healthy4u

Some Conflicts Grow in Brooklyn

<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/03/15/2009-03-15_an_unhealthy_alliance_wyckoff_mds_deal_w.html">From the New York Daily News</a>, here is a new twist on the conflicts of interest story. This is about two leaders of Wyckoff Medical Center in my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, the hospital's chief of surgery, Dr Addagada Rao, and its CEO, Rajiv Garg. It turns out that Dr Rao has another position, this one far away at <a href="http://www.spartanmed.org/">Spartan Health Sciences University</a>, a medical school located on the Caribbean island of St Lucia: <blockquote> The $400,000-a-year chief of surgery at Brooklyn's Wyckoff Heights Medical Center heads a Caribbean medical school that hopes will funnel medical students - and their money - back to New York, the Daily News has learned. The surgeon, Dr. Addagada Rao, is the <a href="http://www.spartanmed.org/president_message.html">president of Spartan Health Sciences University in sunny St. Lucia</a>. Last year he became one of a handful of owners in hopes of bringing third- and fourth-year medical students to Wyckoff to train - and to aid its ailing coffers. 'My association with Spartan is to fulfill my lifelong goal to educate all who are able and willing to pursue a career in medicine...' Rao is quoted on the medical school's Web site. </blockquote> Mr Garg also has a role at Spartan, <blockquote> Garg, 49, has been Wyckoff's $500,000-per-year CEO since November and is also an investor in Spartan. He told The News he stepped down as Spartan's chief operating officer after he got the top job at Wyckoff. </blockquote> Meanwhile, the Daily News alleged: <blockquote> Rao, 67, is in a position to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from the dual relationships. The ability to train in New York is a big draw for offshore medical schools - especially if the school has an established connection with a hospital, experts said. The state has approved Spartan students to do only 12-week stints in New York hospitals. Students pay between $4,000 and $5,000 for the training. Wyckoff - and Rao - could make far more money if the state okays a pending request for Spartan students to do their full two years training at New York hospitals. </blockquote> Dr Rao was asked about these relationships, and responded, <blockquote> he saw nothing wrong with having outside financial interests. 'I disclosed this to the hospital,' he said, but declined to offer further details. Asked if the hospital's board of trustees, of which Rao and Garg are members, approved the arrangement, he said: 'That was not necessary.' </blockquote> It is still a little hard for me to understand how someone could be chief of surgery at a NY hospital and simultaneously the president of a Caribbean medical school, but setting that aside... This story illustrates another twist on conflicts of interest affecting the leaders of not-for-profit health care organizations. Many of the smaller not-for-profit hospitals, of which there are thousands in the US, may have minimal conflict of interest policies, which may be minimally enforced, without much transparency or accountability. The coziness of the leadership culture of such smaller institutions may preclude anyone within the culture from asking tough questions. The results may be total confusion as to whose interests particular leaders are serving. In particular, the interests of each hospital's patients may get lost in the shuffle. In this case, the interests of medical students may also get lost in the shuffle. Although the institutions involved may be small, and hence the conflicts may seem small in terms of their monetary value, they aggregate to contribute to the moral miasma that now is the atmosphere of health care.

Some Conflicts Grow in Brooklyn

From the New York Daily News , here is a new twist on the conflicts of interest story. This is about two leaders of Wyckoff Medical Center i...

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Make sense of your site: tips for webpage design

