E-cigarette tech takesoff as regulation looms
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Just a few years
ago, early adopters of e-cigarettes got
their fix by clumsily screwing together
a small battery and a plastic cartridge
containing cotton soaked with nicotine.
Now, the battery-powered contraptions
have computer chips to regulate puffs
and temperature, track usage, talk to
other electronic devices and even blink
when "vapers" are near each other.
Federal officials say the technology
race could make creating standards the
devices, which heat a liquid to create
vapor rather than burning tobacco,
more difficult in the future. Unlike
traditional smokes that are simply
chopped tobacco rolled in paper with a
filter, e-cigarettes come in many
shapes and sizes and the technological
changes only make regulating them
more of a headache.
At the same time, a rapidly growing
market for e-cigarettes and the
possibility that the devices could be
safer than regular cigarettes have
some in the industry worried that
regulation that's too heavy-handed
would stifle the technological innovation
— and their businesses.
"I think it's fair to say that there will
always be some degree of a gap
between (data) and the latest
innovations," Mitch Zeller, director of
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's
Center for Tobacco Products, said in a
recent interview with The Associated
Press. "But that's the beauty of
regulation because over time, regulation
closes that gap. ... We will get to a point
where new products have to come
through us first."
It's unclear how quickly regulation will
proceed, but the FDA seems to be
taking a deliberate approach.
In April, the FDA for the first time
proposed a set of regulations for e-
cigarettes, including banning sales to
minors and requiring health warning
labels, as well as approving new
products. The agency has said its
proposal sets a foundation for
regulating the products but the rules
wouldn't immediately ban the wide array
of flavors or styles of e-cigarettes or
curb marketing on places like TV.
The agency has scheduled a two-day
public meeting beginning Wednesday to
discuss the science surrounding e-
cigarettes. Late last month, House
Speaker John Boehner joined House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and
House Energy and Commerce Chairman
Fred Upton in writing to federal officials
raising concerns about FDA's regulation
of e-cigarettes, saying the proposed
rules would "impede innovation and
impose unnecessary regulatory
burdens" on the agency and the
industry.
Smokers like e-cigarettes because the
nicotine-infused vapor looks like smoke
but doesn't contain the thousands of
chemicals, tar or odor of regular
cigarettes. Some, known as "cig-a-likes,"
look like traditional cigarettes and use
sealed cartridges that hold liquid
nicotine. Others have empty
compartments or tanks that users can
fill their own liquid. Users also can buy
different batteries and pieces to build
their own e-cigarette.
Ultimately the FDA hopes to require e-
cigarette makers to apply for approval
for their products before they can be
sold.
That worries e-cigarette makers.
"There's a balance to be found between
being protective enough and on the
other hand not being too complicated
for players in the market to innovate
and offer new products," said Alexandre
Prot, CEO of Smokio, which sells an
electronic cigarette or vaporizer that
connects to a smartphone via
Bluetooth to track puffs, tally cost
savings and possible health benefits
from switching from regular cigarettes,
and controls the battery power of the
device, which regulates the amount of
vapor produced. Smokio retails for
about $80 depending on the model, and
the company is closing in on selling
10,000 units by the end of the year.
The nation's biggest tobacco companies,
which have also started selling e-
cigarettes, boast their own technology.
Reynolds American Inc.'s Vuse-brand
electronic cigarette contains a
microprocessor and memory chip that
regulate the power to heat the liquid
nicotine for what the company calls the
"perfect puff." Altria Group Inc.'s
MarkTen has four holes on the
mouthpiece that that make the puffs
more closely resemble a traditional
cigarette. Lorillard Inc.'s Blu e-cig brand
offers a special carrying case that
lights up when near another vaper or
alerts the user when near a store that
sells replacement cartridges.
Another company is marketing an e-
cigarette that has a built-in Bluetooth
speaker and microphone to make and
receive phone calls as well as listen to
music, and others are selling vaporizers
that can either use liquid nicotine or
ground-up tobacco or herbs.
