The following links are just news items and opinions that pass my desk throughout the week. I don’t necessarily support or advocate any of the items, they are just interesting reads.
State judge paves path for higher PG&E bills — starting this spring – PG&E customers face the forbidding prospect of higher monthly bills — starting this spring — now that a state law judge has smoothed out the pathway for interim rate relief for PG&E.
An administrative law judge for the state Public Utilities Commission has issued a proposed decision that clears the way for the PUC commissioners to make a final decision in March that would authorize PG&E to extract more money from customers. Law Judge Camille Watts-Zagha issued the proposal.
PG&E customers could be paying $4 to $6 more a month for their utility service if the powerful five-member PUC panel agrees with the proposal issued by the PUC law judge, estimated Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN.
The higher bills could take effect in April or May if the PUC agrees with the proposed ruling. Read More > in The Mercury News
Could California lose its telephone landline service? – AT&T wants to be done with landline telephone services in California.
The phone company is petitioning the California Public Utilities Commission to withdraw its designation as a Carrier of Last Resort. This means it would no longer have to provide landline telephone service to customers in various parts of the state.
You can check a map of affected communities here, which includes large metropolitan areas and many rural communities.
AT&T says that maintaining traditional copper cable wiring is expensive and they would rather spend their money on expanding broadband and cell phone service.
The CPUC is inviting the public to comment on the matter online or through a series of public forums being held throughout the state through March. Read More > at KTLA
Police warn shoppers of new crime trend at Bay Area Trader Joe’s locations – If you plan on leaving your purse in your shopping cart while you browse for novelty snacks at Trader Joe’s in Livermore, think again, the city’s police department has warned. According to local officials, wallets are being swiped from unattended shopping carts at locations across the East Bay, the department wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.
As a result, shoppers are advised to remain vigilant, keep wallets in a zipped bag close to their body and tell employees if they notice any suspicious behavior. The Danville Police Department also recommends taking it a step further and using a carabiner to secure your bag to your cart, the department wrote in a Friday Facebook post.
In Livermore, nonvehicle larceny has steadily increased since 2018, a 2022 annual report from the Livermore Police Department said. The crime accounted for 51% of all crimes reported in the city that year.
Though the Danville Police Department shared a post about taking extra precautions while grocery shopping, spokesperson Jenn Starnes told SFGATE that the city hasn’t been experiencing these thefts. Regardless, Danville police hope Bay Area residents will heed the recent warning.
“Don’t assume your belongings are safe in a shopping cart without taking precautions,” Danville police wrote in the post. “Always be mindful of your surroundings.” Read More > at SFGATE
More Oakland Businesses Shut Their Doors Because of Crime – More businesses are leaving Oakland because of rising crime. In addition to the city’s only In ‘N Out, the following businesses have announced their departure, NBC reports:
- Denny’s at 601 Hegenberger
- Starbucks at Hegenberger Road and Edgewater Drive
- Starbucks on 98th Avenue
- Black Bear Diner at 405 Hegenberger Road
Raising Cane’s also shut down indoor dining at its Oakland location. Blue Shield and Clorox have hired private security to protect workers. Kaiser Permanente issued a memo last month urging employees to stay inside the building during lunch time for their own safety.
Mayor Sheng Thao, who is facing a recall effort, vowed to address public safety concerns in a statement.
“It is outrageous that criminal gangs and groups continue to harm Oakland residents and businesses. I join Oaklanders in demanding more prevention, enforcement, and accountability for the criminal groups inflicting harm upon our community.”
Thao said she had increased police presence and employed technology to deter criminals around the airport last year, resulting in a 40% reduction in crime in that area.
“The surge in public safety resources has led to a reduction in property crimes along the Hegenberger Corridor. However, more is necessary and I will be working with regional and state leaders to protect this tourist gateway into Oakland.”
As Oakland struggles with a surge in criminal activity, it is also approaching one year without a permanent police chief. Read More > at California City News
S.F. Mayor London Breed joins GOP-led effort to overhaul Prop. 47 – San Francisco Mayor London Breed is joining a Republican-led campaign to roll back parts of a law that aimed to reduce jail populations but that critics say has emboldened thieves.