This is the second post in <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/measurement">The Power of Measurement</a> series. These posts are designed to cover ways to make your website as successful as possible, especially in the current economic climate. Here, Website Optimizer whiz Sandra Cheng explores the topic of website design and offers tips to help you get more from your site. -Ed. In our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/stop-bouncing-tips-for-website-success.html" id="vl3v" title="last post">last post</a>, Avinash Kaushik dove into the world of website analytics and explained the power behind the bounce rate metric. With bounce rate, you are able to identify which webpages are turning away the most visitors. And while it's incredibly useful to identify which pages need fixing, what do you do next? Back in the good old days, you would go back to the page and redesign it based on what you or other people thought was right for your site. Now, you can actually run a test on your website and let your visitors decide the best version of your page, instead of just going with a gut feeling. Here, I'll discuss website testing — executing different versions of a page to see what sticks — and the various ways you can make the most of your site's design choices. To begin website testing, start by brainstorming variations of your website. You can decide on small changes, like swapping out a photo, or large changes, like an overhaul of your website's layout or color scheme. Then, by using a free tool like <a href="http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer" id="x68t" title="Website Optimizer">Website Optimizer</a>, you can test your changes by automatically showing different visitors different versions of your site. From there, Website Optimizer will tell you which version your visitors liked the most by tracking which website variation was the most successful in reaching your goal. You can set your goal to be a sale, someone submitting a form or clicking a link, or any number of other interactions with your site. It's like running a simple experiment — without the complicated data analysis. Testing your site can often reveal surprises. For example, we were surprised by the results of our own test on the Picasa homepage. In version A, we used the word "free," gave it an action-oriented headline, and included a pretty image of the product. In version B, we deleted the photo, used a button instead of a link, and called out the value proposition ("The easy way..."). Which version do you think led more visitors to download Picasa? <div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQnuF4Z__n2QED_1Vm6oH9CL_iHujtiOJvbsy4WuW5D4NunPJWgk_6pgT1DmOo2kRZb5VE0eiOhcE9IQFBhS_fMySLD4RfCriZSkUbDaLqVegPaxbCdX3GBruuwQv_D4CX9koDsspVSbF/s1600-h/Picture+2.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313469672854582274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQnuF4Z__n2QED_1Vm6oH9CL_iHujtiOJvbsy4WuW5D4NunPJWgk_6pgT1DmOo2kRZb5VE0eiOhcE9IQFBhS_fMySLD4RfCriZSkUbDaLqVegPaxbCdX3GBruuwQv_D4CX9koDsspVSbF/s400/Picture+2.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 276px;" /></a>Version A </div> <div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHL57kIZOP2I3ADklaPZMWy2Wo-pYoZ1Zff6Q-HSGtjPQmGLGo1k9tT85A1aKzSinfk7-CRQtGoL2F1AJp2vOpy9ImBc-ckVF0_vsSB7ANutZPz1Ad2KvRycfxf2iGRWfg8ORU2GOjDpQW/s1600-h/Picture+3.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313469929418195634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHL57kIZOP2I3ADklaPZMWy2Wo-pYoZ1Zff6Q-HSGtjPQmGLGo1k9tT85A1aKzSinfk7-CRQtGoL2F1AJp2vOpy9ImBc-ckVF0_vsSB7ANutZPz1Ad2KvRycfxf2iGRWfg8ORU2GOjDpQW/s400/Picture+3.