Cell Listening?
The Ulster County Planning board has made some good recommendations to make the towns proposed cell tower law a better one, but it remains unclear whether anyone on the town level with any clout will listen.
A couple weeks ago Ulster County Planning Board Senior Planner Robert A. Leibowitz sent Shandaken his review of the law created by a citizens’ committee established last year by Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. The proposed law, drafted to make it easy for cellular providers to come to town, is sharply different from one created under the Peter DiModica administration. The DiModica law was drafted to protect the town from unsightly towers while still allowing providers to set up shop, but Cross and company felt the draft made it too tough for providers.
According to Leibowitz, this is a proposal to enact a wireless communication facility law that allows for the placement of wireless facilities by special permit in the R5 and R3 zones.
“The siting of wireless facilities remains a hot button issue in most communities,” he wrote. “The Ulster County Planning Board has a long history of involvement in the review of regulations related to these facilities as well as site plans for the facilities themselves. In addition, the Board has been participatory in the County's public/private partnerships with providers to meet communication needs.“
With those credentials outlined, Leibowitz said the County’s policies with regard to the siting of wireless facilities have evolved over time. Experience, changing technology, and industry maturity have resulted in the County Planning Board moving away from a preference for co-located facilities (unless the tower already exits), to a more distributed system approach. Visual impact, he claims, remains a primary focus.
“Indeed visual impact is, in our opinion, the dominant community concern,” said Leibowitz.
He went to say that the County Planning Board's current policy is, if the visual impact issues can be addressed, to allow the carriers significant leeway in siting their facilities. They have increasingly recommended that restrictions on wireless facilities in hamlet commercial zones, or at crossroads be lifted. The objective, he said, is to allow the carriers, utilizing the continued advances in technology, to place facilities in such a manor that visual issues are addressed while at the same time service is provided and/or capacity and coverage improved.
“We would hope to reduce the need for towers and make facilities part of the existing community’s built form,” said Leibowitz
Leibowitz said Shandaken’s proposed law includes a maximum height limit of 180 feet; substantially taller than what he thinks is needed. He said it was “significantly disconnected from preserving view-sheds within the community. The Board believes a better approach is to limit height to approximately 10 to 20 feet above surrounding vegetation rather than a specific maximum. While this may require additional facilities to provide service throughout the corridor, we have found such siting to be significantly less visually intrusive and it encourages use of alternate tower technologies.”
He also thinks the town should distinguish between full scale and low intensity facilities and allow the latter in all of the zoning districts within the town, especially in the hamlet areas so that existing structures can be utilized to serve telecommunication needs.
Leibowitz also believes that Co-Location, or the siting of two or more providers on one tower should be the general preference as compared to the construction of new facilities where there are existing facilities. Beyond that, he cautioned, co-location needs to be limited to avoid higher towers and encourage smaller facilities that create minimal visual impact.
These are the non binding recommendations provided the town, but so far most of the discussion about the ideas have nothing to do with the ideas, only about whether the town is required to listen to them.
County Planning Board Director Dennis Doyle said Monday when the comments were first sent to the town they were erroneously listed as required changes. “The town” called his office, he said, upset about the directive. “It was an error. They were sent out again as recommendations,” said Doyle.
He agreed that the town board has the right to ignore the comments and that only a simple town board vote is required to officially do so. That decision is expected next week at the April 4th town meeting.

Joining Funds
The Catskill Watershed Corporation has approved creation of a new $4.5 million loan fund for municipalities wishing to help residents connect to new or extended sewer systems. The fund was created after several communities have seen residents struggle to come up with the funds to make the connection between their home and the sewer system, which usually ends at the property line. The Corporation has set aside $4.5 million from its Catskill Fund for the Future, a $60 million economic development fund supplied by the City of New York. Towns and villages can borrow at low interest rates to connect lateral sewer lines and decommission individual septic systems.
Attorney Kevin Young, who is working with several communities in the watershed building new systems, said Monday that the costs for residents can reach $2000, depending on the distance between the home and the systems mains, the site conditions, tree removal, and other variables. He also said discontinued septic systems need to be pumped out and filled in with sand. According Watershed Corporation spokeswoman Diane Galusha, new municipal sewer systems are being developed by New York City in seven municipalities, including Phoenicia, Hunter, Windham and Fleischmanns.
“Those projects do not include funds to pump out and fill private and commercial septic tanks that are being abandoned, and existing funds may not be sufficient to connect individual structures to sewer mains,” she said.
Some municipalities have applied for state and federal grants to cover those costs for low- to moderate-income residents, but businesses, and many residents which do not meet income guidelines, must shoulder the lateral and decommissioning expenses themselves, Galusha noted. Municipalities may borrow $2,000 per property owner in communities getting new sewer systems.