Breed on Thursday threw her support behind the proposal to increase jail time for dealing large quantities of fentanyl, make it easier to charge drug dealers with murder, and increase jail time for repeat thefts and organized retail theft. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan also announced his support for the measure Thursday morning.
They’re among a wave of Democrats this year who are backing efforts to overhaul or reform Proposition 47, a 2014 law approved by voters that reduced punishments for drug possession and theft of property worth less than $950.
Breed said she initially supported Prop. 47. But she said she’s seeing some of the unintended consequences of the measure as she tries to crack down on illegal drugs and thefts in San Francisco.
“Our goal is not to keep people locked up,” she said. “But when there are no real consequences for crimes that are committed in this city, that’s a real problem.” Read More > in the San Francisco Chronicle
Heavy winds send 300-foot marina dock floating down Delta, ‘freaking out’ residents – It’s not every day that you see a 300-foot marina dock float down the river, but when the big storms hit this past weekend, residents along Bethel Island’s Taylor Slough witnessed just that.
And days later, they’re still watching it and wondering what will happen to the double-wide dock structure from the defunct Anchor Marina at 1970 Taylor Road. The docks broke free during heavy winds Sunday and started moving down Taylor Slough in this far eastern Contra Costa community, shearing off parts of private docks along the way.
“It was a high-anxiety day I tell you,” said Fred Koslowski, a Taylor Road resident who called 911 on Sunday morning after seeing the docks, which broke in two, start moving diagonally across the slough.
“They were the size of a double-wide mobile home, going down the river, side by side almost at one time,” he said. “And it looked like it was just going to take out everything, but luckily it only took out the one dock. It did some damage to a few other docks, but it could have just been catastrophic.”
As of early Tuesday morning, the Anchor Marina dock structure, which had broken off its moorings and later crashed into Jersey Island, was still not secure. One portion of the docks – a 40-boat slip – was temporarily wedged there and the other – an 18-boat slip – was wedged across the river along the Taylor Slough, blocking private docks on Bethel Island.
But help was on the way with both the county sheriff’s marine patrol and U.S. Coast Guard monitoring the situation and county code enforcement officials firming up plans to clean up the mess.
At Tuesday’s Contra Costa Board of Supervisors meeting, Jason Carpo of the county’s Department of Conservation and Development confirmed that a contractor had been hired to secure the derelict docks and remove them from the waterways. Read More > in The Mercury News
Escondido Assemblymember Waldron introduces state bill to legalize supervised ‘magic mushroom’ therapy – Escondido Republican Assemblywoman Marie Waldron and Democrat Assemblyman Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bipartisan bill on Tuesday to allow people 21 and older to consume psychedelic mushrooms under professional supervision as part of an agenda to tackle the state’s mental health and substance use crises.
It comes after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last year vetoed legislation that would have decriminalized the possession and personal use of several plant-based hallucinogens, including psychedelic mushrooms. It was the first time the proposal by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener made it through the legislature after years of stalling. In his veto message, Newsom, who championed legalizing cannabis in 2016, asked lawmakers to work on therapeutic guidelines and regulations.
Now Wiener has teamed up with Republican Assemblymember Marie Waldron on a proposal to allow participations to consume psilocybin — the hallucinogenic component in what’s known as psychedelic mushrooms — under the supervision of a licensed therapist. The bill also would include dimethyltryptamine (DMT), MDMA and mescaline.
The legislation does not allow for personal possession and use. That means clients can’t buy the substance to go. The drugs would still be illegal under federal law. Wiener said he doesn’t want to wait on actions from the federal government and that state lawmakers could authorize such regulated psychedelic use, similar to previous efforts to legalize therapeutic use of cannabis to treat cancers or HIV.
Touted as a mind-bending drug in the 1960s, psychedelic mushrooms have been used in religious or spiritual practices in some cultures for centuries and possibly thousands of years. Some researchers believe psilocybin and other drugs show promise in treating depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Food and Drug Administration in 2018 designated psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy” and published draft guidance last year for researchers designing clinical trials for psychedelic drugs. Read More > in The San Diego Union-Tribune
The California Legislature promised to release its sexual harassment records. It has not since 2020 – It has been nearly four years since the California Legislature released sexual harassment records it promised to make public during the height of the #MeToo movement.
