same things we've done all these years and the rest will sort itself out.

BI:?What are the odds of making headway with the labels over royalties? Many speculate that this is what is keeping the company's valuation down.?

TC: What we're focused on with respect to the licensing dimension is creating a level playing field so we're held to the same standards as satellite radio and all other forms of digital radio.?

That's why the Internet Radio Fairness Act is so important to us. We're really concerned with this kind of arcane U.S. copyright process. We've built a big successful business that continues to grow and we'll fight for equality and fairness on the licensing front. But the company's success isn't predicated on those changes.

BI: There's a huge opportunity in the proliferation of mobile devices in growing economies. How can you get Pandora to those people??

TC:?Pandora's international expansion is one of the things that's tied to licensing. We just recently announced ?an expansion into Australia and New Zealand, we're in beta there today, and will launch general availability in the coming months.

That's just one example of a region where we can negotiate to reasonable economic terms. We'll look to replicate that success in other countries over time.

BI:?Who do you see as Pandora's biggest competition? What do you think of Xbox Music?

TC: I?can say that generally I am not terribly competition-centric in my thinking of Pandora. We show up to work everyday with one goal, to make the best playlists in the world and get them in the hands of our listeners. With that focus, the competition sorts itself out.

If you look at how people consume music in the U.S., 80% of all music listening in the country is radio and Pandora is about 6% of that. The really big growth opportunity for us is taking on the mantle of being the future of radio and from that frame the competitors are traditional radio broadcasters.

In terms of Xbox Music, I haven't seen it. I've just read things, so I don't have a opinion about that.

BI:?Where do you see Pandora in the next six months to a year?

TC:?I'm excited about the huge investments we are making to ensure that the listening experience on Pandora is the best in the world. When listeners tune into a station we're focused on what songs we play and the order in which songs play, coupled with the familiarity and discovery that comes along with that. We think its important to pay attention to and improve how listening changes in a day and in a month. That's job No. 1 for us.?

And we have some great stuff coming. I'm?really excited about the job we're doing on the automotive front, when people buy a new car and bring it home, they can fully enjoy Pandora.

The last thing that's exciting for us is the release of Pandora 4.0. This is the first time we've had a consistent experience and amount of features across the Web, Android and iOS. This consistency is going to allow us to continue to enhance the experience on Pandora across those platforms. Now when we come up with a great new experience for the Pandora listener, we can roll that out across the platform. As a designer that's a huge upgrade from where we've been.

Don't Miss:?Here's Your First Look At Pandora Radio's Big Update For Smartphones >

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tom-conrad-pandora-interview-2012-11

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Foster earns lifetime-achievement honor at Globes

(AP) ? Jodie Foster is adding a new trophy to her collection ? a lifetime-achievement honor at the Golden Globes.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Thursday that Foster will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th annual Globes ceremony on Jan. 13.

The 49-year-old Foster is a two-time Globes and Academy Award winner. She was honored with leading actress trophies at both ceremonies for 1988's "The Accused" and 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs."

DeMille Award winners are chosen by the board of directors for the foreign press group. It includes about 90 reporters who cover Hollywood for overseas outlets.

The DeMille Award went to Morgan Freeman earlier this year. Past winners include Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand.

The Globes will air live on NBC.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-11-01-Golden%20Globes-Jodie%20Foster/id-beef8f58e8754b42a67ade656d2517c6

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Rethinking reading

Friday, November 2, 2012

Many educators have long believed that when words differ on only one sound, early readers can learn the rules of phonics by focusing on what is different between the words. This is thought to be a critical gateway to reading words and sentences.

But scientists at the University of Iowa are turning that thinking on its head. A recent study published in "Developmental Psychology" shows certain kinds of variation in words may help early readers learn better. When children see the same phonics regularities, embedded in words with more variation, they may learn these crucial early reading skills better. What might appear to make learning a more difficult task?learning about letter-sound relationships from words with more variation?actually leads to better learning.

