Author: Paul Hutch

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Why did it take so long? FDA Orders Zicam Nasal Off the Market

You’ve probably seen this story at many blogs recently.

FDA Advises Consumers Not To Use Certain Zicam Cold Remedies

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent.

The products are:
–Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel
–Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs
–Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs, Kids Size (a discontinued product)

While this is good news, what took so long for the FDA to act on this? As pointed out at What’s The Harm? What’s the harm in homeopathy? (Lisa Weatherington & 339 others) Zicam settled a lawsuit over this issue nearly 3 1/2 years ago.

By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The manufacturer of Zicam Cold Remedy has agreed to pay $12 million to settle 340 lawsuits brought by consumers who claim the popular over-the-counter zinc nasal gel damaged or destroyed their sense of smell.

Full article: Paying Through the Nose – washingtonpost.com.

Did the FDA really need over three years to act on this problem? Are the 130 injured mentioned in the FDA notice in addition to the 340 from the 2006 lawsuit?

Lets see, the science has shown a potential problem since 2004 and further documented in 2006, the manufacturer settles a lawsuit in 2006, then finally the FDA acts in 2009. The FDA should have acted much sooner!

For some interesting additional information info on the men behind the company see: The Men Behind Zicam – washingtonpost.com.

FDA links:

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Intel needs to come clean fast

This weeks EETimes has an opinion piece about the EU ruling against Intel, Setting the record straight on Intel. It ends with this statement I completely agree with.

There’s no question Intel has made great contributions to the industry with its technology. Now it’s time to make an equally great contribution with its honesty.

My best guess is that Intel’s sales and marketing division has made some mistakes in how they’ve handled their fierce competition with AMD. By coming totally clean right now, before they get more bad press, I think it will go a long way toward keeping the good company image they have with the public.

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Acrobat Alternative

This is not about another Acrobat Reader alternative, it’s an excellent alternative to the $299.00 Adobe Acrobat PDF editor. For the past couple months I’ve been using the free PDF-XChange Viewer from Tracker Software Products for all my PDF editing needs. I found the UI to be as easy to learn and use as my favorite office suite, OpenOffice. The free version has all of the features many users will ever need in a PDF editor. For only $29.50 the Viewer PRO edition adds the rest of the features that are in Adobe’s product. My employer provides me with the full Acrobat product on my workstations but I’ve liked PDF-XChange Viewer so much that I bought the Pro version myself and am using it exclusively now.

Keep in mind this program is not for creating PDF’s it’s for editing existing PDF’s. For creating PDF’s I exclusively use and highly recommend the free open source PDF Creator from PDF forge.

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American Meteorological Society Archives

The AMS has opened up their archives of 20th century articles to the public. Previously you had to go to a college library or pay $$ to see these articles, now we can get PDF’s for free!

This is a fantastic resource that covers all of their publications:
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
Journal of Physical Oceanography
Monthly Weather Review
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology
Weather and Forecasting
Journal of Climate
Journal of Hydrometeorology
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Meteorological Monographs
Earth Interactions

The archives search page is here:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=search-simple

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Ohm's Birthday

The science giant whose shoulders I stand on the most, was born today, March 16 in 1789. Georg Simon Ohm was born to Johann Wolfgang and, Maria Elizabeth Ohm in Erlangen, Bavaria (now part of Germany). His father was a locksmith who taught his self advanced mathematics and science. Johann provided his children with an education in math and science superior to what was available in schools of the time. Georg drifted around a bit in his studies and was not very successful in earning a living from 1805 when he entered university until October 1811 when he received a doctorate from the University of Erlangen.

Georg’s work on electromagnetism began around 1825 and led to his publication of one of the fields most important books in 1827. The book, “The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically” contains what we now call Ohm’s Law. This elegant equation, E=IR, was a breakthrough in electromagnetism that was not widely accepted for many years. Ohm was awarded the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1841 and became a foreign member in 1842. He died July 6th 1854 in Munich Germany.

In recognition of Georg Ohm’s tremendous contribution to science the SI unit for electrical_resistance was named the ohm. In combination with Kirchhoff’s circuit laws, Ohm’s law provides the foundation for so much electronics design that I use it nearly every day in one way or another. So Happy Birthday to Georg Simon Ohm the biggest of my personal giants.

Biographies

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Auto Start Options in Gnome

I use Linux for all my disc burning needs and have been annoyed that every time I pop in a disc something auto starts. It’s become especially annoying with a DVD-RW that I erase weekly to put on a new TV show episode for viewing on a DVD player.

Searching around all I had found was that the settings are supposed to be in the Gnome Control Center’s Removable Drives and Media applet. Well they aren’t there in modern Gnome and I finally found the answer when searching specifically for stopping Totem auto start. The settings are in the Nautilus file manager under Edit -> Preferences -> Media. It seems the Gnome developers took all the removable media settings out of the applet and put them into Nautilus but left the applet name the same, confusing. The current Gnome Removable Drives and Media applet only sets preferences for Cameras, PDAs, Printers & Scanners and Input Devices. I think they should rename the applet since none of those devices are drives or media, some of them may appear as drives but I don’t think most people consider them to be drives or media.

This is one of those posts that is as much for my future benefit as anyone else’s. The next time I wipe out and re-install Linux on the box I know I’ll have forgotten where the setting is and the Gnome applet name will mislead me.