Legislative officials for both the Senate and Assembly told KCRA 3 there have not been any “substantiated” sexual harassment complaints against any state lawmaker or high-level staffer since 2020, a claim that is impossible to verify because legislative rules protect these records from being made public.
Hours after KCRA 3 first published this story, legislative leaders released an update on the legislative Workplace Conduct Unit, showing it had received 391 complaints within the last three years. The report still did not include complaints the unit deemed “substantiated.”
Since 2018, journalists who are credentialed to cover the California Legislature had been receiving conclusive reports of what the Legislature ultimately deemed to be “substantiated” complaints against either lawmakers or their high-ranking staff members.
The release of these records was part of an informal agreement struck between the California Capitol Correspondents Association and legislative leaders after the start of the #MeToo movement. That movement forced an overhaul of changes in how sexual assault and other forms of workplace misconduct are investigated at the State Capitol.
This agreement is not set in state law. The Legislative Open Records Act still legally protects and prevents these records from being released to the public. Read More > at KCRA
Two New CA Bills Unveiled to Ban All Plastic Bags From Supermarkets – Two new bills that would ban all plastic bags from grocery stores and other stores were unveiled on Thursday, potentially marking the complete end of all plastic bags in stores.
Assembly Bill 2236 and Senate Bill 1053, authored by Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) and Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) respectively, would remove the option to have any kind of plastic bag at food stores and convenience stores. Both bills would act as an expansion of SB 270, a 2014 bill that was ultimately approved of by voters in 2016 as Proposition 67, which had banned all one time use plastic bags and only allowed thicker plastic bags to be purchased in stores.
Both Assemblywoman Bauer-Kahan and Senator Blakespear wrote their bills due in large part because of how studies found that most Californians were either not recycling those bags or were still using the thicker bags as one time only bags, despite being designed to be used multiple times. According to one state study cited by Blakespear, the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds per year in 2014 to 11 pounds per year in 2021, despite the massive law change. Both also acknowledged how plastic bags were still causing environmental damage, and that a total ban was the only way to stop it. Some coastal cleanup surveys also found that volunteers have collected over 300,000 plastic grocery bags in the last three decades.
In addition to the backing of many environmental groups and grocery store organizations including the California Grocers Association, many Senator and Assembly members gave the bill their backing on Thursday. Experts told the Globe on Thursday that the bill was likely to pass later this year, and Governor Gavin Newsom would sign the bill. As Mayor of San Francisco in 2007, then Mayor Newsom signed the first city-wide plastic bag ban in the nation. As he has continued to show approval towards such bans, him signing a bill would be likely. Read More > at California Globe
San Francisco is hit by another huge blow as RESIDENTIAL property market begins to tank, with investor landlord ditching 459 homes across 12 buildings due to plunging occupancy blamed on crime – San Francisco’s residential property market has hit troubled waters as a major investor landlord announced the sell-off of a large section of its rental empire this week.
Landlord Mosser Companies defaulted on a 2018 loan for $88 million that was underwritten by its 459 rental units across 12 buildings in San Francisco.
The company’s creditor has now hired real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to sell the multifamily home properties, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Mosser Companies took on the debt pre-pandemic with low occupancy rates, but as the city by the bay grapples with a post-Covid doom loop occupancies have risen as families move out to escape rising crime.
This, coupled with historically high interest rates as the loan came due, means Mosser and other real estate investors are looking to sell off their assets. Read More > at Daily Mail
Report: Unfunded cost of retirement benefits reaches $1.14 trillion – New Jersey, California, New York, Texas and Illinois face a hundred billion plus deficit when it comes to paying for the benefits other than pensions promised to state retirees.
The State of New Jersey’s unfunded liability for post-retirement benefits other than pensions in state health care plans reached $174.9 billion in 2022. That was the highest in the country, according to a report by the American Legislative Exchange Council. The report stated the nationwide costs of state-sponsored post-retirement benefits reached $1.14 trillion in 2022.
California ($140.2 billion), New York ($133.2 billion), Texas ($120.2 billion) and Illinois ($103.1 billion) rounded out the top five states with the highest liabilities.
Other Post-Employment Benefits are referred to as OPEB by actuaries and includes costs such as retiree health care, life insurance, Medicare Supplement Insurance and deferred compensation.
