Many Colon Cancer Patients Lack Therapy

More than a decade after new treatment guidelines for the disease were
issued, many patients with advanced colon cancer are not getting
chemotherapy after surgery, despite clear-cut evidence it boosts
survival, a study found.

Blacks, women and elderly patients were found to be less likely to get
chemo, even though such treatment was shown to improve survival in all
groups.

About two-thirds of the patients who received chemotherapy in
addition to surgery were alive after five years, compared with about
half of those who had surgery alone, according to the study in
Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. On average,
chemotherapy improved the five-year survival rate by about 16 percent.

"It gives you quite a lot of edge," said study co-author Dr. J.
Milburn Jessup of the National Cancer Institute and Georgetown
University Medical Center.

The National Institutes of Health published guidelines in 1990
recommending chemotherapy after surgery for stage III colon cancer, in
which the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes of the abdomen. Colon
cancer is the second deadliest cancer for Americans after lung cancer.

The researchers analyzed data from nearly 86,000 patients at 560 U.S.
hospitals who were entered into a national cancer database, and found
that the share of those who received surgery plus chemo went from 39
percent in 1991 to 64 percent in 2002.

Similarly, studies presented at an American Society of Clinical
Oncology meeting in May showed significant variation in the treatment
given to patients with cancer of the breast or stomach.

The disparity found in the JAMA study narrowed for blacks over the
decade, until it was no longer significant in 2002. But the gap
remained wide for women and even wider for elderly patients. Jessup
would not speculate about the reason for the disparities.

"A lot of patients still don't get treated despite very promising
data," said Dr. Wells Messersmith at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer
Center, who was not involved in the research. He said nearly all his
stage III patients receive chemotherapy after surgery.

Some patients fear chemotherapy and do not realize new medications can
lessen its side effects, he said. And some doctors do not have the
means to provide the best treatment or do not keep up with the
research, Messersmith said.

Dr. Mark Zalupski of the University of Michigan, who was not involved
in the research, said colon cancer patients in their 80s are more
likely to have other health problems that might make chemotherapy
after surgery less practical.

Elderly patients also sometimes refuse chemotherapy, he said.

"In my own practice, I've seen older patients who don't want to be
bothered with the burdens of therapy. They've lived their lives and
will sort of take their chances," Zalupski said.

www.sun-sentinel.com

Gabriel Technologies Announces Upcoming Launch of Trace Location Services; Asset Tracking Technology Integrates a-GPS, Wireless and Internet

Gabriel Technologies Corp. (OTCBB:GWLK), a homeland security company
focused on serving the transportation industry, announced today that
it will formally launch its Trace location services in late January
2006.

Trace provides a flexible, rapidly deployable assisted-GPS
location-based service that enables a wide array of customizable
applications. The technology locates and/or tracks assets or people.
Trace owns a license to use Qualcomm SnapTrack's a-GPS software for
devices using the ReFlex wireless paging network.

CEO Keith Feilmeier said, "This launch represents an important new
milestone for our company. We have spent considerable time and
resources developing Trace in the last 18 months, and we are excited
to bring the product to market.

Trace's proprietary two-way paging-over-wireless network software and
web services interface are going to revolutionize how and where GPS
can be applied. Trace's staff and partners are recognized experts in
two-way paging, wireless networking, nuclear applications, government
contracting and financial management of technology and entrepreneurial
ventures."

Gabriel is initially targeting areas that have good ReFlex coverage,
which is optimal for the Trace technology. Potential uses include:

-- Emergency responder coordination and tracking

-- Airline asset tracking at airports

-- Manage movable assets and people

-- Transportation and vehicular tracking

-- Alzheimer patient tracking

-- Postal shipment tracking

-- Security for high-value cargo

-- Tracking of assets and people on large campuses or highly congested areas

Trace intends to sell its services primarily through its network of
licensed value-added resellers (VARs). The VARs will manage marketing,
Tier 1 support, ongoing customer billing and sales of the bundled
airtime, service and devices. The VARs will pay Trace monthly for
service based on locates and number of devices as well as an
activation and deactivation fee. Trace also will receive royalties on
all devices sold.

About Trace Technologies

Trace Technologies, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gabriel
Technologies Corporation. Trace location tracking provides enhanced
location services to devices supporting Qualcomm's SnapTrack(TM)
assisted-GPS technology. Subscribers and licensees pay a fee to access
the Trace SnapTrack-based location information to determine the
precise location of enabled devices, such as the Trace Asset Tag.

The company works with a number of value-added resellers and
distribution partners to give the technology a greater reach of the
tracking services market. Trace Technologies' mission is to provide
the highest quality security solutions available by creating
innovation, proven technologies that can be implemented on a realistic
basis. The company is headquartered in Omaha, Neb., with satellite
offices in Seattle, Wash., and Dallas, Texas. For more information,
visit http://www.trace-tech.net.

