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These authors contributed equally to this work.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
This paper assesses university sustainability from the perspective of the interested student. A set of questions for a university website analysis is proposed and preliminary results for Swedish universities are presented. The university website analysis intends to emulate a student looking for a university working with sustainable development. University ranking is compared with the results from the sustainability assessment.Results from the study are based on university website analysis of 18 Swedish universities out of a total of 30. Universities are grouped in high ranked, low ranked and benchmark universities. For the majority of the studied universities it was possible to extract the information needed for a sustainability assessment from the website, which indicates that further development of the method is of interest. The average level of performance in the assessment was found to be less than 50% of the maximum of the proposed scale. With Sweden generally being a leading nation in sustainable development the results are below of what could be expected. Ranking, based on the Swedish ranking system does not seem to predict university sustainability performance. The indication is that Gothenburg University, while having further improvement potential, could be considered a benchmark in the Swedish context.
The Brundtland commission definition from 1987 states that: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [
University rankings could play a role when choosing a university. "There is no clear way to arrange campuses on a sustainability scale, yet lack of coherent criteria has not stopped campus rankings on other important issues" [
Sweden could be seen as a country that does well in national comparisons related to sustainability. The Sustainable Society Foundation studies human, environmental and economic wellbeing on national levels and reports results in the Sustainable Society Index. In the results from 2012 Sweden ranks as nr 2 out of 151 countries studied [
The purpose of this paper is to propose how university sustainability could be assessed from a student perspective and based on this to make a preliminary assessment of the level of sustainability of Swedish universities. Since students could base their choices on the university ranking, the authors study if sustainability focus correlates with university ranking. Additionally we try to identify benchmark universities and superficially study the effect of university size on the proposed sustainability assessment.
In order to emulate the student perspective the authors have studied websites formulating a set of questions. The authors have looked at different ways of finding information on the university website. The first general approach chosen was a free search using the search term sustainable development. Here, it would have been possible to use sustainability as an alternative search term, since these often are used interchangeably. We also do that in our text. However, sustainable development is the term defined by the Brundtland commission [
Questions used for website analysis.
|Description of question to be answered by website analysis
|Volume of sustainability information. Number of hits when carrying out free text search in English and Swedish on Sustainable Development—for overview only.
|Relevance of general sustainability information. Average relevance of 10 first hits for Q1 (relevant if referring to education, research or university policies and not relevant when referring to historic documents or links outside of university).
|Easiness to find information on sustainable development. This is based on starting from the opening webpage.
|Access to and relevance of policy on sustainable development.
|Number of courses offered with sustainable development in English and Swedish (Course name should include sustainable development and the course content of sustainable development should be above > 50%).
|Overall management of sustainable development. Relevant mention of sustainable development in Swedish annual report (number of times, not including repetitions or headlines).
The answer to the first question provides on overall information on the quantity of sustainability information on the website when using the website search engine. With an increasing number of hits it becomes more difficult to find relevant answers. Providing good access to core information is therefore important. Question two was formulated as the relevance of the "10 first hits" received in the search. Frequently webpages present 10 hits at a time. We have assumed that most students would stop at the first page assessed as the "10 first hits". This means that the university interested in good communication should see that priority is given to such information that helps the interested student to assess how the university works with sustainable development. Question three looks at the easiness of finding information on sustainable development when starting with the university website. If information cannot be found easily then it will not support the interested student to choose the university. Question four looks more specifically on if a statement on sustainable development can be found and what the policy says as a sign of management commitment. Question five is for finding courses in sustainable development. Even if the number of courses could be hard to access this information is central for an interested student. Question six is answered using the annual report. This shows if sustainable development is considered on the overall managerial level and could be seen as a simple check of if the espoused policy also is enacted. Information on the size of the university, based on number of full time students, has also been collected.
In Sweden it is URANK an independent university ranking system that ranks universities [
Out of 30 Swedish universities listed in the URANK 2009 the authors chose 16 universities in two groups taking the eight highest ranked and the eight lowest ranked. Two universities were later added, one as an identified benchmark and Karlstad University because of a particular interest in seeing how the university was doing. Thus the total number became 18 (a later merger of two universities reduced the total to 29). The purpose was to compare the eight highest-ranking universities with the eight lowest ranking ones. Choosing 60% of the total population of main universities listed in URANK was deemed to be sufficient for doing the preliminary test of the applicability of a website analysis and for a preliminary assessment of the level of sustainability performance in Sweden. Clustering the highest ranked and the lowest ranked and excluding the middle group was done to more clearly indicate if university ranking correlates with sustainability performance. In order not to miss any university with good sustainability work the authors identified universities that could be benchmarks for university sustainability. This was done based on proposals from persons belonging to the national university network for sustainable development, HU2, and by preliminary web searches. Universities mentioned as benchmarks for sustainable development were Gothenburg University, Mälardalen University. Gothenburg University was already on the list but Mälardalen University has been added. Blekinge Institute of Technology has earlier been ranked as number 1 in Sweden within the framework of Engineering Education and was added as the third presumed benchmark. Benchmarks are dealt with as a separate group and are not included in the other groups. This resulted in that both the high ranked and low ranked group had seven universities each. See list of chosen universities in
List of chosen Swedish universities listed based on ranking from 2009. Universities indicated as potential benchmarks for work with sustainable development are marked in bold.
|Ranking 2009
|Karolinska institutet—a medical University
|Stockholm School of Economics
|Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
|Uppsala University
|Lund University
|Gothenburg University (only in benchmark group)
|Linköping University
|Karlstad University (only included in the total average)
|Mälardalen University (only in benchmark group)
|University West
|Dalarna University
|Kalmar University (later Linnaeus University)
|Halmstad University
|Blekinge Institute of Technology (only in benchmark group)
|University of Gävle
|University of Skövde
|Gotland University
The analysis of the answers for the questions in
Description of interpretation of the web-analysis (SD = Sustainable Development).
|Max. rating
|Resul-ting score
|1a.Relevance % English for first 10 hits
|Courses, research and policy are relevant but not events, links or other references—relevant when information can benefit a potential student
|1b.Relevance % Swedish for first 10 hits
|1.Average relevance of 1a and 1b
|2.Easiness to find information
|Max. score when SD information is found from opening page or "about the university"; SD is explained using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) and it is clear how the university works with SD
|3.Access and relevance of sustainability policy
|Max. score when there is a specific SD-policy that relates to TBL
|4.Total number of courses in SD, English and Swedish
|Max. score when 20 courses or more are found
|5.Overall management of SD
|Max. score when sustainable development is relevantly mentioned five times or more
|Total score
Criterion 1—Relevance of sustainability information in a web search. This is assessed as the number of relevant entries out of the 10 first entries in the web search. Ten out of 10 scores 0.2. For relevant hits between zero and 10 the rating is assessed linearly.
Criterion 2—Easiness to find sustainability information from university website. Number of clicks needed and relevance of the information found. Zero, if no information is found and 0.2 if there is a link from the opening page or "about the university" that leads to an explanation of how university works with sustainable development that includes the Triple Bottom Line. A semi quantitative assessment of the provided information results in a rating between 0 and 0.2.
Criterion 3—Access and relevance of sustainability policy. Zero, if no policy is found and 0.2 if there is a specific and official policy on sustainable development that is based on the Triple Bottom Line. A semi quantitative assessment of the provided information results in a rating between 0 and 0.2.
Criterion 4—Total number of courses in sustainable development in English and in Swedish. Zero, if no courses are found and 0.2 for 20 courses or more. For a total between 0 to 20 the rating is set linearly.
Criterion 5—Overall management of sustainable development. Total number or relevant mentions in the yearly report. Zero, if no mention of sustainability or sustainable development and 0.2 when sustainable development is relevantly mentioned five times or more. For a total between 0 to 5 the rating is set linearly.
In most cases it was possible to find the information needed, which indicates that the idea of webpage analysis could have potential as a method. The interpretation of webpage information, especially for criteria one to three was not easy and requires substantial time for finding comparable information. Web pages are structured quite differently with a varying logic and with varying user friendliness. This makes it less likely for the average student to spend the time needed. One option is for student organizations and especially those promoting sustainability to get involved in an assessment. With an initial investment in time, web sites provide a wealth of information. Currently, all sustainability assessments that the authors have found are based on the university taking the initiative (EAUC, 2013). Even if many of these models provide a thorough assessment, this is of little help if only a minority of the universities are engaged. While waiting for all universities to get their assessment working it could be worthwhile further developing the webpage sustainability assessment as a method for interested students.
The questions for the website analysis could be more clearly structured based on operational definitions of sustainable development. Criteria from the AISHE module of Identity [
The average assessed sustainability performance for the 18 studies universities is 0.46 out of a maximum of 1 defined as best performance according to the five criteria. Most universities only have a few courses in sustainable development. Many university search engines do not permit free searches of courses but require a functional topic based selection where sustainable development is not one of the areas that can be chosen. Out of the studied universities only Gothenburg and Uppsala provide students looking for a course with a declaration of which courses contain sustainable development and to what extent. Uppsala University has a continuous scale from 0 to 100% for the content of sustainable development. This could serve as a benchmark. Most universities could with little effort considerably improve the availability of information on sustainable development. The page "about the university" could include a headline for sustainable development that takes the student to the relevant information on how the university views sustainability, how they work with it and which courses can be studied. Only few universities have gone through the trouble of clearly presenting their interpretation of the Triple Bottom Line and how this affects the university education, research and societal co-operation. Here, the University of Gävle (UoG) could serve as a role model. A link to sustainable development is found on the principal webpage, which leads to the information needed. UoG is the highest performing university in the group of low ranked universities with a score of 0.69 (see
Assessed sustainability performance and university ranking.
