PDL BioPharma 4Q net income climbs 27 percent

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. (AP) -- PDL BioPharma Inc. said Friday its net income grew 27 percent in the fourth quarter on greater sales of the cancer drugs Avastin and Herceptin, which PDL helped develop.

The company worked with Swiss drugmaker Roche on Avastin and Herceptin, as well as the eye drug Lucentis and Biogen Idec Inc.'s multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri. PDL gets royalty payments based on sales of the drugs in the previous quarter. Roche said sales of Herceptin grew 14 percent to about $1.58 billion in the third quarter, and Avastin sales rose 11 percent to about $1.6 billion.

PDL said its fourth-quarter net income grew to $49.4 million, or 34 cents per share, from $38.9 million, or 24 cents per share. Revenue rose 18 percent, to $86 million from $72.8 million.

Analysts expected net income of 31 cents per share on $86.1 million in revenue, according to FactSet.

Avastin is used to treat a variety of types of cancer, including forms of the disease affecting the ovaries, lungs, and colon. Herceptin is used to treat breast and stomach cancers.

PDL will also get royalty payments on sales of the new breast cancer treatment Kadcyla. Kadcyla combines Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell. The Food and Drug Administration approved Kadcyla on Feb. 22.

The company said its net income rose 6 percent in 2012, reaching $211.7 million, or $1.45 per share, from $199.4 million, or $1.15 per share. Revenue increased 3 percent, to $374.5 million from $362 million.

Shares of PDL lost 4 cents to $6.95 during the regular trading session Friday, and rose 4 cents to $6.99 in aftermarket trading following the release of the earnings report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pdl-biopharma-4q-net-income-221135997.html

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Porn King Larry Flynt Reveals Implant

Given his career as the king of porn, it may come as no surprise that publisher Larry Flynt is still sexually active at the age of 70, even after he was paralyzed in an unsolved sniper shooting 35 years ago.

The publisher of Hustler, who is five-times married and has spoken extensively about his love of women, revealed just this week that he has a penile implant.

"Lots of men have them," Flynt told The Hollywood Reporter.

"There's a little reservoir in the bottom part of your stomach, and you trigger it with a button inside your testicles that doesn't show. Nothing shows."

More men like Flynt are having the implants installed, doctors say.

"He's open about his sexuality and probably didn't want to give up on sex when he was older," said Dr. Andrew C. Kramer, associate professor of surgery and urology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who did not treat Flynt.

Kramer performs about 250 penile implant surgeries a year, many of them for older men like Flynt who want to regain their sexual prowess after disease or spinal cord injury.

Giuliana Rancic's Controversial Secrets to a Happy Marriage Watch Video

Experts like Kramer say the penile implant is the "treatment of last resort" for men with erectile dysfunction, but its popularity is increasing due to a dramatic rise -- about 74 percent -- in the number of men undergoing radical surgery for prostate cancer.

"I see young guys in their 40s who wake up impotent," he said. "You have to tell your wife in her 30s, we're just friends and cuddle now."

The most common reason for erectile dysfunction in older men is chronic disease that affects the vessels in the penis -- most often diabetes, hypertension, smoking or high cholesterol. Nerve damage caused by spinal cord injuries, diabetes or prostate cancer surgery is also a culprit.

The penile implant or prosthesis is an inflatable device containing two balloon-like cylinders that is inserted in the penis to work like a hydraulic system. A small pump is placed in the scrotum with a reservoir of about two to three ounces of salt water that connects to the tubing.

The man can activate the pump so the balloons fill up with fluid, creating an erection. After sex, he releases the valve inside the scrotum to drain the fluid back into the reservoir.

"I find it a good treatment," said Kramer, who is part of the third-largest practice in the world for penile implants. "Men come to me and say, 'Doc, my organ stays hard. Psychologically, it [seems] harder than a penis."

Urologists typically start with medications that address blood flow, like Viagra and three other similar drugs -- the least invasive approach. "Pills are great if they work," he said.

When that fails, men have other options, but they are often "cumbersome" and interfere with lovemaking, according to Kramer.

Muse, a suppository about the size of a grain of rice, can be inserted in the urethra and acts to expand the blood vessels. Vacuum erection devices take preparation and "strangulate" the penis by trapping old blood in the organ. Injection therapy requires a needle.

"If a guy feels like having sex, he has to say, 'Hold on, dear,'" said Kramer. "An implant can take 10 seconds and the partner doesn't even know. It's more natural."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/porn-king-larry-flynt-reveals-penile-implants-70/story?id=18622712

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FCC looking into ban on unlocking on-contract iPhones and other phones

The FCC is going to look into the ban on unlocking phones. The ban, which came into effect on January 26 of this year, made it illegal to unlock an on-contract device for use on another carrier. Citing concerns over innovations, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the commission would be looking into the matter. According to TechCrunch:

Genachowski isn?t sure what authority he has, but if he finds any, given the tone of the conversation, it?s likely he will exert his influence to reverse the decision. ?It?s something that we will look at at the FCC to see if we can and should enable consumers to use unlocked phones.?

The illegality of unlocking phones benefits carriers by keeping you locked into your contract. Of course, you can still pay an early termination fee, but now you have to get a new device when you move to a new carrier. This increases the hassle of the switching process, which carriers already make as hard as possible. Expect the carriers to fight back, because anything that makes it even a little easier for a customer to take their money elsewhere is a threat to their bottom line.

