Construction sector insolvencies jump by ... - Global Daily Business

Figures fuel fears for industry already in recession as cuts in public spending take effect

Experts warned on Monday that the construction industry could sink deeper into recession as the number of companies unable to pay their debts rose by nearly a fifth in the last quarter, the first rise in two years.

Insolvencies in the construction sector climbed by 19% to 948 in the first three months of the year from 796 in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy.

It is the first quarterly rise in insolvencies since early 2009 and has stoked fears of another prolonged downturn for the sector. The figures show that the number of construction companies going bust had fallen steadily every quarter since the 1,209 insolvencies at the start of 2009, when Britain was mired in recession.

Construction was a key industry driving growth during the boom years up to 2007, along with financial services. While banks and other City firms have recovered strongly over the last two years, construction firms have continued to shed jobs and report low levels of business activity. Although the overall economy is growing, construction shrank in the last two quarters, according to government figures.

A monthly survey for May out on Thursday is expected to show a slight recovery in the sector?s health after property companies reported strong demand for office building in London and the south-east.

The CIPS/Markit survey of construction company purchasing managers dropped to 53.3 points in April, from 56.4 in March, and closer to the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction.

The construction industry had been kept afloat by big public-sector projects but the government is now cutting back sharply as part of its austerity measures.

Wilkins Kennedy said the cancellation of public sector building programmes such as Building Schools for the Future, has driven this rise in the number of construction firms going bust.

Anthony Cork, director at Wilkins Kennedy, said: ?The government has slashed capital spending on infrastructure across the board in order to plug the deficit and that has pushed the construction sector into a double dip. Fiscal stimulus at the start of the recession had included substantial infrastructure projects that keep the construction sector?s head above water. But that support is now being withdrawn.

?The question now is how quickly private-sector construction work will be able to pick up the slack left by the public sector. So far this has not happened.?

Among those that have fallen into administration in recent months are the property repair and maintenance group Rok; Carvill Group, one of Northern Ireland?s leading construction companies; Coventry groundworks contractor CJ? Haughey; John Laing Partnership, the former social housing unit spun off from John Laing Group in 2002; and social housing group Connaught last September.

Experts estimate that public-sector spending on construction represents about 40% of the industry?s turnover. The government is committed to halving this, slashing more than ?90bn of capital spending between now and 2014. Research from the construction data group Barbour ABI reveals that the value of contracts awarded for construction projects fell to just ?21bn in the year to May 2011, down from ?34.6bn on the previous year.

While the banks failed to meet their lending targets in the first quarter, ? lending to small firms fell more than ?2bn short of targets set by the Treasury as part of the Project Merlin deal struck in February ? it appears that the situation has improved more recently.

At the same time, there are signs that lending to small and medium-sized companies has improved in the second quarter, albeit with credit costs remaining high, according to the manufacturers? lobby the EEF. A survey of almost 500 companies by the EEF about 18 months into the recovery showed just as many small companies reported an increase in the availability of new lines of borrowing over the past two months as reported a decrease. This compared with a balance of -11% in the previous quarter.

There was a similar improvement among mid-sized companies. For existing credit facilities the balance of companies reporting decreased availability dropped from 11% to 7% among manufacturers.

However, rising costs remain a challenge. While fewer companies reported rising rates on existing loans, a balance of 22% reported an increase in the overall cost of credit over the past two months. On new lines of borrowing a balance of 28% reported an increase in the overall cost.

Lee Hopley, EEF chief economist, said: ?For the first time since the recession ended, manufacturers are reporting improving access to finance. Hopefully, this will translate into better news on new lending in the coming months. But availability is only part of the story and we also need to see costs coming down.?

She added: ?Ensuring companies have access to the finance needed to invest and grow is critical for the recovery. We need to see a sustained improvement before concluding that the actions taken by banks and government are bearing fruit and that no further measures are required.?

Julia Kollewe

guardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/31/construction-industry-danger-recession

Source: http://globaldailybusiness.com/business-news/4422-construction-sector-insolvencies-jump-by-nearly-a-fifth/

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Doubts Rise Over Virus As Cause Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Whittemore Peterson Institute

XMRV, a mouse virus, may be an artifact of laboratory experiments rather than the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Two new studies may not be the final nails in the coffin of the hypothesis that a mouse retrovirus called XMRV causes chronic fatigue syndrome. But the hammering is certainly getting louder.

