On June 18, Bob Muzerall, Nadia Bracken and I will be leading a networking workshop at the annual DIA convention in Chicago. While working on our presentation, I suggested to my employer that I contribute a blog to the company web page. See the link below to read it:
http://www.lexitas.com/networking-makes-world-go-round/
January 27, 2016 – I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the Houston, TX area for a PRA National Sales Meeting and they’d invited vendors that they partner with or were considering partnering with.
As is my custom, I email everyone I know in the area when I’m traveling and invite them to meet me for drinks/dinner. I was very fortunate that former co-worker Lori Engallina Smith and her husband Wayne Smith joined me that night, along with my co-workers. I’ve known Lori since 2002 when I first joined ICON Clinical Research’s Interactive Technologies Group. This was my first meeting of Wayne. Wonderful people, great Americans. The ceremony was powerful, such excitement and thrills. I forget the name of the restaurant, but it was a Mexican restaurant -shocking, I know.
Welcome Lori and Wayne as card carrying members of FOCM!
And the following day at the PRA meeting, I ran into Dorothy Brown, yes, THE Dorothy Brown. We’d worked together at Quintiles in the early 2000’s. Not that long ago, really, no really, it wasn’t, well it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.
Hi,
A company which provides research and consulting services in health economics, patient-centered outcomes research, market access, epidemiology, and clinical research services, located in RTP is looking for a Project Director that has CRO experience.
If you are interested in this position or know of someone who is please get in touch with me and I can provide more information.
chris@focmnetworking.com
Evidence is showing up that the elimination of trans fats is having a positive effect on the health of people in New York City.
New York City enacted a restaurant ban on the fats in 2007 and several counties in the state did the same. Hospital admissions for heart attacks and strokes in those areas declined 6 percent starting three years after the bans, compared with counties without bans. The results translate to 43 fewer heart attacks and strokes per 100,000 people, said lead author Dr. Eric Brandt, a Yale University cardiology fellow.
Eliminating transfats has beneficial effects
Now that we’ve seen the hourly wage increases in Seattle and San Diego, there are indications that it’s negatively affecting job growth in the restaurant sector. From an article in Forbes:
in San Diego:
Rather than inch upward from $10 per hour to $10.25 per hour in January 2016, as the rest of the state was doing, San Diego jumped its minimum wage to $11.50 per hour. In the year and three months since then, the number of food service jobs in San Diego has dropped sharply, with perhaps as many as 4,000 jobs lost, or never created in the first place.
For all these years, we just took it as a thing that happens – a shoelace becomes untied. But no longer do we have to let this happen. In the future, our children’s children will get an odd look on their face when they read an old book or watch an old shoe where a shoelace becomes untied and a person trips.
Oliver O’Reilly was teaching his daughter to tie her shoes when he realized something: he had no idea why shoelaces suddenly come undone. When he went looking for an answer, it was apparent that no one else knew either.
So O’Reilly, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, roped in two of his colleagues to help work it out. In a paper published on April 11 in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, they show that a combination of forces act on shoelace knots to cause a sudden, runaway failure.
On December 9, 2015, while in RTP on business, Chris McArthur received his FOCM membership card. It’s taken a while to post this as there were some troubling inconsistencies in his background check but all has been resolved. A simple mis-identification from the juvenile court system records. We welcome Chris with full membership privileges. His 2016 membership dues were waived. Invoices will shortly be going out for 2017.
Chris and I have known each other ~8 years; having wroked together at ICON in the late 00’s and early ’10s. Chris is now Director of Business Development at INC Research.
Recently saw this opinion piece by John Stossel re: the EPA. The part toward the bottom about the hassles one family had trying to build on their own property is ridiculous!
Regulation zealots and much of the media are furious because President Donald Trump canceled Barack Obama’s attempt to limit carbon dioxide emissions. But Trump did the right thing.
CO2 is what we exhale. It’s not a pollutant. It is, however, a greenhouse gas, and such gases increase global warming. It’s possible that this will lead to a spiral of climate change that will destroy much of Earth!
But probably not. The science is definitely not settled.
Either way, Obama’s expensive regulation wouldn’t make a discernible difference. By 2030 — if it met its goal — it might cut global carbon emissions by 1 percent.
The Earth will not notice.
However, people who pay for heat and electricity would notice. The Obama rule demanded power plants emit less CO2. Everyone would pay more — for no useful reason.
I say “would” because the Supreme Court put a “stay” on the regulation, saying there may be no authority for it.
So Trump proposes a sensible cut: He’ll dump an Obama proposal that was already dumped by courts. He’d also reduce Environmental Protection Agency spending by 31 percent.
Good!
Some of what regulators do now resembles the work of sadists who like crushing people. In Idaho, Jack and Jill Barron tried to build a house on their own property. Jack got permission from his county. So they started building.
They got as far as the foundation when the EPA suddenly declared that the Barrons’ property was a “wetland.”
Some of their land was wet. But that was only because state government had not maintained its own land, adjacent to the Barrons’ property, and water backed up from the state’s land to the Barrons’.
The EPA suddenly said, “You are building on a wetland!” and filed criminal charges against them. Felonies. When government does that, most of us cringe and give up. It costs too much to fight the state. Government regulators seem to have unlimited time and nearly unlimited money.
But Jack was mad enough to fight. He spent $200,000 on his own lawyers.
Three years later, a jury cleared Jack of all charges.
But even that didn’t stop the EPA.
Jill Barron told me, “We won, but after we were home for a month maybe, the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA sent us another letter saying, ‘how nice for you that you won in the criminal court, but we still feel it’s a wetlands.’ And the decision made by the jury did not matter to them. ‘And if you don’t get off the property, we’re going to fine you (in) civil (court).'”
The EPA threatened a fine of $37,500 a day.
The Barrons sold their home and moved into a trailer.
“We’ll be bankrupt, obviously.” Jill told me, “You have no idea what you’re up against. You don’t know the power that is the EPA.”
So I’m glad that Trump wants to limit the EPA. Scott Pruitt, the agency’s new director, understands that bureaucrats often abuse their power. When he was Oklahoma attorney general, he sued the EPA 13 times for regulatory overreach.
I hope he cuts the bureaucrats back to proper size.
The agency was necessary in 1970, when it was created. At the time, cities dumped whatever we flushed into nearby waterways — with no treatment.
Smokestacks filled the air with actual pollutants: soot, sulfur dioxide, etc. In New York City, we didn’t dare leave windows open because filth would blow in.
The EPA required sewage treatment, scrubbers in smokestacks and catalytic converters in car exhaust systems. The regulations worked. America’s air and water is cleaner than it’s been for decades. I can even swim in the Hudson River, right next to millions of people — who are still flushing.
Now, in a rational world, the EPA would say, “Stick a fork in it, it’s done! EPA now stands for ‘Enough Protection Already.'” But bureaucracies never say they’re done. “Done” means bureaucrats are out of work. Can’t have that.
So politicians keep adding unnecessary new rules and keep harassing people like the Barrons.
John Stossel is the author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed.” Click here for more information on John Stossel.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/04/05/john-stossel-its-time-to-stick-fork-in-epa.html
Saw this article by Dr. Travis Bradberry on LinkedIn last week.
The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. One of their greatest gifts is the ability to identify toxic people and keep them at bay.
“People inspire you, or they drain you—pick them wisely.” – Hans F. Hansen
Toxic People to avoid for career success
It was a warm Indian Summer night on October 29, 2015 when the one and only Wayne Whittingham gave in to insurmountable pressure and decided to publicly declare his membership in FOCM Networking. I believe this took place at Restaurant 1900 on Eastwood Rd in Wilmington, NC.
