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Sunday, March 3, 2013
Sequester would whack away at science funding
By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience
With the deadline for government-wide spending cuts just hours away, attempts to avert the cuts ? which would affect medical research, space exploration and defense spending ? have all but failed.
President Barack Obama must sign the $85 billion in cuts, known as "the sequester," into law by 11:59 p.m. Friday night. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates an effective 9 percent cut to nondefense programs, including basic science research, and a 13 percent cut to defense programs. The blow to researchers and government workers will be felt widely, experts say.
The president met this morning with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but no action to avert the cuts was taken. Obama supports a long-term budget deal that would include both spending cuts and tax increases.
Stinging cuts
The impact of the spending slash on research will be severe. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimates a total research and development cut of $8.6 billion in 2013. This includes a $5.4 billion cut to the Department of Defense, a $1.5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a $283 million cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The sequester could also result in significant cuts to NASA.
Some effects will be immediate: "Federal agencies are going to be either restricting or completely eliminating training and travel for the remainder of 2013," Joanne Carney, director of government relations at AAAS, told LiveScience. "There's going to be an amazing increase in competition" for grants, Carney added, so "universities are going to have to start becoming a bit more strategic, not only in proposals to the federal government, but also in looking for sources of alternative funding." [How the Sequester Will Affect Science]
Other effects could take weeks or months to set in. Some agencies have warned that employees may face furloughs, or mandatory unpaid leave. But federal agencies are required to give employees 30 days' notice before furloughs can commence, so the soonest they could happen is April.
Young researchers will likely be some of the hardest hit by the cutbacks. Spencer Diamond is a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego who is studying photosynthetic bacteria that could be used to produce green fuels and chemicals. Diamond's work is funded completely by the NSF and the NIH.
"A major loss of government research funding would severely impact most individuals at my university, and would significantly set back the basic scientific research we are doing to help develop alternative fuel sources," Diamond is quoted as saying in a letter Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS, wrote to Obama in December. "This is research on which we can build the foundations of U.S. energy independence," Diamond said.
The cuts come on top of significant cuts already put in place in the last couple of years, according to Mary Woolley, president of the not-for-profit advocacy group Research!America.
What happens now
All agencies will be funded through March 27 through what's known as a continuing resolution, but if Congress fails to pass budget legislation by that date, the government will be shut down, except for essential employees (such as emergency workers).?
The hope is that Congress might reapportion the cuts to provide flexibility, Carney said. "Some agencies may see more in funds, and some may see less," but it would be a more balanced approach than across-the-board reductions, she said.
The sequester was designed as a last-ditch measure in case Congress couldn't reach a deal to reduce the deficit. It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 2, 2013 ? the so-called "fiscal cliff" ? but was delayed until March 1.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook?and Google+.?
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Despite the hoopla, shutdown won't happen
It may not be readily obvious from the blizzard of news out there today on the "sequester," but a government shutdown became significantly less likely today, even as the automatic budget cuts barreled ahead toward reality.
What happened? Both sides - Republicans and Democrats - basically seem to have agreed that as they will continue to fight out the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts starting to take effect today, they will not allow that disagreement to jeopardize full funding for the federal government. That funding is now scheduled to expire March 27.
After the White House meeting this morning, House Speaker John Boehner said he would have the House vote next week to fund the full government - what's known as a "continuing resolution."
Boehner: "I did lay out that the House is going to move a continuing resolution next week to fund the government past March 27th, and I'm hopeful that we won't have to deal with the threat of a government shutdown while we're dealing with the sequester at the same time. The House will act next week, and I hope the Senate will follow suit."
Boehner's office provided this read-out of the meeting: "The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the president's sequester."
The president was asked at his mini-news conference whether he would definitely sign such a bill, even if it keeps government going at the new, lower spending levels as this fight is resolved (or not).
Obama's response: "With respect to the budget and keeping the government open - I'll try for our viewing audience to make sure that we're not talking in Washington gobbledygook. What's called the continuing resolution, which is essentially just an extension of last year's budget into this year's budget to make sure that basic government functions continue, I think it's the right thing to do to make sure that we don't have a government shutdown. And that's preventable."