The latest studies, using very different approaches, present new evidence that XMRV was inadvertently created in a laboratory five years ago, and then found its way as a contaminant into a series of experiments.

As a result, some scientists, the skeptics say, were fooled into thinking they had discovered an exotic new virus that often seemed to show up in the blood of patients suffering from chronic fatigue.

The new studies "essentially close the door on XMRV as a cause of human disease," says John Coffin of Tufts University, an expert on retroviruses and coauthor of one of the new papers. No fewer than 11 studies have now failed to support the 2009 claim that XMRV is a probable cause of CFS.

?

But Judy Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Nevada, the leading proponent of XMRV as the cause of chronic fatigue, insists the issue isn't settled.

Mikovits has refused to withdraw her 2009 paper at the request of the editors of Science, which published it, saying that would be premature in light of a planned National Institutes of Health study on XMRV. So the journal has published an "expression of concern" cautioning scientists that the initial paper is under a cloud.

Meanwhile, the hypothesis has had real-world consequences. Because of the fear that a new virus might be circulating, people with a history of chronic fatigue have been barred from giving blood in the United States, Canada and other countries. The U.S. government has embarked on an effort to determine if XMRV is a threat to the safety of the blood supply.

And some doctors have reportedly begun prescribing antiretroviral drugs to CFS patients in the hope that will cure the debilitating ailment, which is thought to affect at least a million Americans.

The new papers, published online by Science, undermine the XMRV claim in various ways.

A team led by scientists at the National Cancer Institute did some detective work on how XMRV arose in the first place. That happened back in 1996, when researchers injected cells from human prostate cancer tumors into mice ? a common way of growing more cells for study.

When those researchers discovered a virus in human prostate tumors, they thought it had come from the cancer cells. But now, NCI-led researchers report that XMRV was not in the original cancer cells. It popped up when two proto-viruses that were present in the laboratory mice genetically combined to create XMRV, infecting the human cancer cells.

The chance that this genetic event could have occurred independently ? outside the lab mice ? is about one in a trillion, the NCI scientists say.

So how did XMRV get into other studies, years later, involving blood samples from chronic fatigue patients?

That's not entirely clear, but the NCI researchers and others at the University of California, San Francisco are convinced it was by contamination ? either of laboratory equipment or of reagents, chemicals used to detect the presence of the virus. The UCSF group found mouse DNA similar to those in XMRV in 9 out of 17 reagents it tested.

Most important, the UCSF researchers obtained fresh blood samples from 61 chronic fatigue patients who had been treated by Nevada chronic fatigue specialist Dan Peterson ? the same patients studied in the 2009 paper that found a strong association between the virus and the disease.

Forty-three of the 61 patients had previously tested positive for XMRV. But when the UCSF group retested them, looking for the virus, pieces of the virus or antibodies to the virus ? the results were all negative.

Moreover, the UCSF group found that XMRV and similar viruses "are fully or partially inactivated" by humans' immune systems, "suggesting that these viruses could not readily establish a human infection."

The San Francisco researchers left the door open to the possibility that a virus or other infectious agent could lie behind chronic fatigue, since some studies have found CFS patients have activated immune systems.

In fact, last August scientists at the NIH, the FDA and Harvard detected another virus, PMLV, in the blood of patients with chronic fatigue. But it's not clear where that claim now stands, since the new NCI paper found no evidence of the virus type that PMLV belongs to.

The new papers are a disappointment to the sizable community of chronic fatigue sufferers, who were ecstatic over the possibility that scientists seemed to have discovered a cause for their mysterious malady. That engendered hope that treatments might follow.

The CFIDS Association has issued a statement about the new studies that has a resigned tone. "The results of NIH-supported research into XMRV will provide answers about whether XMRV is a route to better care," the association says. "We will support the outcome of those studies, whichever way they lead."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/05/31/136828197/doubts-rise-over-virus-as-cause-of-chronic-fatigue-syndrome?ft=1&f=1024

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Jobs WWDC keynote to highlight Mac OS X Lion, iCloud

May 31, 2011

With less than a week to go before the kickoff of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, you may have been looking at the schedule and scratching your head. Would there be a keynote? Who would be hosting? Consider your concerns assuaged, as Apple on Tuesday announced that its conference will begin with a keynote by CEO Steve Jobs on Monday, June 6, at 10 a.m. Pacific. And if that's not enough, Apple's press release also revealed that the company will be discussing iCloud, its forthcoming cloud services offering.