The chosen method of website analysis and the proposed scale for rating sustainability performance have not been tested before and the results are only indicative. The preliminary results need to be compared with other assessment results. Sweden should be a leading nation in working with sustainable development based on different national rankings. Additionally, universities are clearly by law obliged to work with sustainability. Sweden has some 40% of the young generation attending university education and should be a role model in educating ethically aware global citizens within fields important to sustainable development. In spite of this the average performance seems to be rather low.
If these results are representative for other leading countries within sustainable development then the global situation is worrisome. In any change, management plays a crucial role. The reason for university management not seemingly giving priority to activities proposed in the university law on sustainable development could be related to lack of active follow up and commitment from the Swedish government. Since 2006, when the law for sustainable development was issued and until mid 2013, there has been no published follow up on how universities are living up to the expectations formulated in the law.
Results in
Summary of sustainability performance for chosen university groups.
|Low ranked
|High ranked
|Number of universities
|Total full year students 2012
|Total hits on WEB page Eng—2012
|Total hits on WEB page Swe—2012
|Relevance % Eng for first 10
|Relevance % Swe for first 10
|Relevance average
|Links to SD-information (2012)
|Policy found and relevance (2012)
|Courses ENG SD (2012)
|Courses SWE SD (2012)
|Total courses
|Yearly report 2011—SD relevantly mentioned
|Sustainability assessment
|Range of assessment
The three universities indicated as benchmarks have an average of 0.57, which is above the average performance of 0.46. This is mainly due to Gothenburg University, one of the benchmarks, having the highest score of all studied universities at 0.77. Based on the preliminary assessment only Gothenburg University could, in the Swedish context, be considered a benchmark, out of the three indicated as such. There is a possibility that some of the not studied universities could be a benchmark. Since the authors initially interviewed people within the national group HU2 working with university sustainability the possibility of the existence of an unknown Swedish benchmark university is not likely. However, there are four other universities, not earlier indicated as benchmarks that also score in the range of 0.69 to 0.75. Web pages change quite frequently and in the case of work being driven by a few enthusiasts the assessed performance could change rapidly.
Assessed sustainability performance and university size.
The preliminary webpage assessment for sustainability information is promising. Most universities provide the information needed for making an assessment based on important criteria, such as transparency, vision and policy, expertise (courses provided) and communication, defined in, e.g., the AISHE-model for assessing university sustainability [
The indication is that Swedish universities based on results from 2012 are not working with sustainable development to the extent that could be expected considering the university law from 2006 that clearly defines a triple bottom line approach of sustainable development. The average assessed sustainability performance for the 18 studies universities is at about 50% of best performance according to the defined scale.
Ranking as exemplified by URANK cannot be used to predict university sustainability performance.
In the Swedish context Gothenburg University (GU) could be considered a benchmark in sustainable development. This is based on a combination of the initial information on benchmarks and the results from the preliminary assessment. Compared to general sustainability challenges, GU still needs considerable improvements.
University size does not seem to be a prerequisite for good sustainability performance. Instead one of the important prerequisites could be management commitment.
Many of the planetary problems threatening mankind and nature need to be solved by those graduating today, see for example [
The authors declare no conflict of interest.


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NC shoppers gear up for final sales tax holiday
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) _ The sales tax holiday that began this morning will be the last one in North Carolina.
Consumers can get breaks on school supplies, computers, clothes and sports equipment at their local stores beginning Friday. But after stores lock their doors on Sunday, the tax break ends for good.
The N.C. General Assembly repealed the sales tax holiday as part of a tax overhaul approved by lawmakers in the just-completed session. The overhaul also brings to an end the Energy Star appliance program.
Ending the holiday could encourage North Carolina shoppers to head to one of the five bordering states that still have sales tax holidays, or to shop online.
Click here for a complete list of what is and isn't included in the tax free weekend.

subset: commoncrawl


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1 comments (click to read or post):
- Anonymous, 03 March, 2012 17:25
I didn't really like it. I always buy MDG 64 and I wasn't sure this was the same thing. I guess I missed the memo on this one. I still bought the beer though.
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Apps Posts - Page 2
Razer servers fail again, profiles flicked to default
Razer has had yet another cloud storage server failure, the second in March, with Razer peripheral owners forced back to their default settings - yes, everyone - all across the world.
The server outage happened over the weekend, when millions of gamers are you know - gaming. The profiles are stored both on the cloud, and on your local machine - but as TechPowerUp notes, you'll need to "use a XML editing hack to get the software in offline mode to make it actually use the local profile on your machine. Otherwise, the software prefers to just go to defaults and give the end-user an arguably irritable situation".
One of the TPU readers said that Razer lets you create "Tournament Mode" drivers, which makes an offline installer with your driver and profile in one spot. Razer doesn't advertise this, but with two cloud server outages and profile wipes in a month... I'd recommend doing this.
Facebook Messenger now features mentions and reactions
Facebook has made quite a few tweaks to Messenger, with reactions and @-mentions added - you can now react to individual messages, or even tag a specific friend in a group chat.
When you're using Messenger, reacting to a message is as easy as pressing and holding a message to see Facebook's love/laugh/cry emojis to show up. A small counter will add up the reactions, showing you who exactly is spamming that emoji button - it even has its own notification on your lock screen, a nice touch by Facebook.
Moving onto the mentions feature, where you just need to use the @ symbol, and then Messenger will show a drop down menu of all of the people in the chat - you can then tag their name, and they'll receive an individual notification.
These new features should be rolling out to Messenger users now, and over the next few days.
GPU-Z 1.18.0: support for AMD's new Radeon RX 500 series
GPU-Z has teased the upcoming release of the unconfirmed Radeon RX 500 series, with TechPowerUp's new GPU-Z v1.18.0 has support for the Radeon RX 580, RX 570, RX 560, and RX 550.
Most AMD partners are phasing out the older Radeon RX 400 series cards in favor of the upcoming rebranded RX 500 series cards, with a rumored price of $199 on the new Radeon RX 580, and just $149 for the new Radeon RX 570.
As for the GPU-Z 1.18.10 changelog, here it is:
- Added support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Quadro P4000, P1000, P600, P400
- Added support for AMD Radeon RX 580, RX 570, RX 560, RX 550, HD 6430M
- Added support for Intel HD Graphics 500 (Apollo Lake Pentium N4200)
- Update check will now display the latest version number available
- Fixed error message display during BIOS upload
- Improved tray icon creation code when GPU-Z is launched during Windows startup
- Fixed clocks read as -1 on Pascal cards with overclocking disabled
- Invalid readings are no longer included in sensor average calculation (avoids -1.$ output)
- Added support to display Boost clocks on Intel
YouTube announces streaming TV service, $35 per month
So YouTube has just made a major announcement, with a new streaming TV service called YouTube TV with a monthly cost of $35 - offering broadcast TV channels, some cable channels, and of course the near unlimited library of videos on YouTube.
YouTube is aiming at AT&T's DirecTV Now service, and Hulu and Sling - but there will be iOS and Android apps, as well as support for set-top products like Chromecast. Google won't be providing a massive lineup of channels, but YouTube TV will be offering up Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as a bunch of cable channels like ESPN, Fox News, and Bravo.
YouTube TV will have an unlimited cloud-based DVR, a spiffy Google-powered recommendation system, and more. The question is: will you pay $35 for YouTube TV?
WhatsApp now enables two-step verification
WhatsApp has introduced two-step verification feature for its Android, iOS, and Windows Phone users. The feature was initially available only to beta users, but now is officially available to everyone.
The feature is optional, and it allows you to create a six-digit passcode which you will have to enter when your phone number is being verified on the app.
To enable two-step verification, open WhatsApp > Settings > Account > Two-step verification > Enable.
Continue reading 'WhatsApp now enables two-step verification' (full post)
YouTube pushes out mobile live streaming to some users
I have been live streaming from my smartphone to Facebook Live for over a year now, and finally - finally, Google is catching up with YouTube and mobile live streaming.
YouTube originally pushed into the mobile live streaming game in mid-2016, but it was limited to a very small handful of people. Now, YouTubers with over 10,000 subscribers can get into mobile live streaming, with the rest of the world needing to wait until later this year.
If you have over 10K subs, you can use the mobile live streaming feature to set a custom title, enable/disable the live chat, and choose whether to send a notification to all of your subscribers. YouTube allows mobile live streamers to blast their video in portrait or landscape, with messages appearing on the screen in fast-moving bubbles.
Better yet, there are some "new revenue opportunities with the introduction of SuperChat", reports TechSpot, which will "allow users to highlight their messages for a fee". These messages will be highlighted with bright colors, and will be pinned to the top of the chat window for up to 5 hours.
Continue reading 'YouTube pushes out mobile live streaming to some users' (full post)
Google's Instant Apps: use apps without installing them
The push into the cloud is taking more shape, with Google teasing the future with their announcement of the testing of Instant Apps - a feature that will run select Android apps, without needing to install them.
