HIV and AIDS – the Essential Facts

By: Tim Leach

If you think you may have been exposed to HIV or AIDS, through unprotected sex with a stranger or accidental exposure to an infected person’s blood, then there’s no time to delay – an HIV test is essential, both for your peace of mind and for the sake of your health. Here are the essential facts that you need to know about HIV and AIDS…

How can HIV/AIDS be caught?

HIV and AIDS are transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids. There are several common ways that people are infected:

• Sexual contact through vaginal or anal sex

• Sharing needles with an infected individual. Rarely, this can include tattoos and piercings

• Blood transfusions or accidental exposure to infected blood

• Mother to child transmission during pregnancy or during birth. Breast feeding, in some cases, can also lead to HIV infection

How can it be prevented?

The most important precautions to take are to make sure that you always use a new, sterile needle for any injection that you take, and to always use a condom during sex unless both you and your partner have had an HIV test. The contraceptive pill, diaphragms and spermicidal jelly cannot prevent infection during sex – only condoms are an effective preventative.

What are the symptoms?

Unfortunately, HIV and AIDS do not present any clear symptoms. Approximately 4 weeks after infection, most people will suffer a fever, glandular swelling, rashes, a sore throat and muscle aches. Since these symptoms are so general, they are frequently mistaken or misdiagnosed. The only way to be certain is to take an HIV or AIDS test.

What are the treatments?

There is currently no cure or vaccine for HIV or AIDS. However, there are various courses of retroviral drugs that can help to manage the symptoms and greatly increase the quality and length of life. Early diagnosis is critical, which is why HIV tests are so important for anyone who thinks they may have been exposed to the virus.

How do I get an HIV test?

There are numerous sexual health clinics around the US that offer confidential HIV tests. Most people choose to purchase them privately rather than through their insurance for the sake of privacy.

The first HIV test that is usually administered is the HIV-1 test. This is a blood test that checks for the antibodies that the body produces to fight the HIV infection. However, it can only be taken six weeks or more after exposure, as it takes time for the body to generate these antibodies. Another HIV test, the HIV PCR, can detect the virus 4-11 days after exposure. If either of these initial tests gives a positive result, follow tests are required to confirm it (the HIV-1 test can occasionally give false positive results, as it is very sensitive.)

How often should I have an HIV test?

Comprehensive STD screening, including an HIV test, is recommended once a year for all sexually active adults who have three or more sexual partners in that year. An HIV test is also recommended if you intend to start having unprotected sex with a partner, and, due to the risk of transmission to a child, is usually part of a standard health check up at the start of a pregnancy.

Windows 7 - Brief Review

by robertoms

Unlike Vista, which included a number of new applications and an entirely different look and feel than earlier operating systems, Windows 7 is meant to be fully compatible with all aspects of Vista. Some upgrades do make Windows 7 preferable to both Windows XP and Vista, but some aspects are better in the older versions. The time to boot up and shut down the system as well as the speed at which documents and other files open are much improved in Windows 7. But, tasks like video editing remains just as slow as they do in XP and Vista.

While there are new features that are part of Windows 7, the Microsoft team placed much emphasis on ensuring that users would not have major compatibility issues when making the switch. They seemed to have learned their lesson from the difficulties that arose when people moved from Windows XP to Vista. One of the new features includes advances in handwriting recognition, a huge advantage for those who can write faster than they type. The Control Panel has some new additions as well including a color calibration wizard, troubleshooting, and biometric devices. The Windows Security Center has a new name, the Windows Action Center, which houses both security settings as well as computer maintenance.

The changes that will be most noticeable to the average user are those made to the task bar. The Quick Launch toolbar is no longer, and has been replaced by pinning applications to the task bar. Applications that are `pinned` to the task bar are then easily accessible by buttons that become part of the task bar. The set-up of the new task bar allows for easy re-organization and re-ordering of the items on the bar to suit user preference.