Nebraska and South Dakota didn’t have any unfunded liabilities.
Hawaii had the highest per-capita cost of unfunded liabilities at $19,933. Hawaii’s overall unfunded OPEB liability was $28.2 billion, ranking it 11th highest in the U.S. Read More > at The Center Square
Car insurance rates jump 26% across the U.S. in 2024, report shows – Having a car is getting more expensive for drivers across the country as auto insurance premiums continue to soar.
According to a new Bankrate report, U.S. drivers are paying an average of $2,543 annually, or $212 per month, for car insurance — an increase of 26% from last year. That’s 3.41% of yearly earnings for those with a salary of $74,580, which is the national median household income according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Auto insurance rates have been rising at a breakneck pace,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate. “And though the pace of increases will eventually slow, that doesn’t mean premiums are coming down.”
Bankrate’s report looks at car insurance costs as a percentage of household income throughout the U.S., to determine the true cost of auto insurance. Read More > at CBS News
COAL PLANTS STAYING ONLINE BECAUSE AI NEEDS SO MUCH POWER – The booming AI industry is putting a massive strain on the US’s aging electricity grid as energy companies struggle to power the massive data centers that the technology requires, Bloomberg reports.
In fact, the situation is already dire enough that coal plants once set for retirement are being kept online as a stopgap measure with more set to follow, highlighting AI’s worrying environmental footprint that can sometimes go overlooked.
“We do need way more energy in the world than we thought we needed before,” Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, said at the World Economic Forum last week, as quoted by Bloomberg. “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology.”
AI data centers are different from traditional ones, which are already formidable energy hogs, because they’re stacked with specialized graphics processing units that perform more demanding tasks than typical computer chips.
Meta, formerly Facebook, itself heavily invested in AI, is building one such data center in Kansas City. Perhaps not coincidentally, the energy company that services the area, Evergy, announced in June that it was delaying the retirement of a coal plant by five years to 2028, according to Bloomberg.
Elsewhere, in an area of Northern Virginia aptly known as “data center alley,” local provider Dominion Energy was forced to temporarily pause new data center connections in 2022. It reportedly warned the data center company Digital Realty of a possible “pinch point” that could prevent new projects until 2026. A Dominion representative, however, told Bloomberg that this was inaccurate and that the pause only lasted a few months.
Still, what is a matter of record is that Dominion is also considering keeping a coal plant online along with several natural gas ones to service the area, Bloomberg noted — despite having a massive wind farm in the works. Read More > at THE_BYTE
Fast foodies are getting fed up with price hikes at the drive-thru – Look no further than the fast-food drive-thru for evidence of inflation fatigue.
Food companies have been passing along higher labor and ingredient costs to consumers long after inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. Diners are getting fed up, eating less fast food and griping on social media that their go-to cheap meals aren’t so cheap anymore.
Sales show it. McDonald’s reported underwhelming results in the fourth quarter, and Yum Brands showed weaker-than-expected growth in its top brands, which include KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.
Fast-food executives are taking note. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts Monday that consumers are becoming more discriminating with their dollars, and he promised the company would focus more on affordability this year.
Kempczinski noted that consumers earning $45,000 or less annually were favoring comparatively cheaper groceries over Mickey D’s, opting to cook their own meals more often.
“Eating at home has become more affordable,” he said. “The battleground is certainly with that low-income consumer.” Read More > at NBC News
It’s not just Taylor Swift ‘nudes’: Millions of teen girls victimized as classmates turn them into deepfake porn – “Imagine a girl waking up and finding an explicit photo or video that looks like her but it isn’t her,” Dorota Mani told The Post.
That’s what happened to Mani’s 14-year-old daughter, Francesca, who discovered in October that classmates at Westfield High School, in Union County, New Jersey, had been circulating a photo that appeared to depict her in the nude.
But the photo wasn’t real. It was generated by boys in her class using artificial intelligence “deepfake” technology.
All the perpetrator needed was to take an innocent photo of Francesca from her social media and use one of dozens of apps or websites, to turn it into a fake nude.
This week the ease with which vile pornographic “deepfakes” can be created exploded into public view as a nude image of Taylor Swift flooded social media.
The twisted version of the world’s biggest pop star was so ubiquitous that X, formerly Twitter, had to censor searches of her name to stop innocent users seeing the image.
