Breaking embargoes is a big deal

by vrogy

Leakegate: Jonathan Leake gets Sunday Times banned from EurekAlert
[Via Deltoid]

This Jonathan Leake story on the evolution of Polar Bears broke the embargo on this PNAS paper. Ivan Oransky quotes PNAS media and communications manager Jonathan Lifland:

The majority of our infrequent embargo violations are accidental and typically the result of mislabeled copy that does not properly list the 3 p.m. EST Monday embargo expiration. We have a separate situation with the Sunday Times of London. With EurekAlert, we have prevented their editors and reporters from accessing the embargoed news section of EurekAlert, which is where pre-print copies of our articles are accessible. …

At this time, we have no plans to remove the restriction we have placed on the editors and reporters from the Sunday Times. …

With the exception of the Sunday Times, we have not had any three-time repeat offenders. In the case of the Times, we have removed all reporters and editors from accessing our media materials.

It seems that you can’t trust Leake about anything.

[More]

Most journalists are able to print articles on the day a science article is published because they get access to it days beforehand. Their reports are embargoed until a certain time to provide some constancy in the publication enterprise.

Newspapers break embargoes at their own risk because the publishers will respond by preventing them from getting access to the articles before the public. in a way, it is like developers of computer software breaking NDAs. Not good business practice.

So the Sunday Times can no longer get access to pre-print copies of their articles. Because they knowingly broke the embargo three times. They are the first organization to ever be a three time loser so their penalty might be much longer than the month-long deprivation given to 2 time offenders.

Sounds like a great bunch of professionals.

A very sad chart

Flu deaths in children
[Via Effect Measure]

Two days ago I went with my daughter to the pediatrician to check out her 20 month old who had a fever and rash. Viral origin, probably. Also an ear infection. Pretty much par for the course at this time of year. But lots of little ones and their older sibs weren’t so lucky this flu season. As we’ve had too many occasions to mention, the severity of the 2009 pandemic has yet to be gauged, but trying to compare it to seasonal flu is misleading as its epidemiology is very different. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the melancholy figures for pediatric deaths.

Since the beginning of September CDC has registered 265 flu deaths in children under the age of 18. Here’s how that compares with past seasons:

Source: CDC

This is pretty dramatic, even more so when we look at the distribution within the pediatric age group. 48 deaths were in babies and toddlers (less than 2 years old), 30 in children 2 – 4 years old, 98 in the 5 – 11 year age group and 89 in pre-teens and teens (12 – 17 years old). Thus well over two-thirds of the mortality is in children over 5 years old.

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I’ve talked with some people who think the H1N1 pandemic was a lot of hype. This graph demonstrates that it was anything but. Three times as many deaths as with regular influenza.

This was a pandemic that had virtually all of our tools thrown at it. Vaccines, education, anti-virals. And still had a three-fold increase in the number of children in the US that died.

We are just lucky that it appears that many adults may have been protected by previous exposure. That is not hype

Some questions about competition and Apple

I wrote yesterday about a report that Apple is using one-third of the entire world’s supply of NAND flash devices. for its products, such as the iPhone, iPod and soon to be iPad. NAND flash memory is cheaper and has higher capacity , with faster data transfer rate, than other types.

What does that mean for any company that wants to provide a competitor to the iPhone or iPad? Where are they going to get the memory from? How can Sony create an iPhone killer if it can not get enough of the solid state devices needed to make it work? Well, I guess Sony is big enough to buy up its own supply but will some of the others who are not Nokia?

Most cell phones before the iPhone did not have lots of internal memory, relying on the customer to pay for and provide their own. Now smartphones are expected to have lots of internal memory, because of the iPhone. Much harder for other companies to compete if memory supplies are constrained, due to Apple.

Apple spent $500 million setting up a long term deal with Toshiba to provide the NAND memory. Apple has a huge pile of money to keep adding as incentives to get the memory it needs. It does not have to deal with the spot market at all. How many other companies could do the same? Just a few.

So it may be that Sony, Nokia and Apple are the only ones who have a real chance at some of this technology, simply because of their size and heft. They can all buy up lots of memory with long term contract. I wonder if there will be room for a novice such as Microsoft and its mobile ideas? Microsoft has experience selling operating systems and software. It will be dealing with companies whose whole reason for existence is selling hardware and have spent many years learning the game.

I guess it is a nice time to be a NAND flash memories producer.