Another very useful new feature is called `Aero Peek`. Hovering the mouse over the Aero Peek button, located on the task bar, immediately renders all open windows transparent so that there is a clear view of the desktop. A simple click on the button automatically minimizes all the open windows and a second click brings them all back.

Consumer reception of Windows 7 has been positive thus far. In the first eight hours that pre-orders were being accepted, demand for Windows 7 surpassed that of the demand for Windows Vista in its first 17 weeks of availability. If that is any indication, Windows 7 is a marked improvement over Vista. Early reviews of the operating system confirm that it is an improvement based on the fewer compatibility problems, the redesigned task bar, and faster start-up.

It is not all good news however, as a major concern about Windows 7 is the hefty price tag. It seems, however, that it is worth the price, especially for those users of Vista, which is known to have some difficulties. Vista users who are upgrading to Windows 7 can install the new system directly on top of Vista, while those who are moving from XP will have to reinstall all of their applications.

Overall, the improvements provided by Windows 7 seem to make it worth the price and potential hassle to upgrade.

Palm Oil Destroys Breast Cancer Cells

by Palm Oil Truth Foundation

A key natural compound in palm oil that can kill breast cancer cells have been discovered by scientists in singapore
Announcing this exciting development, the Davos Life Science Singapore, a research and development center today, the research center said: "The compound, called gamma-tocotrienol, which was extracted in its natural form from palm oil, demonstrated powerful cancer-killing properties."

In a statement today, the centre said the compound could be found at low levels in food sources such as palm oil.

The centre said its scientists partnered with the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong and the Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre in conducting the cancer study.

The study showed during in-vitro experiments, the natural compound demonstrated greater potency than ‘Docetaxel', a commonly-used chemotherapy drug used to treat breast cancer. This was the first tocotrienol study to identify the key upstream regulators that mediated breast cancer progression and invasion, the centre said.

The compound was also found to suppress the invasive ability of breast cancer cells to spread to other organs via metastasis.
While the doses of gamma-tocotrienol showed positive anti-cancer effects, they did not affect the normal cell functions of healthy cells, the study found.

Davos Life Science was set up in 2004, as a manufacturer that isolates and purifies natural tocotrienol, for use in supplements, functional food, personal care and pharmaceutical formulations. It has established the world's largest R&D centre dedicated to tocotrienol and the world's largest manufacturing facility for the production of natural tocotrienol.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, the findings of Davos Life Science only confirms what the foundation has been positing for some time - palm oil is a natural edible oil that is great for health which has been mystifyingly selected for demonization by certain quarters. Certainly, organizations with questionable motives and bona fides such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) which despite its altruistic sounding name appear to exist only to carry out what appears to be fully funded and sponsored spurious attacks against certain industries at the behest of competing industries have a lot of explaining to do, in the light of this and many other scientific findings published in peer reviewed journals.

Other studies have corroborated Davos Life Science scientists findings that palm oil, as compared to saturated fats and oils, may help fight cancer, especially breast cancer[1]

This may be due to tocotrienols[2] or other phytonutrients[3] present in palm oil. Indeed, Professors K. K. Carroll of the Centre for Human Nutrition at the University of Western Ontario and David Kritchevsky of the Wistar Institute recently concluded that evidence from animal and in vitro studies indicate that tocotrienols of palm oil are effective anti-cancer agents and provide adequate justification for clinical trials in human cancer patients. Palm oil is the only vegetable oil available on the world market that naturally contains tocotrienols.

Customer segmentation

by: Allan U.

In the snowmobile example, the served market consisted of one segment. But conceivably, the served market could be much broader in scope. For example, the company could decide to serve all industrial customers (large, medium, small) by offering diesel-driven snowmobiles for delivery use. The “broader” served market, however, must be segmented because the market is not homogeneous; that is, it cannot be served by one type of product/service offering. Currently, the United States represents the largest market in the world for most products; it is not a homogeneous market, however. Not all customers want the same thing. Particularly in well-supplied markets, customers generally prefer products or services that are tailored to their needs. Differences can be expressed in terms of product or service features, service levels, quality levels, or something else. In other words, the large market has a variety of submarkets, or segments, that vary substantially. One of the crucial elements of marketing strategy is to choose the segment or segments that are to be served. This, however, is not always easy because different methods for dissecting a market may be employed and deciding which method to use may pose a problem. Virtually all strategists segment their markets. Typically, they use SIC codes, annual purchase volume, age, and income as differentiating variables.