Are you glad that the FCC is investigating? Have you ever unlocked or considered unlocking your phone?

Source: TechCrunch

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/_u9NphDbGeY/story01.htm

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Past Antarctic warming tied to greenhouse gas

Fr?d?ric Parrenin

A section of an Antarctic ice core shown under polarized light reveals the individual ice crystals.

By Tia Ghose, LiveScience

Rising carbon dioxide levels may have caused Antarctic warming in the past, new research strongly suggests.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, just add to the body of evidence that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions will lead to climate change.

"It's new evidence from the past of the strong role of CO2 [carbon dioxide] in climate variation," said study co-author Fr?d?ric Parrenin, a climate scientist at the CNRS in France.

Past data
Eons of the Earth's climate history are revealed deep within ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic. The Antarctic ice traps gas bubbles from the climate that can reveal what the ancient atmosphere looked like, while the ice itself can reveal historical temperatures.

But gas bubbles from a given period get buried deeper than ice of the same period, making it hard to tie past temperatures with atmospheric changes.

In the past, scientists using older techniques found that increases in carbon dioxide happened after global warming, not the reverse. [Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice]

Past link
But Parrenin and his colleagues wondered whether that was actually the case. To answer that question, the team looked at five ice cores that had been drilled from Antarctica over the last 30 years.

They focused on ice from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, which encompassed the last period when the planet warmed naturally and glaciers melted.

The team measured the concentration of nitrogen-15 isotopes, or atoms of the same element with different weights, at different depths throughout the ice cores. They compared the depth of that isotope with the ice composition for all the cores to determine the distance between ice bubbles and ice from the same period.

Global warming
The team found that global warming and a carbon dioxide increase happened at virtually the same time ? between 18,000 and 11,000 years ago.

"It makes it possible that CO2 was the cause ? at least partly ? of the temperature increase during the courses of the last glaciation," Parrenin told LiveScience.

And if increased carbon dioxide could lead to rising temperatures in the past, it also can in the present day, he said.

The findings may deflate some climate skeptics, who used the poor dating of ice cores to question the link between carbon dioxide and warming, said Robert Mulvaney, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who was not involved in the study.

It also confirmed the view of most climate scientists that in the past, rising temperatures and carbon dioxide were locked in a feedback loop, where high temperatures led to more carbon dioxide being released from the deep oceans, which increased temperatures further, Mulvaney said.

But because predictions of future warming are based on recent carbon dioxide and temperature data, not historical models, "it hasn't really changed anything about our understanding of how climate change will change our modern environment." Mulvaney told LiveScience.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghoseor LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.?

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17136958-past-antarctic-warming-linked-to-greenhouse-gas?lite

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Pixels guide the way for the visually impaired

Mar. 1, 2013 ? Images have been transformed into pixels and projected onto a headset to help the visually impaired in everyday tasks such as navigation, route-planning and object finding.

Developed using a video camera and mathematical algorithm, the researchers from the University of Southern California hope the pixels can provide more information and enhance the vision of patients already fitted with retinal implants.

Lead author of the paper, James Weiland, said: "Blind people with retinal implants can detect motion and large objects and haveimproved orientation when walking. In most cases, they can also read large letters."

"At the moment, retinal implants are still low-resolution. We believe that our algorithm will enhance retinal implants by providing the user with more information when they are looking for a specific item."

The findings have been presented today, March 1, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering.

A total of 19 healthy subjects were involved in the study, who each undertook training first to get used to the pixelated vision. During the study, they were fitted with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and took part in three different experiments: walking an obstacle course; finding objects on an otherwise empty table; and searching for a particular target in a cluttered environment.

A video camera was mounted onto the HMD which collected real-world information in the view of the subject. Mathematical algorithms converted the real-world images into pixels, which were then displayed onto the HMD?s screen in front of the subject

The algorithms used intensity, saturation and edge-information from the camera?s images to pick out the five most important, or salient, locations in the image. Blinking dots at the side of the display provided the subjects with additional directional cues if needed.

All three of the experiments were performed with and without cues. When subjects used the directional cues, their head movements, the time to complete the task and the number of errors were all significantly reduced.

The subjects learnt to adapt to pixelated vision in all of the tasks, suggesting that image processing algorithms can be used to provide greater confidence to patients when performing tasks, especially in a new environment.

It is possible that the device could be fitted with voice description so that the subjects are provided with cues such as "the red target is to the left."

"We are currently looking to take this a step further with object recognition, so instead of telling subjects that ?the red object is to the left?, it will tell them that ?the soda can you want is to the left?,"continued Weiland.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute of Physics (IOP), via AlphaGalileo.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. N Parikh, L Itti, M Humayun, and J Weiland. Performance of visually guided tasks using simulated prosthetic vision and saliency-based cues. Journal of Neural Engineering, 2013; 10 (2) DOI: 10.1088/1741-2560/10/2/026017

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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/ZOqaSxH-vhU/130228194657.htm

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Source: http://garywright.binhoster.com/wedding-limousine-hire-planning-for-perfection/

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Health News and Fitness ? 5 Career Options for Personal Trainers

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Personal trainers are becoming more and more in demand in recent times. If youve been thinking about entering the health and fitness field, you might want to consider taking personal training or fitness courses. There are ...

Source: http://www.firstborn.us/5-career-options-for-personal-trainers/

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