Friday, June 24, 2005

Governments have long been creating comparative advantages for their own economies

Why Asia Will Eat Our Lunch

"Businessweek, Book Review, June 20, 2005
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, are all too rational
By Clyde Prestowitz

Prestowitz has been mulling over America's competitiveness problems for 30 years, most recently as head of his own think tank -- the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. Before that he was an international executive for U.S. multinationals, a trade negotiator in the Reagan Administration, and author of a ground-breaking, although ultimately alarmist, 1988 book about U.S.-Japan relations, Trading Places. Prestowitz writes with clarity, historical perspective, and an uncommon ability to extricate himself from the intellectual straitjackets that hobble so many Washington economic policymakers. Free trader or protectionist? Democrat or Republican? Keynesian or supply-sider? He doesn't fit in any of those boxes.

Governments have long been creating comparative advantages for their own economies, Prestowitz notes, but U.S. policymakers have apparently forgotten this. Despite today's fashionable disdain for industrial policy, Washington was once an active participant in boosting the gross domestic product. The federal government created Radio Corporation of America and established U.S. dominance in radio technology, launched Boeing (BA ) and nurtured it with government contracts, and created AT&T (T ) and its genius pool at Bell Laboratories (B ), cradle of microelectronics. Then there's the Internet. 'The apparently effortless technological supremacy Americans assume as a birthright...had nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with targeted policy decisions,' Prestowitz notes.

Prestowitz also challenges one of the most popular and soothing myths in Washington -- that U.S. workers can compete with any in the world if given 'a level playing field.' The truth: Western workers won't be able to compete without accepting wage cuts, since, in the area of labor costs, China enjoys a "fifteen to thirtyfold advantage" over the developed world.

China and India, which together accounted for 75% of the world's GDP before the discovery of America, are on a steep trajectory to regain their prominence. 'The potential size of their markets, their endless supply of low-cost labor, the unique combination of many highly skilled but low-paid professionals, and the investment incentives offered by their governments will constitute an irresistible package' that will soak up global investment.

There is reason for hope, Prestowitz allows. America's technology is often the best, as are its universities. The U.S. leads in biotech, and it retains an entrepreneurial culture. That said, Prestowitz still could be too pessimistic. As with Trading Places, he tends to project current trends far into the unknowable future.

But the U.S. government is dangerously shortsighted. The country's savings rate, secondary-education system, energy and water conservation, critical infrastructure, research investment, and worker training lag behind those in too many other nations."

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Most U.S. Doctors Believe in God

Most U.S. Doctors Believe in God

"Most U.S. Doctors Believe in God
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer, Wed Jun 22, 9:03 PM ET

A survey examining religion in medicine found that most U.S. doctors believe in God and an afterlife — a surprising degree of spirituality in a science-based field, researchers say.

In the survey of 1,044 doctors nationwide, 76 percent said they believe in God, 59 percent said they believe in some sort of afterlife, and 55 percent said their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine.

"We were surprised to find that physicians were as religious as they apparently are," said Dr. Farr Curlin, a researcher at the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

"There's certainly a deep-seated cultural idea that science and religion are at odds," and previous studies have suggested that fewer than half of scientists believe in God, Curlin said Wednesday.

A previous survey showed about 83 percent of the general population believes in God.

But while medicine is science-based, doctors differ from scientists who work primarily in a laboratory setting, and their direct contact with patients in life-and-death situations may explain the differing views, Curlin said.

The study is based on responses to questionnaires mailed in 2003. It is to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine and was released online to subscribers earlier this month.

Dr. J. Edward Hill, president of the American Medical Association, said religion and medicine are completely compatible, as long as doctors do not force their own beliefs on patients.

Belief in "a supreme being ... is vitally important to physicians' ability to take care of patients, particularly the end-of-life issues that we deal with so often," said Hill, a family physician from Tupelo, Miss.

Religions among physicians are more varied than among the general population, the survey found. While more than 80 percent of the U.S. population is Protestant or Catholic, 60 percent of doctors said they were from either group.

Compared with the general population, more doctors were Jewish — 14 percent vs. 2 percent; Hindu — 5 percent vs. less than 1 percent; and Muslim — almost 3 percent vs. less than 1 percent."

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Can China Go Green?

Can China Go Green?

"CAN CHINA GO GREEN?
Fortune, June 27, 2005

When China's ministry of Science and Technology decided to build a new headquarters in Beijing, the government sought help from an unlikely partner - the Natural Resources Defense Council, best known for litigating and lobbying for stricter environmental rules in the U.S. The resulting green building uses the best available technology to save energy and water; since it opened last year, it has been toured by 2,000 local officials, designers, and architects. 'In terms of environmental innovation, China's going to kick our ass within a decade unless we wake up,' says Rob Watson, a senior scientist with the NRDC who works on China projects.