Vaporizers are also commonly used for
marijuana.
Other advances foreshadowed in U.S.
Patent Office filings suggest a pay-as-
you-puff feature where users could
buy time credits on the Internet and
then sync an e-cigarette via USB to
control how much they can smoke,
possibly as a way to cut down.
Connecting the device to the computer
also would allow users to monitor how
much they use, perform maintenance
and automatically order additional liquid
or tobacco.
And with several hundred brands in the
market, technology is a way to grab
vapers' attention and will continue to
evolve, Cowen analyst Vivien Azer said.
"We are far from the end of the
innovation life-cycle as it relates to e-
cigarettes," Azer said. "Manufacturers
continue to innovate, and rightly so."
While evaluating e-cigarettes is "sort of
a new frontier for FDA," the agency
already has the expertise to regulate
more advanced technology such as
pacemakers, dialysis machines and MRI
machines, said Dr. Daniel Schultz, a
regulatory consultant with Greenleaf
Health LLC and former director of the
FDA's Center for Devices and
Radiological Health.
"If they can regulate all those things, I
daresay that they can regulate an
electronic cigarette."
On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
> The PlayStation gaming console wrapped
> up its second decade on Wednesday, and
> Sony celebrated by looking to the past.
> The Japanese tech giant announced that a
> limited edition 20th Anniversary
> PlayStation 4 will be released soon. The
> console will be gray, like the first
> PlayStation released December 3, 1994 in
> Japan. It will include other imagery like the
> iconic four-color PlayStation logo that
> harks back to the system's history.
> "The mid-'90s were an exciting time for
> game developers, driven by the explosion
> of powerful but affordable 3-D graphics
> rendering hardware and the birth of many
> young and adventurous development
> studios," Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony
> Computer Entertainment Worldwide
> Studios, wrote in the post on the
> PlayStation blog. "The original PlayStation
> was meant to embody that sense of
> adventure and discovery, that sense that
> anything was possible."
> The PlayStation sold a then unheard-of
> 100,000 units in its first weekend and hit 1
> million units in six months, according to
> Sony.
> Only 12,300 units of the 20th Anniversary
> PS4 will be released, according to a video
> on the blog post. Pre-orders will begin
> Saturday, and details about how to vie for
> one of the handful of slots will come
> during a keynote presentation from
> PlayStation Experience, a fan and
> developer expo being held in Las Vegas.
> The keynote will be Saturday at 1 pm ET.
> To celebrate the 20th anniversary, we
> assembled a gallery of images of the
> PlayStation, and the people who love it,
> from the past two decades.
>
> On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bond is back and we're pleased to have
>> all of the details of the new movie.
>> Director Sam Mendes revealed the
>> name and cast of the new movie,
>> Spectre, during a live event held at
>> London's Pinewood Studios.
>> The movie is set to be released on 6th
>> November 2015. Avid fans will know
>> Spectre stands for: Special Executive
>> for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism,
>> Revenge and Extortion,
>
>
>> On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Gangnam Style hit music video by
>>> South Korean singer, PSY, has exceeded
>>> YouTube's view limit, prompting
>>> YouTube to upgrade its counter.
>>> The video which was released in 2012,
>>> was announced to be its most watched
>>> ever and has been viewed more than
>>> 2,147,483,647 times. YouTube has now
>>> changed the maximum view limit to
>>> 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or more
>>> than nine quintillion.
>>> On December 1, YouTube posted a
>>> statement saying: "We never thought a
>>> video would be watched in numbers
>>> greater than a 32-bit integer… but
>>> that was before we met Psy."
>>> Meanwhile, how do you say
>>> 9,223,372,036,854,775,808? That's
>>> over a quadrillion, over a trillion, and
>>> over a billion.
>
>
>>> On 12/4/14, Joseph Ogunlowo <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Kim K has been named the "Most Searched
>>>> Person of 2014″, beating last year's winner,
>>>> Beyonce. 2014 was definitely the year of the 34
>>>> year old reality star with buzz-worthy events like
>>>> her wedding to Kanye, her Vogue cover and
>>>> most recently her 'break the internet' naked pics
>>>> for Paper magazine.
