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Expensive repaired treatments, an increasing number of patients on chemotherapy in major markets and evidence that more people in emerging markets are gaining access to modern targeted therapies will contribute to sales of cancer drugs growing at a compound rate of 12 to 15 percent, IMS said.

In 2008, sales of oncology products will exceed $48 billion, contributing nearly 17 percent of global pharmaceutical sales growth this year, according to the IMS Global Oncology Forecast released on Thursday.

"Double-digit sales growth in oncology drugs will be fueled by increased use of targeted therapeutic agents introduced over the past 10 years, along with first-time innovations coming to the market and longer treatment periods for extending numbers of patients," Titus Plattel, IMS vice president for oncology, said in a statement.

IMS expects growth to be fueled by the prelude of 25 to 30 new chemical entities betwixt 2008 and 2012, while expensive new biotechnology drugs and the increasing use of combination therapies contribute to the exploding cost of treatment.

Data from clinical studies of frequent of the newest cancer drugs faculty of volition have being presented and discussed at the nation's largest oncology encounter later this month in Chicago. Much of the given conditions will be unveiled in continuance Thursday ahead of the American Society of Clinical Oncology duel.

Several factors could do to moderate growth over the nearest five years, IMS before-mentioned. They include financial constraints of payers, slowing growth of some current blockbuster therapies and indisputable expirations of four cancer drugs with annual sales exceeding $1 billion, including Eli Lilly's Gemzar and Taxotere from Sanofi-Aventis .

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; editing by Carol Bishopric)

The WorldWide Telescope lets amateur astronomers explore the cosmos from one side a computer, which provides a photo map of the heavens

by Heather Green

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For people who have gazed up at the night sky in wonder and wished they had someone there to identify what they were looking at, Microsoft’s (MSFT) WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is coming to the rescue.

The service, that opened to the public on May 13, lets people explore the cosmos through a single one computer with an Internet connection. It combines about 12 terabytes of data, including 50 surveys and 1,000 high-resolution studies, with links to astronomy research on sites around the Web. It blends the given conditions with regularly updated photos captured by high-powered telescopes on and off the Earth, including the Hubble Space Telescope, circling the planet 353 miles up, and the Cerro Tololo Observatory, 312 miles north of Santiago, Chile, in the foothills of the Andes. Put it all cheek by jowl, and the WWT knits together a spellbinding panorama of the night sky.

There are some similar services available now, including Google (GOOG) Sky from the search kingpin. But what sets WWT apart is how easy it is to navigate the service and dig into more information about planets, stars, and galaxies. Sweep your mouse sidewise, and you’re spinning across the splendid assemblage. Move the look closely forward, and you hurtle into the picture. You can close in attached Sombrero Galaxy or a black hole in Galaxy NGC 4261 and find yourself immersed in startling details and whirling brilliant hues.

Once you declare a verdict an be engaged object, you can uncover loads of additional information. A mouse click brings up links from outside sources, including NASA, Wikipedia, and Europe’s SIMBAD Astronomical Database. One link on the group of galaxies known as Stephen’s Quintet explains how the galaxies are colliding with each other and ripping stars away from one another.

The work of piecing the all created things together is WWT’s strength. At Google Sky, for instance, you have to click to move in and out, much like you do for Google Maps. Much of the heavy lifting Microsoft did was to pull together the images into one quilt. "Even though you can download any professional image of the universe at this moment online, it’s a fragment," says Roy Gould, an education researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who unveiled WWT at the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) conference in February, moreover isn’t differently associated with the project. "This puts it into junction seamlessly and gives you the impression that you’re traveling end space."

How can people practice WWT? First, you mode to worldwidetelescope.org, download the application, and install it on your computer for free. (Be forewarned, it works barely by Microsoft’s Windows operating system.) The download is joined to the Internet, so that when you look up information online, a weak window pops up. The service moreover automatically updates when unaccustomed photos are taken by the telescopes.

Such services—whether WWT, Google Sky, or Google Earth—are the early models for the way data from totality types of fields will be modeled in the coming, says Alyssa Goodman, professor of astronomy at Harvard University who worked on WWT. Whether one is studying the inside of a confined apartment or the brain, using imagery to make sense of large sets of data helps not past nor future the data in a way that makes sense according to humans. And while the WWT initially is intended for amateur stargazers and teachers eager to spark a passion in students for the sky, it’s not hard to imagine how the service could have being used since a tool for professionals to share exploration and questions.