Google makes Instant Apps work by being a smaller version of their native Android apps that run as soon as you tap their URL, without an installation. Once you've closed the app, it will disappear from your phone with no memory of icons on your desktop, but stays in your phone cache for a few hours if you open the link again.
A few applications work with Instant Apps, including Buzzfeed, Wish, Periscope, and Viki. Google Play software engineer Aurash Mahbod explains: "By collecting user feedback and iterating on the product, we'll be able to expand the experience to more apps and more users".
Why would Instant Apps be useful? For the apps you might install once, it is perfect - no installation, and it doesn't take additional space on your storage. You can quickly install the app without going to the Play Store, without installing it - if it's not good, no installation. Move onto the next, find something more suitable, try it out - and then download it.
Continue reading 'Google's Instant Apps: use apps without installing them' (full post)
Facebook rolls out Group Video Chat in Messenger
Just last week, Facebook introduced a new camera feature in their Messenger that lets you add special effects and art on your photos and videos. Now, they have launched another feature - Group Video Chat in Messenger.
Group Video Chat is rolling out to Android and iOS devices and the desktop version of Messenger, worldwide.
You can see up to six people at a time, but up to 50 people can join in and choose just to listen in and join via voice, or be on camera. Once more than six people are on the call, just the dominant speaker is shown to all participants.
Continue reading 'Facebook rolls out Group Video Chat in Messenger' (full post)
'One Dance' - First song to a billion streams on Spotify
Your music preference is your thing; there is no reason to debate the music taste. So, whether you like it or not - Drake made history with his song 'One Dance'.
Billboard announced that Drake became the first artist to reach one billion plays on Spotify for a single track with his song 'One Dance'. The Canadian singer also dominated Apple Music's year-end charts.
The 'One Dance' track was released in April, and it became the most streamed song ever on Spotify.
Continue reading ''One Dance' - First song to a billion streams on Spotify' (full post)
Facebook turns Messenger's camera into a Snapchat copy
Instagram recently added a new feature Stories, which is a clear copy of Snapchat. Now, Facebook introduced a new camera feature in their Messenger that lets you add special effects and art on your photos and videos. Sounds familiar?
On their official blog, Facebook says that users send over 2.5 billion emojis, photos, stickers and videos every day on Messenger, and they expressed hope that this new feature will enable even more visual messaging.
In some ways the camera is now replacing the keyboard. As more people use Messenger in their everyday lives, we wanted to make it faster, simpler and more fun to send photos and videos - so we built the new Messenger camera.
The new Messenger Camera will debut 3D masks and special effects "which make it super easy to apply an artistic filter to your full-screen photo and to turn your world into a work of art," says the company.
Continue reading 'Facebook turns Messenger's camera into a Snapchat copy' (full post)


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Search NIOSH | NIOSH Home | NIOSH Topics | Site Index | Databases and Information Resources | NIOSH Products | Contact Us
NIOSH Programs > Construction > Strategic Goals > Main Goals List > Goal 13.0 > Intermediate Goal 13.5
NORA Construction Sector Strategic Goals
Goal 13.0: Increase the use of prevention through design (PtD) approaches to prevent or reduce safety and health hazards in construction.
Intermediate Goal 13.5: Expand the use and evaluation of CHPtD practices.
Research Goals
r2p Goals
Page last updated:April 24, 2013
Page last reviewed:May 23, 2011
Content Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Office of the Director
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Festive fare
Fine foods
Gathering with friends and family and toasting the year with fine fare and delicious treats—that's what the holidays are about. Fresh and unique, our collection of gourmet foods offers everything you need to make this season special. Join us, won't you? It's time to celebrate.
Gryfe's Bagels
The best bagels this side of, well, Montreal, Gryfe's is a Toronto institution—and a Pusateri's exclusive—dating back decades. Their secret? It's all about butter.


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Southern figures to be the center of attention during Southwestern Athletic Conference media day Friday in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Jaguars are the reigning conference champions, and coach Dawson Odums is one of just six incumbent coaches among the 10 in attendance. He's operating under a new four-year contract the university gave him in anticipation of long-term success being built after Southern's first conference title in 10 years.
The spotlight that will shine Friday is merely preparation for what the Jaguars will face on the field in the fall.
"I think that's a good thing. Every team would want to have that problem," Odums said. "We'll be ready to handle it. We'll get our mindset to a point where being targeted doesn't faze us."
The Jaguars report to campus July 31 and begin preseason preparations the following day. The season begins Aug. 31 at Louisiana-Lafayette, and Southern begins defense of its SWAC title when it visits Prairie View on Sept. 20.
The SWAC will announce its preseason all-conference teams as well as the teams' predicted order of finish. The defending champions don't have any all-SWAC first-teamers returning. Their only first-team picks last season were seniors: quarterback Dray Joseph and wide receiver Lee Doss.
"We understand the holes that we've got to fill, but I think we have a philosophy in place," Odums said. "Around here, it's all about the right chemistry from a character standpoint because you have to understand the Southern way. We have a new way of doing things, and it starts with discipline — nobody's above that. I just believe that whoever you put into a disciplined program will fall right into place."
The Jaguars were picked to finish second in the SWAC before getting off to a slow start last season. They began with back-to-back lopsided losses at Houston and Northwestern State before turning things around.
Southern won nine of its final 11 games and ended the season on a five-game winning streak.
"Now comes a new expectation," Odums said. "I really believe we were a year ahead of the curve. I think we accomplished some great things as a team last year, but we have a pretty good team coming back, too.
"Will the pieces fall together like they did this year? Time will tell, but we'll definitely have the right mindset to be contenders."
Follow Les East on Twitter: @EastAdvocate.


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Last week something splendid happened on the New York Times best-sellers list.
Daytripper, a graphic novel published by Vertigo, was named the best-selling paperback graphic novel. (The rest of the top 10 was dominated by Walking Dead and Scott Pilgrim titles.)
I just finished Daytripper myself, and I can tell you it's a comic that lingers in the head, with powerful writing and vivid art that are a pleasure to behold. For that we can thank Brazilian brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, cartoonists who have been working for almost 15 years on personal and others' projects. (You may recognize Ba's work from Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy.)
Daytripper follows a Brazilian man named Brás de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer who appears to have a good life: family, friends, ambition. Each chapter examines a particular moment in Brás' life, however, that changes things forever. The main character dies again and again, forcing readers to contemplate the fragility of life.
The trade edition includes an introduction by Craig Thompson (Blankets), who says, "The world of comics has long been divided between two schools: FANTASY versus REALISM. ... Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon dance between both, infusing reality with the sacred."
Daytripper is in stores now, and I highly recommend it.
Whitney has been writing about pop culture for USA TODAY since 1999, when Pop Candy began as a weekly column. Her interests include music festivals, mustaches, Lost, comic books and Andy Warhol. She lives in New York City. More about Whitney | E-mail Whitney


text: By Jonathan Bales firstname.lastname@example.com 3:12 pm on November 27, 2012 Jonathan Bales is a special contributor to SportsDayDFW.com. He's the founder of The DC Times and writes for DallasCowboys.com and the New York Times. He's also the author of Fantasy Football for Smart People. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. You can follow him @TheCowboysTimes. The Cowboys have converted a first down on 75.0 percent of their rushing plays with three or fewer yards-to-go for a first down, ranking them first in the NFL. I searched long and hard for a rushing stat in which the Cowboys excel, and that's about all I could find (and it's more likely due to a small sample than anything else). Overall, there's no doubt that, even with the decreased importance of rushing in the NFL, the Cowboys simply won't reach their offensive potential until they rush the ball more efficiently. There are a variety of ways in which the Cowboys might be able to improve their ground attack, the easiest and most immediate of which is to change the nature of the rushes. The Cowboys have been unbelievably "vanilla" in all aspects of their 2012 offense, and the running game is no exception. Whereas we saw hundreds of counters and draws from the 'Boys over the past three seasons, the majority of the running plays this season have been dive plays. Here's the full breakdown: Bootleg: 0.5% Counter: 2.5% Dive: 57.2% (3.27 YPC) Draw: 14.8% (4.36 YPC) End-Around: 1.5% Power: 18.2% (2.95 YPC) Sneak: 0.5% Toss: 4.3% Trap: 0.5% You can see that "straight runs"—dives and powers—comprise 72.0 percent of the Cowboys' rushes. Dallas has totaled 3.2 YPC on such rushes, suggesting they might not be the best bet for the offense. It's true that dives in particular are often used in short-yardage situations, but probably not to the extent that you think. Of the Cowboys' 120 dive plays, only 23 (19.2 percent) have been with fewer than four yards-to-go for a first down. In comparison, 67 of the dives (55.8 percent) have come with at least 10 yards-to-go for a first down, suggesting the poor efficiency is due more to the play type and the personnel than game situations. The Cowboys have actually been quite effective on all other run types, but they haven't dialed them up enough for the impact to be meaningful. The 'Boys have averaged 7.2 YPC on counters since 2009 and over a full yard more on draws than all other runs, but together they make up only 17.3 percent of the offense's running plays this year. The Cowboys' tosses have gone for 10.0 YPC, but they've run only nine of them. Dallas will undoubtedly benefit from the return of running back DeMarco Murray, but the easiest way to improve the running game is to change the structure of it. With more draws, counters, and other "deceptive" runs, the Cowboys will rise dramatically from their current 32nd place rank in rushing efficiency


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From one of the music industry's top executives comes the ultimate guide to making the most of the internet to promote yourself and your music. Nicky Kalliongis is a veteran music industry professional who's worked with the likes of the legendary Clive Davis and L.A. Reid and with artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Avril Lavigne, OutKast, Pink, and Prince. He has been involved with hit singles and albums totaling over 653 million copies in sales. Now, he divulges proven Internet marketing strategies for the digital world and demonstrates how any musician or band can put them to use without the benefit of a big budget, marketing team, or PR person. This step-by-step guide shows you how to: Make the most of your MySpace page Utilize MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and Squidoo in concert for maximum online presence Get people to visit your site and listen to your music Increase traffic to your site Write and circulate an effective press release Attract media, radio stations, record labels, and fans Whether you're trying to get a record contract or stay independent, MySpace Music Profit Monster gives you all the tools you need to successfully establish yourself online. You make the music. This book will do the rest. "One of the premier music executives in the country, Nicky has participated in the success of the world's biggest acts, including Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin, Carlos Santana, and Prince. His tremendous work ethic, attention to detail, and superb musical instincts truly exemplify him as one of the top A&R men in the business today." (Monte Lipman, President, Universal Republic Records)


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Sounds Like Snooki's Writing a Book. Are You Listening, Pulitzer Committee?