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 204px;" /></a>Version B </div> We predicted that Version A would be the clear winner since it had a photo to captivate visitors and a "free" product call-out. However, the data from the tests showed that the cleaner, simpler Version B was more effective. In fact, the changes in Version B increased downloads by 30%! This example illustrates a powerful point: sometimes you need to rely on data — not your gut — to make decisions that will help your website and your bottom line. Now, you might be asking yourself, "With so many different aspects of my website to test, how do I know where to begin?" Here are four design tips to pay attention to: <ul><li> Tip #1: Pass the 8 second test. At first glance, a visitor should understand the purpose of your website within a few seconds. People are busy and have limited attention spans — you want to keep them from hitting the dreaded back button.</li><li>Tip #2: Tell them what's in it for them. Create clear and tangible benefits (e.g., "Save more! Make extra money! Look better with our product!").</li><li>Tip #3: Use compelling images. Try product images instead of generic stock photos, icons with blocks of text, and buttons instead of links. Keep in mind that a low-quality, irrelevant image can kill your site's credibility.</li><li>Tip #4: Close the sale. Help your visitors take the next step. Make that step clear and easy to reach; don't make them hunt for it. Action words like "buy now" may work better than "add to cart," for instance. </li></ul>Once you've decided which details to test — a call-to-action, color, headline, layout, or video, for example — go to Website Optimizer and set up an experiment. For first-time users, we recommend a/b testing, meaning testing one variation of your page against another. After you launch your experiment, Website Optimizer will do the heavy lifting and show you when the data is "statistically significant." (In case it's been a while since your last Stats 101 course, statistical significance means that an event is unlikely to have happened by chance, and that you have enough data to know that there is a true difference in which page variation your visitors prefer.) The results will start showing in your reports page and for each experiment, the corresponding bar will begin to turn red, yellow or green. When the bars start to turn green, you have a winning page variation that is helping you reach the goals you have set for your website: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hAeAcEwN43qa6artIZpFq7nigiIiP2d9G_5uTLd4Ru-rvb4V10AJGHnlfKYdWnqFnR70GnK6DeY_ZBjM4VqL-ekfIXT-JIxeexo0-NCx_LkATNpR8rYG7SBVCZMqc30kJYzfH8ZV3o6U/s1600-h/Picture+4.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313470581308252178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hAeAcEwN43qa6artIZpFq7nigiIiP2d9G_5uTLd4Ru-rvb4V10AJGHnlfKYdWnqFnR70GnK6DeY_ZBjM4VqL-ekfIXT-JIxeexo0-NCx_LkATNpR8rYG7SBVCZMqc30kJYzfH8ZV3o6U/s400/Picture+4.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 287px;" /></a> Remember, best practices may work best for some, but they are not necessarily what's best for your site and your visitors. In the past, a few opinions and a strong hunch determined an effective website design. Now, armed with metrics, data, and tools galore, you can let your visitors tell you what works best for them and for your site. Good luck, and get testing! Posted by Sandra Cheng, Product Manager, Google Website Optimizer