And a new analysis for the Associated Press revealed that more deepfake content was posted online this year than every other prior year combined.
The issue was only mentioned once on Wednesday on Capitol Hill when senators quizzed tech CEOs including Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Facebook and Instagram, Evan Spiegel who leads Snapchat, and X’s Linda Yaccarino on children’s safety for four hours.
But Francesca was, her mother said, one of dozens of victims of deepfake pornography at her high school alone — suggesting the problem is regularly affecting millions of teenage American girls.
And there is no federal law which prevents the images being spread, because they are not currently categorized as child abuse images. Read More > in the New York Post
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign – Our understanding of COVID-19 vaccinations and their impact on health and mortality has evolved substantially since the first vaccine rollouts. Published reports from the original randomized phase 3 trials concluded that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could greatly reduce COVID-19 symptoms. In the interim, problems with the methods, execution, and reporting of these pivotal trials have emerged. Re-analysis of the Pfizer trial data identified statistically significant increases in serious adverse events (SAEs) in the vaccine group. Numerous SAEs were identified following the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), including death, cancer, cardiac events, and various autoimmune, hematological, reproductive, and neurological disorders. Furthermore, these products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing in accordance with previously established scientific standards. Among the other major topics addressed in this narrative review are the published analyses of serious harms to humans, quality control issues and process-related impurities, mechanisms underlying adverse events (AEs), the immunologic basis for vaccine inefficacy, and concerning mortality trends based on the registrational trial data. The risk-benefit imbalance substantiated by the evidence to date contraindicates further booster injections and suggests that, at a minimum, the mRNA injections should be removed from the childhood immunization program until proper safety and toxicological studies are conducted. Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits. Given the extensive, well-documented SAEs and unacceptably high harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.
Our understanding of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccinations and their impact on mortality has evolved substantially since the first vaccine rollouts in December 2020. Early investigations indicated the potential of these biologicals for preventing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Based on the first randomized controlled trials sponsored by Pfizer-BioNTech ((New York, United States (US); Mainz, Germany) and Moderna Inc. (Massachusetts, US), researchers concluded that there was a noteworthy 95% relative risk (RR) reduction of symptomatic COVID-19 [1,2]. The overlapping finding between the two trials prompted the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow the use of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on December 11, 2020, a decision that was followed by early unblinding and cessation of the trials [3].
Prior to the rapid authorization process, no vaccine had been permitted for market release without undergoing a testing period of at least four years, the record set by Merck & Co., Inc. (New Jersey, US) in 1967 with the development of the world’s first mumps vaccine [4]. Pfizer’s vaccine (BNT162b2) completed the process in seven months. Previous timeframes for phase 3 trial testing averaged 10 years [5]. Health departments have stated that 10-15 years is the normal timeframe for evaluating vaccine safety [6]. With the COVID-19 vaccines, safety was never assessed in a manner commensurate with previously established scientific standards, as numerous safety testing and toxicology protocols typically followed by the FDA were sidestepped [7,8]. Preclinical studies of the mRNA product’s biodistribution and potential toxicities from repeated doses (to mimic multiple vaccinations), were circumvented to enable accelerated clinical testing [9]. Perhaps the most important trial benchmark obviated by the rapid authorization process was the minimum 6-12 month observation period typically recommended for identifying possible longer-term vaccine-related adverse effects (AEs) in the vaccine versus placebo groups [9]. Read More > at Cureus
The Weaponization of “Scientific Consensus” – In September, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill that prohibited medical professionals from sharing “misinformation” with patients. Specifically, the law stated that it would be
[U]nprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.
The law defined “misinformation”:
“Misinformation” means false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.
The law reflected a common perspective: A scientific consensus represents truth and views outside that consensus are misinformation. Thus, to identify those who are spreading misinformation we simply need to identify the relevant scientific consensus. Those out of step with the consensus, the argument continues, can then be called out or sanctioned for spreading misinformation — and public discourse can proceed based on accepted facts, not falsehoods.
The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.
There are many problems with the notion of consensus-as-truth and the (self)appointment of misinformation police to regulate discourse, whether of the public or, as in the case of the California law, of experts themselves. Read More > at The Honest Broker
Will U.S. Oil Boom Keep Booming? – When last October Hamas attacked Israel, oil prices jumped higher, as always happens when armed conflict breaks out in the Middle East. Just a week or so later, however, prices had retreated.