Snooki has proven to be a woman of many talents since she first burrowed her way into America's hearts late last year. Fist absorber. Dancer. Goodwill ambassador.
And now, authoress?
Jersey Shore's breakout guidette—real name: Nicole Polizzi—has taken one more step toward absolute media domination by filing an application for her nom de GTL with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Which is nice and all, but here's the really intriguing thing: The application notes that she plans to use the trademark for "printed matter, namely books."
That's right; Snooki is preparing to bring her literary genius to a bookstore near you. Hallelujah, a new voice has emerged to fill the void left by Kurt Vonnegut's passing!
What do you think Snooki will write? Autobiography? Diet book? Spy thriller? Science fiction? Romance novels? Fist-Pumping for Dummies? Share your predictions in the comments section!


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Kinetic Concepts Inc, (NYSE:KCI)
Q3 2010 Earnings Conference Call
October 26, 08:31 am EST
Todd Wyatt - Vice President, Investor Relations
Cathy Burzik - President and Chief Executive Officer
Butch Hulse - Associate General Counsel
Michael Genau - Global President, Active Healing Solutions
Lisa Colleran - President, LifeCell Corporation
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Paul Choi - Caris & Company
Chris Cooley - Stevens
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
Good morning and welcome to the KCI Third Quarter 2010 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions). Thank you Todd Wyatt, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference
Todd Wyatt
Thank you and welcome to the KCI third quarter 2010 earnings conference call. Today, we will review the results that we announced in our press release earlier this morning.
Today's webcasted conference call will include prepared remarks by Cathy Burzik, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Marty Landon, our Chief Financial Officer. We are also joined by other selected members of our senior leadership team.
If you have not received a copy of KCI's earnings release, it is currently available on our corporate website at www.kci1.com. A replay of this webcast will be made available on our website shortly after conclusion of the call.
Our conference call this morning will include forward-looking statements about our business, including guidance on future plans, revenues and earnings. These statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from our expectations. More information about potential risk factors may be found in our filings with the SEC.
Also, quarterly and full year results discussed on this call may reflect adjustments to revenues for changes in foreign currency exchange rates or adjustments to expenses related to the LifeCell acquisition and restructuring and other charges incurred during periods discussed. Please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliation of these metrics contained in our earnings release issued this morning.
I would now like to turn the call over to Cathy Burzik, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kinetic Concepts. Cathy?
Cathy Burzik
Thank you, Todd, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your joining us to discuss our third quarter 2010 results. On today's call, I will review some of the highlights of the third quarter and then review the performance of our three businesses, including an update on new products and strategic initiatives. Marty Landon will review our financial results. We will conclude with a question-and-answer session.
Before I begin, I'd like to comment on last week's trial ruling in the US where the court held that the patent claims license by KCI from Wake Forest University were invalid. We disagree with the court's decision and are evaluating our next step. Regardless of outcome, KCI has been preparing for an operating in an environment without these patterns for the past several years.
We are executing well to the strategy we laid out 3 years ago, the call for expansion of our business through new product innovations, diversification and geographic expansion. For over 15 years, KCI has offered the most proven and innovative NPWT solutions in the marketplace to our many generations [about] therapy products. Our clinical evidence, our clinical expertise, our field service and our commitment to clinicians and patients worldwide are unmatched in the industry, positioning us well to continue to win in the NPWT marketplace globally. Continuing now with the quarterly comments, the global healthcare landscape has faced many challenges in 2010n this past quarter with no exception.
During this time, we have remained focused on numerous investments to support our strategic initiatives and I'm pleased to report that our investments are beginning to bear fruit as evidenced by our 2% constant currency revenue growth from the prior year quarter. The launch of VAC therapy in Japan is off to a good start and several AHS products have launched or will be launching soon on a global basis.
Also, we continue to see significant growth in our LifeCell business, including the successful expansion of LifeCell into Europe and our new regenerative medicine applications are gaining tractions. For the third quarter, total worldwide revenue of approximately $507 million was comparable to Q3 '09 on an as reported basis. EPS on an adjusted non-GAAP basis was $1.20, an increase of approximately 11% versus the prior year quarter.
Key business developments since our last call, beyond the headline of the trial verdict, includes the US launch of our Pervena incision management system for use in the operating room. The Pervena system is now available at a worldwide basis. The execution of an exclusive sales and marketing agreement for distribution of Novadaq Technology spy system, this is used by surgeons for real time operating room evaluation of tissue profusion, the release of exciting 12 month data from the Rich study that demonstrates Stratus being used as a safe and effective alternative to a 2 stage or a synthetic mesh repair. And additionally, our US acute and post acute VAC therapy has rebounded modestly, with unit growth across both care settings on a sequential basis and units up on a year-over-year basis in acute care and stable and post acute.
We posted a record quarter in the regenerative medicine business, led by strong growth in both [aladome] and Stratus and our core applications of challenging hernia repair and breast reconstructions, despite both competitive and price pressures, and good performance in Europe as our LifeCell presence expands.
And in TSS, we launched an exciting new therapy, Skin IQ microclimate manager for the preventive and management of pressure ulcers.
The challenges we faced in the quarter, we're much likely to have them throughout this year, including a difficult economic environment, an increasingly competitive marketplace across all our businesses and volatility in the value of the Euro and other currencies in relation to the US dollar.
Additionally this quarter, we felt the impact of modest price degradation concentrated mainly in our AHS EMEA and [APAC] businesses. The increased austerity measures in EMEA, along with reduced hospital procedure volumes, particularly depressed our US and EMEA TSS rental business.
Turning now to our review of our performance by each segment, all revenue growth rates will be stated in terms of constant currency figures, unless otherwise noted.
In our Active healing solutions business, global revenue grew 1% compared to last year, and 3% sequentially. North American AHS revenue improved 1% compared to last year. Importantly, US AHS revenues increased 1% year-over-year and 3% sequentially. Volumes increased mid single digits both year-over-year and sequentially in our acute business as we saw good order growth rates over the summer months. This increase was realized despite a clear trend of [indiscernible] procedures versus the same quarter last year.
Additionally, our post acute revenue improved sequentially for the second straight quarter. I'm pleased with the work that Mike Genau and his team are doing, showing improved execution. As we mentioned last quarter, we are making investments in our US AHS sales force. These investments are ongoing and we are on track with our plans to hire 100 new sales and clinical professionals in the US by the end of 2010.
Although we have seen some early signs of success, we expect the results from these investments will become more evident in 2011 as we look to drive units and the NPWT business as well as new products recently introduced.
In the EMEA/APAC AHS markets, revenue was down approximately 2%, driven entirely by EMEA. Starting in APAC, I was recently in Japan and spent a considerable amount of time talking to key opinion leaders and customers, reviewing our operations and importantly, speaking to some of our patients. I met an elderly man who suffered from painful Venus leg ulcers on both his legs for over 6 years. Within one month of starting VAC therapy, he was effectively healed.
I'm very proud of the work that we're now doing in Japan, the work that only KCI does so well; healing patients and improving the quality of their life. Given the adoption of VAC therapy over the past 2 quarters, we remain ahead of our plan and are committed to driving substantial growth for KCI in this important Japanese market.
Additionally during the quarter, we began operations in India and are now placing back some patients there and just last week, we received regulatory approval for VAC therapy in China. We have been quietly preparing for our China launch for some time, and are excited to finally be on the market in this important and growing country.
In EMEA, AHS revenues declined 5% year-over-year. The decline was largely related to continued pricing pressures resulting from increased healthcare austerity programs across Europe as well as some increased competitive activity. We have our EMEA sales forces focused on educating our customers on the value that KCI delivers to our 360 degrees of wound healing by providing best-in-class products and clinical evidence as well as delivering to a hospital administrator the economic benefit message that only VAC therapy can deliver.
Additionally, we are providing significant resources to EMEA aimed at driving the adoption of our new ABThera, Pervena and [indiscernible] products.