Make sense of your site: tips for webpage design

This is the second post in The Power of Measurement series. These posts are designed to cover ways to make your website as successful as po...

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Walmart to Become the Healthcare IT Punching Bag?

At "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/wal-mart-to-market-ehr-system-to-small.html">Wal-Mart to market Electronic Medical Records? Has Medicine Gone Bananas?</a>" I noted the entry of Walmart into the healthcare IT fray. As I <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2005/03/wash-post-on-cedars-sinai-cpoe-failure.html">observed here</a> in early 2005, HIT is a field where angels fear to tread. Or should fear to tread. Walmart is <a href="http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=walmart+opposition&btnG=Google+Search">not exactly popular</a> in numerous circles, so let me state I buy from them (most recently my Acer Netbook, clothing and various Christmas gifts) and am neutral on most of the issues that create the opposition. My father ran a business, after all. However, he at least stuck to his core expertise, pharmacy. Walmart is trying to market EMR's, a product far beyond their core competencies. The HIT market and "ecosystem" is also far beyond their competencies, and it's not hard to predict they are going to have a rapid and quite unpleasant learning experience about the dark corners of this industry. Felix Fulmer, a correspondent with longstanding expertise in academic and pharmaceutical research environments conveyed to me the following observations about this arrangement: Deficient as its products often are, the HIT industry was built up by entrepreneurs over many years and by much hard work. They are now being challenged by a very large and very powerful entity. The entry of Walmart into EMR represents a tremendous threat to the HIT industry status quo. This initiative is likely to help doctors and patients at the very least by reducing the cost of EMR (even if not improving the performance), putting downward price pressure on the entire industry. It is also likely to change the marketing and consulting practices in the HIT industry as well, driving wages down among other factors. If successful, Walmart's initiative could in fact cause the extinction of the current monopolistic and parasitical HIT establishment. [In my estimate, a 33% - 50% reduction in companies, revenues and personnel in three or four years would not be an unreasonable figure - not that I would be sad to see some of them go - ed.] Mr. Fulmer continues: The HIT industry must realize this and, based on Walmart's history of capturing other markets and putting smaller competitors out of business, the captains of this industry must be quaking in their boots. These entrepreneurs will fiercely act to defend their territory, using every trick in the book [knowing the industry as well as I do, I cannot fail to agree with that assessment - ed.] Walmart is going to be severely punished. The pushback from the HIT establishment will likely consist of three phases: subversion, obstruction, and agitation for litigation (in a collusive manner) to challenge the newcomer. There will be technical, administrative and political angles. The first phase, subversion, will be the establishment's attempt to try to keep the Walmart arrangement from happening. It may occur through the press and through political means. Antitrust complaints, and a negative campaign of badmouthing and panning may occur. It will be insinuated or stated that Walmart doesn't have the required expertise, that they don't know what they're doing, among other claims to discredit, diminish and minimize the initiative. The second phase will likely be obstruction. HIT products Walmart will carry will be sabotaged by other vendors in terms of passive aggressive measures to complicate or prevent data interoperability. There may be issues such as constant "breakdowns" of interfaces, inexplicable technical glitches blamed on Walmart and its supplier, of course. Walmart's HIT products and services will be scrutinized under a microscope and deficiencies highlighted through the media and printed competitive materials. There may also be attempts to intimidate and misdirect physicians not to go with this product through the medical leadership, through back room paid sponsorship of "influential thought leaders" (as in pharma), through "detail people" (e.g., sales reps as in pharma) and other means. Hospital administrations and CIO's may also be influenced by various means to steer physicians away from this offering, perhaps to the level of marginalizing users or refusing to support this product. Finally, there will be litigation, especially regarding the inevitable medical errors that occur when this technology is pushed into small town physicians offices unused to technology of this complexity. Walmart may be shocked to find the "learned intermediary" principle suddenly and mysteriously not be applied. Why would this be a surprise, considering their immensely deep pockets and the disdain of the the left-leaning, anti-big business judiciary system? Mr. Fulmer concludes with this thought: Walmart may think of their entry into the HIT marketplace as a great business plan, but their executives may need to partake of their own medical clinics to deal with the stress the HIT industry pushback will cause. -- SS

Walmart to Become the Healthcare IT Punching Bag?

At " Wal-Mart to market Electronic Medical Records? Has Medicine Gone Bananas? " I noted the entry of Walmart into the healthcare ...

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Healthcare IT: How Much More Out of Control Can An Industry Be?

