SMALL STARTUPS NET NEARLY $1M IN SBIR FUNDING.

Encelle Inc. of Raleigh, an emerging biomaterials company, has received a $100,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the company's proprietary hydrogel matrix, an injectable biopolymer material that has shown initial promise in wound healing.

"Encelle is developing wound-healing and other applications of its unique biomaterials technology," said James D. Woodward, Encelle's CEO. "This technology, originally discovered in the company's development of a bioartificial pancreas, is now the central focus of our development efforts."

Encelle recently filed an Investigational Device Exemption …

LONELY WIDOWER COULD USE A WARM SWEAT SUIT.(Main)

Byline: Grace O'Connor Staff writer

Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. Psalms 41:1.

Mr. A.N. is a sweet old man who lives alone since the death of his wife several years ago. His three children are scattered and seldom bother to keep in touch. He was once employed as a cook, but at age 81 he cannot even prepare his own meals. A home health aide cooks his meals and tries to keep him and his apartment neat.

He has some weakness on his right side and uses a cane because of an unsteady gait. His vision is poor and he has a pacemaker. He is lonely and dependent but he will not complain. He worries about …

Discount juggernaut keeps rolling.(State of the Industry)

NEW YORK -- Year by year, discount stores continue to increase their share of mass market retailing's $1 trillion-plus in annual sales. The good news for chain drug store operators is that the discount channel's continuing gains are coming more at the expense of supermarkets than of drug stores.

Discounters posted a solid 7.6% increase in sales to $425.5 billion in 2004, with comparable-store sales up 4.5%. Discount store chains added 652 units last year, a gain of 4.1% for a total store count of 16,556 at the start of 2005.

While chain drug stores generate less than half the volume of the discount channel, the trade class' $157.1 billion in 2004 sales reflect an 8.3% year-over-year increase, beating both discounters and supermarkets. Dollar stores posted a larger sales gain, 14.5%, but it was driven largely by volume from newly opened stores.

The chain drug channel also had the best comparable-store sales improvement among all mass market retailers last year, a 6.5% gain. Same-store sales at dollar stores were up just 2.1%, in contrast, and supermarkets managed only a 1.5% improvement.

All that said, the discount store channel remains a formidable competitor to chain drug …

DEATHS IN THE NEWS

David Condon, 70, a Chicago Tribune sportswriter who for years wrotethe paper's In the Wake of the News column, died Monday in Chicago.In 1955, he succeeded Arch Ward as author of the column, which ran onthe front page in the sports section. Mr. Condon quickly gained areputation for tweaking the pompous and playing up the underdogs ofthe sports world. But he was equally at home writing aboutpresidents, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and DwightD. Eisenhower, and many other celebrities. He retired in 1982. Elizabeth Glaser, 47, who crusaded tirelessly to draw attention topediatric AIDS after she passed the disease to her children, died ofcomplications from AIDS last …

CAPITAL REGION ALMANAC.(CAPITAL REGION)

This almanac of community news provides coverage of local governments, local courts and police calls from selected communities in our region. Government listings focus on communities in Albany County, and police calls are taken from the actual police blotters from larger communities throughout the area. This feature usually appears on this page Mondays through Saturdays. P B Saturday, Feb. 19 4:08 p.m. BURGLARY. On the 100 block of North Lake Avenue, a subject punched a woman in the face several times.

6:37 p.m. SUSPICIOUS FIRE. On the 300 block of Third Street, a basement fire was reported.

Sunday, Feb. 20 1:30 a.m. HARASSMENT. At a bar on North Pearl Street, a 23-year-old male claimed he was harassed by a bouncer.

1:39 a.m. POSSESSION. A 19-year-old Washington Avenue man was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana. Thursday, Feb. 24 12:55 p.m. BURGLARY. A Wexford Place resident claimed someone stole …

One Love you won't be too Wild about

If you're looking for final, indisputable proof -- and really, at this point, who would think more evidence is needed? -- that the reality-TV genre has completely run out of new ideas, you can consider your search ended with the arrival of Love in the Wild.

NBC's latest summer fill-in series, which premieres tonight at 9 (also on CTV), is such a blatant ripoff of elements from other reality shows that it really should have been called One From Column A, One From Column B and One From Column C.

Of course, that wouldn't be as sexy as Love in the Wild. Immeasurably more accurate, but lacking in audience-attracting sizzle.

So it's Love in the Wild -- a clumsy amalgam of aspects that borrows heavily from long-running favourites Survivor, The Amazing Race and The Bachelor and then sprinkles in a bit of the tawdriness of the late and in-no-way-lamented cancellation casualty Temptation Island.

The series takes place in the jungle of Costa Rica, where 20 young, attractive singles -- 10 men, 10 women -- have been transported in search of a shared goal.

"They have one thing in common," stereotypically Brit-accented host Darren McMullen (actually, sort of a Scot/Aussie hybrid) intones as two cargo planes ferry the contestants above the jungle canopy. "They're all looking for love. In the past, they've tried it all -- Internet dating, speed dating, blind dating -- but they still haven't found that special someone."

Well, with all those romantic avenues exhausted, presumably a few weeks of captive/camp living, punctuated by paired-up daytime adventure competitions and short-term nighttime cohabitations, will provide all the starry-eyed answers they need.

The newly arrived contestants are assembled in an outdoor space, and an old-fashioned schoolyard pick is employed to turn singles into pairs. From there, the teams are sent on a breathtaking adventure race that involves climbing a giant observation tower, collecting water from a jungle stream, retrieving a medallion from a tree and then racing a hand-powered cable car across a deep ravine.

The winning tandem gets to spend the night at "The Oasis," a luxurious suite inside the show's compound; the others are assigned more rustic accommodations and are expected to share quarters with their opposite-sex partners until morning.

There's the requisite dating-show hot-tubbing and hookup-potential explorations, of course, and the next day the group attends the Couples' Choice ceremony, at which each person is given a choice of sticking with the previous day's partner or trying a new pairing.

The last two unchosen singles -- one male, one female -- make the walk of shame out of the game. In the end, the last couple standing will win an all-expense-paid trip around the world.

It is, mostly, rather tired stuff. While the jungle-race adventuring provides an injection of excitement and fun that almost makes Love in the Wild worth watching, the rest of the patched-together reality-romance stuff ultimately turns this show into a dull and all-too-familiar snoozer.

This is one Love you just won't be too wild about.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV PREVIEW

Love in the Wild

Hosted by Darren McMullen

Tonight at 9

NBC and CTV

Counterfeit Meds Still on the Rise

The threat of counterfeit medicines in the next year will be more severe than ever, according to a survey of 1,000 companies conducted in October 2010 by Pharma IQ. More than 60 percent of the 1,000 pharma anti-counterfeiting specialists surveyed believed that the threat of counterfeit medicines would increase, and 53.8 percent said they intend to invest more in anticounterfeiting.

Emerging markets in Asia - particularly China - were seen as the major source of counterfeit drugs (50% of respondents); however, 21.4% of respondents indicated that the Internet was also a major threat to the pharma market. Indeed, these views are reflected in an interview about anti-counterfeiting conducted by Pharma IQ with S�bastien Mauel, Head of Product Security at Ares Trading SA, an affiliate of Merck Serono SA.

"The pharmaceutical industry and the legitimate supply chain are highly regulated, therefore as long as you source your medicines from a reputable pharmacy, the risk of getting a counterfeit product is low. This risk becomes much higher in developing countries where the distribution system is less secure, and also when you purchase medicines from uncontrolled sources, such as certain online pharmacies, which provide no guarantee at all about the quality of the medicines they sell," said Mauel.