Categories based on these variables, however, may not suffice as far as the development of strategy is concerned. RCA, for example, initially classified potential customers for color television sets according to age, income, and social class. The company soon realized that these segments were not crucial for continued growth because potential buyers were not confined to those groups. Later analysis discovered that there were “innovators” and “followers” in each of the above groups. This finding led the company to tailor its marketing strategy to various segments according to their “innovativeness.” Mass acceptance of color television might have been delayed substantially if RCA had followed a more traditional approach. An American food processor achieved rapid success in the French market after discovering that “modern” Frenchwomen liked processed foods while “traditional” French housewives looked upon them as a threat. A leading industrial manufacturer discovered that its critical variable was the amount of annual usage per item, not per order or per any other conventional variable. This proved to be critical since heavy users can be expected to be more sensitive to price and may be more aware of and responsive to promotional perspectives. Segmentation aims at increasing the scope of business by closely aligning a product or brand with an identifiable customer group. Take, for example, cigarettes. Thirty years ago, most cigarette smokers chose from among three brands: Camel, Chesterfield, and Lucky Strike. Today more than 160 brands adorn retail shelves. In order to sell more cigarettes, tobacco companies have been dividing the smoking public into relatively tiny sociological groups and then aiming one or more brands at each group. Vantage and Merit, for example, are aimed at young women; Camel and Winston are aimed mostly at rural smokers.

Cigarette marketing success hinges on how effectively a company can design a brand to appeal to a particular type of smoker and then on how well it can reach that smoker with sharply focused packaging, product design, and advertising. What is true of cigarettes applies to many, many products; it applies even to services. Banks, for example, have been vying with one another for important customers by offering innovative services that set each bank apart from its competition. These illustrations underscore not only the significance of segmenting the market but also the importance of carefully choosing segmentation criteria.
Segmentation Criteria

Segmentation criteria vary depending on the nature of the market. In consumergoods marketing, one may use simple demographic and socioeconomic variables, personality and lifestyle variables, or situation-specific events (such as use intensity, brand loyalty, and attitudes) as the bases of segmentation. In industrial marketing, segmentation is achieved by forming end use segments, product segments, geographic segments, common buying factor segments, and customer size segments. For a detailed account, however, reference may be made to a textbook on marketing management. In addition to these criteria, creative analysts may well identify others. For example, a shipbuilding company dissects its tanker market into large, medium, and small markets; similarly, its cargo ship market is classified into high-, medium-, and low-grade markets. A forklift manufacturer divides its market on the basis of product performance requirements. Many consumer-goods companies, General Foods, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola among them, base their segments on lifestyle analysis. Data for forming customer segments may be analyzed with the use of simple statistical techniques (e.g., averages) or multivariate methods. Conceptually, the following procedure may be adopted to choose a criterion for segmentation:

1. Identify potential customers and the nature of their needs.

2. Segment all customers into groups having

a. Common requirements.

b. The same value system with respect to the importance of these requirements.

3. Determine the theoretically most efficient means of serving each market segment, making sure that the distribution system selected differentiates each segment with respect to cost and price.

4. Adjust this ideal system to the constraints of the real world: existing commitments, legal restrictions, practicality, and so forth.