Even as the war spread and lit up surrounding countries, oil prices remained stubbornly range-bound, with analysts predicting that it would take an actual supply disruption for traders to start caring about geopolitical risk.
All this was made possible by one factor: U.S. oil production. That expanded surprisingly strongly last year. And many traders and analysts alike seem to assume that this year will be the same. But will it?
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia ordered Aramco to stop work on The Kingdom’s oil production capacity expansion. That work would have raised Aramco’s maximum production capacity from 12 million bpd to 13 million bpd. It turned out, however, that Riyadh had reconsidered the plan. Bloomberg was quick to note the role of U.S. shale as the Saudis’ “nemesis for much of the past decade.”
The suggestion appears to assume that U.S. shale production will continue growing at last year’s robust rate, which surprised most industry watchers who had expected production to reflect drillers’ newfound capital discipline and focus on shareholder returns and debt repayment. Read More > at Oil Price
An EV That’s Truly Equivalent to a Gas Car Isn’t Coming Anytime Soon – The simple fact is that many Americans won’t consider switching to an EV until EVs are functionally equivalent to gasoline-powered vehicles and similarly priced. Gas vehicles today have a median range of around 400 miles, refuel in under five minutes, and typically cost between $25,000 and $45,000. The EV models currently sold in the U.S. have a median range of 250 miles, recharge 10% to 80% in 18 to 40 minutes, and have a median cost of $57,000. For consumers who just want an affordable, convenient car that works, an EV can be a tough sell.
The price divide is more stark when you consider that there are only eight EVs available for under $40,000 in the U.S., all sedans or small SUVs. By itself, automaker Toyota sells 11 gas models in that price category — cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans among them.
So, when will EVs reach true parity with gas cars? To put some concrete metrics on the question, when will there be an EV that has 400 miles of range, recharges in 10 minutes or less, and costs $30,000?
Recent trends provide reason for optimism. In 2011, the median range for an EV was 80 miles. By 2022, it was 250. Between September 2022 and September 2023, the average cost of an EV in the U.S. fell 22.4%. This boon for consumers was made possible by falling battery pack prices and rising battery energy density. The energy density of lithium-ion batteries has increased by more than eight times since 2008 while costs have fallen nearly 90%.
… Three years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised a $25,000 EV within the next three years. Tesla’s cheapest car today, the Model 3 sedan, is just over $37,000. Read More > at Real Clear Science
What do your blood test results mean? A toxicologist explains the basics of how to interpret them - Your blood serves numerous roles to maintain your health. To carry out these functions, blood contains a multitude of components, including red blood cells that transport oxygen, nutrients and hormones; white blood cells that remove waste products and support the immune system; plasma that regulates temperature; and platelets that help with clotting.
Within the blood are also numerous molecules formed as byproducts of normal biochemical functions. When these molecules indicate how your cells are responding to disease, injury or stress, scientists often refer to them as biological markers, or biomarkers. Thus, biomarkers in a blood sample can represent a snapshot of the current biochemical state of your body, and analyzing them can provide information about various aspects of your health.
As a toxicologist, I study the effects of drugs and environmental contaminants on human health. As part of my work, I rely on various health-related biomarkers, many of which are measured using conventional blood tests.
Understanding what common blood tests are intended to measure can help you better interpret the results. If you have results from a recent blood test handy, please follow along.
Depending on the lab that analyzed your sample, the results from your blood test may be broken down into individual tests or collections of related tests called panels. Results from these panels can allow a health care professional to recommend preventive care, detect potential diseases and monitor ongoing health conditions.
For each of the tests listed in your report, there will typically be a number corresponding to your test result and a reference range or interval. This range is essentially the upper and lower limits within which most healthy people’s test results are expected to fall.
Sometimes called a normal range, a reference interval is based on statistical analyses of tests from a large number of patients in a reference population. Normal levels of some biomarkers are expected to vary across a group of people, depending on their age, sex, ethnicity and other attributes.
