Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost

Write this name down and keep in mind when the IPO rolls around.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing.

The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany.

Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost

Nanosolar

claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to

sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt

Toy Containing Date-Rape Drug Pulled (Aqua Dots)

Smart Clips: Toy Containing Date-Rape Drug Pulled (Aqua Dots)

Insanely Useful Web Sites

Some really incredible websites. Great information.

clipped from www.sunlightfoundation.com The following sites and resources are “insanely useful Web sites” for government transparency. They provide a broad range of information available to track government and legislative information, campaign contributions and the role of money in politics. Many of these resources apply the Web 2.0 ethos to sift, share and combine this information in innovative ways – often times by mashing data together from disparate sources to maximize the usability of that information. Insanely Useful Web Sites Congresspedia Contractor Misconduct DOJ TrainingDB Earmark Watch FedSpending Follow the Money Govtrack Legistorm LOUIS MapLight Metavid OpenCongress Open Community Document Review OpenCRS Open Hearings Open Secrets OS: Lobbyists OS: Revolving Door OS: Personal Financial Disclosure OS: Travel Project Vote Smart Taxpayers for Common Sense WashingtonWatch Fedspending.org Follow The Money Legistorm OpenCongress.org Open Secrets OS: Lobbying Database OS: Personal Financial Disclosure OS: Revolving Door

Hot Christmas Toys #1 Hannah Montana In Concert

Hannah Montana in Concert Projected #1

clipped from money.aol.com Analysts expect the Hannah Montana In Concert Collection Doll from Play Along, a division of JAKKS Pacific, Inc., to be at the top of the sales list this holiday season.

Hannah Montana is an American Emmy Award-nominated[1] children's television series which debuted on March 24, 2006 on Disney Channel. The series focuses on Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus), who lives a double life as an average teenage girl at school during the day and a famous pop singer, Hannah Montana, at night, concealing her real identity from the public other than her close friends and family.

The show centers on 14-year-old Miley Stewart and takes place in Malibu, California. She's a teenage girl who has a big secret. Only her close family, best friends Lilly and Oliver, ex-boyfriend Jake Ryan, and bodyguard Roxy know that she is living a double life as "Teen Pop Sensation" Hannah Montana. She lives in a house by the beach with her father Robby (played by Miley's real life father Billy Ray Cyrus) and older brother Jackson (played by Jason Earles), who works down at Rico's Surf Shop by the beach. The Stewarts are from Nashville, Tennessee. Miley's mother died before the show began, leaving singer-songwriter Robby a widower and the sole caretaker of their children, giving up his previous career as a famous country singer. He is also the disguised father and manager of Hannah Montana. Miley's two best friends Lilly Truscott (played by Emily Osment) and Oliver Oken (played by Mitchel Musso) also live nearby and attend school with her. Each episode deals with life, personal conflicts, or problems that are easily solved with lessons learned by the end of the show.

Sites Already Leaking Black Friday Deals

Let the games begin.

clipped from money.aol.com bfads.com Sites like bfads.net are already leaking Black Friday sale details, well ahead of the post-Thanksgiving shopping day that kicks off the holiday shopping season.     1 of 5 Photo Gallery: Predictions for Top Toy Sellers www.playalongtoys.com Analysts expect the Hannah Montana In Concert Collection Doll from Play Along, a division of JAKKS Pacific, Inc., to be at the top of the sales list this holiday season.     1 of 11 Despite this new tactic, the Black Friday dance will play out as it has in years past. For those who haven't caught the rerun, allow me to screen the highlights: * The setup: A handful of websites -- BlackFridayAds.com, bfads.net, Gottadeal.com, to name a few -- hype stores' marketing schedules by posting anticipated deals at holiday hot spots like Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, Best Buy, and Circuit City  before the ads appear in newsprint or on the stores' websites.

Why women find doctors so irresistible... (Scientific Study)

clipped from timesofindia.indiatimes.com The study conducted by Dr Brendan Kelly, of University College Dublin found that people get attracted to GPs, nurses and surgeons because they expect them to be more caring than the average professional. The study was carried out after researching medical romance stories to see what got readers so hot under the collar. In the study, at random 20 novels were selected with a medical theme and the recurrence of “brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiseled features, working in emergency medicine” was noticed. "These novels suggest there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses who intend working in these settings,” the Sun quoted him, as saying in a tongue in cheek manner. "It gives a good insight into how people think medicine should be. If you were to take these novels literally, one would think uncontrolled passion is an inevitable consequence of working in the emergency room,” he said.

Will This Winter Be Warmer Than Average?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Most of the country is likely to have a warmer than average winter, according to AccuWeather.com’s seasonal forecast, released last week and covered widely in the press. And if you’ve ever been prodded by a rain forecast to carry an umbrella on what turns out to be a cloudless day, you won’t be surprised to learn that predicting the weather three months out comes with a lot of uncertainty. What do you think? How reliable are such forecasts? Would you base business or personal decisions on them? Please let me know in the comments. Further reading: Reuters rounds up winter forecasts.