>>>> Beyonce comes second, while Miley Cyrus and
>>>> Katy Perry come 3rd and 4th respectively. See
>>>> the top ten most searched personalities of 2014
>>>> after the cut...
>>>> 1. Kim Kardashian
>>>> 2. Beyonce Knowles
>>>> 3. Miley Cyrus
>>>> 4. Katy Perry
>>>> 5. Justin Bieber
>>>> 6. Joan Rivers
>>>> 7. Jennifer Lopez
>>>> 8. Kendall Jenner
>>>> 9. Kaley Cuoco
>>>> 10. Robin Williams
>
>
>>>> On 12/3/14, Joseph Ogunlowo <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> At the Pioneers Festival in Vienna, a
>>>>> Slovakian startup called AeroMobil unveiled
>>>>> the thing that we have all been dreaming
>>>>> about since we saw that first episode of the
>>>>> Jetsons while still wearing diapers: The first
>>>>> flying car. It's here. It's real. And it's
>>>>> spectacular.
>>>>> According to Venturebeat, the company
>>>>> took the wraps off AeroMobil 3.0, the latest
>>>>> iteration of its flying car that has been in
>>>>> development for almost 25 years.
>>>>> "We believe personal transportation is about
>>>>> to change forever," said AeroMobil chief
>>>>> executive Juraj Vaculik at a press
>>>>> conference. "We think it's time to make
>>>>> transportation more emotional and more
>>>>> personal."
>>>>> The car was designed by Stefan Klein,
>>>>> founder and head of the Department of
>>>>> Transport Design at the Academy of Fine
>>>>> Arts in Slovakia. Klein had been tinkering
>>>>> with the concept as far back as 1989.
>>>>> Image
>>>>> The car needs very little runway to take off,
>>>>> and it can be refueled at any standard gas
>>>>> station when the wings are retracted.
>>>>> AeroMobil believes it will be attractive for
>>>>> countries that don't have billions of dollars
>>>>> to spend building a modern transportation
>>>>> infrastructure.
>>>>> The body is built from advanced composite
>>>>> materials that keep it lightweight but also
>>>>> durable. Under the hood, it has autopilot
>>>>> and an advanced parachute deployment
>>>>> system. The cockpit can carry two people,
>>>>> and in the air the flying car can reach top
>>>>> speeds of 200 km/h. It has a 27-foot
>>>>> wingspan and is 19.7 feet long.
>>>>> No word on the price tag.
>
>>>>> On 12/3/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> According to reports Angelina Jolie's black
>>>>>> SUV car slipped on a wet road, slid into the
>>>>>> curb with extreme force, popping two tires,
>>>>>> almost causing the driver to lose control of
>>>>>> the vehicle.
>>>>>> The actress was heading home in a
>>>>>> chauffeured black SUV from Writers' Guild
>>>>>> Theater, when the car hit the curb.
>>>>>> According to an eyewitness (who spoke ti
>>>>>> X17 Online): "The car slammed into the
>>>>>> curb at a significant speed. Angelina must
>>>>>> have wondered if they hit another car. It
>>>>>> was pretty bad -- the tire exploded and it's
>>>>>> amazing nothing worse happened to the
>>>>>> car. I wouldn't be surprised if she has
>>>>>> whiplash."
>>>>>> Angelina reportedly stayed in the car after
>>>>>> the incident and was later picked up, not
>>>>>> by Brad pitt, but by another driver from the
>>>>>> same car service.
>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>>>>>> 12/03/2014 10:47:00 am
>
>
>
>
>>> --
>>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>>> 12/07/2014 01:50:00 am
>
>
>> --
>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>> 12/07/2014 03:24:00 am
>
>
> --
> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
> 12/07/2014 06:03:00 am
>
ago, early adopters of e-cigarettes got
their fix by clumsily screwing together
a small battery and a plastic cartridge
containing cotton soaked with nicotine.