Now for an update on the AHS products. Beginning with ABThera, our unique negative pressure solution for active management of open abdominal wounds, we continue to see an increase in adoption in the US and Europe and to date, approximately 56% of level 1 and level 2 trauma centers in the US have approved ABThera for use.
The Pervena incision management system, a naval negative pressure based technology designed to reduce infection [adhesence] in surgical incisions was fully launched on a global basis in the third quarter and several thousand units have been sold to date.
With the launch of ABThera and now Pervena, our initial entries into negative pressure surgical management, we're delivering on our objective to organically develop the surgical wound management opportunity for KCI. With the successful acceptance of ABThera and Pervena, our annualized Q3 revenue was $20 million for this new product group.
Turning now to [indiscernible] Via, our single use NPWT product, because the Via is the only NPWT product that is built with our proprietary [indiscernible] pump technology. During the third quarter, we conducted several clinical preference trials in order to optimally position Via with doctors and [indiscernible]. These trials were quite informative and the product was well received throughout the 50 placements in the US and EMEA.
We have made substantial investments in the development of this technology and have automated manufacturing of the product in our world class production facility in Ireland. Needless to say, we are very excited about Via's upcoming launch in the fourth quarter.
Turning now to LifeCell, our regenerative medicine business posted another great quarter, with record revenues of $85 million. This reflects a year-over-year increase of 18% versus Q3 '09. In the US, the strong performance of both [aladome] and Stratus delivered almost 20% growth over last year, driven by our unrivaled product performance, the successful sales force expansion of early 2010 and our best-in-class clinical data. We continue to see significant demand in both core applications, challenging hernia repair and breast reconstruction as biologics gain acceptance and become a more standard part of surgical practice.
We're also pleased that these strong results were achieved in spite of an increasingly competitive market and accelerated price pressure. Regarding our LifeCell business in Europe, revenue rose sequentially to $1.8 million in the face of the normal summer slowdown in Europe, and contributed 2% to LifeCell's overall revenue growth. The increase was driven by an uptake in Stratus or breast reconstruction and challenging hernia repair in the UK and Germany, our first 2 European countries for the launch of Stratus.
Additionally, we are pleased with the progress we are making in other European countries. Where we launched in early 2010 and expect acceleration in the fourth quarter. Another key component of the excellent Q3 results in our regenerative medicines business was the use of Stratus during [Stemma] placements to potentially reduce the risk of hernia formation. This new application, launched earlier this year is experiencing significant uptake.
Globally, Stratus grew a solid 52% in the quarter over Q3 '09 and now comprises 43% of revenues compared to 33% a year ago. Stratus is now on an annual run rate exceeding $150 million in revenue. Stratus is a biologic of choice for challenging hernia repairs and the leading product in this application due to its superb clinical performance.
One of the most important developments in our LifeCell business occurred in October when 12 months data from the Rich study was presented at The American College of Surgeon's Meeting. Rich, which stands for the Repair of Infected or Contaminated abdominal incision of Hernia, is truly a landmark study. Rich produced the only prospective multi-center evidence published to date supporting the use of a product in a single stage repair of difficult hernias, and demonstrates that Stratus has been used as a safe and effective alternative to a 2 stage or synthetic mesh repair. In the study, search inducing Stratus where able to achieve safe, definitive, single stage closure in more than 80% of patients with challenging infected or contaminated central hernias. Importantly, none of the patients died required explants of Stratus, which would have necessitated a second surgical procedure. Because LifeCell products remain best in class, and we possess the deepest base of relevant clinical experience and data, we are able to defend and even improve our market leading position.
Finally, we announced this quarter our signing of an exclusive sales and marketing agreement for distribution of Novadaq Technologies by imaging system in the North American surgical market. This by-system provides real time intra operative visual data to assist surgeons in the assessment of poor or inadequate patient profusion and change the surgical approach with the goal to prevent downstream complications. Adequate tissue profusion is critical to the success of tissue [revasporization] and survival. We believe this technology fits well with our LifeCell sales force and will be a new platform to drive the growth of this business.
Now turning to our TSS business. In the third quarter, TSS encountered several challenges and posted a revenue decline of 10% year-over-year to $63 million. As anticipated, the comparison to last year is difficult due to a severe flu season and the prior year period. In addition, the experience reduced volumes in half overall and a reduction in the length of stay, coupled with modest competitive share loss. During weaker periods such as this, our rental business tends to experience share loss, [indiscernible 00:00] relying more on existing capital on hand and there is less peak utility due to low patient volumes.
During the third quarter, we had an important win in the US. We were recently awarded access to a multi-source contract with MedAssets for our TSS business that will cover wound, bariatric and critical care. This contract will give us increased access to this TPOs number.
And finally, TSS launched an exciting new therapy in October, the Skin IQ microclimate manager. Skin IQ is a brand new therapeutic [indiscernible] approached for the prevention and management of [indiscernible]. It is an innovative and proprietary microclimate coverlet that controls moisture and temperature exceptionally well while also providing low sheer and friction properties.
Using Skin IQ, in combination with our atmosphere product family, provides an excellent alternative to the current standard of care, low air loss therapy and continues TSS' mechanization, inner management of pressure ulcers. Before turning the call over to Marty, let me comment on our outlook.
The environment for our active healing solutions business remains challenging, particularly given head wins and EMEA. We think it is prudent to expect that EMEA has not yet stabilized and that it may be several quarters before the European economy improves. In the US, revenue growth and AHS has stabilized and the addition of new product introductions, coupled with the 100 or so new sales people in acute and post acute should help us counter the persistent challenges of an environment of fewer procedures and pricing pressures.
Our outlook for regenerative medicine remains robust and we are confident in our ability to achieve similar rates of growth over the rest of the year. As you know, we are working on improving our TSS business and I remain confident that the team is moving in the right direction.
As we move through the remainder of 2010, we expect to see the early benefits of several new product launches as noted above, the benefits of our geographic expansion of VAC in Japan and LifeCell in Europe and the benefits of our investments in the AHS and regenerative medicines sales forces.
As Marty will review, we are reaffirming our fiscal year 2010 revenue and are increasing our EPS guidance due to our strong EPS performance in Q3.
I will now turn the call over to Marty Landon to review our financial performance in more detail. Marty?
Marty Landon
Thanks Cathy, and good morning everyone.
Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 was 506.7 million, a slight increase from the 504.4 million reported for the same quarter one year ago. Excluding the effects of foreign currency exchange rate movements, third quarter 2010 revenue increased to approximately 2% year to year as foreign currency remained a head win for us in the quarter.
Third quarter 2010 net earnings per diluted share on a fully reported or GAAP basis were $1.06 per share compared to the $0.91 per share we reported for the same quarter last year, and increase of 16%. Our EPS growth in the quarter reflected both operating and financial leverage within the businesses.
Our adjusted non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.20, up from $1.08 reported for the same period of 2009 and an increase of $0.19 or 19% sequentially. For your convenience, we've provided a reconciliation of GAAP to adjusted non-GAAP earnings per share in today's release.
Turning to revenue, in our AHS business segment, third quarter revenue of 358.4 million were down 1% from the prior year period on a reported basis, well up 1% on a constant currency basis. Our worldwide AHS revenue improved over 3% from the second quarter of 2010, a nice improvement from the trends we saw in the first half. Third quarter AHS revenue in the US rose 1% over the prior year and improved 3% sequentially, also demonstrating improvement from the first half of this year.
As Cathy remarked, revenues improved sequentially in both our acute and post acute businesses in the US. In the EMEA/APAC region, AHS revenue was 82.9 million, a decrease of 8% on a reported basis and 2% on a constant currency basis. This third quarter decline in EMEA/APAC AHS revenue was largely attributable to continued pricing pressure from increased levels of competitive activity, which was linked to increased healthcare austerity measures across Europe. The EMEA decrease was partly offset by the strong demand in unit growth we are experiencing for VAC in Japan as we ramp up in this new and exciting market.
Regenerative medicine had another record quarter with revenue for the 3 months ended September 2010 of 84.9 million. This represents an 18% increase from the same period last year on both reported and constant currency basis, and a 1% improvement sequentially. LifeCell is now approaching 17% of overall KCI revenue, up from 12% at acquisition.
TSS revenue for the third quarter of 2010 decreased 12% from the year ago period to 63.4 million on a reported basis and 10% on a constant currency basis. The decline resulted chiefly from lower global rental volumes driven by lower influence of this quarter versus the prior year, continued economic weakness which has caused many acute care facilities to streamline spending and some modest competitive share loss. As Cathy mentioned, we recently introduced our skin microclimate manager coverlet, which represents the latest innovation in moisture and sheer prevention in our fleet, and which should be readily accessible and easily used by nurses and other caregivers.
Gross profit in the quarter of 289.4 million increased 3% versus the prior year period resulting in a gross margin of 57.1% versus 55.8% last year, an improvement of approximately 130 basis points. The increase in gross margin was primarily due to lower product royalty expenses, increased productivity of our service operations and higher gross margins associated with the LifeCell business.
SG&A expenses for the third quarter were 139.5 million compared to 132.4 million for the same period of 2009. Third quarter SG&A increases included continued investments associated with our entry into the Japanese market, an increased selling cost associated with the global LifeCall business. In addition, we recorded approximately 3 million during the quarter related to employee separation costs.