Witness recounts Lady Di's last words

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com A witness says he heard Princess Diana repeatedly say "oh, my God" before she succumbed to the injuries she sustained when her vehicle crashed in a Paris underpass on Aug. 31, 1997. "There was smoke emanating from the vehicle. I wanted to stop the battery but I couldn't," Damian Dalby, a volunteer firefighter, says during the inquest according to Sky News. "Was it right the lady in the car was trying to speak?" Ian Burnett, counsel for the inquest asks. "Yes, she was saying 'oh my God, oh my God,'" Dalby says.

What Women Love this Man

clipped from blackvoices.aol.com What's the secret to his success? There really isn't one. One of the reasons Perry has been able to capture the attention of many, first in his plays and now in his movies, is that he creates what hasn't been pitched to the masses in slick, big-budget Hollywood films. Perry's movies instill family values, sometimes using words with religious sentiments. Perry is also a business man who knows how to capture markets that have gone under-served. Women tend to go to movies in droves if you give them what appeals to them. They want to see stories that they can relate to and men they can love. It also helps when you have actors who are also musicians like Janet Jackson and Jill Scott, that women identify with or even revere as icons. At a time when Hollywood seems to make mostly films for kids and young males, a Tyler Perry film is a rare movie that appeals to mature, modern women.

Dem's Go Chicken on Kid's Health Bill

Persoanlly I believe they should bring the same bill back and back and back until the public puts pressure on Bush and the Republicans to insure the heatlh of our kids.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The long-debated, once-vetoed plan to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program will return to the House floor this week, The Hill reports. And Democrats, who overwhelmingly supported the first bill, say they’re open to some changes that could reduce the risk of a second veto. In particular, Democrats are responding to complaints that their plan went too far. One criticism was that federally-subsidized insurance for children would be allowed for families earning up to $83,000 a year. But as the Hill points out, only the state of New York asked to insure families with that income level. The Bush administration rejected that proposed waiver, as the Health Blog noted.

Discovery suggests new ways to treat Alzheimer's cause, not just symptoms

clipped from www.newsroom.ucla.edu For some time, scientists have blamed Alzheimer's disease on a small molecule called amyloid beta protein (A beta) that leaves large gummy deposits in the brain. Recent studies suggest that these A beta proteins stick together to form floating toxic clumps that kill brain cells. Now, UCLA scientists have identified a tiny loop in A beta as the likely culprit behind the adhesion process. The UCLA team discovered that gene mutations in A beta increase the loop's flexibility, enabling it to join easily with loops from other A beta proteins and form clumps. The loop also appears in the region of the protein that regulates how — and how much — A beta is made. Principal investigator David Teplow, professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is available for interviews. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the findings in its Oct. 10 online early edition. For a PDF of the study, see www.eurekalert.org/pio/tipsheetdoc.php/237/zpq7481.pdf.

The Evolution of Home Ownership

Forty-three percent of housholds aged 20-34 already own a home. Nationally about 70 percent of households now own a home. With a return to more normal lending practices and higher interest rates it is likely that the back log of homes already being built and homes from foreclosures will cause a long term hangover in the housing market.

These numbers indicate that housing is a big long term problem for the economy. This problem is not likely to resolve in a couple or few years. It seems that houses are over owned at this point in time. Demogrpahics already in place favor downsizing (retirement) and shrinkage in the pool of available new buyers. This indicates a long term, possibly a decade, hangover in the housing market. That is much longer then anything now being anticipated in the market place.

It is likely that we will see significant mark downs in prices in the years ahead in the formerly hot areas like New York, California, and Florida.

More details on next page.


Get the detailed paper from the Atlanta Fed

Source Atlanta Fed: Mortgage Innovation Boosted Home Ownership

After holding steady for three decades, the share of U.S. households owning their own home jumped from 64% in 1994 to 69% in 2005. The primary cause, argues a new staff study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, was the introduction of new mortgage products that reduced the initial down payment needed by a home buyer.

The paper, by Matthew Chambers, Carlos Garriga, and Don E. Schlagenhauf, examines changes in home ownership by age cohort. The U.S. population aged in the last decade, boosting the share of the population in age cohorts that are more likely to own a home. But the authors conclude this explains just 16% to 31% of the rise in total home ownership. The introduction of new mortgage products, in particular those that allowed little or no down payment, accounts for 56% to 70% of the increase. Such “loans tend to be the contract of choice for younger cohorts which explains an important part of the increase in the aggregate homeownership rate observed since 1994,” they say. Indeed, while the homeownership rate rose for all age groups in that period, it rose most for households under age 35: it jumped to 43% from 37.3%



Robert T DeMarco Weblog: The Evolution of Home Ownership

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

This development has wonderful implications for diagnosing Alzheimer's; it has far reaching implications for those predisposed by genetics to Alzheimer's disease.