In a <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/serious-leak-of-top-secret-classified.html">prior post</a> I had quoted a Healthcare IT News report on the <a href="http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/docs-may-be-using-it-they-dont-love-it">healthcare IT user experience</a>: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">Healthcare IT News (3/10, Merrill) reported, a survey conducted by the American College of Physician Executives found "that although more physician leaders are using healthcare information technology, they still find it clunky and unresponsive to their needs." The survey of 1,000 ACPE members "revealed that the biggest source of frustration is a lack of input from physicians when designing and implementing healthcare information technology systems. Many said involving clinicians at the planning stages would pre-empt many of the problems that crop up later." One respondent noted that "systems are chosen according to administrative criteria rather than what physicians need."</blockquote> These same observations have been made by the <a href="http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12572">National Research Council</a> of the National Academies, and many others, in fact dating back decades as I've previously written on these pages, and as at my site on HIT difficulties <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/medinfo.htm">here</a> starting a decade ago. Several issues occur to me that need emphasis: <ul><li>How can it be that in 2009, 1,000 ACPE members opine that the biggest source of frustration is a lack of input from physicians when designing and implementing healthcare information technology systems but do little about this glaring defect in an industry touting itself as the savior of healthcare? </li></ul><ul><li>If the medical leadership notes that HIT is "clunky and unresponsive" to clinician needs, why are they not speaking out vociferously and seeking prolongation of the 2014 "deadline" for IT adoption?</li></ul><ul><li>If HIT is clunky and unresponsive to clinician needs, how can the technology actually do anything but make clinicians' work slower, harder (e.g., by exhausting 'cognitive capital' working around the problems) and less effective, thereby serving as an impediment to healthcare improvement and cost savings?</li></ul><ul><li>Why do grass roots "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/disruptive-innovators-at-healthcare.html">disruptive innovators</a>", not the leadership, have to take up the mantle of opposition to an industry as primitive and backwaters as to allow a lack of physician input, and a customer base of healthcare organizations that mismanage what technology they do purchase from the HIT vendors? </li></ul><ul><li>How can the HIT industry continue to develop and push such products?</li></ul><ul><li>How can healthcare organizations still purchase it (at costs of tens of million to 100+ million dollars)? </li></ul><ul><li>How can clinicians and their leadership tolerate such a situation? </li></ul><ul><li>How can our society allow the HIT industry such latitude, without regulation and accountability?</li></ul><ul><li>How did the HIT and healthcare industries manage to fall behind in talent management, causing a lack of clinician leadership and input into HIT, and perhaps worse, causing neglect and underutilization of a growing pool of biomedical informatics expertise, thus exacerbating the noted deficiency of meaningful domain expert input at the critical planning stages? (See below.) </li></ul> Only an unregulated, unaccountable, poorly led industry that is out of control - the vendors and the consumers, i.e., healthcare organizations themselves - can be producing and marketing and acquiring HIT clinical devices that are clunky and unresponsive to clinician needs for a prolonged period dating back decades. Further, if my own personal experiences and that of a group of similarly experienced colleagues are a gauge, and I believe they are, then the HIT industry's talent management, and that of the healthcare organizations who purchase and implement this technology, are similarly out of control. Case in point, one of many dating to at least 1994 when I completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in Biomedical Informatics at Yale School of Medicine: About two years ago I had interviews with Siemens Healthcare in Malvern about a HIT leadership role. I presented state of the art information on best practices in HIT, including the critical need for physician input, as well as showed them some of my own work in use at major area medical centers and overseas as well. I did not have even the courtesy of a call back or email as to their decision. Simply silence. Sadly, a decade prior I'd had excellent, frank conversations about these HIT issues with Siemens personnel at their Healthcare headquarters in Erlangen, Germany that led to a position offer (I simultaneously received an offer from Merck & Co., Inc. in the U.S. and went that route). It was clear Siemens America and its American employees did not share the kultur and engineering insights of their German counterparts. The results with other HIT vendors have been similar, such as <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/02/nextgen-and-vendordoctor-dialog-yet.