The Great Economic Crisis of 2008 has blown the doors off every sector of the economy and the government has selectively bailed out insurers, bankers and auto makers, so no one can blame industry leaders in other sectors from giving it the old college try.

Take BioTech for example. The sector has been soundly thrashed, especially the little guys.  In fact BIO, a trade group reports that 33% of the 370 publicly traded US BioTech companies have less than 6 months’ cash on hand—twice as many as last year.

Whew, so last week BioTech executives had their day with Congress.

They proposed a deal: if you give us cash now, we won’t take our tax credits when we become profitable (when and if, they should say). And there’d be a cap, say $30 million, on the cash a single firm receives.

Ahem. How in the heck is Congress going to assess all that risk, or are are these people also proposing a built-in BioTech Czar?

Actually, it may be a good deal, but Congress has to weigh it against proposals from other sectors. And for all the bluster, BioTech is small. Only 200,000 people are at risk.

In its defense, CombinatoRx chief exec Alexis Borisy told the New York Times BioTech is “one of the few places where the US is the undisputed leader of the world.”

The plan has at least one ally in Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Penna.) who wants to include the proposal in the Big O’s stimulus package. “Innovation and technology are growth areas for American businesses and American workers and should be part of this package,” she told the Times.

Schwartz’ district is home to several BioTech and Big Pharma offices.

It was nice while it lasted, but the days when Web-based start-ups could focus on building traffic and cash in later on ad-based revenue models are going, going, gone.

Online display-ad spending will likely plummet in 2009, and probably stay low through at least part of 2010, and the line-up of affected companies looks like an Internet murderer’s row: Twitter, Facebook, AOL, CNET and Yahoo among others, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

In the Great Economic Crisis of 2008, Web companies need a balanced revenue model according to Roger Lee, a general partner from Battery Ventures.

Lee told the New York Times that most start-ups in his portfolio offer premium services, subscription products or e-commerce elements in addition to free services.

Pizaazz has covered several companies like this including comScore, LinkedIn, and Yammer.

Angie’s List does this as well. It provides reviews and ratings of local businesses for a monthly fee, as well as earning income from ads. World Golf Tour is yet another. The site lets people play famous golf courses for free on their computers, but charges tournament fees and has a virtual store that sells duds for avatars and tips from pros.

Or, as David Weiden said, “If a company approaches investors with a plan to lose money for three or four years while building an audience, it will encounter many closed doors.”

The partner at Khosla Ventures told the Times, “It’s gone from plausible to almost implausible.”

“What’s changed more than the ability to make money from ads is the ability to raise money at the same valuation it had six months ago (using an ad-based revenue model),” he added.

It’s a shame that blood pressure recordings from the doctor’s office aren’t great predictors of future cardiovascular events due to white-coat hypertension, but it is what it is.

The long-recognized phenomenon is characterized by office-based BP readings that are higher and more labile than those taken during the course of normal everyday life.

Thankfully, scientists have shown that ambulatory blood pressure recording devices provide useful predictive information, particularly in those having severe hypertension, a cardiac history, multiple cardiovascular risk factors, pregnancy and elderly folks.

Now Gil Salles and co-investigators at University Hospital Clementino Fraga Filho in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil have shown that ambulatory blood pressure recordings can predict CV risk in another subset of patients, the ones with resistant hypertension.

Sales’ was a prospective study of 556 patients with resistant hypertension, defined as persistently elevated blood pressure despite treatment with 3 anti-hypertensive agents.

After median follow-up of 4.8 years, the scientists found that 109 patients (19.6%) either died or incurred a cardiovascular event.

After controlling for age, gender, prior cardiac events and other CV risk factors, Salas’ group confirmed that office-derived blood pressure recordings were not predictive of future events, but higher mean ambulatory BPs did predict these events.

Ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressure recordings were both effective predictors, and nighttime recordings were superior to those obtained during the day.