District 9 is a fantastic science fiction movie set in an alternative future where a group of alien refugees have settled in South Africa. Unlike most alien invasion films, the aliens in District 9 are treated as outcasts, put into concentration camps, and experimented on by corporations hoping to mine their weapons technology for financial gain.

Science and technology play a big part in the film, and while scientists and corporations are clearly the antagonists, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) has launched an interesting blog that focuses on the real-life science behind film. District9facts.com offers some loose blog posts, answers questions about the film, and attempts to connect the science of D-9 to the promise of the biotechnology industry.

BIO also maintains a similar site with the same focus for the Eleventh Hour TV show: eleventhhourfacts.com.

Even though scientists and corporations are usually cast as “the baddies” in science fiction movies, it’s interesting to see biotech industry groups leveraging their popularity to promise the promise of science. The EleventhHourFacts.com site provides a scientific fact guide for every episode—providing real-life information on topics ranging from cloning to biosafety to fashion-induced violence.

The biotech and pharmaceutical industries face a number of complex public relations problems. While very few industries hold as much promise for our future, general public fear, perceived corporate greed, and the nefarious nature of new science lead to them being portrayed as bad guys (in movies and in real-life). I think it’s interesting and smart for industry groups to look to Hollywood as a new platform to get the real messages out there in an engaging and light-hearted way.

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Twitter….seemingly so much promise, but for those of us who aren’t social media experts…what’s the real deal?

Pear Analytics released a new study on Twitter usage trends. They tracked 2,000 tweets over a 2-week period and then categorized them into six usage buckets: news tweets, spam, self-promotion (my favorite), pointless babble, conversational tweets, and pass-along value. Tweets containing “RT” were categorized as “pass along”, and those using “@” were considered conversational.

The study revealed that over two thirds of tracked tweets were either “pointless babble” or “conversational”. I suppose this isn’t too surprising. However, the study found that news-related tweets constituted the smallest category; less than 4% of tweets are news-related.

The study is provided in whitepaper format on Pear’s website and is worth a read. There are also some interesting findings on user demographics and the overall reach of Twitter.

I’ve been a Twitter user for a couple of years now. My usage is casual at best. Maybe I’ll check once or twice a day and perhaps post a handful of tweets a week. I’ve never really used it for promotion, nor have I made any effort to recruit followers. I find it useful for tracking news and updates on industries I’m interested in—hash tags are the most useful feature to me. But getting to the good stuff requires a lot of sifting. Several months ago I removed all the so-called “social media experts” from my follow list and the results were remarkable. It’s amazing how such a small group of power-users can create so much useless static.

Check out the visualization below (from Gizmodo). Despite the hype and promise, it’s easy to make the case that Twitter has become a soapbox for a select group of loud mouths. This statistic is likely one that keeps the Twitter founders up at night—it points to unsustainable business model.

The Pear Analytics study is one of several that have clearly illustrated that Twitter provides value in terms of reach, trend-tracking, and marketing. However, the majority of content is either pointless or conversational and likely not of interest to the largest Twitter population: relatively passive users like me. The study highlighted a new service called Philtro that uses preferences and complex algorithms to serve up only the Tweets that you real care about—supposedly leaving the junk behind.

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Guess this thing took three years to build…

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Current research indicates that nearly 70% of physicians use a PDA or smartphone.

Check out this quick presentation on mobile applications developed by the team at RDVO:

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Manhattan Research recently released a new report that highlights the role that search plays in online healthcare.

Some interesting highlights:

• Consumers who visit product sites are nearly three times more likely than the average US adult to request prescriptions by name from their doctors.
• When consumers use search engines for pharmaceutical or health information online, they are most likely to search by the name of a specific condition/disease or the name of a specific product.
• The most common situation for which they use a search engine for this purpose is when they have symptoms for a condition.

Worth a look…

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