Granting Miss
Shandaken will not apply for a community block development grant this year, for two reasons. One. it is too late to apply. Two. Last year’s effort under then rookie Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. was unsuccessful.
A public hearing was held Monday to discuss making application for Community Block Grant Small Cities funds to the Governor's Officer for Small Cities. Shandaken has been successful obtaining the funds, which are available annually, in the past.
The town was slated to make a decision as to what specific project will get the funds. Usually about $400,000 is available to a community for one project but in 2004 Shandaken chose to split the request to try and get money for infrastructure improvements for Phoenicia and Pine Hill. The grant didn’t come through, and grant consultant John Brusk from Delaware Engineering said it just wasn’t worth pursuing a block grant again because last years “scoring was low,” and he didn’t any time to prepare a solid request before the April 4th deadline for submission. Other funding sources would investigated instead, he said.

Hiring Plans
A recent survey of Ulster County employers by Manpower Inc. found just under half they talked to saying they would likely be hiring more employees in the second quarter of this year, with only three percent planning employment cuts of any kind. Half of all respondents expected no change from current staff levels. For the coming quarter, job prospects appear best in construction; durable goods manufacturing; transportation and public utilities; wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance and real estate; services; and public administration. Hiring in non-durable goods manufacturing and education is expected to remain unchanged. The average statewide response showed 23 percent planned increases and 7 percent anticipated cuts. Five percent were unsure and 65 percent expected no change to present levels. Of the 16,000 employers surveyed nationwide, 30 percent plan to add staff and 7 percent expect to reduce their payrolls. Five percent were unsure of their hiring plans and 58 percent of the hiring managers polled anticipate no change in staff levels.

Bad ATVs
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is presently reviewing a new all-terrain vehicle (ATV) policy for its state lands, a draft of which is being presented at public hearings – none in our immediate region for the time being – over the coming months. The aim of the new regulations is to protect fragile state lands from a recreational activity that more and more experts are seeing as hazardous to ecological health.
“We are trying to take a responsible management approach to try to control through a process that doesn’t ban ATVs ... but sets up appropriate standards and criteria that need to be adhered to in order to accommodate ATVs on state land,” the DEC has said of its planned policy shift.
A primary part of the new policy would require all roads or trails that pass through wet areas to be better protected from erosion, either through banning of all ATVs or better regulations for their use. Furthermore, ATVs would not be allowed in certain areas, such as those classified as wildlife management areas and environmental education centers. In areas where ATVs could possibly be permitted, such as on some conservation easement lands, the policy sets forth guidelines to be followed when determining whether to allow the use or prohibit it. There are exceptions for people with disabilities.
The draft policy establishes that ATV riding is NOT a program offered on public lands owned by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. But the policy also states that ATV riding opportunities would be considered on conservation easement lands in appropriate areas that comply with the established criteria. The criteria include that the rights of the owner of conservation easement land will be respected to ensure that any access does not interfere with the reserved rights of the owner to manage the lands; that the use is compatible with other uses on the land; that sufficient measures will be taken to prevent illegal ATV use off the designated road or trail; and that management actions involving public ATV access will address the need for monitoring, education and enforcement. The policy also says the road or trail being used must be safe and maintained.
The DEC has pointed out that both snowmobiling and riding ATVs are motorized activities that are not traditional programs the department manages. The draft policy is available for review online at www.dec.state.ny.us.

Mo’ Meets
The current town administration has racked up an unprecedented amount of special meetings over the past year, with as many as four sessions held within a two week period. That’s a far cry from the regularly scheduled, one meeting a month system that’s been in place for years and years. But beginning on March 29th a new plan began that will hopefully give the Cross administration some better planning skills. That evening was expected to mark the first “workshop session” of the board. The workshop is an unofficial gathering where the board cannot conduct official business, but have the chance to openly discuss issues that would be coming up at the next monthly meeting. The hope is that board members enter the official session better informed, and the Supervisor enters better organized. The next official meeting is set for April 4th.