WWT is an ambitious project tinged by tragedy. Curtis Wong, the manager of Microsoft’s Next Media Research clump, developed the service based on the work of fellow Microsoft researcher Jim Gray. Since the 1990s, Wong wanted to create ways to make exploring the sky more accessible to nation outside of universities. Gray, who won the prestigious Turing Award for work on database and transaction processes, started working a decade ago with researchers in astronomy, oceanography, and environmental monitoring to create digital libraries for their work. In 2001, Gray and Alex Szalay, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, developed SkyServer, a site that publish the images from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Wong helped design the interface without ceasing account of the seat and talked with Gray encircling building affair broader. Gray encouraged Wong, but it wasn’t to the time whereas Gray was lost at sea off the California coast in January, 2007, that Wong started working on the intend in earnest. WWT is dedicated to Gray.

To turn WWT into even further of an educational hireling, Microsoft built a feature that allows people to pull together different images and create narrated stories that they can share through others. "People accept always looked up to the death region of clouds and made up stories," Wong says. "This is a way for them to ploughshare those stories and that knowledge."

The office also allows you to look at different approaches to studying the universe, whether by studying cosmic dust or microwaves. That provides canaille with a broader understanding of astronomy research. And folks be able to even indication up to get feeds from specific telescopes about the earth or in space.

WWT is expected to add more features that Google Sky has a little while ago. For instance, researchers can add their own data to Google Sky and use petition programming interfaces (APIs) to put models of their facts onward their own sites. That emulation, says Goodman, will be proper for both as well as for researchers and amateurs similar.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Visiting US President George W. Bush vowed upon the body Thursday to support Israel in battling "terror" groups as the nation marks its 60th anniversary still struggling to provide peace with Arab neighbours.

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Washington’s home sales are down, and the dip is more pronounced in the Central Puget Sound province, which has the sight’s share of the state’s housing transactions.

Compared with the same period a year ago, sales of existing homes were off again than a third in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, the Washington Center for Real Estate Research reported Tuesday. The research does not include repaired homes.

The trend was generally repeated in prices, with the middle price of resale homes dropping more in Central Puget Sound

In the first three months of this year, existing hearthstone sales dropped 31.8 percent in King County, 35.6 percent in Pierce, and 34.8 percent in Snohomish County, compared with a year earlier. The statewide mean proportion was 29.7 percent.

Those three counties accounted for 44 percent of the state’s 97,630 first-quarter home sales.

Across Puget Sound, Kitsap County fared slightly better, through sales off 26.2 percent.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, first-quarter sales were the floor in three of the four counties compared with the last quarter of 2007, showing that the slide has not stopped.

King County sales slipped 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter; Snohomish County slid 5.1 percent; and Pierce fell 2.8 percent. Kitsap sales increased 2.5 percent quarter to quarter.

Despite public reports suggesting few homes are actuality sold, about 98,000 units were sold statewide, similar to the number of sales a decade ago, the center notorious in a news release.

“Washington’s annual sales decline was marginally greater than nationally, but the recite’s markets remained besides robust than many areas in the West,” the report said.

Still, first-quarter sales declined from the year-earlier divide in 36 of the state’s 39 counties.

Those showing gains were Columbia, Skamania and Wahkiakum. Each had fewer than 250 sales from January through March.

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Kathryn Johnston was shot 39 times as plainclothes narcotics officers busted into her race using a “no-knock” warrant on Nov. 26, 2006. During nearly eight hours of corroboration, Arthur Tester said he was instructed by two other officers after the shooting to commit to memory a cover-up story that they had witnessed an informer buying drugs at Johnston’s hearthstone.

Tester also told the jury in Fulton County Superior Court that he didn’t know officer Jason R. Smith had lied to a judge to get the warrant and then planted drugs in Johnston’s basement to upper part up the story. In his often tearful testimony, Tester said he eventually decided to cooperate with federal investigators because he “couldn’t take it anymore.”

“A woman was dead and they were trying to involve me in their untruth,” Tester aforesaid. “I didn’t lay a hand on this woman. I wanted nothing to do with it.”

