Gregory I. Simpson, PhD

Some Preamble

For almost 25 years, my mother who has had Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) has successfully combined i) a herbal diet and exercise, ii) meditation and iii) traditional medicines, to control her condition. For autoimmune diseases like SLE, finding suitable pharmaceutical or alternative medicinal approaches to control these major types of conditions has been a task.

For example, herbs such as the Chinese herb Tripterygium wilfordii or combinations of herbs with dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), yellowdock (Rumex crispus), echinacea (Echinacea purpurea), and garlic (Allium sativum) have had mixed results for SLE. In many cases with little or no scientific evidence to support the claims.

Over the same time, the use and regulation of nutraceuticals, functional foods herbal supplements and alternative medicinal approaches to control weight, treat addiction, cancer, hypertension, autism etc has steadily grown. Such as the DSHEA 1994 and subsequent dietary supplement Acts for example. With these approaches, the growth and complexity of the alternative health products market has increased exponentially. Also facilitated by medical breakthroughs and an emphasis on disease prevention!

At the 2008 Global Spa Summit in New York, reports were presented which estimate the global size of the Spa Industry to be $60B, $194B in spa-related hospitality, tourism and real estate and a further $700B when taking into account beauty, nutrition (supplements, diet, teas) and fitness! So there are regulatory issues to deal with, products to ensure pass those hurdles and online markets to access.

The 5 Questions to answer before a Product Launch

Well that’s all great news, but you’ve just spent 6-12 months developing a product to market and sell online to a health & Wellness niche, so how are you going to get in front of the customers or clients in the niche? Let’s say for arguments sake you have a product or system for SLE (I would love to take a look at it if you do!) or you have a program for weight loss and dieting . You are now ready to launch online. Or are you?

There are 5 major questions you will have to answer and will face as you move forward.

Question 1 Does the product have a large market size?

Question 2 Who is buying similar products and what are the online triggers?

Question 3 Do you have a list of customers already or do you need a JV partner?

Question 4 Do you have the back end systems, platforms and support in place to attract the right Joint Venture partners?

Question 5 How will you manage your relationships with your JV partner, sales affiliates and customers as you roll out your launch?

The niche that I specialize in has significant opportunities for new products and services and that is the Health and Wellness (H&W) niche. Delivering the right product to the right customer using online marketing strategies, requires you to answer, plan for and solve each of these five questions clearly and then act decisively to get your product in the hands of buying customers.

JV Brokers Do What?

Marketing and sales online, requires very different approaches to minimize risk and maximize profit during a launch. Basically, JV brokers match product owners with large list holders or “super affiliates” and spend a great deal of time, energy, effort and resources ensuring that both individuals achieve their objectives.

As a JV Broker in the Health & Wellness niche, my job is to review, access, test and properly match your products with the right partner, before the launch. I provide the back-end research, make suggestions on improving product appeal, assist you with some of the technical infra-structure as well as work very hard to get your product or service accepted by the right JV partners you will need.

The key services we provide to product owners to enable them to attract and entice large list holders are by,

• Evaluating the product(s) developed for the online market you are targeting,

• Putting in place the right back-end systems to efficiently communicate and deliver your product to the customer and finally
• Getting your product matched with the right JV partners.

Gregory I. Simpson, PhD

JV Broker- Health & Wellness Specialist

www.gregoryisimpson.com

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gsimpson JV Partnerships

Today is a beautiful day so how can I make it better for just one aspiring scientist? I was thinking that for many students, reading scientific journals can be a daunting task. Mainly because in many cases not all of the resources or access to information is possible and also “I can’t understand what they are writing about” appears to the first hurdle your mind has to get over.

When I was in my early teens, an Aunt of mine back in Jamaica once asked me, “why don’t you do the sciences? My response to her was I can’t understand that stuff! Her response to me was “If it’s in a book and you can read, you can do it”

I’ve never forgotten that statement and that led me obtaining a PhD in Chemistry. You see I enjoy learning and teaching and yes applying new stuff, but it was never easy for me, in fact I can honestly say that I was never really the brightest bulb in class, if you know what I mean. But enough about me!!

What if you could take a seemingly complex peer-reviewed science, say from a journal like Nature, Science, Cell, or the Journal of Organic Chemistry and figure out what the authors are writing about? Would that help you build confidence in chemistry or biology or physics? Could it improve your grades? Would it impress your parents or employer? or improve your college entrance chances?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then, 7 tips to reading peer-reviewed science journals can help.