At least on paper, China is matching, if not exceeding, environmental standards set in the West. To curb its dependence on imported oil, China has adopted fuel-economy rules for automobiles that are more stringent than those in the U.S. or Europe. That is putting pressure on GM and Volkswagen, the leading foreign carmakers in China, to find ways to profit from selling small, fuel-efficient vehicles. The Chinese government is also investing in fuel-cell technologies for motor scooters, cars, and buses, hoping to invent an entirely new kind of auto industry. 'They've set the policy stage for innovation,' says Watson.

Desperation is driving the initiatives: Like so much in China, the scale of environmental problems is mind-boggling. China is home to five of the world's ten most polluted cities in terms of air quality. It burns dirty coal in more than 2,000 plants, generating clouds bearing mercury, soot, and sulfur dioxide that have been tracked all the way to the Oregon coast. China's industry is wasteful, requiring three to ten times more energy than industry in the U.S., Western Europe, or Japan to produce a dollar of economic output. Water is in short supply and deserts are expanding rapidly, according to Elizabeth Economy, the author of The River Runs Black, a book about China's environmental crisis.

Global companies are poised to capitalize. Immelt says that GE's investments in clean coal technology, wind power, nuclear energy, and fuel cells are being made with China in mind. "While Europe has been a driver for innovation in cleaner technologies, China promises to be its market," he says.

Because China relies so heavily on coal, for instance, it is likely to become the biggest buyer of a cleaner coal technology called IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle, if you must know) that converts coal to natural gas, which generates fewer pollutants. The technology can be combined with a process in which carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, can be captured and buried deep in the earth. David Hawkins, an expert on climate change with the NRDC who has consulted in China, says, "I think we'll see the technology move forward there faster, conceivably, than in the U.S."

Bill McDonough, the architect and industrial designer, predicts that China will become a seedbed for environmental innovation. "The Chinese are very practical," he says. "They are asking what mistakes have been made in the rest of the world and how they can avoid them." McDonough, who is chairman of a nonprofit called the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, says new building materials will be developed for China—he is working with the chemical industry giant BASF to develop a strong, lightweight, insulating poly- styrene to replace brick—as armies of Chinese people move to the cities. He foresees solar-power farms on a vast scale. "China is the place where the costs of solar collectors will drop once they go into mass production," he says. "It's a massive gift that China will give to the world."

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Sunday, June 12, 2005

The incredible shrinking aquifer - Ecocreto porous concrete

The incredible shrinking aquifer - ecological paving material called Ecocreto

"The incredible shrinking aquifer
BY ELIZA BARCLAY/The Herald Mexico, El Universal, Lunes 21 de febrero de 2005

For most Mexico City residents, the circulation of water is an obvious element of daily urban life, be it a projectile coursing down from the sky during the rainy months, a weekly task to replace or refill large plastic jugs of purified drinking water, or as a biweekly gift from the faucet for those marginalized communities whose utility service remains irregular.

As generations have built layer upon layer of structures to create the massive urban jungle that the city is today, it has become easy to forget that the city is sagging atop an enormous underground aquifer, where it has rested since the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico in the 14th century.

As the city's population has swelled to 18.5 million people, the pressure on the aquifer has become critical as the city's consumption of water has risen to 10,500 cubic feet per second, according to the city government's water division. Estimates of the aquifer's size and its ability to continue to sustain Mexico City vary considerably. Some local hydrologists say it could be fully depleted in as few as 10 to 20 years, while some government officials expect it to last 70 more years at minimum.

But the issue that is of concern to nearly everyone is insuring that the aquifer recharges properly as a means of avoiding full depletion. Though the city gets an average of 40 inches of rainfall per year, groundwater pumping exceeds the natural recharge by 50 to 80 percent. This overuse has resulted in declining groundwater levels, compression of the aquifer, subsidence of the land, and damage to buildings and other structures on the surface -- some parts of the Historic Center have dropped 30 feet.

An effort to recharge the aquifer has emerged from the private sector, in the form of an ecological paving material composed of aggregate grains that allow water to seep through straight into the ground. This porous concrete, called Ecocreto, has been employed in the construction of street pavement, sidewalks, parking lots, and bikepaths at more than 50 sites around the city, including the Televisa headquarters in Santa Fe and the National Museum of Antropology.