Prosecutors say Tester had opportunities to tell the conformity to fact but decided to do so only when federal agents told him they knew he was lying.

Tester was in the backyard of Johnston’s home during the raid, during which Johnston fired person shot from a pistol as police were breaking on the ground her door. She did not hit any one of the officers.

Fulton County prosecutor Kelly S. Hill has said even though Tester never fired a shot, he shared bounden duty for Johnston’s death because he went along with a lie.

The Rev. Al Sharpen, who was sitting in the courtroom during the morning, called Tester’s testimony “chilling” and the shooting “a complete disregard for the criminal justice system.”

Tesler is charged with recumbent in an official investigation, violating his oath as any officer and incorrect imprisonment. The trial is credible to exist the no other than one in the Johnston shooting because former officers Gregg Junnier and Smith have even now pleaded guilty to pass homicide and federal easy rights charges. Junnier testified against Tesler last week.

The fatal shooting led to sharp criticism of the police sphere of duty, and a shake-up of the narcotics one, which Tester’s agent, William McKenney, has said routinely planted drugs and lied to obtain pry into warrants. It also prompted a review of how officers obtain and use no-knock warrants, which are intended to store up drug suspects from having time to destroy evidence.

Closing arguments are expected to begin Thursday morning.

Other enterprises can benefit by borrowing strategies from these companies that have prospered generation later generation

by Stacy Perman

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In 2000, a scarcely any members of the Lyman family moved out of its capacious hereditary home. Though the house, set in continuance a sprawling farm in Middlefield, Conn., had been inhabited by Lymans since its shape in 1785, it was feeling moreover big for them. Two years later, the 180-member kindred decided to turn the homestead into an event room for weddings and other occasions. It was the latest in a series of business decisions that have kept the family transaction successful for from one side of to the other 200 years.

Today, the event space is one of multiple businesses spun out of Lyman Orchards, including two golf courses, a line of baked goods, and Connecticut’s largest indoor carry on a farm market. The farm, operated by eight generations of Lymans, sits upon the body 1,100 acres and earned $10 the masses in receipts in 2007. "I look upon obviously it’s unusual for a family business to latest taken in the character of to a great extent as us," says John Lyman, Orchards’ executive vice-president.

Indeed, according to the Family Firm Institute, a research collection in Boston, only 30% of family-owned businesses make it to the second people of the same age, 10% to the third part generation, and 3% to the fourth. While all enterprises are susceptible to failure, neglectful of ownership, family businesses contend with some unique issues (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/07), such as managing succession, going public, bringing in outside victuals members and other executives, and keeping products or services relevant through the generations.

While the odds are indeed stacked against family-owned businesses being operated by continuous generations of family members, there are examples of companies that have remained family-controlled and successful through time. Kongo Gumi (BusinessWeek.com, 4/16/07), a Japanese construction assembly that began in the year 578 lasted for 14 generations until 2006. The Marinelli family of Agnone, Italy, has been making bells in its foundry since around the year 1000. The Loane Bros. started in 1815 like a maker of canvas sails on Baltimore’s Bowley’s Wharf for the famous Baltimore clipper ships in 1815. When the steamship made sails obsolete, Loane shifted the set’s focus to manufacturing awnings. Today’s sixth generation continues to produce awnings and also makes event tents.

While the statistics don’t favor subdivision of an order ownership over the long haul, those companies that have beaten the odds describe a multitude of things that have contributed to their success. According to William O’Hara, the executive director of the Institute for Family Enterprise at Bryant University in Rhode Island, the biggest misunderstand that most house businesses make is not planning on this account that the future. "The companies that have trouble are those that don’t look ahead, whether about succession or future products," he says. Regarding the happy few that do make it, O’Hara says, "Those that have been around for centuries distribute in products that rejoin to human needs."

According to John Lyman, the clew to his lineage’s 265 years of success has been remaining tied to the land as for one’s advantage as continuously diversifying offerings. The head of the family’s third generation, Charles Elihu Lyman, introduced non-agricultural products such as spring lambs and dairy cattle, and began selling hay for local livestock. He is also credited with introducing peaches as a major crop in Connecticut.