Now, the battery-powered contraptions
have computer chips to regulate puffs
and temperature, track usage, talk to
other electronic devices and even blink
when "vapers" are near each other.
Federal officials say the technology
race could make creating standards the
devices, which heat a liquid to create
vapor rather than burning tobacco,
more difficult in the future. Unlike
traditional smokes that are simply
chopped tobacco rolled in paper with a
filter, e-cigarettes come in many
shapes and sizes and the technological
changes only make regulating them
more of a headache.
At the same time, a rapidly growing
market for e-cigarettes and the
possibility that the devices could be
safer than regular cigarettes have
some in the industry worried that
regulation that's too heavy-handed
would stifle the technological innovation
— and their businesses.
"I think it's fair to say that there will
always be some degree of a gap
between (data) and the latest
innovations," Mitch Zeller, director of
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's
Center for Tobacco Products, said in a
recent interview with The Associated
Press. "But that's the beauty of
regulation because over time, regulation
closes that gap. ... We will get to a point
where new products have to come
through us first."
It's unclear how quickly regulation will
proceed, but the FDA seems to be
taking a deliberate approach.
In April, the FDA for the first time
proposed a set of regulations for e-
cigarettes, including banning sales to
minors and requiring health warning
labels, as well as approving new
products. The agency has said its
proposal sets a foundation for
regulating the products but the rules
wouldn't immediately ban the wide array
of flavors or styles of e-cigarettes or
curb marketing on places like TV.
The agency has scheduled a two-day
public meeting beginning Wednesday to
discuss the science surrounding e-
cigarettes. Late last month, House
Speaker John Boehner joined House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and
House Energy and Commerce Chairman
Fred Upton in writing to federal officials
raising concerns about FDA's regulation
of e-cigarettes, saying the proposed
rules would "impede innovation and
impose unnecessary regulatory
burdens" on the agency and the
industry.
Smokers like e-cigarettes because the
nicotine-infused vapor looks like smoke
but doesn't contain the thousands of
chemicals, tar or odor of regular
cigarettes. Some, known as "cig-a-likes,"
look like traditional cigarettes and use
sealed cartridges that hold liquid
nicotine. Others have empty
compartments or tanks that users can
fill their own liquid. Users also can buy
different batteries and pieces to build
their own e-cigarette.
Ultimately the FDA hopes to require e-
cigarette makers to apply for approval
for their products before they can be
sold.
That worries e-cigarette makers.
"There's a balance to be found between
being protective enough and on the
other hand not being too complicated
for players in the market to innovate
and offer new products," said Alexandre
Prot, CEO of Smokio, which sells an
electronic cigarette or vaporizer that
connects to a smartphone via
Bluetooth to track puffs, tally cost
savings and possible health benefits
from switching from regular cigarettes,
and controls the battery power of the
device, which regulates the amount of
vapor produced. Smokio retails for
about $80 depending on the model, and
the company is closing in on selling
10,000 units by the end of the year.
The nation's biggest tobacco companies,
which have also started selling e-
cigarettes, boast their own technology.
Reynolds American Inc.'s Vuse-brand
electronic cigarette contains a
microprocessor and memory chip that
regulate the power to heat the liquid
nicotine for what the company calls the
"perfect puff." Altria Group Inc.'s
MarkTen has four holes on the
mouthpiece that that make the puffs
more closely resemble a traditional
cigarette. Lorillard Inc.'s Blu e-cig brand
offers a special carrying case that
lights up when near another vaper or
alerts the user when near a store that
sells replacement cartridges.
Another company is marketing an e-
cigarette that has a built-in Bluetooth
speaker and microphone to make and
receive phone calls as well as listen to
music, and others are selling vaporizers
that can either use liquid nicotine or
ground-up tobacco or herbs.
Vaporizers are also commonly used for
marijuana.
Other advances foreshadowed in U.S.