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-leads-in-intellectually-challenged.html">here</a> and numerous others. Further, my CV has been on all the major job boards for years, and I have almost never been contacted by an HIT vendor. What, exactly, are their HR departments doing if formal medical informatics credentials are either invisible or ignored? Further and perhaps worse, I and similarly experienced colleagues have had difficulty even being talked to by major healthcare organizations, such as outlined <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/?loc=cases&sloc=leadership">here</a>, who appear to believe there's such a thing as "too much experience" in managing HIT investments of tens of millions of dollars and up, investments that impact patient lives. I have sprinkled this blog's pages with many such examples of vendor and provider organization talent management seemingly gone awry, a "wall" against informed clinical input in the form of shunning of those with actual clinical and biomedical informatics credentials in favor of cheaper technical labor. Such patterns should not be lightly ignored. (In actual fact, several members at House Energy & Commerce were simply incredulous when told of this issue. 'Why are hospitals and the HIT companies not actively running after people of your backgrounds?' was their question.) The health IT pioneers noted these same patterns forty years ago. As far back as 1969, EMR and Medical Informatics pioneer Donald A. B. Lindberg, M.D., now Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine at NIH, made the observation that <blockquote face="arial">"... computer engineering experts per se have virtually no idea of the real problems of medical or even hospital practice, and furthermore have consistently underestimated the complexity of the problems…in no cases can [building appropriate clinical information systems] be done, simply because they have not been defined with the physician as the continuing major contributor and user of the information" (Lindberg DAB: Computer Failures and Successes, Southern Medical Bulletin 1969;57:18-21).</blockquote> Other pioneers in EMR such as Morris Collen, Octo Barnett, and others published guidelines on how to best implement clinical IT that warned against the cornucopia of problems that plague the HIT industry today. Sadly, they did so starting in -- and perhaps even before -- the 1960's. A good source on references to the wisdom of the pioneers is "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964774305/qid=1111634652/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-5628970-2983252?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">A History of Medical Informatics in the United States 1950-1990</a>", by Morris Collen MD, section 3.4. For example, Octo Barnett's clinical IT "10 Commandments" (written in 1970) as reproduced in Collen's book on page 169, as well as 1960's and 70's material by Lindberg, Lamson, Collen, Davis, Baker, and numerous others address many of the substantial problems that plague health IT today. Yet, here we are in 2009, and we have an industry still mired in the problems noted forty years ago. How much more out of control can an industry be? The technology will only improve when those behind it have a better grasp of the complexities of medicine and end the lack of input from (and I might add, dearth of leadership by) physicians and physician informaticists. The only private response to these observations over more than a decade I've gotten is <a href="http://histalk2.com/2008/05/10/monday-morning-update-51208/">this foolishness</a> from a vendor sponsored gossip site that I: <blockquote face="arial">... don't usually have good things to say about CIOs and IT departments, so if you don’t want to start your Monday morning sputtering and flinging your coffee at your monitor, don’t click the link. He often makes harsh observations from the context of "the IT people didn’t hire me, so they must be insular fools who hate doctors" angle, but he does make an occasional point.</blockquote> I don't think the HIT vendors are fools who hate doctors, but I do believe they are indeed insular and the industry out of control, as any unregulated, unaccountable and lucrative industry might become after time - such as medicine itself prior to Flexner. Who needs smart, knowledgeable experts to reduce margins? About that insularity, at "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/05/htrea-parallel-world-of-hit.html">Earthlings and Htraesians: The Parallel Worlds of Medicine and Healthcare Information Technology</a>" I wrote: <blockquote style="font-family: arial;"> ... In trying to unify my observations, I am postulating that HIT has created for itself its own closed society with its own value system, credentialing, culture, and power stuctures, which piggyback off the hard labor of clinicians. The culture of this closed society is at great odds with that of the community it ostensibly serves, medicine. </blockquote> To summarize, healthcare is in a sad - and may I say alarming - state when its executive leaders can opine that an entire industry's products now being mandated for use by the federal government on a short time frame are "clunky and unresponsive" due to a "frustrating lack of input from clinician endusers", and such a revelation is <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/07/anechoic-effect-explained.html">anechoic</a> and relegated to a small corner of the blogosphere. -- SS