A market can also be segmented by level of customer service, stage of production, price/performance characteristics, credit arrangements with customers, location of plants, characteristics of manufacturing equipment, channels of distribution, and financial policies. The key is to choose a variable or variables that so divide the market that customers in a segment respond similarly to some aspect of the marketer’s strategy. The variable should be measurable; that is, it should represent an objective value, such as income, rate of consumption, or frequency of buying, not simply a qualitative viewpoint, such as the degree of customer happiness. Also, the variable should create segments that may be accessible through promotion. Even if it is feasible to measure happiness, segments based on the happiness variable cannot be reached by a specific promotional medium. Finally, segments should be substantial in size; that is, they should be sufficiently large to warrant a separate marketing effort. Once segments have been formed, the next strategic issue is deciding which segment should be selected. The selected segment should comply with the following conditions:

1. It should be one in which the maximum differential in competitive strategy can be developed.

2. It must be capable of being isolated so that competitive advantage can be preserved.

3. It must be valid even though imitated.

The success of Volkswagen in the United States in 1960 can be attributed to its fit into a market segment that had two unique characteristics. First, the segment served by VW could not be adequately served by a modification to conventional U.S. cars. Second, U.S. manufacturers’ economies of scale could not be brought to bear to the disadvantage of VW. In contrast, American Motors was equally successful in identifying a special segment to serve with its compact car, the Rambler. The critical difference was that American Motors could not protect that segment from the superior scale of manufacturing volume of the other three U.S. automobile producers. The choice of strategically critical segments is not straightforward. It requires careful evaluation of business strengths as compared with the competition. It also requires analytical marketing research to uncover market segments in which these competitive strengths can be significant. Rarely do market segments conveniently coincide with such obvious categories as religion, age, profession, or family income; or, in the industrial sector, with the size of company. For this reason, market segmentation is emphatically not a job for statisticians.

Rather, it is a task that can be mastered only by the creative strategist. For example, an industrial company found that the key to segmenting customers is by the phase of the purchase decision process that they experienced. Accordingly, three segments were identified: (a) first-time prospects, (b) novices, and (c) sophisticates. These three segments valued different benefits, bought from different channels, and carried varying impressions of providers. A technology-consulting firm, Forrester Research Inc., separates people into ten categories: “fast forwards, techno-strivers, hand-shakers, new age nurturers, digital hopefuls, traditionalists, mouse potatoes, gadget-grabbers, media junkies, and sidelined citizens.” For example, “Fast forwards” own on an average 20 technology products per household. Several of their clients have found this kind of classification useful in identifying segments to serve. Market segmentation has recently undergone several changes. These include: 16

• Increased emphasis on segmentation criteria that represent “softer” data such as attitudes and needs. This is the case in both consumer and business-to-business marketing.

• Increased awareness that the bases of segmentation depend on its purpose. For example, the same bank customers could be segmented by account ownership profiles, attitudes towards risk-taking, and socioeconomic variables. Each segmentation could be useful for a different purpose, such as product cross-selling, preparation of advertising messages, and media selection.

• A move towards “letting the data speak for themselves,” that is finding segments through the detection of patterns in survey or in-house data. So-called “data mining” methods have become much more versatile over the past decade.

• Greater usage of “hybrid” segmentation methods. For example, a beer producer might first segment consumers according to favorite brand. Then, within each brand group, consumers could be further segmented according to similarities in attitudes towards beer drinking, occasions where beer is consumed, and so on.

• A closer connection between segmentation methods and new product development. Computer choice models (using information about the attribute trade-offs that consumers make) can now find the best segments for a given product profile or the best product profile for a given market segment.

• The growing availability of computer models (based on conjoint data) to find optimal additions to product lines products that best balance the possibility of cannibalization of current products with competitive draw.

• Research on dynamic product/segment models that consider the possibility of competitive retaliation. Such models examine a company’s vulnerability to competitive reactions over the short term and choose product/segment combinations that are most resistant to competitive encroachment.

• The development of pattern-recognition and consumer-clustering methods that seek segments on the basis of data but also respect managerial constraints on minimal segment size and managerial weightings of selected clustering variables.

• The development of flexible segmentations that permit the manager to loosen a clustering based only on buyer needs (by shifting a small number of people between clusters); the aim might be to increase the predictability of some external criterion, such as household profitability to a company, say, selling mutual funds.

Making what customers want

by: Allan U.