In the 1930s, the family began promoting Lyman Orchards as a recreational family destination, with the launch of the Apple Blossom Festival. "To stay relevant in the market you be delivered of to change," says John Lyman. "We are constantly looking for new opportunities. We’ve tried to have being open to reinvigorated ideas. We are not heavy risk-takers, but we try not to subsist afraid of seizing risks, likewise."

Start by means of taking a renewed inventory of your fixed assets. Then try to application more e-mail and less gasoline. Here are some tips to get started

by Karen E. Klein

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Small concern owners are always looking to cut expenses where they can. But in today’s business climate, reducing outlays may be particularly important. In this column, Smart Answers shares several tips on how fine companies can save on operating expenses.

Do an "asset audit." Many businesses aren’t sure exactly the kind of they own in fixed assets. Of course, large items like attribute, buildings, and manufacturing rigging are easy to take care of track of, says Marcus Scholes, vice-president of Real Asset Management International, a Boston software company. But technology assets such as laptops, flat-screen monitors, printers, fax machines, and PDAs can easily get lost or forgotten.

"A company’s fixed assets are often person of the biggest business items on its financials, but they are often haphazardly managed," Scholes says. Not having a handle on your assets can be costly: You may be profitable taxes and insurance premiums put on items your company no longer owns.

If you haven’t done an inventory of your assets in a long time, set aside an afternoon or a Saturday and list everything your company owns. If you have a barcode combination of parts to form a whole, or an earlier asset list you be able to start with, that will constitution your audit easier. If you don’t, simply walk around by a pad of paper and create note of every one of your assets. Don’t forget furniture, fittings, fixtures, and IT equipment.

"In our experience, up to 20% of property on companies’ book are no longer in existence," Scholes says. You can eliminate those items the next date your insurance is updated and when your taxes are what is due. "Shadow assets that lurch on asset registers solely no longer as a matter of fact exist are costing many businesses thousands or more per year in state property taxes," Scholes notes.

Having some true, updated asset list have power to aid with insurance recovery in the case of a fire or other disaster, and keep your company current on the best strategy for depreciating those estate towards assess tribute upon purposes.

Use e-mail over postage mail whenever possible. May 12 marked the latest in a series of U.S. Postal Service price increases (BusinessWeek.com, 7/17/07), to 42 cents for a one-ounce, first-class stamp. This is the fifth increase since 2001, during which rates esteem gone up nearly 24%.

Combine annual increases in mail rates with the rising cost of paper, envelopes, ink, and printing, and greatest part small companies light upon that doing business through postage mail is far more splendid than using e-mail, .pdf files, and Web sites, says Thomas Harpointner, chief executive of AIS Media, each interactive marketing company in Atlanta. "We’re seeing fewer companies that produce four-color, sheeny brochures, informational CDs, and print catalogs these days. They are more well-suited to rely on digital documents, secure-login Web sites, and e-mail marketing," he says. "A sales person can refer customers to the company’s Web site preferably than mailing out a printed pamphlet."

Things such as company newsletters, trade publications, and sales catalogs are all instigating online as companies cut costs and respond to environmental concerns. While certain legal documents, such as contracts, may still require paper originals, many small companies can application electronic formats instead of most of their communications with suppliers and customers. Online marketing campaigns cost about a penny per e-mail, Harpointner says, and outsourced e-mail service providers can help gather e-mail direct one’s speech, navigate "opt-in" palaestra and quantity with spam filters.

Return on investment is higher with e-mail marketing than it is with prescribe to postal mail, and e-mail can be tracked, with 90% of metrics typically approach in within 48 hours of the time the campaign was launched, Harpointner says.

Manage your fuel use carefully. Everyone is being good stroke rough by the skyrocketing price of gasoline, but companies such as plumbers and florists are suffering more than most. They cannot erase combustible matter costs without also wounding out revenues. But they can figure out ways to reduce those costs by managing their fuel use.

Reducing drivers’ speed, training them to avoid excessive idling, and plotting out the most efficient routes have power to completely help divide phthisis, says Todd Krautkremer, CEO of Gearworks, a Minneapolis company whose fuel-management software runs on cell phones and GPS devices. Other companies, such as 4Refuel, based in British Columbia, do on-site refueling to cut in a puzzle labor time at the gas interrogate, and manage combustible matter employment through strategies like regular provisions.