Healthcare IT: How Much More Out of Control Can An Industry Be?

In a prior post I had quoted a Healthcare IT News report on the healthcare IT user experience : Healthcare IT News (3/10, Merrill) reported...

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Celebrating Mars, then and now

Today is the 174th birthday of the famous Italian astronomer and cartographer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Schiaparelli" id="qi4y" title="Giovanni Schiaparelli">Giovanni Schiaparelli</a>. In 1877, Schiaparelli began producing some of history's most iconic planetary maps, and he single-handedly invented the naming scheme we use to identify features on Mars today. His maps are famous for their detail and beauty, as well as for showing many linear features he named canali (the Italian word for channel). <div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIuMpUAusg9ZS7aYNua3m-sAAbQGHC568a5FyBX7GB3CmHFC0Y8tqF7phqewuBWJWceYCx37qJFEroJ9C3VdZPah_z6hk3NbEyNF2KeGeAhQaF2x1Y1QJI9pk1ohw_ag6D1fui5MWByE0j/s1600-h/chgfnmvw_28d7dgkxgz_b.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312890873827468082" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIuMpUAusg9ZS7aYNua3m-sAAbQGHC568a5FyBX7GB3CmHFC0Y8tqF7phqewuBWJWceYCx37qJFEroJ9C3VdZPah_z6hk3NbEyNF2KeGeAhQaF2x1Y1QJI9pk1ohw_ag6D1fui5MWByE0j/s400/chgfnmvw_28d7dgkxgz_b.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 190px; text-align: center; width: 198px;" /></a>Martian canals, as imagined by Schiaparelli</div> A combination of translation error and overactive imaginations caused some of Schiaparelli's contemporaries, including astronomer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell" id="rep7" title="Percival Lowell">Percival Lowell</a>, to re-label these features as canals, suggesting that Mars was home to both an advanced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds" id="qt9b" title="Martian civilization">Martian civilization</a> and abundant water bodies. Of course, further study of Mars has revealed neither water bodies nor any signs of intelligent life on the planet, and Schiaparelli's 'canali' were shown to be nothing more than an optical illusion. Yet, our study of the planet has only increased, and our curiosity has only deepened, as countless images and numerous space missions have been dedicated to the Red Planet since Schiaparelli's time. But don't just take my word for it. Instead, you can fly all the way there yourself with <a href="http://earth.google.com/mars" id="aiwk" title="Mars in Google Earth 5.0">Mars in Google Earth 5.0</a>. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NUfpsObwi6RFnsk49wfnzVXmIVtHy1tfuZrEugdhGc9Id-ZuMM0tdCE39CivEE7C1SqjTUIak59bmVAbJ8E2IKG6KqUBhKHsevEz120zzBF2Pf2QyRRStuI3RzjY_71mvZ_8d79_78KG/s1600-h/ahdxcwpmmt_5fqmjjvdt_b.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312891235493260354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NUfpsObwi6RFnsk49wfnzVXmIVtHy1tfuZrEugdhGc9Id-ZuMM0tdCE39CivEE7C1SqjTUIak59bmVAbJ8E2IKG6KqUBhKHsevEz120zzBF2Pf2QyRRStuI3RzjY_71mvZ_8d79_78KG/s400/ahdxcwpmmt_5fqmjjvdt_b.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 91px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> New features released on Friday give you a glimpse into the evolution of our knowledge of Mars over the course of history. You can travel back in time to see the sketches of early astronomers like Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell in the 'Historical Maps' layer. You can also fast-forward more than a century with the 'Live from Mars' layer to view the latest images from NASA's <a href="http://themis.asu.edu/" id="rjfk" title="THEMIS">THEMIS</a> camera on board the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, sometimes just hours after NASA receives them. <a href="http://www.billnye.com/" id="gyd4" title="Bill Nye">Bill Nye</a> the Science Guy and Public Radio's <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/" id="ziq-" title="Ira Flatow">Ira Flatow</a>, host of Science Friday, have also recorded narrated tours of Mars — together they'll walk you through some of the most interesting geology in the solar system and show off mankind's most advanced robotic planetary explorers. For more information about the new features added to Mars in Google Earth, check out the <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/" id="bn4:" title="LatLong Blog">Google LatLong Blog</a>, or view the tutorial video below. To explore Mars on your own, <a href="http://earth.google.com/mars" id="qqut" title="download Google Earth 5.0">download Google Earth 5.0</a>. <object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GjcCF6cIlPw&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GjcCF6cIlPw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="295" width="480"></embed></object> Posted by Noel Gorelick, Chief Extraterrestrial Observer

Celebrating Mars, then and now

Today is the 174th birthday of the famous Italian astronomer and cartographer Giovanni Schiaparelli . In 1877, Schiaparelli began producing...