So, separate reference populations are often created from people with a particular attribute. For example, a reference population could comprise all women or all children. A patient’s test value can then be appropriately compared with results from the reference population that fits them best. Read More > at The Conversation
Did Drug Traffickers Funnel Millions of Dollars to Mexican President López Obrador’s First Campaign? – Years before Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected as Mexico’s leader in 2018, U.S. drug-enforcement agents uncovered what they believed was substantial evidence that major cocaine traffickers had funneled some $2 million to his first presidential campaign.
According to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. and Mexican officials and government documents reviewed by ProPublica, the money was provided to campaign aides in 2006 in return for a promise that a López Obrador administration would facilitate the traffickers’ criminal operations.
The investigation did not establish whether López Obrador sanctioned or even knew of the traffickers’ reported donations. But officials said the inquiry — which was built on the extensive cooperation of a former campaign operative and a key drug informant — did produce evidence that one of López Obrador’s closest aides had agreed to the proposed arrangement.
The allegation that representatives of Mexico’s future president negotiated with notorious criminals has continued to reverberate among U.S. law-enforcement and foreign policy officials, who have long been skeptical of López Obrador’s commitment to take on drug traffickers.
The case raised difficult questions about how far the United States should go to confront the official corruption that has been essential to the emergence of Mexican drug traffickers as a global criminal force. While some officials argue that it is not the United States’ job to root out endemic corruption in Mexico, others say that efforts to fight organized crime and build the rule of law will be futile unless officials who protect the traffickers are held to account.
“The corruption is so much a part of the fabric of drug trafficking in Mexico that there’s no way you can pursue the drug traffickers without going after the politicians and the military and police officials who support them,” Raymond Donovan, who recently retired as the Drug Enforcement Administration’s operations chief, said in an interview.
In their investigation, DEA agents developed what they considered an extraordinary inside source after they arrested the former campaign operative on drug charges in 2010. To avoid federal prison, the operative gave a detailed account of the traffickers’ cash donations, which he said he helped deliver. He also surreptitiously recorded conversations with Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar, the close López Obrador aide who the operative said had participated in the scheme. Read More > at ProPublica
U.S. – Japan Steel Alliance Helps National Security of Both – Attention-grabbing media headlines such as “After U.S. Steel announces sale, reactions range from outrage to concern,” and “U.S. Steel-Nippon deal merits ‘serious scrutiny,’ says Biden aide,” fuel Americans’ worry. They fear another iconic American company is being sold to a foreign buyer, in this case Japan.
This echoed my own initial reaction.
Lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Ohio have requested Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen block the proposed sale of the Pittsburgh-based company. They argue that the country’s core industries should not be dependent upon foreign actors.
But is this angst justified? After carefully exploring the issue, I think not.
Opponents of the sale to Nippon Steel have argued that U.S. Steel should be acquired instead by Cleveland-Cliffs, a steelmaker based in Cleveland, Ohio. They made an unsolicited bid of $7.3 billion in August, which U.S. Steel rejected. But is blocking Nippon’s December offer of $14.1 billion, plus assumption of debt, in the best interest of Americans?
The WSJ Editorial board suggests that teeing up a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of the U.S. Steel purchase is to treat Japan and China alike. In fact it rightly notes, “Japan is arguably America’s most important ally as a bulwark against China.”
Japan is one of the strongest U.S. allies, both in military might and economic clout. I witnessed the unmatched professionalism of their Self-Defense Forces first-hand during my two U.S. Navy tours of duty in Japan. I also saw it later as the senior spokesman for the United States Pacific Fleet.
“It is pretty clear that Japan does not pose any national security risk to the United States,” says Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute. “It’s not like Nippon Steel is a state-owned steel company in China. It’s a privately owned company in Japan and the U.S. should welcome all kinds of investment from Japan.”
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who served in the Obama Administration, said there’s no national-security justification for questioning the proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp.
“There is no remotely plausible national-security rationale for questioning the Nippon-US Steel transaction,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin. “Japan is a staunch ally.” Read More > at Real Clear Defense
Experts Confirm: US Is Dealing With an ‘Out-of-Control’ STI Epidemic – The US is dealing with an “out-of-control” epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, according to the National Coalition of STD Directors.
The warning comes after the release of an annual data report on STIs by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The exasperation of public health officials can be felt in the very first sentence of the online announcement.