Micromarketing, or Segment-of-One Marketing An interesting development in the past few years has been the emergence of a new segmentation concept called micromarketing, or segment-of-one marketing. Forced by competitive pressures, mass marketers have discovered that a segment can be trimmed down to smaller subsegments, even to an individual. Micromarketing combines two independent concepts: information retrieval and service delivery. On one side is a proprietary database of customers’ preferences and purchase behaviors; on the other is a disciplined, tightly engineered approach to service delivery that uses the database to tailor a service package for individual customers or a group of customers. Of course, such custom-designed service is nothing new, but until recently, only the very wealthy could afford it. Information technology has brought the level of service associated with the old carriage trade within reach of the middle class. Micromarketing requires:

1. Knowing the customers Using high-tech techniques, find out who the customers are and aren’t. By linking that knowledge with data about ads and coupons, fine-tune marketing strategy.

2. Making what customers want Tailor products to individual tastes. Where once there were just Oreos, now there are Fudge Covered Oreos, Oreo Double Stufs, and Oreo Big Stufs.

3. Using targeted and new media Advertising on cable television and in magazines can be used to reach special audiences. In addition, develop new ways to reach customers. For example, messages on walls in high-school lunchrooms, on videocassettes, and even on blood pressure monitors may be considered.

4. Using nonmedia Sponsor sports, festivals, and other events to reach local or ethnic markets.

5. Reaching customers in the store Consumers make most buying decisions while they are shopping, so put ads on supermarket loudspeakers, shopping carts, and in-store monitors.

6. Sharpening promotions Couponing and price promotions are expensive and often harmful to a brand’s image. Thanks to better data, some companies are using fewer, more effective promotions. One promising approach: aiming coupons at a competitor’s customers.

7. Working with retailers Consumer-goods manufacturers must learn to “micro market” to the retail trade, too. Some are linking their computers to retailers’ computers, and some are tailoring their marketing and promotions to an individual retailer’s needs.

An example of micromarketing is provided by a North Carolina bank, First Wachovia. The bank’s staff serves all customers the way it used to serve its best customer. The staff greets each customer by name and provides personalized information about her or his finances and how they relate to long-term objectives. Based on this knowledge, the staff suggests new products. In this way, the commodity retail banking has been turned into a customized, personalized service. This marketing strategy has resulted in more sales at lower marketing costs and powerful switching barriers relative to the competition. Three major investments are behind this seemingly effortless new level of service: a comprehensive customer database, accessible wherever the customer makes contact with the bank; an extensive training program that teaches a personalized service approach; and an ongoing personal communications program with each customer. Similarly, Noxell’s Clarion line illustrates how micromarketing can be implemented. When the company introduced its line of mass market cosmetics in drugstores, it looked for a way to differentiate it in a crowded market. The answer was the Clarion computer. Customers type in the characteristics of their skin and receive a regimen selected from the Clarion line, thus providing department store-type personal advice without sales pressure in the much more convenient drug channel.

This article examined the role of the third strategic C the customer in formulating strategy is the definition of the market. A conceptual framework for defining the market was outlined. The underlying factor in the formation of a market is customer need. The concept of need was discussed with reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once a market emerges, its worth must be determined through examining its potential. Different methods may be employed to study market potential. Based on its potential, if a market appears worth tapping, its boundaries must be identified. Traditionally, market boundaries have been defined on the basis of product/market scope. Recent work on the subject recommends that market boundaries be established around the following dimensions: technology, customer function, and customer group. Level of production/distribution was suggested as a fourth dimension. The task of market boundary definition amounts to grouping together a set of market cells, each defined in terms of these dimensions. Market boundaries set the limits of the market. Should a business unit serve a total market or just a part of it? Although it is conceivable to serve an entire market, usually the served market is considerably narrower in scope and smaller in size than the total market. Factors that influence the choice of served market were examined. The served market may be too broad to be served by a single marketing program. If so, then the served market must be segmented. The rationale for segmentation was given, and a procedure for segmenting the market was outlined.