Ah, Efficiency!
Legislators on the Ulster County Government Efficiency and Reform Committee, in conjunction with the Purchasing Department, have come up with a plan to better manage the county’s fleet of vehicles and bolster its in-house mechanic staff at a cost of about $15,000. The plan. which will now go to the General Services Committee for approval, is designed to pay for upgrades of both employees and equipment. A new fleet manager position would be responsible for maintaining a new computer program purchased last year by the county, which will gather data on vehicle use and maintenance with the aim of getting a better handle on vehicle use overall, and to aid the Government Efficiency and Reform Committee when they look at revising the operating procedures currently in place for the use of county vehicles. The general idea is to now get a preventative maintenance program, such as other counties in New York already have, in place. There are roughly 487 vehicles, from compact cars to snowplows, in the county fleet.

Empirical…
The Hudson Valley’s political leaders recently called on the state to keep its business-attracting Empire Zone program alive, urging the state Senate and Assembly and Gov. George Pataki, each of whom have different proposals for changing the program, to find common ground. If no action is taken, the legislation that created the state’s Empire Zone program - which links tax breaks and other financial incentives to job creation - would expire on March 31. The program was initiated a little over a decade ago to help the region recover from IBM’s major downsizing in Kingston and other locations.

Defibrillate!
Ulster County Legislators Robert Parete, Peter Kraft and Richard Parete recently obtained an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) for the Ashokan Field Campus in Olivebridge. Ulster County received the AED as part of an overall grant from the New York State Department of State to provide these lifesaving devices to our communities. The Ashokan Field Campus offers Environmental Education programs to elementary age students from across a wide region of New York State, and hosts a wide range of retreats and seminars. Legislators Robert Parete, Peter Kraft and Richard Parete represent District Three, which encompass the Towns of Olive, Hurley and Marbletown.

Ag-Protected…
An award of $279,000 in supplemental funds to Ulster County’s Farmland Protection Program will allow two farms in Ulster County to remain in agriculture, rather than be developed. The farms, Davenport’s and Misner/Palmatier’s, both in the Hurley area, represent nearly 400 highly productive acres in the Esopus Valley. Scenic Hudson and the Open Space institute provided matching funds to the Ulster County Farmland Protection Board, which worked on the application with the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets.
The Farmland Preservation Program purchases development rights from willing farmers, placing agricultural land in conservation easements that continues to allow farm activities while restricting non-agricultural related development. Before and after values are determined by an appraisal and the farmer is paid the difference. The Program seeks to ensure the continued economic viability of agriculture. It uses critical mass to keep support services in place and minimize land use conflicts. It provides economic incentives to continue farming by allowing farmers to obtain development value for their property without the development, and it can reduce costs of entry and value for new farmers by creating agricultural and farming availability.
This is the fourth grant the County has received from the State for the program. In all, over 3.3 million dollars has been allocated to preserve 1,400 acres. For additional information please contact Dennis Doyle, Director Ulster County Planning Board at (845) 340 -3339.

Abstinence?
Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests. The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse. Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge. The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the researchers found. Millions of teens have signed written pledges or verbally promised to abstain from sex, part of a church-led effort to discourage premarital sex and the spread of disease. President Bush has boosted funding for abstinence-only education in schools. Critics say that education needs to be coupled with safe-sex education to be effective. Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage, compared with 99 percent of teens who do not make a pledge.

Better Research
Britain should never again go to war solely on the reports of the secret services, the British government admitted recently in a comprehensive intelligence shake-up. New rules to ensure ministers always treat the reports of MI6 and other intelligence agencies with caution are at the center of the reforms brought about by the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fiasco. The changes announced by the Foreign Office amount to a tacit admission that Tony Blair did not do enough to question the reports that led the Prime Minister to state “beyond doubt” that Iraq had WMDs and support the unprovoked U.S. war against Iraq. British intelligence agents and analysts are also to get new “whistleblower” rules allowing them to raise doubts about their superiors’ conclusions.
The legality of invading Iraq is also now under scrutiny by the British Government, one of our nation’s last allies in the Middle East.