About Gabriel Technologies

Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Gabriel Technologies, LLC of
Omaha, Neb., Gabriel Technologies Corp. develops, manufactures and
sells a series of physical locking systems for the transportation and
shipping industries collectively known as the WAR-LOK(TM) Security
System. Security has evolved substantially in recent years due to
increased risks from theft and terrorism. With the implementation of
the award-winning WAR-LOK, Gabriel Technologies provides
cost-efficient security measures to prevent national and global theft
and homeland security issues.

Gabriel Technologies' mission is to provide the highest quality
security products available to the transportation and shipping
industries by creating innovative, proven technologies that can be
implemented on a realistic basis. Gabriel Technologies Corp. is also
the parent company of the next-generation-assisted GPS company,

Trace Technologies, LLC, http://www.trace-tech.net. For more
information about Gabriel, contact Dan Chicoine at (402) 614-0258 or
visit http://www.gabrieltechnologies.com.

A profile on the business can be found at
http://www.hawkassociates.com/gabriel/profile.htm.

Investors may contact Frank Hawkins or Julie Marshall, Hawk
Associates, at (305) 451-1888, e-mail: info@hawkassociates.com. An
online investor relations kit containing Gabriel Technologies' press
releases, SEC filings, current Level II price quotes, interactive Java
stock charts and other useful information for investors can be found
at http://www.hawkassociates.com and http://www.americanmicrocaps.com.

Forward-Looking Statements: Investors are cautioned that certain
statements contained in this document are "Forward-Looking Statements"
within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995.

Forward-looking statements include statements which are predictive in
nature, which depend upon or refer to future events or conditions,
which include words such as "believes," "anticipates," "intends,"
"plans," "expects" and similar expressions. In addition, any
statements concerning future financial performance (including future
revenues, earnings or growth rates), ongoing business strategies or
prospects, and possible future Gabriel actions, which may be provided
by management, are also forward-looking statements as defined by the
act. These statements are not guarantees of future performance.

home.businesswire.com

Online software, services taking new look at how we manage time

Benjamin Franklin said that more than 200 years ago, yet we still lose
much time in the modern world from everyday inefficiency and
confusion.

Personal computers and the Internet were supposed to have helped solve
those problems, following a burst of enthusiasm for online calendars
and scheduling programs in the late 1990s.

But that first generation of products didn't work particularly well
and were too difficult to use. While electronic calendars,
particularly the one in Microsoft Outlook, are widely used within some
big corporations, most people still keep track of their lives on
paper.

Silicon Valley is now revisiting the difficult question of time
management, with a new crop of online software and services from
companies big and small.

Their ideas were on display Tuesday at ``When 2.0,'' a one-day
conference held at Stanford University.

``I'm just excited the topic is coming up again,'' said Ray Ozzie,
chief technology officer of Microsoft and inventor of the Lotus Notes
software for organizing work group activity.

Ozzie sat on a panel that included Lotus co-founder Mitch Kapor,
moderated by technology doyenne Esther Dyson.

``There's much more pain around calendars than there is around
e-mail,'' Kapor told an audience of 165.

Kapor is an advocate for open-source software, where new programs are
created collaboratively and shared freely. He's backing an open-source
project called Chandler that will offer advanced tools for selectively
sharing your personal calendar entries with others.

Chandler is based on iCalendar, an open-source standard for sharing
calendar entries among different programs. Microsoft hasn't fully
supported iCalendar, greatly reducing its value, but it is swinging
fully into the iCalendar camp with the next version of Outlook, due in
2006.

Microsoft and the open-source community have yet to come to terms on
several other important technical standards. Kapor said he would sit
down with Ozzie immediately after the panel to start ironing out these
wrinkles, and the two men did spend time together at a picnic table
outside the hall.

Of course, you can't have a conference in Silicon Valley without
everyone wondering what Google will do.

There were rumors that at the conference Mountain View-based Google
would announce a free online calendar service, to compete with the
online calendars already offered by Yahoo and Microsoft.

Carl Sjogreen, a Google product manager, announced during the
question-and-answer period that Google would make no announcement.

But something is more than likely on the horizon. When I asked
Sjogreen what product he managed, he declined to answer -- leaving me
to wonder if he's the product manager for a Google calendar project
that's still in development.

Of the several start-ups presenting at When 2.0, my favorite was Renkoo.

The Palo Alto company plans to launch an online service early next
year that will provide a shared space for small groups to plan events.

If you want to invite a list of friends to a party with a fixed time
and place, it's easy to use the existing Evite service. But Evite
doesn't work well when you're not sure what you want to do, or what
your friends prefer.

