Our Work

Our Jim Gerstenzang on energy policy, Detroit and 60 miles per gallon

Jim Gerstenzang is back with another co-authored op-ed piece on energy policy, this one looking at the White House's moment of opportunity in nudging Detroit toward not only new car designs, but a new industrial model. From the piece in the Miami Herald:

This month, with traditional fanfare, Detroit is launching the new model year. More quietly, the Obama administration is preparing to help shape the cars that we will be driving six years from now. In coming weeks, it will unveil the first draft of standards for fuel efficiency and emissions beginning with the 2017 model year.

The challenge facing the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation is to set standards tough enough to revitalize the industry. They will bring savings at the pump, reduce global warming pollution and cut our oil addiction and the risks that go with it. They will transform the car industry by transforming the car.

This is a unique opportunity. As auto makers emerge from bankruptcy, strong emissions and fuel-mileage standards can ignite American know-how -- the country's greatest resource. With the best American technology, by 2025 Detroit can build safe, clean, 21st-century cars that average at least 60 miles per gallon -- and deliver 21st-century jobs.

Susan Brink on one doctor's evolution

Our Susan Brink has a piece in On Wisconson, the alumni magazine for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on what can only be described as a physician's path of enlightenment that began with a dying man's case of the hiccups. From her story:

The hiccups wouldn’t stop. It was August of 1996, and an elderly stroke victim lay dying in his home in the small town of Driggs, Idaho. But he could have no rest. He was stricken with a relentless case of hiccups, robbing him of comfort. The episode gave David Rakel, the man’s physician and neighbor, a memorable lesson in the importance of watching, listening, and heeding the desires of his patients. Drugs, the main weapon in Rakel’s medical arsenal, made the dying man groggy and unaware, and still the hiccups continued. Family members suggested acupuncture. Like many conventional, or allopathic, Western physicians, Rakel was skeptical. But he figured acupuncture would do no harm. “I humored them. I said, ‘Sure. Why not?’ ” It worked. The acupuncturist came. The hiccups went away without sedation. “He was able to die with loving family around him and a sense of peace. It was a beautiful death,” says Rakel, now a UW-Madison professor of family medicine.

Janet Wilson on new research on the line between 'senior moments' and Alzheimer's

Our Janet Wilson, who has been doing work for UC Irvine, has a piece up on research into the difference between "senior moments and Alzheimer's. From her piece:

Now, with the help of Burns and other volunteers aged 18 to 89, the researchers have been able to identify for the first time in humans a long-hidden part of the brain known as the perforant path. The passage is believed to deteriorate gradually as part of normal aging and far more quickly as part of Alzheimer’s. Scientists have struggled for decades to locate the tiny pathway, which is linked to the hippocampus, a well-known center of memory.

The UCI researchers developed and used a new ultrahigh-resolution technique, outlined in a paper published June 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to electronically peer through dense matter near the seahorse-shaped hippocampus.

Locating the perforant path and monitoring its deterioration could distinguish normal aging from dementia much sooner than other methods, offering relief to absent-minded folks. The information could also be useful to drug companies and doctors testing Alzheimer’s treatments.

“The nice thing about this is we may be able to predict Alzheimer’s very early,” says Stark, who often inserted his own gleaming bald pate into the MRI to help develop their scanning techniques. “Let’s say you’re a drug company, and you think you’ve got a potentially effective treatment for slowing Alzheimer’s. You want to try it on people in the most preliminary stages of that disease, not those just experiencing normal aging.”

Our Jim Gerstenzang on oil spills and public policy

Jim Gerstenzang, writing with Dan Becker, has this op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press looking at the Gulf Oil spill within the context of America's energy policy and gas mileage.  From the article:

The lesson of the BP disaster is that we must now substantially toughen those standards. They need to be strong enough that auto companies will produce cars that begin to break our reliance on the internal combustion engine. To do that, the Obama administration will have to weaken the grip of big oil and the auto industry.

The new mileage standard represents a 4% annual increase in fuel economy. If it is next increased to 5.5%, from 2017 to 2025, we could ultimately save an additional 3.5 million barrels of oil a day.

Accomplishing this is not rocket science. It's auto mechanics. Better engines, improved transmissions and aerodynamic, hybrid and new electric vehicle technology are all awaiting installation by Detroit.

Given their track record, the car companies will only use them if we adopt tough standards. We own GM and Chrysler. Let's tell them and the other automakers: It's time to help, not hinder. Use your engineers, not your lobbyists.