As part of our global business transformation initiative, we opened a share and service center in Budapest, Hungary during the quarter. This share and service center is an integral part of our plan to drive intermediate and long term transactional cost savings and efficiencies. The Budapest facility represents a consolidation of many functions and people that were formally spread across several distinct geographies. Over time, the Budapest office will grow in functionality and geographic coverage to support KCI's growth in a very scalable structure, thereby enhancing our bottom line.
Research and development expense of 20.9 million for the quarter was down 15% from the prior year and comprised 4% of total revenue. The majority of this decrease was due to the timing of certain programs and activities and therefore are temporary in nature, but the 9 months ended September, our R&D spending has been approximately 4.5% of revenue and we would expect spending to return to normal levels in the fourth quarter.
Operating profits for the third quarter of 2010 was 122.2 million compared to 114.2 million in the prior year period, an increase of 5% over the same period last year. Our operating margin was 23.7% for the third quarter, up from 22.6% during the same period last year, which represented a 110 basis points increase driven by our strong gross profits, reduced acquired intangibles amortization and low R&D spending as previously mentioned.
In addition to our operating leverage, we saw a continued financial leverage in the period. Interest expense in the third quarter of 2010 was 21.5 million, down 4.2 million versus last year's third quarter due to our accelerated debt repayment program and lower interest rates.
During the last 12 months, we've made scheduled and voluntary debt repayments totaling 235 million. The third quarter effective tax rate was also down to 25% compared to 29.7% in the prior year period. The decrease in the effective income tax rate was a result of a higher percentage of taxable income being generated in low tax foreign jurisdictions and a favorable resolution of certain tax contingencies during the quarter.
We would expect the overall effective income tax rate for the fourth quarter to return to normal levels of approximately 30%.
Turning now to the balance sheet, our financial position remains liquid and stable with total worldwide cash of 263.3 million and a substantially [unincomprent] $300 million revolving credit line. We again utilized our strong cash flow to make both scheduled and voluntary debt payments totaling 60 million in the third quarter on our term A bank facility. At the end of the third quarter 2010, our total debt, on an economic or debt instrument basis was 1.26 billion, which is now below 2 times leverage, or approximately 1.9 times our trailing 12 month EBITDA, which is down from a leverage of around 3 times EBITDA at the turn of our LifeCell acquisition 2 years ago.
Regarding our cash flows, operating cash flow less capital expenditures was 179.6 million for the 9 months ended September 2010 versus 208.4 million in the prior year period, a reduction of 28.8 million, primarily as a result of our anticipated increases in biologic inventory level to meet growing demand for our [aledome] and Stratus tissue matrices in increased tax payments. These were partially offset by improved cash collections and higher net earnings.
Accounts receivables days outstanding improved from the prior year period as we continue to work hard in improving our billing and customer service operations. Looking forward, our priorities for cash remain chiefly to support the growth initiatives within our existing businesses, to support the business development activities underway in each business unit, to further diversify our sources of revenue and earnings growth, to meet required bank amortization levels and to the extent we have excess free cash, potentially buy back shares opportunistically and within the covenants of our existing credit agreement.
Our financial guidance for fiscal 2010 remains relatively unchanged, though we have reflected the impact of our strong Q3 earnings on our full year EPS guidance. Our revenue guidance of 2 billion to 2.03 billion naturally implies fourth quarter revenues of between 510 and 540 million. While we're pleased with the results in the US AHS and regenerative medicine businesses in particular, and optimistic about our new product launches, given the economic difficulties in Europe and broadly increasing price pressure, we would expect our Q4 revenue performance to be reasonably comparable to last year's fourth quarter. In Q4 2009 we reported revenue of approximately 527 million, representing growth of 7% due in part to a strong flu season combined with a 3% currency tail wind.
Our outlook for growth and operating margins remains unchanged. As this guidance implies, we continue to play an incremental investment in the fourth quarter, particularly for our sales force expansion, new product launches and geographic expansion. We are raising our guidance on reported or GAAP EPS which now reflects a diluted earnings per share range of $3.52 to $3.57, up from prior guidance of 3.40 to 3.50, implying year to year growth of 9 to 10%.
The lower end of our adjusted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share guidance is also narrowed to a revised range of $4.24 to $4.29, reflecting adjustments similar to the GAAP EPS numbers, partially offset by our tax rate and intangibles amortizations or non-GAAP add backs.
To assist you with your modeling and to provide a consistent basis of comparison, we have included reconciliation to the adjusted earnings per share outlook in this morning's press release. And now I'll turn the call back over to Todd Wyatt
Todd Wyatt
Thank you Cathy and Marty. Before we begin the Q and A session. I would like to ask everyone to please ask one leading question and one follow up question and then return to the queue. We will respond to as many questions as time permits, including those of you who may have re-queued to ask additional questions. Thank you very much. I will now turn the call over to the operator. Operator?
Question-and-Answer session
(Operator instructions). Your first question comes from Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Thank you. A couple of questions for you. Cathy, when you were talking about Stratus and Stratus has had a good quarter, you did sight increased competitive pressures and increasing price pressure in that market place. I was hoping you could just elaborate on that?
Cathy Burzik
Sure Mike. We're really pleased, when you think about the short amount of time Stratus has been on the market to be at 150 million run rate, and clearly the preferred biologic. And my comments really just reflected the fact. As I think everybody knows there is competition in that market now, more folks coming on board with core scene and other based products and so I've wanted to acknowledge that. I don't say that in a way to raise any level of concern. We just wanted to acknowledge that we see that. Clearly, I think the pricing pressures referred to the general pricing pressures. I think all of us feel right now with all the constraints from an economy perspective, and particularly is that impact cost.
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
So what is Stratus' pricing during year over year basis at this point?
Marty Landon
Stratus pricing is relatively unchanged and what we see there is what we expect it right improved margins as we continue to lower the cost of production.
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Okay, a couple of clarifications from your comments; one, the lower product royalty expenses, Marty, that you sighted that benefited gross margins. That's not [indiscernible] other agreements you have that have either expired or you've renegotiated?
Marty Landon
That's correct.
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Okay, and 3 million of employees' separation costs, was that embedded in that SG&A line this quarter?
Marty Landon
It was
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Okay, and lastly, is there anything you can add on the call relative to the trial and expected appeals process?
Cathy Burzik
I'll just take that one Mike. As I said in the press release last week, the overall document that was written by Judge Ferguson, the ruling, it's pretty complicated. We're spending a lot of time going through that. It's clearly important for us to understand what actions we take and we light out in the others the potential for us to ask for reconsideration. There's clearly to offer the alternative for the appeal. We just want to be really thoughtful in how we approach this.
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Sorry, just one last on that, how does it impact the Common Tech litigation which I think was passed to trial a couple of weeks?
Cathy Burzik
I have Butch Hulse from our legal department, Mike, I'll have Butch answer that.
Butch Hulse
Good morning Mike. The Common Tech case is not currently set for trial. The parties agreed that there needed to be some more discovery done so that case is not currently set for trial, and we're still getting our head around how the ruling from Judge Ferguson is going to impact our ongoing pattern for litigation with ITI and Common Tech, but there could be an impact but we don't know yet what that's going to be.
Mike Weinstein - JPMorgan
Good. Thank you guys.
Your next question comes from Dave [Turquie] with CIG
Dave [Turquie] - CIG
Thanks. I may have missed this on the comments, but did you talk at all about unit growth for AHS either here in the US or in EMEA?
Cathy Burzik
We talked indirectly about it in that we talked about the fact that we have seen volume growth in the -- to give you the numbers, we see in the acute area of the US, we see volume growth of roughly around 4%. Post acute it's pretty flat and in EMEA, we see volume growth pretty flat. We see price down in EMEA.
Dave [Turquie] - CIG
And just in terms of a percent or directionally, do you think this is the bottom in your P&L? Is there any commentary you could say like in terms of pricing that it could actually improve from here or do you expect that it'll still kind of remain, I guess, down single digits or something to that effect looking ahead?
Cathy Burzik
I said, on my call, I'm going to turn this to Mike in a minute but I think the important thing to understand here is that I don't think any of us can predict how long the situation in EMEA from this is going to last, and this has broad impact on the healthcare environment, not just on KCI so clearly -- you've seen the kinds of numbers that the UK, Germany, France, Spain, all these countries are taking a lot of money out of healthcare so all of us are trying to figure out the best way to be responsive to that. Mike, I don't know if you want to specifically talk about forward-looking comments relative to EMEA
Michael Genau
Sure, thanks Cathy. Dave, I think as we've said, we continue to see with the austerity measures in Europe, the impact on tenders as they increased to slowdown how business has performed. The landscape has been consistent over these last few quarters. We've put programs in place and we've armed our sales force with the right information around the clinical outcomes and the evidence that we have and working closely with customers so the market will continue to perform as it has, we believe, over the next few quarters and we think we're well positioned.
Dave [Turquie] - CIG
Last one. You mentioned buy backs, can you remind us if you have one in place and exactly what's out there on that?
Marty Landon
We don't right now Dave, and under our credit agreement, we're currently limited to 50 million in total.
Dave [Turquie] - CIG
Thanks a lot.
