Why should we worry about genetic modification in humans when we already accept enhancement by surgery, drugs and cosmetics?

Source: The Guardian

“Enhancement” of physical and mental abilities is becoming more and more sophisticated, at least for those who can afford it. Golfer Tiger Woods improved his vision to 20/15 with laser eye surgery, and American footballer Terrell Owens sped his recovery from injuries by sleeping in a high-pressure chamber. Medicine has made great advances also in the use of cognition-enhancing drugs, which doctors prescribe to treat cognitive disabilities and improve quality of life for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders and brain injury. These prescription drugs are now being used more widely, including for shift workers and for jet-lag.

Technology will soon offer even more extreme and tantalising possibilities for enhancement. Scientists, using “gene therapy” to increase the levels of a single enzyme, recently created a strain of mice with increased physical abilities. By injecting an active form of the gene PEPCK-C into an embryo, the scientists found that the mouse more efficiently burns body fat for energy and produces less lactic acid during exercise. These “mighty mice” run much faster and longer than their non-genetically-engineered cohorts. “They are metabolically similar to Lance Armstrong biking up the Pyrenees,” said Richard Hanson, the Case Western University biochemist who directed the research. Although the mice eat 60% more food than controls, they remain fitter and trimmer and live and breed longer than mice in a control group. (Humans share the same gene.) (more…)

When you pump $30 dollars into your tank, that money is broken up into little pieces that get distributed among several entities. Gas is just like any other consumer product: There’s a supply chain and several groups who are responsible for setting the price of the product. The media can sometimes lead you to believe that the price of gas is based solely on the price of crude oil, but there are actually many factors that determine what you pay at the pump. No matter how expensive gas becomes, all of these entities have to get their slice of the pie. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, here’s an approximation of where each dollar you spend on gas goes:

• This is what the average breakdown looked like in March 2008. Let’s look at those components in more detail.

Crude oil - The biggest portion of the cost of gas goes to the crude-oil suppliers. This is determined by the world’s oil-exporting nations, particularly the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which you will learn more about in the next section. The amount of crude oil these countries produce determines the price of a barrel of oil. Crude-oil prices averaged around $35 per barrel (1 barrel = 42 gallons) in 2004. And, after Hurricane Katrina, some prices were almost double that. In April 2008, crude-oil prices averaged around $104.74 per barrel. During that month, the price of oil reached a record price of almost $120 a barrel. This sharp increase in price may have been due in part to speculation in oil futures.Sometimes, gas prices go up even though there is plenty of crude oil on the market. It depends on what kind of oil it is. Oil can be classified as heavy or light, and as sweet or sour (no one actually tastes the oil, that’s just what they call it). Light, sweet crude is easier and cheaper to refine, but supplies have been running low. There’s plenty of heavy, sour crude available in the world, but refineries, particularly those in the U.S., have to undergo costly retooling to handle it.

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by Heidi Shierholz and Emily Garr

Source: Economic Policy Institute

This Mother’s Day, we reflect on the critical but often overlooked issue of maternity leave. In a selection of 19 countries with comparable per capita income, the United States provides the fewest maternity leave benefits in both length of leave and paid time off (see chart). This is considered separate from any disability insurance for which one may qualify. In fact, the United States falls two weeks short of the International Labor Organization’s basic minimum standard of at least 14 weeks general leave. It is also the only country not to guarantee some amount of leave with income.

The United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, giving eligible parents 12 weeks unpaid leave to care for a new child. But aside from being unpaid, it is limited to workplaces of more than 50 employees, which excludes more than 41.3% of working Americans, or about 48.1 million people.¹

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By Kelly Zito

San Francisco Chronicle

Two parched years - punctuated by the driest spring in at least 150 years - could force districts across California to ration water this summer as policymakers and scientists grow increasingly concerned that the state is on the verge of a long-term drought.

State water officials reported Thursday that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of a huge portion of California’s water supply, was only 67 percent of normal, due in part to historically low rainfall in March and April.

With many reservoirs at well-below-average levels from the previous winter and a federal ruling limiting water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the new data added a dimension to a crisis already complicated by crumbling infrastructure, surging population and environmental concerns.

“We’re in a dry spell if not a drought,” said California Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “We’re in the second year, and if we’re looking at a third year, we’re talking about a serious problem.”

Chrisman stopped short of saying the state would issue mandatory water rationing, which appears possible only if the governor declares a state of emergency. Rather, the burden will fall on local water agencies. Many, such as San Francisco and Marin County, have asked residents and businesses over the past year to cut water usage voluntarily by 10 to 20 percent.

Others have taken more drastic steps.

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By Alex J. Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute

With the financial world in turmoil, here’s a handy guide to the bursting of the housing market bubble.

Q. The term “bubble” is used frequently in discussing the housing market—did we have a bubble, and what does that really mean?
A. Yes, we did. A “bubble” is created when many people believe that an asset’s price, which has already greatly increased, must keep on rising, and that it therefore makes sense to borrow in order to buy it—for example, to buy a house with no down payment. Speculators acquire loans that can be repaid only if the asset is sold for a higher price, temporarily driving up prices and debt; lenders grow confident that it is attractive to make such loans. As long as the prices rise, borrowers, lenders, and investors all make money. But bubbles, by definition, come to a sad end, with defaults, failures, dispossessions, scandals, and late-cycle political and regulatory reactions and often overreactions.

Q. How big was the recent bubble in the U.S. housing market?
A. This time we had the greatest house price inflation in U.S. history. The value of U.S. residential real estate almost doubled between 1999 and 2006. The U.S. residential mortgage market was already the biggest credit market in the world, and it grew to have total loans of over $10 trillion. Securitized prime and subprime mortgages were purchased by investors around the world. A financial crisis occurs about once a decade, with markets relearning the same lessons and then forgetting them.

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