So even as we moved toward the brink of sequester, the nation's leaders took a step back from another, much larger cliff.
Also ReadSource: http://news.yahoo.com/sequester-government-shutdown-looks-unlikely-211805386--abc-news-politics.html
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Saturday, March 2, 2013
In Kenya, half brother to Obama runs for governor
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? A politician named Obama who is running for governor in Kenya can boast of one big claim to fame on the campaign trail: blood relations with the president of the United States.
Malik Obama ? a half brother of Barack Obama ? is running for governor in the country's nationwide elections on Monday.
Malik said in a phone interview Friday that he can't run away from his name and association with his brother. He said he has the feeling people want to see who is the brother of President Barack Obama. Evoking Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, one of Malik's campaign slogans is change.
Monday is Kenya's first nationwide election since the 2007 vote devolved into massive tribal violence that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 600,000 from their homes.
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Friday, March 1, 2013
Obama administration joins fight vs. Calif. gay marriage ban
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Earth Provides Little Warning Before 'Catastrophic' Sinkholes
 
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New Study Links BPA and Childhood Asthma
One out of every ten U.S. children has been diagnosed with asthma. Image: Flickr/JasonUnbound
Kids exposed to a commonplace chemical early in life are more likely to have asthma, according to a study published today.
The study, which tested 568 children and their mothers in New York City, is the first to link early childhood exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) with asthma. Studies with lab mice, however, have found a similar link.
A Columbia University research team reported that children with higher levels of BPA at ages 3, 5 and 7 had increased odds of developing the respiratory disease when they were between 5 and 12. The children studied had roughly the same concentrations of BPA as the average for U.S. kids.
?We saw increased risk of asthma at fairly routine, low doses of BPA,? said Dr. Kathleen Donohue, an instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and lead author of the study, which was published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology today.
BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastics and is found in some canned foods and beverages, paper receipts and dental sealants. More than 90 percent of Americans have traces in their bodies.
Medical experts for decades have been trying to figure out what has caused asthma rates to skyrocket in children throughout much of the world, beginning in the 1980s. Many suspect that it might have something to do with early-life exposures and changes in immune systems causing inflammation.
One out of every 10 U.S. children has been diagnosed with asthma, and the rate is even higher for black children ? one out of every six, according to 2011 data from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
The study doesn?t mean BPA causes asthma or wheezing. But ?it?s an important study because we don?t know a lot right now about how BPA affects immune response and asthma,? said Kim Harley, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies environmental chemicals and children?s health but did not participate in the new research.
?They measured BPA at different ages, measured asthma and wheeze at multiple points, and still found consistent associations,? she said.
The researchers measured BPA in the women?s urine toward the end of their pregnancies. Once born, their children were then tested for BPA at ages 3, 5 and 7. Then they were tested for asthma and wheezing between the ages of 5 and 12.
Even though the researchers took BPA measurements at multiple times, it?s tricky to pin down exposure levels.
?BPA has a short half life, so whatever we take in today will be gone in about 24 hours,? said Joe Braun, an epidemiology professor at Brown University who was not involved with the research.
Braun said the testing was ?as good as we?re going to get for this type of study.? Still, he said, "we?re still not accurately capturing exposure."
Chemical industry representatives assert that there is no clear evidence of any human health effects from BPA exposure.
?The increasing rate of asthma among children is an important public health issue, but there is no scientific consensus on what is causing the increase and this study adds little relevant information to the debate," Steven Hentges, a representative at the American Chemistry Council, said in a prepared statement.
?Because of the limited study design based on single samples to monitor exposure, it is difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from this report," he said.
Sixty-five percent of the mothers were Dominican ? the rest were black women ? and mostly low income. This group of women and children has been studied for more than a decade by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children?s Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. They?ve been tested for a variety of potential effects related to consumer chemicals, air pollutants and pesticides.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=5ef0920c1c7cdd877bba23f625434c05
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