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The magic number

Here at Google, we're getting ready to celebrate <a href="http://www.piday.org/">Pi Day</a>, which culminates tomorrow, March 14 at 1:59pm, a date and time that correspond to the first six digits of pi: 3.14159. (Some people celebrate at 1:59am.) Of course, since pi is a member of a select group of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number">irrational numbers</a>, meaning they can't be expressed as a fraction, there are an infinite number of digits in pi. You can even set a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=recite+pi+world+record">world record</a> for reciting pi from memory if you have the spare brain cells to remember 100,000 or so digits. Odds are, you certainly won't remember the one trillion digits past the decimal point that computers have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_computation_of_%CF%80">calculated</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi">What is pi</a>, anyway? It's a mathematical constant representing the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. It sounds abstract, but there's a real-world example right under your feet: the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=circumference+of+the+earth">circumference of the earth</a> equals the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=diameter+of+the+earth+times+pi">diameter of the earth times pi</a>. And pi is all over the place in math, science and engineering. It's even part of Einstein's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations">theory of relativity</a>, which is fitting since March 14 also happens to be <a href="http://www.google.com/logos/einstein.gif">Einstein's</a> <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=when+is+einstein%27s+birthday">birthday</a>. Maybe pi's essential place in our world is why every March around Pi Day searches for [pi] <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=pi&cmpt=q">spike upwards</a>. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMo2XYySz3tJrQYc3zbvSJMMGGxMN2FWjypyYTzwpsMwatV6LjykEjaUol4AsZL06g-PdnvFmv6t4GxB2fAC8sX2bIEm2sSeTX9hvPh46KFnBDHbvi2ek-0mhUh3aUz-uahNumg_gh463/s1600-h/pi+march.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312745992947083346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMo2XYySz3tJrQYc3zbvSJMMGGxMN2FWjypyYTzwpsMwatV6LjykEjaUol4AsZL06g-PdnvFmv6t4GxB2fAC8sX2bIEm2sSeTX9hvPh46KFnBDHbvi2ek-0mhUh3aUz-uahNumg_gh463/s400/pi+march.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 148px;" /></a>A quick <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+celebrate+pi+day&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">Google search</a> reveals a lot of options for celebrating this "nerd holiday." For starters, you could do some <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=1+/+%28pi+*+phi+/+speed+of+light+*+planck%27s+constant+/+e+*+the+golden+ratio%29">math</a> (now that's an irrational number!). If you're at the <a href="http://press.exploratorium.edu/pi-day-march-2009/">Exploratorium in San Francisco</a>, where Pi Day began in 1987, you might be circumnavigating a "Pi Shrine" or singing a Pi Day song. Others suggest watching the movie π or going on a "pi run" (you can stop at 3.14 miles). You can hold your own pi recitation contest, or mix it up and make it tougher by asking people to recite <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=pi+in+binary">pi in binary</a> (hint: it's a lot of ones and zeros). Finally, don't forget the best part of Pi Day: eating pie! Either <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=pie+recipes">make your own</a>, or, if you're too dizzy to bake after circumnavigating Pi Shrines all day, find one to buy <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=pie">nearby</a>. I'll have apple. Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog team

The magic number

Here at Google, we're getting ready to celebrate Pi Day , which culminates tomorrow, March 14 at 1:59pm, a date and time that correspond...

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Introduction to the ad auction

(Cross-posted from the <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/03/introduction-to-ad-auction.html">Inside AdWords Blog</a>) When we go to conferences or read posts in forums, we find that advertisers sometimes know more about advanced features than about the basics of how AdWords works. So, we've decided to take some time to get back to basics and talk about how the AdWords auction actually works. To help you, we've brought along our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, to walk you through the auction and explain how your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid and <a href="http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215">Quality Score</a> determine how much you actually pay for an ad click on Google's search results pages. When people think of an auction, they often think of a prize being sold for the highest bid. But the AdWords auction works a little differently, where the winner only pays the minimum amount necessary to maintain their position on the page. That means you'll only pay the minimum necessary to beat the person below you. In fact, our quality-based pricing system ensures that you'll often pay less than your maximum bid. How exactly does this work? We'll leave that to Hal to explain. <object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/K7l0a2PVhPQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/K7l0a2PVhPQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="295" width="480"></embed></object> If you have trouble viewing this video, you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7l0a2PVhPQ">watch it here</a>. Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Introduction to the ad auction

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog ) When we go to conferences or read posts in forums, we find that advertisers sometimes know more...

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