1. Fear is not an option
There are so many resources out there that practically any topic, technique, problem or question can be researched. Knowing how to filter the information is the critical first step in the process and being afraid to explore the information won’t help.

2. Identify the animal or cell model used to study the problem
In order to figure out a problem in chemistry or biology or physics, scientists use a model to mimic the system they want to study. This is usually the most difficult develop and has proven to be the down fall of many a good research project and research scientists. However, the more closely the model is to the system being investigated the easier it is to make changes, observe results and explain what is happening.

3. Identify the measurement tool used to study the problem
Without an appropriate measurement tool to study a problem, results can be meaningless. For example if you needed to weigh an item to the nearest milligram it is pointless to use a scale that measures to the nearest kilogram. Identifying the measuring tool or tools that are used in an experiment helps you understand the level of accuracy and precision the researchers are working with to solve a problem.

4. Identify the gene or protein being studied
This is an important step in the process, simply because without this knowledge understanding a disease condition or biological process is next to impossible. Modern medical research spends an extraordinary amount of time and money studying the genes and proteins involved in disease and therefore learning about these large molecules is fundamental. There are incredible resources on line to help you discover what a specific gene(s) or protein(s) does and from that information you can work towards understanding how it relates to the research topic you are studying.

5. Don’t be afraid of the words
If you think about how you were taught English, French, or Spanish you started slowly to build your understanding of the words, there meaning, how they are used in sentences, then phrases, then paragraphs and so on. Scientific jargon is exactly like learning a new language and it takes time and patience. What you must be willing to do is learn the new words as they pop up in the article and dig a little deeper to gain more knowledge.

6. Be bold when reading and summarizing the information in the paper
The best scientists in the world are constantly reviewing other peoples science and people are constantly reviewing there science. Writing out what you think is going on is a part of the learning process and you shouldn’t worry about the fine details, there will always be plenty of help available to help you refine your understanding of the problem.

7. Identify the scientific hypothesis
For most students this is the single most difficult task to overcome and the reason is simple. In our early years of education students are often taught that a scientific hypothesis posed as a question. This is never the case. A scientific hypothesis is always, always presented as a statement, but more important it is a statement that is testable and can be made shown to be true or false through experimentation, data collection and analysis.

What I really enjoy about science is that no matter how much you think you know there is always something else to learn. Learning to read the science is however a critical first step!

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gsimpson Uncategorized biomedical sciences, Cell, Nature, science education, scientific hypothesis, Technorati

I spent last weekend at an internet marketing conference and met a very interesting lady. She is a Mom with 5 kids and one incredible product that solves a simple problem that many parents have with their kids. The DREADED SCIENCE PROJECT!!

She has compiled a list of science projects and templates that can be completed in 24 hours! Now isn’t that cool! Her name is Kayla Fay and if you haven’t heard of her you should check out her eproduct  24 Hour Science Projects .

As a parent and scientist myself, I’ve visited many science fairs, conferences, listened to many top notch presentations from scientists round the world and many in my neck of the woods here in Massachusetts. The simple truth is that at public middle and high schools and with many home schooled kids I’ve come across, science typically isn’t very high on the curriculum radar for a few practical reasons. Some of these are

-No access to labs,

-Expensive lab supplies and

-Minimal access to relevant scientific information that really gets students in the right frame of mind to pursue scientific careers.

If we multiply these problems across towns, cities and states in the US, no wonder there is so much concern about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education!!!

There are simple ways to get around these problems and one way is to make sure that some of the simple scientific skills that students need to learn early, they actually do! The other is to teach scientific thinking skills, but that’s another story. For now simple science projects that allow your child to begin building basic skills in

-developing scientific hypotheses (a major problem in the way we teach science-we’ll talk about this more in a later blog)

-planning and performing an experiment (necessary in practically all data driven professions)

-observation and recording results (from basic scientists to health care professionals, technicians, nurses, physicians)

-analyzing results and drawing conclusions, are in demand and can help in getting over the first step that many parents are fearful of.

Why don’t you checkout    24 Hour Science Projects and give me your feed back. You should also check out this very informative video by Dr. Mae C. Jemison about the state of the nation’s science education programs Bayer Facts of Science Survey

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gsimpson Uncategorized science education, science projects, scientific hypothesis, STEM, Technorati

Setting up links to my blog. Proving to be challenging but doable.
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gsimpson Uncategorized Technorati