With Renkoo, you can send a query by e-mail, instant message or
cell-phone text message, perhaps asking, ``Who wants to go for a hike
this weekend? What's the best time for you, and where do you want
go?''

Your friends then reply with their preferences, and the group goes
back and forth -- with the dialogue recorded on a single Web page --
until there's a consensus.

Renkoo, named for a form of Japanese poetry called renku or renga
where people take turns writing verses, will be free to users and
hopes to make money through ads and sponsorships.

Adam Rifkin, Renkoo's co-founder and chief executive officer, said he
aims to solve a basic problem: ``You can never get enough information
on what your friends are doing.''

While it's much too soon to know whether Renkoo or any of the other
bold proposals at When 2.0 will succeed, the vision at least is clear.

In a few years, we'll effortlessly manage our time by entering
appointments on whatever Internet-connected electronic device is at
hand -- a computer or a cell phone or a personal digital assistant --
and those appointments will instantly appear on the calendars of
others we designate.

If we change the time of an appointment, it will instantly update the
calendars of others.

Public and group events we want to track, from upcoming rock concerts
and professional hockey games to our children's soccer team schedules,
will automatically pop into our calendars.

There are lots of technical, security and privacy issues yet to
resolve, but the benefits are big enough that families may ultimately
be freed from running their lives through scraps of paper stuck to
refrigerator doors.

www.myrtlebeachonline.com/

State To Issue Long-Awaited Report Cards On Hospitals

A Web site tracking surgical procedures and other treatments at hospitals across New York will be launched next month by the state Health Department, almost a decade after a law was passed requiring the state to do so.

Some of the measures tracked will include treatment of heart attacks and pneumonia and the prevention of surgical infections, said Health Department spokesman Rob Kenny.
Kenny declined to elaborate about the site, which has been in the works for more than a year, until its launch is finalized and officially announced early next month.

The Web site is in response to a 1996 law that required the state to issue report cards tracking hospitals procedures. Kenny said the delay was partly because such medical reports are complex and must take into account various factors.

"They've had 10 years to work on it, so it'll be interesting to see how they approach it. We're waiting with bated breath," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which lobbied for the law a decade ago.

The department now only tracks three types of common cardiac procedures.
Citing studies that show public scrutiny improves the quality of care, critics have long said the Health Department should expand its reporting of hospital procedures.
A report card released by the Health Department this year showed that in 2003, the mortality rate for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery was 1.61 percent, compared to 3.52 percent in 1989.

Few people are aware of the state report card, however, Horner said.
"It's a buried treasure," he said.

Additionally, the reports are based on information that is usually at least two years old, he said.
News of the department's Web site launch comes just a week after an independent group health care plans and providers issued a report card on 28 measures and procedures in hospitals statewide.

The Niagara Health Quality Coalition tracked 28 procedures and treatments in its third annual report card.
A single comprehensive report would make it easiest for consumers, said Matt Cox, spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, which represents about 500 health care facilities statewide.
Before seeing the state's Web site, however, Cox declined to say which site would be more useful to consumers.

"If they're just going to duplicate what we have, it's probably not that helpful," said Bruce Boissonnault, president of NHQC.
Horner, meanwhile, pointed out the state, unlike NHQC, can mandate that providers alert consumers to the report cards, whether by requiring them to tell patrons or by sending out notifications through voter information forms or DMV mailings.
"It's better for the government to do it because they have the regulatory clout," he said. "It's good that they're finally getting something out the door."

www.wnbc.com

What bloggers think about your business

The blogosphere is a vast, unruly, and totally tantalizing mother lode of unvarnished consumer opinion on every product and service in the capitalist universe. But to know what the masses are saying about your product, you would have to dig through 350,000 daily postings on a staggering 20 million blogs worldwide.

Enter Umbria, a market research firm in Boulder that designs software to find useful consumer intelligence on the Internet. "The blogosphere is overflowing with brutally honest opinion," says Howard Kaushansky, Umbria's 47-year-old CEO.

"Our goal is to track those opinions down."
Every few hours Umbria sends an application called a spider out over the web to scour the blogosphere for postings about the firm's clients, most of which are big consumer companies, such as Electronic Arts, SAP and Sprint. By analyzing keywords in blogs on behalf of Sprint, for example, Umbria's software can tell whether a blogger is talking about customer service, the company's advertisements, or a particular calling plan.

To figure out whether an opinion is strong or tepid, the applications knows that "awesome" is a stronger endorsement than "pretty cool," and that "shoddy" is less damning than "abominable," thanks to several employees with Ph.D.s in linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Kaushansky claims his software can even identify sarcasm, a useful skill in the prickly blogosphere. It can also estimate the author's age and gender. Elongated spellings ("soooooooo"), multiple exclamation marks (!!!) suggest a teenage female. The blogger is probably a teenage boy if a posting is rife with hip-hop terminology such as "aight" (translation: "all right") and "true dat" ("I agree!").