Nancy Wride on some good news about diabetes

Our Nancy Wride has added blogging to her repertoire, and has this post on Lifescript about some new developments in diabetes treatment. From her post:

Monitors worn 24/7 to track blood sugar levels have been around awhile, but the technology and convenience continue to improve. Continuous glucose monitors have a hair-sized sensor wire that inserts beneath the skin of the abdomen secured with a sticky patch. Every five minutes, the sensor measures blood glucose and reports it to a receiver you wear like a pager. There are numerous brands of these products, which demand time and a commitment to managing blood sugar that not all people can muster. The calibrating and changing of the sensors takes time to replace for safety and hygiene every three or so days.

 Cutting that time by more than half now, though, is DexCom’s Seven Plus, which was introduced to an Expo audience by Dr. Richard Berkson, associate clinical professor at UCLA’s School of Medicine. Seven Plus is the only FDA-approved continuous monitor that can be worn for a whole week.

And she has this post on a related topic.

Janet Wilson on a San Diego County desalination project

Our Janet Wilson has this piece for DC Bureau on a San Diego County desalination plant -- and concerns that the reality might prove to be much different than the supporters' expectations. From her story:

Company and water officials, along with some industry analysts, say it is well worth the price to bring a local water supply to the drought prone region, as population swells and climate change could begin to wreak havoc with the Sierra snow cap. They say despite recessionary woes, the time is right. 

But critics say that far from being a New Age answer to water woes, the plant and others like it are costly, unnecessary boondoggles that often malfunction and carry damaging environmental side effects. They argue keeping water prices artificially low through subsidies for costly desalination plants is the wrong approach, and that conservation, recycling wastewater, and other far cheaper alternatives should be tried first.

Janet Wilson weighs in on a couple of enviro books

Our Janet Wilson, former environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, takes a look in the San Francisco Chronicle at a couple of new books, "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," by Bill McKibben and "How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate," by Jeff Goodell.

The short version: We may have already blown it. From Wilson's review:

Forget 2050. We're already cooked. Thanks to the greenhouse gases we've piled into the atmosphere, the natural world as we knew it is gone. It's time to figure out how to preserve what's left. 

That's the in-your-face conclusion of "How to Cool the Planet" and "Eaarth" - so spelled because the old Earth is dead. But Jeff Goodell's and Bill McKibben's books - timed for Earth Day, on Thursday - diverge dramatically in exploring solutions to an altered planet that "represents the deepest of human failures," in McKibben's words.

Janet Wilson on James Cameron, 'Avatar,' and the environment

Member Janet Wilson reports for Grist that director James Cameron sees himself as the film industry's "greenest" director, and the worldwide success of 'Avatar' is a blow for raising environmental awareness. From Wilson's piece:

 “I wanted to do a film that had a deeply embedded environmental message ... but do it in the form of a science fiction action adventure,” Cameron told local public radio host Elvis Mitchell. “My feeling was if we have to go four light years away to another planet to appreciate what we have here on earth, that’s okay.”

He wanted, he said, to pack such an emotional wallop that by the time the film’s giant, sheltering tree is felled, everyone in the theater would feel moral outrage. Further, after the triumph of nature’s creatures over evil military contractors, he wanted the audience to feel hopeful enough to do something.

Susan Brink on planning for the end of life

MSNBC has picked up member Susan Brink's three-part package on planning for the final days of life. Brink wrote the pieces for Kaiser Health News. From her first story: 

 When 87-year-old Bunny Olenick suffered a massive stroke in December 2008, doctors told her family there was no chance she could recover fully, although her limitations probably wouldn't be known for months. A neurologist told her sons that if she did survive, her ability to communicate would be diminished, and she would likely need around-the-clock care for the rest of her life. What would Bunny want them to do? 

Phil Olenick, 59, and his brother Steve, 57, knew that modern American medicine can offer few compassionate exits from this life. Artificial measures in the intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston — things like ventilator-assisted breathing or feeding tubes — stood a chance of prolonging life for Bunny Olenick but in a condition they knew she would abhor. 

In the era of modern medicine, there is often no easy way to navigate between an acceptable quality of life and a death with dignity. That was underscored by two recent studies in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that some aggressive measures might actually increase pain and speed declines among frail elderly.

Scott Martelle on a looming rainy week in LA - and fears of mudslides

Member Scott Martelle - Los Angeles correspondent for Sphere.com - has a piece on fears that an expected  week's worth of El Niño-influenced storms could start some of the mountainsides moving in areas that burned during last fall's devastating fire season. From his story: 

 In the three months since the biggest of the fires – called the Station Fire – charred more than 250 miles of mountains north and east of Los Angeles, authorities have scrambled to prepare foothill communities for the second part of Southern California's dangerous tango with nature – mudslides. More than 100,000 feet of cement "K-rail" barriers have been deployed through neighborhoods to steer mudflows away from homes, and countless sandbags have been filled and stacked atop curbs and property lines. Some residents have heeded engineers' advice and built diversionary fences along hillsides.