“Yet again,” the CDC website reads, “more than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported in the United States.”
The most common STI in the US in 2022 was chlamydia, which has remained in the top spot for years now. Nevertheless, it is the recent rise in syphilis that is concerning health officials most.
According to CDC data, syphilis cases of all stages have increased by 80 percent in the past five years.
While most think of adults contracting STIs, syphilis threatens the lives of babies, too. When a child contracts syphilis from the mother during pregnancy or birth, it is known as congenital syphilis.
In 2022, more than 3,700 of these cases were officially reported in the US. That’s a 937 percent increase in a single decade.
The good news is that syphilis is curable with the right antibiotics. The bad news is that until the infection is diagnosed and treated, it can cause irreversible damage to the body. In babies, syphilis is particularly dangerous, sometimes causing developmental delays, seizures, or even death. Read More > at Science Alert
Soda taxes can’t reverse the obesity epidemic – Many public health advocates and scholars see sugar-sweetened-beverage taxes (often simply called soda taxes) as key to reducing obesity and its adverse health effects.
But a careful look at the data challenges this view. We reviewed close to 100 studies that have analyzed current taxes in more than 50 countries and conducted our own research on the effectiveness of soda taxes in the US. There is no conclusive evidence that soda taxes have reduced how much sugar or calories people consume in any meaningful way. Soda taxes alone simply cannot nudge consumers toward healthier food choices.
The World Health Organization estimates that more than 17 million people die prematurely each year from chronic noncommunicable diseases. Being overweight or obese is a major risk factor for many of these conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, asthma and several types of cancer. A widely publicized 2019 Lancet Commission report pegged annual obesity-related health-care costs and economic productivity losses at $2 trillion, about 3 percent of the global gross domestic product.
Consuming large amounts of added sugars is a key part of this problem. A single 12-ounce can of soda can have more than 10 teaspoons of sugar; drinking just one exceeds the American Heart Association’s recommended daily limits on added sugars. It is easy to see why reducing soda consumption has been a popular target in the war against obesity.
One would think that taxing sodas would raise their prices and discourage consumers from purchasing them. With this idea in mind, a wave of taxes has been slapped on sugar-sweetened beverages across the world. For example, cities in California’s Bay Area have imposed a tax of 1 cent per ounce on sugary beverages (a seemingly large price increase given soda’s cost of about 5 cents per ounce in the western US).
Yet even taxes that are portrayed as most effective to date, such as the UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy, correlate with a decrease in the average person’s intake of added sugars of only 18 calories (just over a teaspoon) per day. These reductions can be canceled out by consuming just two gummy bears, a single teaspoon of ice cream or two potato chips or fries.
So why have these taxes been so ineffective? Read More > at Knowable Magazine
Harvard-trained nutrition expert: If I could only prioritize one food in my diet, it’d be this – Meat is good for you. There are experts who might disagree with me, and many researchers continue to search for evidence linking meat to heart disease, for example.
But as a Harvard-trained, board-certified psychiatrist specializing in nutritional and metabolic psychiatry, I’ve long been curious about the relationship between food and brain health, as well as overall well-being. And in my research, I’ve yet to find a credible, plausible health argument against eating meat of any kind (including red meat, seafood, and poultry).
In fact, no other food group is nutritious enough, safe enough, or geographically accessible enough to recommend as the healthy foundation of the optimal human diet.
So if I could only afford to buy food from one food group, I’d prioritize meat.
Meat is good for gut health because it’s non-irritating, easy to digest, and supports healthy insulin levels without promoting blood glucose spikes.
It also provides all of the macronutrients and micronutrients we need, including some that are difficult or impossible to obtain from plant foods. For instance, it’s an excellent source of every B vitamin, including B7, which plants contain very little of, and B12, which plants do not contain at all.
Only meat contains heme iron, a form of iron at least three times easier for us to absorb than the non-heme iron in plants. And only animal-source foods contain the MK‑4 form of vitamin K2, which is easier to absorb (and is the form used by the human brain).
Some scientists even argue that eating meat made us human — meaning that it allowed us to devote less energy and bodily real estate to the long intestinal tract needed to process high-fiber, high-plant diets, so that we could invest more energy in developing our uniquely oversized brains. Read More > at CNBC
Romick in Oakley 