The twenty- and thirty-somethings are more likely to use complete sentences. These men tend to favor vivid adjectives such as "sordid" and "hilarious," while the women favor elaborately emotive turns of phrase, such as "wishing I could just crawl out of my skin" (a real example). Male baby-boomers, on the other hand, tend to favor stale hip-hop-isms such as "jiggy" and "bling." They also pepper their blogs with terms such as "prostate" and "IRA."

Umbria's service is fast -- spidering through 20 million blogs in under a minute. Running linguistic algorithms takes another few minutes. Then out spits an "Umbria Buzz Report" that tells clients how they are being portrayed in the blogosphere. The reports cover the overall brand experience, along with consumer reactions to specific products and even specific features of those products. Umbria also classifies all the comments by estimated age and gender, and its reports always reproduce a few of the juiciest blog postings verbatim.

Bloggers are often early adopters of products and services, and they tend to be more fervent and expansive in their opinions than the general population. Clients say Umbria's service helps them discern attitudes that may not show up for months using traditional market-research tools such as surveys and focus groups.

Buzz Reports are also useful for gathering intelligence on competitors. Izze Beverage, a 45-employee Boulder company that makes sparkling fruit juices, recently engaged Umbria to track what bloggers were saying about rival brands. When a blogger had a bad fruit juice experience with one of his competitors, the result was often a profane online rant. "We want to make sure that never happens to us," says Izze CEO Todd Woloson. The company recently hired a customer relations specialist that it hopes will soothe angry consumers before they take to their blogs.

Kaushansky, a former lawyer who worked at several small data-mining companies, founded Umbria in 2004. He has raised $6.75 million for the company, mostly from venture capitalists. Kaushansky projects that Umbria will generate $2 million in revenue this year and will turn a profit in 2006.

Umbria is a relatively small player in the $20 million blog research market, with a 10 percent share. Principal rivals include Cincinnati-based Intelliseek, which controls about a third of the market, and BuzzMetrics in New York, which does not disclose revenues. Unlike Umbria, the latter two companies also meet with clients to interpret the data and suggest strategic responses. "We rely on both technology and humans for analysis," says Max Kalehoff, marketing director for BuzzMetrics. "Umbria takes an extremely automated approach."

But automation keeps Umbria's services affordable. Its clients pay roughly $60,000 a year, while the fee for one of its rivals can easily run into the seven figures. Kaushansky intends to maintain Umbria's low-cost and no-consultants strategy. The company's next frontier: algorithms that will classify bloggers by ethnicity, location, income, social class and level of education. As a white, female, middle-class, college freshman living in Akron might say, that would be soooooo cool!!!!!!!

www.money.cnn.com

China transforming through technology innovation and commitment to education

Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett applauded leaders in China for progress made in technology innovation and their commitment to education.

"China's focus on science and technology education has advanced the nation's competitiveness and attracted Intel's investment in world-class microprocessor assembly and test facilities in Chengdu and Shanghai," said Barrett. "A skilled and talented local workforce is a solid foundation on which to build businesses and develop new economic opportunities."
Barrett and local community leaders took part in the opening ceremony of Intel's first assembly and test plant in Chengdu, located in western China's Sichuan Province.

"The opening of this facility brings new manufacturing capabilities to China and further strengthens the country's ability to deliver products to the worldwide market," said Barrett. "Intel's commitment to China's technology industry has a 20-year history. The Chengdu facility significantly expands our 5,000-person employee base in China."

This first US$200 million Chengdu facility begins production, with a second advanced assembly and test facility scheduled to start production in 2007.
With its increased presence Intel also announced a program supporting local communities. Intel is extending the Intel Volunteer Matching Grant Program to China. For every 20 hours an Intel employee volunteers in a school, US$75 will be donated to the school by the Intel Foundation.

Funded solely through donations from Intel, the Intel Foundation works to strengthen engineering and computer science education, and increase participation in these fields by women and under-represented minorities, improve mathematics and science education for elementary and secondary students, and foster the effective use of computer technology in education.
"Intel employees in communities across the globe take a special interest in their children's schools," said Barrett.

"Through this matching grant program, employees are able to work with and mentor young people while at the same time raising funds that can help schools acquire new educational tools."
In addition to the matching grant program, Intel supports education development through a variety of programs. Marking the five-year anniversary of the Intel Teach to the Future program in China, Intel has trained nearly 600,000 teachers in 31 provinces to integrate technology into classrooms.

Intel has also provided after-school, community-based Intel Learn programs for almost 63,000 children to help them learn technological literacy, problem solving and collaboration skills and built an after-school technology learning center in Chengdu called the Intel Computer Clubhouse.

www.emsnow.com