Read this article at the Alzheimer's Reading Room

Researchers Discover Diagnostic Tool for Alzheimer's and other Brain Diseas

Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have identified a noninvasive way to diagnose Alzheimer's and other brain diseases.

read more | digg story

The Validation Breakthrough: Simple Techniques for Communicating with Peopl

You might get the impression from the title that this book is only for professionals; this is not the case. The validation theory works and it is simple to apply. The case studies are invaluable and provide you with specific situations that you are sure to encounter. I am convinced everyone involved with elderly parents suffering from dementia or A

read more | digg story

Training Helps Alzheimer's Caregivers

Some states are trying new ways to increase Alzheimer's services. In Colorado, for example, officials experimented with giving $1,000 stipends to help families hire monitoring for their loved ones so they could attend a six-session training program called the Savvy Caregiver.

read more | digg story

Why Alzheimer's Patients Get Lost

"People with Alzheimer's get lost not because they can't remember where they've been, but because they can't see where they're going," says Charles Duffy, a Rochester neurologist and lead investigator in a study published in the journal Neurology.

read more | digg story

Forty Dollar Alzheimer's Association Safe Return Bracelet Saves Life

The Alzheimer's Association Safe Return bracelet only cost $40. It is a safety net if the Alzheimer's patient wanders or gets lost. Why don't more people use it? Spread the word.

read more | digg story

There is a Bridge (Alzheimer's)

I was told by most medical professionals that my mother would need fulltime care (meaning nursing home) within a year or two when I decided to become her CareGiver. Its been almost four years now and she is still living right in her home with me. It is very trying at times, but we are doing well and still going. My mother's friends still find her t

read more | digg story

The early signs of Dementia (Alzheimer's)

If you have an elderly parent or grandparent you will want to read this article. I wish I had seen it ten years ago.One out of 8 Americans over the age of 65 now suffers from Alzheimer's.

read more | digg story

Early signs of Alzheimer's (Dementia)

We are receiving many "hits" from people searching "early signs of dementia". I ran across this description of the "early signs of Alzheimer's" on the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (Penn State) some time ago. I felt it might be helpful....

read more | digg story

Scientists find early signs of Alzheimer's

"We found the earliest predictor," said the lead researcher, Lisa Mosconi of New York University School of Medicine. "The hippocampus seems to be the very first region to be affected."

read more | digg story

Zen and the Art of Coping With Alzheimer’s

The politicians mouthed generalities about health care, larded with poignant anecdotes. None of them answered the question about Alzheimer’s.

read more | digg story

SLIDE SHOW: A Descent Into Alzheimer's

Over nearly four decades, self-portraits by William Utermohlen chronicle his descent into dementia.Very eerie, well worth viewing.

read more | digg story

Johnnie Byrd Alzheimer's Center gets the shaft from the State of Florida

The Center says it could lose 50 of its 70 employees and all 12 of the clinical trials already being conducted there would likely be dropped.There are an estimated 450,000 Alzheimer's patients residing in the State of Florida.

read more | digg story

I am an Alzheimer's Caregiver: The early signs of Dementia (Alzheimer's)

Looking back, there is little doubt in my mind that if I had had the proper education or information I would have realized my mother was suffering from dementia sooner. Most people like me tend to ignore the symptoms at first believing they are simply signs of "old age". Anyone who ends up in my shoes knows and understands that a person in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s can function with some normality--even drive a car. It is not until they deteriorate or until some "event" takes place that we wake up to reality.

The article on the next page is one of the best I have read. The basic underlying premise is that behavior changes slowly in the elderly and if they begin to suffer cognitive impairment it will be evidenced in behavioral changes. Sometimes these changes can be quite subtle but if detected could raise a “red flag”.

If my mother had been enrolled in any of these studies I feel certain she would have been diagnosed with dementia sooner. This would have allowed me to get her in an exercise program, get her proper nutrition, and insure that she was taking her medicines as prescribed. I leaned in the last three years how important these three factors are in the quality of her life.

My mother turned 91 years old in June and she suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. I am her CarGiver.


I am an Alzheimer's Caregiver: The early signs of Dementia (Alzheimer's)

Robert T DeMarco Weblog: The latest in Financial Infotainment--Minyanville

Robert T DeMarco Weblog: The latest in Financial Infotainment--Minyanville

A friend of mine sent me a link to this website, Minyanville. The site is will worth visiting. Informative and entertaining. The stuff on China, subprime loans and trading is thought provoking. Chances are good you will be sending this link along to your freinds.


Some examples of the headline stories.

Fire in the Hole!
Todd Harrison
...as yesterday’s false alarm once again proved, structural smoke won’t matter until someone actually sees a fire.

Testing the Waters of Intel
Jeff Macke
Plucking at the strings of lunacy, trying to find something valid enough to trade off, thus becomes a somewhat futile exercise...

Stocks To Watch: Dell, eBay, Ford, IBM, Sysco
Minyanville Staff
Today's top stories and some stocks with potential to move...

Bear Stearns' Hedge Fund Mess
Bennet Sedacca
Brokerage paper has been widening relative to Treasuries of late, but so has everything else, as perhaps it should.

The Market's Remarkable Symmetry
The market may have an agenda higher in terms of time and price, but... there are many clusters of time, price and pattern projecting a turning point in this neighborhood.


Subscribe to Robert T DeMarco Weblog by Email

hedge funds, infotainment, investing, minyanville, subprime loans, trading