Jobs has been on?indefinite medical leave from Apple since January, but that hasn't stopped him from appearing on stage; in March, he?headlined the iPad 2 announcement.?But the Apple CEO won't be alone on stage next week. As with previous WWDC keynotes, he'll be accompanied by a team of the company's executives -- we'd guess folks like Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, and the newly promoted Craig Federighi for sure.

[ Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]

In addition to the tantalizing iCloud, which many have speculated will feature a cloud-music component to compete with recent offerings from Amazon and Google, the WWDC keynote will also focus on two major milestones: Mac OS X Lion, which we first saw previewed back in October, and iOS 5, which has so far been kept tightly under wraps, but which many hope will bring much-needed improvements like better notifications and other subtler changes to the mobile operating system.

All told, it's a spate of interesting topics that are bound to be significant for users of all Apple products, so you can bet your bottom dollar that Macworld will be on hand to bring you live coverage of the keynote event, followed by plenty of analysis of Apple's announcements.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/jobs-wwdc-keynote-highlight-mac-os-x-lion-icloud-581

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How to manage arthritis in neck ? Article Xplosion

Would you like to know how I came to have arthritis in neck? I was 7 years old. Standing back I evaluated the scene. I felt proud as I just had floated over a fence made of wire about three feet high. That was not a challenge for me. So, now I tied a rope between two of the posts thus making the height to clear tall as I was. Slowly I started off, gradually increased my speed and leaped for the moon. I had an abrupt call to the real world. My neck caught the rope and I was launched like a canon ball back to the ground.

Being young and able to bounce back, I picked myself off the ground, dusted myself off and went about my business. That was a costly mistake that I would not realize how costly until years later. In jumping for the moon I took the natural curve out of my neck and developed what is called a straight neck or military neck that led to me having arthritis in neck. This all happened about five decades ago.

Upon reaching 30 years of age a chiropractor diagnosed me with whiplash, straight or military neck, boo hoo. My chiropractor informed me that this was not fixable, but he could stop the advancement of the straight neck. He told me I could die by the time I was 60. Upon turning 58 years-old those seemingly recurring words that had terrorized me for some 28 years finally came to a climax.

Not long ago, I began to experience pain in my neck. When I would go to bed at night I would feel needle like sensations in the back of my neck. In order to get relief I had to sleep on my back in a fixed position. I began doing neck exercises and that was helpful. In distress, I opted to go and see a chiropractor again. Upon taking x-rays he told me that I had developed spurs on the vertebrae of my neck and as a result arthritis had set in. He adjustmented me and told me that he could not "heal me" only stop the advancement of the military neck. I had two treatments but felt that it was doing little good. His plan was to give me two treatments per week for a month, then one treatment per week the second month and thereafter a treatment per month.

I search the Internet high and low to find some miraculous cure for straight neck. No cure-all was found. Yet, I did find two web sites that alluded to getting the curve back into the neck. I was blown away by one of them. So, rather than going to the chiropractor two times a week for the first month, I made an investment in a neck straightener device for the cost of two visits to the chiropractor. Following directions, using this device daily for a few minutes resulted in me gradually getting the curve back in my neck. However, more important than that, I had gain freedom from neck pain.

Now, the pain I had was torturous. I would moan and groan with heavy sighs throughout the day. Sleep fled from me. In fact, I had to sleep in a certain position on my back. I was unable to sleep on my sides. After six months of using this device my pain decreased from a 10 to a 3. After a year my neck pain disappeared completely. I am still using the device 2 or 3 times a week to keep the neck pain from ever returning. If you have had whiplash, stiff neck, straight neck or military neck do yourself a favor and check out this neck straightener device. The benefits I have received is a reversing of my arthritis in the neck and a returning of the natural curve in the neck. Hurrah, my what a relief it is.

Arthritis in Neck with Neck and Headache Relief

Source: http://articlexplosion.net/2011/05/30/how-to-manage-arthritis-in-neck/

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