Credit Bubble
Those people following monetary policy closely have been noting the unprecedented change in policies by Alan Greenspan and the US Federal Reserve well after the declared recession is supposed to have ended in 2001, and even after the bottoming of hiring in mid-2003. It seemed to many to be necessary because of soft business conditions, and to others, a dangerously inflationary move that, combined with high US federal budget deficits, would lead to increasing pressure on the US dollar, which has already declined dramatically against currencies such as the Euro, the Swiss Franc and the Great British Pound. So much so that the US stock market, if priced in any other currency besides its own, has been essentially flat since September 2003, with real wages in the US down slightly or flat over the last two years. It seems like monetary policy, other than producing some gaudy GDP numbers used for electoral purposes, has been spinning its wheels… according to a recent survey of the world’s top economic pundits published in London’s Financial Times. All have warned recently of the possibility that the US dollar will drop dramatically, and with it the ability of the US to borrow in its own currency. Since oil is priced in dollars, this meltdown would come alongside a move to price oil, officially, in Euros, even though it is clear that OPEC has already been working to keep the price of oil pegged to the Euro, not the dollar, for about the last two years. In reaction, they say, the Bush administration is attempting to generate a massive wave of wage deflation as the solution to the current currency and price imbalances. “The Bush Administration has consistently pursued a policy of borrowing, and of printing more and more dollars,” the FT has written..” Many nations have gone along with this, buying the debt and devaluing their currencies along with the dollar. However, many economies - in particular Britain, the Eurozone - as well as currencies tied more closely to the Euro - , have not done this. Why does this matter? The conflict has forced other nations to choose: do they devalue with the dollar, or do they start reducing dollar holdings, and allow their currencies to rise? Call it a game of economic chicken. And what that means is that current currency mismatch between the strong currencies such as the Euro, and the weak currency of the dollar, is that one or the other must give way, and in the world of currency markets, that often means giving way in a spectacular fashion. Either the Euro ease back down to dollar parity, the dollar must drop to around half a Euro, or the two sides must come to a cooperative monetary policy agreement to work out the imbalance…”

Unpatriotic…
Conservative and liberal groups normally at each other’s throats over the direction of government are finding common cause in wanting to gut major provisions of the government’s premier anti-terrorism law. The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Free Congress Foundation are among several groups that formed a coalition - Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances - to lobby Congress to repeal three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
Having people from all sides of the political spectrum working together will keep politicians from calling Patriot Act opponents un-American or willing to help terrorists, which happened during the original debate over the law, the groups said. The coalition wants Congress to repeal or let expire prosecutors’ Patriot Act ability to easily obtain records in terrorism-related cases from businesses and other entities, including libraries; the provision that allows “sneak and peek” searches conducted without a property owner’s or resident’s knowledge and with warrants delivered afterward; and what they called an overbroad definition of “terrorists” that could include non-terrorism suspects. Lawmakers set a 2006 expiration date on many of the wiretapping and surveillance measures, and will begin holding hearings starting in April on whether they should be renewed.

Salty Roads…
The use of salt to melt snow and ice from slippery roads has an environmental downside that can affect a widespread area long after winter has passed, scientists are saying now, more loudly than ever. Among findings being taken before governments throughout the Northeast is the fact that salt can be responsible for changes in water chemistry many miles downriver from a road crossing. Nationwide, more than 13 million tons are applied annually, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But to date there has been relatively little research on how all this road salt, which frequently contains dyes and other chemicals, is affecting the environment. Scientists know that road salt can kill trees and that white pines are particularly sensitive. Sometimes, road salt puts such a strain on native species that hardier invasive plants and animals take over.
But more recently researchers have learned that excess salt changes stream chemistry, causing certain minerals to leach out of soils. At high enough concentrations, salt can increase the acidity of water, causing some of the same negative effects as acid rain.
Studies have shown that road salt attracts deer and moose, causing collisions with vehicles. Other scientists have learned that some amphibians refuse to cross salted roads and, as a result, can be separated from their traditional breeding areas.
Scientists who study road salt’s effect on the ecology do not advocate leaving icy roads untreated. They hope to learn more about how to prevent salt’s negative impacts without sacrificing public safety.