"If drivers have to get to a particular customer but they don’t take the most direct route, it accounts for 3% to 10% of their driving time. If they be able to get to a destination more efficiently, it will immediately cut up to 10% of the company’s fuel cost," Krautkremer says. Navigation systems and informed dispatchers also help prevent drivers from getting lost and wasting gas driving around looking for a client location.

Training drivers not to speed and monitoring their compliance exist possible to also save money. "Going 55 mph vs. 60 mph saves a half-mile per four quarts on fuel good housewifery. If your firm has 10 trucks traveling 100 miles a day, that’s $4,500 a year in extra fuel expense you can save by just slowing them from a thin to a dense state by 5 mph," he says.

For companies that simply cannot divide costs enough to continue business profitably, raising prices may be the only option. "This conjuncture we face today, particularly with elastic fluid, is not something the corporation owner feels unaccompanied. Individuals feel it too, since they are filling up their own tanks. So your customers may be more sympathetic to your price increase than they would be in another spot," Krautkremer says.

Jan Fields is the confident dynamo behind McDonald’s push into specialty coffees. She says it’s ready

by Michael Arndt

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Jan Fields is certain her shops can pour cappuccinos and lattes without slowing service. Roark Johnson

Thirty years gone, Janice L. Fields was a brand new McDonald’s crew subordinate part in Dayton, Ohio, vexation orders on the evening artful contrivance while her husband, an enlistee in the U.S. Air Force, took watchfulness of their three-year-old daughter. Today, Fields is chief operating officer of McDonald’s USA. Working from the old company of founder Raymond A. Kroc, she is responsible for 13,800 restaurants, 700,000 employees, and $7.9 billion in yearly revenue. But formerly a gang, always a crew. So in the present life she is, in front of a TV camera for ABC’s Nightline, back backward the counter and in an apron, grinning and serving coffee.

She’s had plenty of reason to feel good. Right after Fields was promoted into upper management as president of McDonald’s Central division in 2003—she moved up to national COO in mid-2006—Big Mac’s domestic sales began rising and hold been up each quarter subsequently to. Over that extend too far, the fast-food chain introduced premium salads and Snack Wraps, began eliminating trans-fats from its menu, extended hours at other than 90% of its locations, rebuilt 6,500 restaurants, and pocketed record sums: U.S. operating income totaled $2.84 billion in 2007.

Fields, 52, is now being challenged as never before, however. To grab more of the breakfast market, McDonald’s is adding specialty McCafé coffees, such as cappuccinos and lattes, to all its U.S. sites, a rollout that should be completed by dint of. next May. It is the most disruptive prompt since McDonald’s began serving breakfast nationwide in 1977, requiring the installation of fresh machines in the already cramped space adjoining the drive-through pickup window. Another risk: The complexity of preparing the upscale brews could deliberate down service.

Years of test-market trials have convinced Fields the company is ready. As with most chores inside a McDonald’s kitchen, tasks have been broken down to the simplest level, with the accoutrement handling much of the work automatically. Crew members need only attack a button, for instance, to dispense milk or sweetener in pointed measures. Printed instructions even tell employees for what cause many times to stir in chocolate syrup with respect to a mocha (12 times). Her bosses think she’s done her homework, also. "She’s detail-oriented. This fits right into her strengths," notes McDonald’s President Ralph Alvarez.

Though Fields takes her work seriously—she usually clocks in by 6:30 a.m. when she’s not traveling—she is quick to joke about most everything else. In her Oak Brook office are a link of sunny red Ronald McDonald clown shoes, as company-anniversary mementos. And amid her business and family memorabilia is a snapshot of her through a half-dozen women franchisees during a break from a company convention—lined up in front of a row of urinals. "Life is too short not to have fun," she says with a laugh.

Growing up in Vincennes, Ind., the seventh of eight children, Fields dreamed mostly of fit a nun. When she put on her first McDonald’s uniform in 1977, she had no intention of turning the piece of work into a manner of life; she just needed cash. She recalls finishing that first shift in tears, upset over all the rules end for end how to make french fries. The nearest darkness, she was switched to the cash register and fell in love through interacting with customers. After that, "I was happy everyday," she says. "I’m still happy 30 years later."