Author: SupremeCmdr

Changes in the Way We Work

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Predictions for 2010: Five Changes in the Way We Work – Tammy Erickson – Harvard Business Review

Recessions unquestionably leave a mark on the way we work. The approaches companies use to respond to difficult business conditions don’t only affect the company — they leave a lasting impression on the workers (and the workers’ teen-age children, who draw conclusions for their career strategy based on their parents’ experience).

Read this short post.

Now think about it.

A Social Marketing Success Story – Ford

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How Ford Got Social Marketing Right – BusinessWeek

There is an awful lot of aimless experiment in the digital space these days. A lot of people who appear not to have a clue are selling digital marketing advice. I think the Fiesta Movement gives us new clarity. It’s a three-step process.

• Engage culturally creative consumers to create content.
• Encourage them to distribute this content on social networks and digital markets in the form of a digital currency.
• Craft this is a way that it rebounds to the credit of the brand, turning digital currency (and narrative meaning) into a value for the brand.

In effect, outsource some of our marketing work. And in the process, turn the brand itself into an “agent” and an enabler of cultural production that is interesting and fun. Now the marketer is working with contemporary culture instead of against it. And everyone is well-served.

Abnormal Calcium = Increased Mortality in Kidney Disease

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Note this is an observational study and causality should not be assumed.

Medical News: Abnormal Calcium Increases Mortality in Kidney Disease – in Nephrology, General Nephrology from MedPage Today

Abnormal levels of serum calcium are associated with increased mortality in patients with non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease, an observational study found.

A one mg/dL elevation in baseline calcium levels was associated with a multivariable adjusted hazard ratio for mortality of 1.31 (95% CI 1.13 to 1.53, P<0.001), according to Csaba P. Kovesdy, MD, of the Salem, Va., Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues.

There also was a significant interaction between elevated baseline calcium level and the presence of cardiovascular disease, which raised the hazard ratio to 1.58 (95% CI 1.29 to 1.94, P<0.001), the researchers reported online in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

High Mortality Rate for Iguanas in South FL

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Iguanas falling off trees in South Florida – Bay News 9

Iguanas are a lizard with tropical origins and do not have the capability to withstand long bouts of cold weather.

Once the air temperatures drop below about 40-45 degrees they begin to lose muscle control and fall out of trees and other areas.

If it warms up the next day many will survive, but when you have a period of extended cold weather as we have experienced in the last week and beyond the weather proves lethal and decimates the population.

The lizards that have underground burrows are likely to survive but the ones that don’t will have a high mortality rate.