Doctoral student Keith Apfelbaum and associate professors Bob McMurray and Eliot Hazeltine of the Department of Psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) studied 224 first-grade students in the West Des Moines, Iowa school system over a period of three months. The group used a version of an online supplementary curriculum called Access Code.

Access Code was developed by Foundations in Learning, a company founded by Carolyn Brown and Jerry Zimmermann. Brown and Zimmermann earned their doctorates from and are now adjunct faculty in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, also in CLAS. Based on the Varied Practice Model, which helps children master early reading skills like phonics, the research team used Access Code to conduct the study directly in the classroom.

During the study, one group of students learned using lists of words with a small, less variable set of consonants, such as maid, mad, paid, and pad. This is close to traditional phonics instruction, which uses similar words to help illustrate the rules and, presumably, simplify the problem for learners. A second group of students learned using a list of words that was more variable, such as bait, sad, hair, and gap, but which embodied the same rules.

After three or four days of training on phonics skills, partaking in activities such as spelling and matching letters, the students from both groups were tested to see if they could read words that they had never seen before, read novel non-words, and apply their newly-learned skills to tasks they hadn't done before.

"We were interested in not just whether they could do exactly what we were teaching, but whether they could learn something more robust that would enable them to apply what they had learned to new tasks and new words," McMurray says. "Critically, we wanted to know if variability or similarity would impact this ability to learn and generalize."

Results surprised even the research team.

"We were expecting a very subtle effect, maybe similar words would help students learn the words they were trained on but maybe not generalize as well, or maybe similar words would help them learn the more difficult rules but variability might work for the easier ones, but in no case was similarity helpful," McMurray says. "This suggests a powerful principle of learning. While we've known about this in a variety of laboratory tasks for a while, this study shows for the first time that this principle also applies to early reading skills."

Overall, variation led to much better learning. Students experiencing more variation in words showed better learning when tested on the words and tasks they encountered in training. More importantly, it helped them generalize these new skills to new words, and to new tasks.

"Variability was good for the low-performing students, it was good for the high-performing students. It was good for the boys, it was good for the girls. It was good for the words, it was good for the non-words," Apfelbaum says. "Among the students who struggled the most, the kids who weren't exposed to variation didn't show any learning at all, while the kids who were exposed to variation did."

Robert Davis, an educator for 36 years and principal of Hillside Elementary, which was one of the schools that participated in the study, says he is eager to work with his teachers on ways to apply varied practice to the classroom.

"If we really look at what happened with the research, there is a multitude of applications that could go forward with this," Davis says. "We could certainly look at varied practice as a method for learning new vocabulary, as a new method for learning basic math facts, maybe even something involved with music. As educators, we need to figure out how to take that model and apply it to the umbrella of learning for a variety of things that kids struggle with."

Brown, whose research has focused on child development, language acquisition, and reading for more than three decades, says she looks forward to continued collaboration with the UI research team.

"We hope this collaboration is only the beginning to bringing the science of learning to the art of teaching children to read," Brown says. "We have missed many children because reading pedagogy has been driven by systems of belief in how reading should be taught rather than by how children learn. The importance of variation in this process will be a surprise to many educators and a help to many children."

###

University of Iowa: http://www.uiowa.edu

Thanks to University of Iowa for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125007/Rethinking_reading

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The cost of prescription drugs: Comparison of two countries

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2012) ? In the United States, the cost paid for statins (drugs to lower cholesterol) in people under the age of 65 who have private insurance continues to exceed comparable costs paid by the government in the United Kingdom (U.K.) by more than three fold. These results from Boston University's Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, are a follow up of an ongoing comparison of prescription drug costs between the U.S. and U.K. The initial results reported on relative drug costs in 2005.

The current updated results for 2009 appear this week in the journal Pharmacotherapy.

