“What’d I miss?” – Week of June 29th

As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.

- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was #1 at the box office last weekend. I told you it would be #1. The movie brought in just over $200 million during its five day opening. My family and I enjoyed the movie over the weekend. It was great!

- Medscape.com: “Three of 4 observational studies suggest an increased risk for cancer associated with use of insulin glargine (Lantus, sanofi-aventis), although these findings warrant further follow-up studies to confirm an association, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).” – The studies suggest a dose-dependent increase in the risk of cancer, meaning the bigger the dose, the higher the risk. It’s not time to dump your Lantus just yet. A lot more information is needed before anyone can make an informed decision.

– Check out the Archos 9 Windows 7 tablet over at cknet uk. “This is a tablet PC weighing 623g, featuring a 9-inchcapacitive touchscreen (that’s the sexy kind, like the iPhone), an Intel Atom Z515 CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1“. It’s hard not to love these little things. The Archos 9 is one of those “tweener” devices, not quite a full blown tablet, but much larger than a smart phone. With web access, this thing would make the perfect social networking device. So many toys, so little time.

– thejobcure.com: ““Zero error rate” eludes surgeons at mature trauma center – In an 8-year study at a “mature” trauma center in Southern California, fewer than 1% of patients experienced preventable complications, according to a report in the June Archives of Surgery (Arch Surg 2009;144:536-542). “Even at a mature trauma center, with a highly experienced group of surgeon-researchers with a very focused evidence-based practice, errors continue to occur, despite our best efforts to detect preventable errors and institute corrective mechanisms,” Dr. Kenji Inaba from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles told Reuters Health.” – That’s just a little bit scary. The article goes on to say that preventable or potentially preventable complications represented 16% of the annual complications at the trauma center. Well, at least the other 84% of the complications were out of their control.

– Twitter changing the world? I’m not really sure, but this is pretty funny.

– Barcode.com: “The Active Shelf System, available from Barcoding Inc., is an affordable method of keeping track of inventory in retail stores, stockrooms, pharmacies, libraries, and warehouses, allowing automated asset tracking in libraries, document storage facilities, and data tape archives. Basically, anything that can be placed on a shelf can be tracked using the Active Shelf System…..The RFID Enabled Active Shelf System works by placing RFID antennas on each shelf to monitor signals from UHF Gen 2 tags that are placed on each product. The antennas then send information through the hybrid multiplexer that transmits the data to a central RFID reader. This RFID reader is connected to your database through a hard-wired connection or wireless infrastructure, making the inventory levels available through a web interface or XML feed from the system.” – Dawg gone RFID keeps showing up everywhere I look.

I wish everyone a great 4th of July (a.k.a. Independence Day). Keep it safe, have fun, eat lots of BBQ and ice cream, but don’t blow up anything bigger than your head.