Your next comes from Paula Chow with Caris & Company
Paul Choi - Caris & Company
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. First, on the margins, Marty or Cathy, if you could walk us through what's going on with the rental margin. It looks like you had checked up a bit around 46% a little bit of improvement here over the past few quarters. Can you help us understand maybe what the impact or lack of drag rather was from the slower TSS and what maybe the contribution from some [indiscernible] tax question here?
Marty Landon
That was a mouthful, but generally I can tell you that on the rental side of things, I think in the US we had fairly stable prices and with the work we've been doing around service operations and the lower royalties we talked about, that helped those pieces of the margin. Certainly on the sales side of things, a lot of that is mix related as you have the higher margins associated with the LifeCell business. I would tell you that on the TSS business, in terms of covering that impact of decline, it's just a smaller part of the business so the larger parts of the business are covering that. It would tell you that in that part of the business, we've had a little bit lower depreciation as we think about getting the right portfolio in place and Steve and his team are doing a lot of work there so we did see a little bit lower depreciation expense which would end up on the rental line as well so those are the kinds of things that go towards sustaining that and improving that over time.
On the new product, I guess I would limit my comments right now to say that anytime you launch a new product on the front end of that, the margins aren't going to be as good as where you'd expect them to be ultimately. That said, I think we're happy with the clinical outcomes from those products and in fact in one of those product lines, we've already -- because we've delivered a fair amount of value to the marketplace, we've already had the opportunity to increase the pricing slightly on one of those products just because of the value it's delivering.
Paul Choi - Caris & Company
Okay, thank you. That's useful. And then just quickly on tax, any sort of one special thing that we noted that came in a little lower than we were modeling this quartert?
Marty Landon
I think Paul we had some releases, you're always trying to be conservative in your approach and as tax years close, there are certain things that you just cover for and those things then cross that tax [indiscernible] that have to be released, and so that's what we saw in this period that took us down into that 25% range, I think, on a recurring basis you're still looking at effective income tax rate that's in that 29-30% range.
Paul Choi - Caris & Company
Okay, and then Cathy, maybe, a broader strategy question for you. Can you maybe comment a little bit on, given the environment, maybe some of your discussions with the board in terms of how you guys are thinking of potentially increasing shareholder value over book and year end intermediate term? Any sort of discussions you've been having on that -- any color on that would be useful.
Cathy Burzik
Sure Paul. I'll come back to some of the things that you've heard me certainly talk about in the last 4 years, and we talk about this with my board all the time. You're going to see KCI continue to invest in new products. We think that product innovation, KCI has now proven, we talked about this going back a few years ago. The commitment to new products, and you see these new products coming out and you know we're very excited about Prevena, I'm particularly excited about Via, and then the new products and applications also for LifeCell and now you're starting to see them on TSS with Skin IQ. Also, you're going to see us continue to move towards market expansion globally. We were very happy with where Japan is coming out. That clearly was a top, it was a lot of investments, we believed in the investment, we stayed the course, we think it's going to pay off and now you're seeing also a market expansion into China and into India and Mike is working on expansion into Latin America and Lisa is very focused on EMEA so you see the global expansion opportunity and then you also have the opportunity of continued diversification because of the strong tax position that we have. Clearly, LifeCell was done now 2 years ago. We have a pretty robust price line. Clearly we're not going to talk about that publicly but you can think of things -- like you saw me announce the Navadaq Technology. That's clearly in the sweet spot, it's a great product pretty used in the LifeCell type of applications today. We think it has wound applications also. You're going to continue to see us make those kinds of investments to diversify our business. So those are the main things. It's kind of like a mouthful but those are the what things we talk about with the board on how we see KCI continuing to grow for the future.
Paul Choi - Caris & Company
Okay, thank you very much. I'll jump back in queue.
Your next question is from Chris Cooley with Stevens
Chris Cooley - Stevens
Hi Cathy, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. If I may just start with, could you maybe just address what's fundamentally different now with AHS as you'd look at the post acute market and how you've expanded in terms of the number of feet on the street and you do have some new product [indiscernible] as well now -- really not in the fourth quarter but you've had 2 solid quarters now in a row. Help us kind of understand how -- what's fundamentally different in how you're approaching that market or what you're seeing that's different in that market that's enabling you to really kind of be more aggressive and gain share in that space, and then I have a follow up? Thank you.
Cathy Burzik
Thank you for [indiscernible] I'm very proud of the work that KCI and Mike and his team has done in that post acute area. Mike could tell you specifically what he's done. I can tell you exactly what he's done, and in the face of continuing decline in the number of procedures there so the fact that we're doing as well as we're doing is a good tribute so like maybe you could just highlight a few of the actions you've taken
Mike Landon
Chris, along with the investment in our field sales team, which Cathy alluded to in her comments, both on the sales side as well as our clinical side, we've started to see some early wins and some good traction. What's important to note there is how we continue to reach more patients through customer relationships and so as we look at as we follow patients who transition out of the hospital, as well as those who originate from the home, making sure that we reach more to provide Vac therapy, we're seeing some great results as a result of those programs. Now, we do have programs that we've been using all year, whether it'd be our asset management program or ready care program which helps with our transitions out of the hospital, and our camp program, which is essentially taking the clinical resources that we have in the field, working with home health agencies and physician offices to help with speedy collection of information and the accurate submission of that data so that safety -- I think our services wrapping around the customer support piece have been a true differentiator, whether it'd be on the technical side or the clinical side, I think this 360 degrees of healing as you've heard us refer to it is really paying off, I think in an unparalleled way in the marketplace.
Chris Cooley - Stevens
Okay, super. And then if I may, just quickly, just kind of, I guess 2 final ones. When we think about the Japanese market opportunity, I notice you didn't give specific revenue contribution there for the quarter but maybe can you just help us think about scaling in that opportunity -- how rapidly are you penetrating that market versus when you entered the US or Germany or other markets? You did state it was ahead of expectations. We're just trying to get a little bit more color on that, and then the last question I had was in regards to the R&D expenses. As we think about the continued [indiscernible] in particular, I'm assuming you're going to have to demonstrate efficacy and the number of specialties, guidance assumes those type of efficacy, cost effectiveness type studies, I'm assuming, or is that incorrect? Thank you.
Cathy Burzik
So let's first talk about Japan a little bit here. We talked about last time, weighing to the thought of $10 million. We're not changing that estimate of where we see for the end of the year. I will tell you that it's impressive when you go over there. It's impressive to see the number of hospitals that we're penetrating, we're clearly penetrating many more hospitals that had been in the plan with what I'll call a pretty lean staff at this point because one of the things that I gave [indiscernible] with my guidance a lot of credit for is for being really thoughtful about the salespeople they add, we want to add very high quality salespeople. We're making the investments to go find those people, as many of those people we can possibly find. We're giving you kind of a long term expectation we have for Japan but as far as growth rate, I think the best proxy that you might think of would be Germany. As we launched our business in Germany, and we think that we will be able to penetrate the Japanese market at a great faster than we were able to do in Germany, and a lot of that is because we've moved classic KCI expertise and back over to Japan. We've got a really high quality team of people there guiding and teaching the Japanese salespeople how to approach the market, how to do surgeon forms over there, how to do all the professional occupation that we've learnt, so important for Mark in the US and in Germany and in Europe so that's the way we're going to build the Japanese market. So as we said before, we are not limiting the investment in Japan, the investment is paying off and we continue to plan to stay the course with that.
The R&D question
Marty Landon
I think it's simple, Chris. I think one of the things that we expect at the business unit readers have put in place and thus for us is to make sure that we have clinical support for the new products that we roll out in the marketplace so clearly there's going to be initiatives and efforts to do that. I think that's one of the strengths of LifeCell at this point; is making sure that when they bring out a new application, it comes with good clinical data so I would us doing the same.
Chris Cooley - Stevens
Thank you.
Cathy Burzik
Your next question comes from Jayson Bedford with Raymond James
Cathy Burzik
Hi Jayson?
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Hi Cathy and good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll start with a clarification, on the EMEA business, on the VAC side, I think you said flat -- did you see flat volume year-over-year because I guess I was under the impression that that business has been growing kind of double digits on a volume basis historically?
Michael Genau
Hi Jayson, this is Mike. The volumes overall EMEA were flat. We're seeing good volume improvement in Germany and as we look at other parts of Europe, we're seeing some volume improvement. We haven't seen as much of that in the UK so the mix in total would bring us to a flat.
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
But that's down from quarters past, is that right?
Michael Genau
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Okay. And then in terms of adding 100 reps from the post acute side, how far along are you there?
Michael Genau
What we said was we would have 100 or so by the end of the year and we are on that plan.
Cathy Burzik
And Jayson, that's not all proposed to acute [indiscernible] those are also going to acute to support the launch of the new products.
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Okay. And is it fair to assume kind of 50-50 in terms of the [indiscernible] third quarter, fourth quarter?
Marty Landon
No, actually I think we're ahead of that. We had a very good Q3 in terms of bringing in new reps, getting them trained and so we'll be at our plan by the end of the year, but I would say that it was a little bit better in the third quarter than fourth quarter.
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
And then last couple here. VAC Alta, maybe I missed this but can you just give us an update of either timing or maybe your interaction with the FDA?