In a comparable base population of about 1.2 million people in each country, the estimated number prescribed a statin increased from 103,000 in 2005 to 125,000 in the U.S. in 2009 and from to 67,000 to105,000 in the U.K. The total estimated cost for statins in the U.S. paid by private health insurance companies was $87 million in 2005. In July 2006, simvastin (Zocor) was made available in a generic formulation and became the most widely prescribed statin. The cost per pill fell from $3.91 in 2005 to $0.20 in 2009. As a result, despite the increase in number of statin users in the U.S. the total private insurance cost for all statins fell from an estimated $87 million in 2005 to $47 million in 2009. In the U.K., where costs are paid for by the government and generic statins were widely available and prescribed, the total statin cost was estimated to be $17 million in 2005. Because the cost of generic statins continued to be reduced the total cost fell to $14 million in 2009 despite a large increase in the number of users.

Cost estimates for Proton Pump Inhibitors show a similar pattern to those for statins. The total cost for continuous users was estimated to be $14 million in the U.S. compared to $4 million in the U.K. in 2005. Costs in both countries fell about 20 percent in 2009 as generic formulations became more available at lower cost.

In the U.S., over the past decade, roughly 180 million people below age 65 years have been covered annually by private health insurance companies. Based on the large sample of about 1.2 million people (0.7 percent) the researchers estimate that the total cost of branded statins paid by private insurance companies was more than $10 billion in 2005. Due to the availability of generic formulations of these drugs, the cost fell by half in 2009 for a savings of some $5 billion. Reductions related to other prescription drugs have regularly occurred.

"The cost of prescription drugs incur a tremendous burden to the U.S. economy, whether paid by private insurance companies through higher insurance premiums or paid by the government that provides this service for the military, other government employees, the elderly and others," said author of the accompany editorial Hershel Jick, MD, director emeritus of the Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program and associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

According to Jick, these results are based on reliable, inexpensive and transparent resources that can be used to form a basis for considering public and private policy related to the cost of prescription drugs. "Information on a substantial majority of drugs, including those prescribed primarily for children, can be derived from these continuous reliable electronic data resources. They yield critical insight into the difference in drug costs between the U.S. private sector compared to the U.K. government that can lead to creation of policy that provides greater efficiency and large cost savings," he added.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston University Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/KYJvV6xL6q4/121101073150.htm

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Twitter plays gender card in promoted products

2 hrs.

Just like PC makers who look to make an extra buck by marketing?floral computers to women, and pen makers who design a "for her" model, or even car?makers who think pink's a good female Fit,?Twitter now is pulling?the gender card to help advertisers with "promoted"?(paid) products on the short-messaging site.

No, it won't turn its iconic Twitter logo, a bird with a blue background, into one with a pink background on your tweets?if you're clearly?female.?

In fact, figuring out gender on Twitter, which has 140 million monthly active users, can be difficult. Not everyone uses their own?photos, Twitter names that are female or even profiles that make it easy to discern gender.

In a blog post titled, "Gender targeting for Promoted Products now available," Twitter's product manager of revenue, April Underwood writes:

We?ve been working on using a variety of signals that could help us understand our users? gender reliably, while maintaining the simplicity of the Twitter profile that our users value. These signals have proven effective in inferring gender, so starting today, we are making gender targeting available to all marketers.

Those signals are in part?based on what information users provide on Twitter, including their profile names or the other Twitter?accounts they follow.

Underwood writes that a "panel of human testers has found our predictions are more than 90 percent accurate for our global?audience. And where we can't predict gender reliably, we don't???and those users won't be targetable through this feature."

Gender targeting can work, she said, for things like a "new line of cosmetics"???(or floral PCs or pink?pens)???"without having its message delivered to men not likely to be interested in that content."?

Twitter, she says, is making the move based on what?those in marketing say? they want.?

"It's a tough feature for us to pull off since we don?t ask people to share their gender on Twitter, and some people don?t identify themselves by gender anyway," Underwood writes.?

Twitter previously?added other ways???location?by country, ?interests,?mobile devices????for advertisers to do targeted marketing.

"We believe there?s value to having more contextual signals, including gender, so that messages reach the most relevant audience," Underwood says. "Just as marketers don?t want their ads to reach people who aren?t interested in their message, people don?t want to see mistargeted ads."

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/twitter-plays-gender-card-promoted-products-1C6706052

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