Patent Office filings suggest a pay-as-
you-puff feature where users could
buy time credits on the Internet and
then sync an e-cigarette via USB to
control how much they can smoke,
possibly as a way to cut down.
Connecting the device to the computer
also would allow users to monitor how
much they use, perform maintenance
and automatically order additional liquid
or tobacco.
And with several hundred brands in the
market, technology is a way to grab
vapers' attention and will continue to
evolve, Cowen analyst Vivien Azer said.
"We are far from the end of the
innovation life-cycle as it relates to e-
cigarettes," Azer said. "Manufacturers
continue to innovate, and rightly so."
While evaluating e-cigarettes is "sort of
a new frontier for FDA," the agency
already has the expertise to regulate
more advanced technology such as
pacemakers, dialysis machines and MRI
machines, said Dr. Daniel Schultz, a
regulatory consultant with Greenleaf
Health LLC and former director of the
FDA's Center for Devices and
Radiological Health.
"If they can regulate all those things, I
daresay that they can regulate an
electronic cigarette."
On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
> The PlayStation gaming console wrapped
> up its second decade on Wednesday, and
> Sony celebrated by looking to the past.
> The Japanese tech giant announced that a
> limited edition 20th Anniversary
> PlayStation 4 will be released soon. The
> console will be gray, like the first
> PlayStation released December 3, 1994 in
> Japan. It will include other imagery like the
> iconic four-color PlayStation logo that
> harks back to the system's history.
> "The mid-'90s were an exciting time for
> game developers, driven by the explosion
> of powerful but affordable 3-D graphics
> rendering hardware and the birth of many
> young and adventurous development
> studios," Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony
> Computer Entertainment Worldwide
> Studios, wrote in the post on the
> PlayStation blog. "The original PlayStation
> was meant to embody that sense of
> adventure and discovery, that sense that
> anything was possible."
> The PlayStation sold a then unheard-of
> 100,000 units in its first weekend and hit 1
> million units in six months, according to
> Sony.
> Only 12,300 units of the 20th Anniversary
> PS4 will be released, according to a video
> on the blog post. Pre-orders will begin
> Saturday, and details about how to vie for
> one of the handful of slots will come
> during a keynote presentation from
> PlayStation Experience, a fan and
> developer expo being held in Las Vegas.
> The keynote will be Saturday at 1 pm ET.
> To celebrate the 20th anniversary, we
> assembled a gallery of images of the
> PlayStation, and the people who love it,
> from the past two decades.
>
> On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bond is back and we're pleased to have
>> all of the details of the new movie.
>> Director Sam Mendes revealed the
>> name and cast of the new movie,
>> Spectre, during a live event held at
>> London's Pinewood Studios.
>> The movie is set to be released on 6th
>> November 2015. Avid fans will know
>> Spectre stands for: Special Executive
>> for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism,
>> Revenge and Extortion,
>
>
>> On 12/7/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Gangnam Style hit music video by
>>> South Korean singer, PSY, has exceeded
>>> YouTube's view limit, prompting
>>> YouTube to upgrade its counter.
>>> The video which was released in 2012,
>>> was announced to be its most watched
>>> ever and has been viewed more than
>>> 2,147,483,647 times. YouTube has now
>>> changed the maximum view limit to
>>> 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or more
>>> than nine quintillion.
>>> On December 1, YouTube posted a
>>> statement saying: "We never thought a
>>> video would be watched in numbers
>>> greater than a 32-bit integer… but
>>> that was before we met Psy."
>>> Meanwhile, how do you say
>>> 9,223,372,036,854,775,808? That's
>>> over a quadrillion, over a trillion, and
>>> over a billion.
>
>
>>> On 12/4/14, Joseph Ogunlowo <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Kim K has been named the "Most Searched
>>>> Person of 2014″, beating last year's winner,
>>>> Beyonce. 2014 was definitely the year of the 34
>>>> year old reality star with buzz-worthy events like
>>>> her wedding to Kanye, her Vogue cover and
>>>> most recently her 'break the internet' naked pics
>>>> for Paper magazine.