Cathy Burzik
Alta has been approved by the FDA, I think it was a couple of months ago now, sometimes in Q3 and the Alta product is an important product to complement our overall platform, and I think Mike we're looking at like mid 11 foot launch of the Alta product. Right now we've got our sales force in the US and around the world quite honestly extremely focused on all these 3 new products we have, [indiscernible] Prevena, getting ready for Via and then Alta will be the fourth. We think from a timing perspective, obviously they spend time at our sales meetings in the year and then plan for our launch in mid '11.
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
So the timing of the launch is at your discretion, you're not waiting for an enhanced label or anything like that?
Marty Landon
That's right. It's totally up to us. As Cathy pointed out, as we've been launching these new products, you want to make sure that the commercial organizations across the globe are able to take the new ones on, get the training done, digest it, get it in the marketplace and so it's a planned kind of style or approach.
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Okay, great. And then lastly from me on the LifeCell business in Europe, can you talk about what you view as the key catalyst to break that market open? I guess I'm kind of leaning at are there any expected reimbursement decisions upcoming that could help you there? Thanks
Cathy Burzik
I have Lisa Colleran on the call. Lisa, why don't you give your thoughts to Jayson regarding how you see Europe right now or what you think is going to take to drive some of your plans
Lisa Colleran
Great Cathy. Thanks Jayson for the question. Just to give a little bit of reminders of where we've been in Europe. We entered the European market about 18 months ago with a heavy focus on the UK and Germany. Probably about 12 months into that, the UK has taken off very substantially and actually it's exceeding our expectations, and I think that we can point to a couple of things that drove that success, aside from the strong performance of the product in both [indiscernible] construction, we have great leadership on our UK team as well as we have had great success in hiring very skilled sales force. On top of that, we've leveraged what we've learnt in the US about market development activities so we have invested heavily in medical education and programs around that in the UK and then followed on by Germany.
In the last few months, sort of again, the 18 months pointing to Germany, we are seeing significant growth there. I think we've kind of hit our mark or our stride in those 2 major markets that we entered early on. The rest of Europe, we really just started to focus on those markets or those countries at the beginning of this year so I'll call that Southern Europe and we're just doing the building and the market development activity.
Now specifically to your question, we have a couple of things that really need to continue to hit their strides. We need to continue to develop and hire and train the right sales organization and again, I think we have a successful formula in the UK that we can leverage to the rest of Europe. Second is we are working on and do need to deliver European clinical data, and remember, Stratus is new in the US so we didn't even have up until the Rich data, a lot of clinical data on Stratus, which is the product that we're selling in Europe so the Rich data has been very positively received in Europe and will have an impact. It'll be not only broadly the first multicenter prospective study in the challenging hernia a patient population but will be the first data on Stratus to be used in Europe, so second thing would be the clinical data.
Third, we'll continue to make the investments in the market development, mainly focused on working with key opinion leaders and educating the surgeons on the benefits of using biologics and those 2 key applications.
And then last but not least, your point is reimbursement. There really isn't a short term upcoming event on reimbursement but we are continuing to build our dossier and submitting those tender by tender or country by country to develop the reimbursement schemes and those activities, together with 2 European studies that we've initiated over the next coming years will give us the reimbursement that's necessary
Jayson Bedford - Raymond James
Thank you.
Your last question comes from Lennox Ketner with Bank of America
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
Thanks so much for taking the questions. One, just on Jayson's question earlier about the unit growth in EMEA, I believe you said that was flat, I was under the impression as well that that market previously was seeing double digits offset by double digit pricing pressure so is it fair to assume that the pricing pressures improved there this quarter?
Cathy Burzik
I think we talked about double digit pricing pressures.
Marty Landon
We've said that a lot of that volume growth has been cut by the pricing and I would tell you that in this particular period we did see a slowdown in unit growth, that was fairly flat year to year and the decline than year on year was mostly related to price in the marketplace.
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
Okay, but there must have been fairly moderate pricing pressures, because that business [indiscernible] 2%, correct?
Marty Landon
In that 5% range.
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
Okay, and then I was wondering on the new product launches of ABThera and Pervena, if you could update us on the clinical trial front. I know you had a study that you were enrolling for ABThera, I'm just wondering if it's possible to get an update on that and when we might see the data and then for Pervena, it seems like you're not planning to do any clinical trials, you don't think one is necessary right now? I'd get your thoughts on that.
Cathy Burzik
We are working with [indiscernible] as a registry effectively across a multi-centered type of a registry. Mike, I think 17 sites?
Michael Genau
And, as far as we are, it's called the ABTech trial. It's approaching kind of inflection point where the committee is meeting next month actually, the data monitoring committee to review the data, to determine if the study has been powered enough and so the sense there would be that we're seeing very favorable results so we'll know more in another month or so on the ABThera piece. On the Pervena piece, we're working on several kind of targeted surgical indications when incisions are an increased risk of surgical site infections and other would complications and so we'll be working with our key opinion leaders and researchers as we are now over the several months to have something towards the second half of 2011.
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
To have a study towards the second half of 2011?
Michael Genau
We'll have some initial data in the second half of 2011
Lennox Ketner - Bank of America
Okay, great. Thanks so much and congratulations on the quarter.
Cathy Burzik
Thank you Lennox, thank you. Bye bye.
Thank you. I'd like to turn the call back over to Cathy Burzik, President and CEO.
Cathy Burzik
So I'd like to thank you all for participating in the call, thanks for the great questions and have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call, thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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Father: Daniel BALL b: 5 JAN 1712/13 in Middlesex, VA, USA
Mother: Sarah HACKNEY b: 1720 in Middlesex, VA, USA
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Last week, Bespoke Investment Group released the most-shorted stocks in the S&P 500 during December 2012. As a trader, my interest was piqued—especially because the list wasn't only small-cap stocks like OpenTable (NASDAQ:OPEN) or Questcor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:QCOR). Their list also included large-caps, and familiar names, too, like Gamestop (NYSE:GME) and Safeway (NYSE:SWY).
I thought it would be interesting to see how their list overlapped with the stocks I follow. For the most part, I saw consistent results—stocks that my Power Stocks system showed high levels of weakness in also had significant short interest…with one exception.
According to Bespoke, Take-Two Interactive's (NASDAQ:TTWO) short interest as a percentage of float was 28% in December. My Power Stocks system, which scans hundreds of stocks for liquid, volatile candidates for options trading, rated TTWO as a problem stock—that is, one that is in a downward trend showing signs of accelerating its descent.
My system rated Gamestop, another stock on Bespoke's list, as among the weakest of the stocks I follow. There is very little downside here left, so while I share the bearish sentiment, the traders who hold that 36% of short interest may not be very happy in the coming weeks. JC Penney (NYSE:JCP) is another laboring stock with nearly 50% in short interest—it's tried to rally up, but with little success.
Click to Enlarge Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI), on the other hand, is where my data doesn't align itself so neatly with Bespoke's. While the stock did experience some end-of-year selling (perhaps because of fiscal cliff fears) and Bespoke shows over 29% short interest as a percentage of PBI's float, my system's theoretical models show a buy watch for this stock on any further strength. The stock is trading above its 50-day MA, and has been testing current resistance is at $12. That just goes to show you that just because there's a lot of short interest in a stock, you shouldn't discount it entirely before looking further.
InvestorPlace advisor Ken Trester is editor of the popular Maximum Options program. Trester has been trading options since the first exchanges opened in 1973 with a winning streak that goes back to 1984 with money-doubling average annual profits since 1990. Try Maximum Options today for 2 months for only $99.


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Skipping The 4Th Gear For Economic Reasons. Myth? Is It Good Or Bad For The Car?
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text:
Amy Winehouse's New Addiction
If you've seen the video of Amy Winehouse smoking from a crack pipe, you might think she would get addicted to anything — drugs, teasing hair, and, now, tanning. Apparently she's spending hours in her tanning bed, even falling asleep while soaking up the UV light. Amy, if you don't want pale skin, stores everywhere sell a thing called "self tanner." [AHN]


text:
A patent is pending on the method, which previously had been realized in principle but not proven in practice until now.
The research team was been able to identify the structural elements responsible for the enzyme's extreme thermal tolerance.
The enzymes, particularly the tyrosine recombinase and its subfamily integrase, assist in recombining genetic material and used widely in biotechnology applications including gene splicing, cloining and gene therapy. They are notoriously fragile and require cooling to remain viable. Once a sample has risen to room temperature, its usefulness is short lived.
Integrases allow viruses to alter the genetic structure of host cells. Site-specific integrases perform recombinations of DNA segments by recognizing and binding to short DNA sequences (sites), at which they cleave the DNA backbone, exchange strands between the two DNA helices, and rejoin the DNA strands.
Because increased thermal stability can provide more user-friendly laboratory enzymes from test-tube to animal applications, the findings have the potential for developing superior site-specific recombinases for academic and commercial biotech applications.
The findings can also be applied to other recombinases, including as Cre, Flp and Lamda, to increase stability of industrial tyrosine recombinase enzymes in general.
Interested companies and entrepreneurs can license the new technologies by contacting Nick Zelver with the MSU Technology Transfer Office at (406) 994-7868, or by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.
To date, MSU has licensed 214 technologies developed by faculty, and 95 of those licenses are with Montana companies.
To access these and other MSU technologies, visit:http://tto.montana.edu/technologies.
Contact: Nick Zelver at (406) 994-7868, or firstname.lastname@example.com.