Developed by a team of Mexican engineers and architects in 1994 who were distressed by the looming water crises of Mexico City and Guadalajara, Ecocreto is similar to hydraulic concrete but manufactured without sand, which permits as much as 80 percent of rainwater to pass through into the subsoil.

"Our product is 100 percent permeable concrete additive that will help to recharge groundwater resources in Mexico and other parts of the world where water is scarce," said Néstor de Buen Unna, Ecocreto's general director. Ecocreto's popularity has bloomed in the past few years and the company now has distributors in Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Though initiatives like Martínez Santoyo's and Buen Unna's are steps forward in respecting the limits of the aquifer and finding ways to recharge it, the city still faces significant challenges in getting a grip on its water use. As the aquifer remains invisible to the eye above ground, it may be caught in losing tug-ofwar with the city's 18.5 million residents."

Read more about Ecocreto

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The Next Plague? Contagion through history

The Next Plague? Contagion through history

"The Next Plague?

Contagion through history
by Michael Slenske, The Atlantic Monthly, June 2005

From last December to this writing, the disease known to epidemiologists as H5N1 avian flu infected twenty-eight people in Vietnam, killing fourteen. On the scale of global catastrophe that may not sound like a lot. But World Health Organization officials worry that a worldwide outbreak could kill as many as seven million. Human populations have proved particularly susceptible to new flu pandemics every twenty to thirty years, as flu strains mutate and overcome built-up immunities. The most recent major flu pandemic petered out in 1972, so we may be overdue. Here are some noteworthy disease outbreaks through history.

1. Pneumonic plague. Since last December there have been some 300 suspected cases of—and at least sixty-one deaths from—pneumonic plague in eastern Congo. This is the largest plague outbreak since 1920, when more than 9,000 Manchurians succumbed.

2. Severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS first appeared in China in November of 2002, and was soon recognized as a coronavirus that caused high fevers and fatal pneumonia. Over the course of the next eight months the disease infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774 in twenty-six countries.

3. West Nile virus. Although outbreaks of this mosquito-borne encephalitis were identified as early as 1937, in Uganda, West Nile didn't reach the United States until the summer of 1999, when it infected sixty-two people and killed seven in New York City. Since then more than 15,000 American cases—and more than 500 deaths—have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control.

4. Ebola virus. Nearly two decades after Ebola—which can turn organs into virus-ridden slime in less than a week—took the lives of 600 people in Zaire and Sudan, in 1976, it resurfaced in Zaire, infecting 316 people and killing 245 from May to July of 1995. Fifty of the victims were hospital staffers treating the outbreak.

5. Hong Kong flu. Sweeping across the Pacific from Hong Kong in early 1968, the disease reached the United States by September of that year and went on to kill 34,000 Americans in six months. Outbreaks of this strain recurred in 1970 and 1972, and may have produced a million fatalities worldwide—despite the fact that another flu eleven years earlier (see #6) is believed to have built up global resistance to the disease.

6. Asian flu. First identified by health officials in East Asia in February of 1957, this influenza traveled to the United States that summer and spread through classrooms nationwide, even though a vaccine was introduced in August of that year. The flu claimed 70,000 American lives, and a million worldwide, before dissipating in March of 1958.

7. Spanish flu. After coursing through the trenches of World War I in 1918—accounting for half of all GI deaths during the war—this bug was carried across the globe by homebound soldiers. By some estimates it infected a billion people (about half the world's population), killing 20 million to 50 million in just one year. Most victims of "la Grippe" were healthy adults aged twenty to fifty.

8. Yellow fever. Thousands of Philadelphia residents, including President George Washington, fled their city (then the nation's capital) in 1793, after seeing scores of infected people turn yellow and vomit blood. The fever—which killed 5,000 people (10 percent of Philadelphia's population at the time)—returned to the city in subsequent years, though not on the scale of the '93 epidemic.

9. Black Death. Although it is generally thought to have been transmitted from rodents to human beings, some scholars believe that the Black Death was actually a person-to-person disease. It ravaged Europe from 1347 to 1352, killing around 25 million people— nearly a third of the Continent's population."

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Exposure to pesticides can cause Parkinson's

Exposure to pesticides can cause Parkinson's

"Exposure to pesticides can cause Parkinson's

By Andy Coghlan, Special Report from New Scientist Print Edition, May 26, 2005

SUSPICIONS that pesticides could cause Parkinson's disease have been strengthened. The more pesticide you are exposed to, the higher your risk of developing the disease, say investigators who have studied almost 3000 people in five European countries. The results reinforce the need for amateur gardeners and farmers alike to wear protective equipment when spraying pesticides, the team concludes."

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