>>>> Beyonce comes second, while Miley Cyrus and
>>>> Katy Perry come 3rd and 4th respectively. See
>>>> the top ten most searched personalities of 2014
>>>> after the cut...
>>>> 1. Kim Kardashian
>>>> 2. Beyonce Knowles
>>>> 3. Miley Cyrus
>>>> 4. Katy Perry
>>>> 5. Justin Bieber
>>>> 6. Joan Rivers
>>>> 7. Jennifer Lopez
>>>> 8. Kendall Jenner
>>>> 9. Kaley Cuoco
>>>> 10. Robin Williams
>
>
>>>> On 12/3/14, Joseph Ogunlowo <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> At the Pioneers Festival in Vienna, a
>>>>> Slovakian startup called AeroMobil unveiled
>>>>> the thing that we have all been dreaming
>>>>> about since we saw that first episode of the
>>>>> Jetsons while still wearing diapers: The first
>>>>> flying car. It's here. It's real. And it's
>>>>> spectacular.
>>>>> According to Venturebeat, the company
>>>>> took the wraps off AeroMobil 3.0, the latest
>>>>> iteration of its flying car that has been in
>>>>> development for almost 25 years.
>>>>> "We believe personal transportation is about
>>>>> to change forever," said AeroMobil chief
>>>>> executive Juraj Vaculik at a press
>>>>> conference. "We think it's time to make
>>>>> transportation more emotional and more
>>>>> personal."
>>>>> The car was designed by Stefan Klein,
>>>>> founder and head of the Department of
>>>>> Transport Design at the Academy of Fine
>>>>> Arts in Slovakia. Klein had been tinkering
>>>>> with the concept as far back as 1989.
>>>>> Image
>>>>> The car needs very little runway to take off,
>>>>> and it can be refueled at any standard gas
>>>>> station when the wings are retracted.
>>>>> AeroMobil believes it will be attractive for
>>>>> countries that don't have billions of dollars
>>>>> to spend building a modern transportation
>>>>> infrastructure.
>>>>> The body is built from advanced composite
>>>>> materials that keep it lightweight but also
>>>>> durable. Under the hood, it has autopilot
>>>>> and an advanced parachute deployment
>>>>> system. The cockpit can carry two people,
>>>>> and in the air the flying car can reach top
>>>>> speeds of 200 km/h. It has a 27-foot
>>>>> wingspan and is 19.7 feet long.
>>>>> No word on the price tag.
>
>>>>> On 12/3/14, ogunlowo joseph <ogunlowojoseph@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> According to reports Angelina Jolie's black
>>>>>> SUV car slipped on a wet road, slid into the
>>>>>> curb with extreme force, popping two tires,
>>>>>> almost causing the driver to lose control of
>>>>>> the vehicle.
>>>>>> The actress was heading home in a
>>>>>> chauffeured black SUV from Writers' Guild
>>>>>> Theater, when the car hit the curb.
>>>>>> According to an eyewitness (who spoke ti
>>>>>> X17 Online): "The car slammed into the
>>>>>> curb at a significant speed. Angelina must
>>>>>> have wondered if they hit another car. It
>>>>>> was pretty bad -- the tire exploded and it's
>>>>>> amazing nothing worse happened to the
>>>>>> car. I wouldn't be surprised if she has
>>>>>> whiplash."
>>>>>> Angelina reportedly stayed in the car after
>>>>>> the incident and was later picked up, not
>>>>>> by Brad pitt, but by another driver from the
>>>>>> same car service.
>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>>>>>> 12/03/2014 10:47:00 am
>
>
>
>
>>> --
>>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>>> 12/07/2014 01:50:00 am
>
>
>> --
>> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
>> 12/07/2014 03:24:00 am
>
>
> --
> Posted By ogunlowo joseph to entertainment,investing,education on
> 12/07/2014 06:03:00 am
>
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