Gambling Woes
The Pataki administration has turned down a request by the state Assembly to send its officials to a hearing on the governor’s proposed land claim and casino legislation, calling the request “inappropriate” and saying it was “vitally important” for the Assembly to move forward with the proposed measure to allow five tribal casinos in the Catskills without further questioning or public input. The Governor’s stance came in response to a request for direct involvement in a scheduled April 5 hearing in Albany that was called after state Senate Republicans held their own hearings without allowing more than rudimentary opposition to the casino plan. Sen. John Bonacic, who led those hearings, questioned the approach the Assembly is taking noting that jobs were at stake. Bonacic expects the Senate to pass Pataki’s bill in April. Assembly Democrats are countering that the Senate hearings did not delve deeply into issues involving the effects of gambling in a region such as the Catskills. The social cost of Gov. George Pataki’s plan to build five tribal casinos in the Catskills would outweigh any economic benefit, according to recent polls, a majority of whom claim they aren’t big on betting anyway. Yet a majority say they would support the construction of five new American Indian casinos if they were spread across the state. A key finding of the polls suggests that while most people of middle age or older don’t gamble, young people are more likely drawn to casinos, horse racing and other forms of betting.
In 2001, the Legislature and Pataki created a law that allows three casinos in Ulster or Sullivan counties. Pataki now proposes two more in that region. His goal is to settle Indian land claims, create jobs and use the state’s cut of slot machine revenue to finance public education.

Divine Evolution
Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America’s political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution. The proposals typically stop short of overturning evolution or introducing biblical accounts. Instead, they are calculated pleas to teach what advocates consider gaps in long-accepted Darwinian theory, with many relying on the idea of intelligent design, which posits the central role of a creator. The growing trend has alarmed scientists and educators who consider it a masked effort to replace science with theology. But 80 years after the Scopes “monkey” trial — in which a Tennessee man was prosecuted for violating state law by teaching evolution — it is the anti-evolutionary scientists and Christian activists who say they are the ones being persecuted, by a liberal establishment. Go figure.

Un-Foiled!
In recent years, the AP and other regular users of the Freedom of Information Act have been presented with a growing list of never-before-seen excuses for denying the public release of government documents. According to the Asasociated Press and other news agencies, the government has started to view its role as coming up with techniques to keep information secret rather than the other way around, completely contrary to the goal of the Freedom of Information acts passed soon after Watergate to keep our government policies from imploding.
It has taken administrative appeals or lawsuits to overcome some obstacles, but not before requesters had to wait - sometimes until the information sought was no longer useful - and often had to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for lawyers. Other times, ordinary citizens were thwarted because they lacked time or money. Whether journalists, advocacy groups or private citizens make the requests, the ultimate loser is the public, which learns less about its government, say those who have fought the fights.
Bush administration officials acknowledge reining in the policies of earlier administrations to protect privacy and national security, particularly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bad For Vets
While states are spending more to extend benefits to their National Guardsmen called to duty, the Bush administration is reducing benefits, according to a growing number of states. In his budget, President Bush has proposed charging certain veterans a $250 annual registration fee and raising from $7 to $15 the copayment those veterans pay for a 30-day supply of prescription drugs. The budget also would cut $293.5 million by limiting the veterans whose care in state-operated veterans homes is reimbursed by the federal government. The proposed cuts in veterans health care are generally oriented toward veterans with higher incomes and veterans whose injuries or illnesses are not sustained from active duty, officials said.

Teen Drugs…
Over a million American teenagers intentionally inhale the vapors of common household products like hairspray, shoe polish and glue each year and the number is rising, government officials said recently White House drug czar John Walters said recently, noting that while drug use overall has gone down in this country, there has been an increase in inhalant use. Inhalants commonly sniffed, or “huffed,” by children as young as eight include gasoline and lighter fluid, spray paints, cleaning fluids, paint thinners and other solvents, degreasers, correction fluids and hair sprays.
More than 2 million people said they huffed in 2003, of whom 1.1 million were aged 12 to 17, according to results from the 2002 and 2003 national survey on drug use and health. In 2002, over a million people huffed for the first time, of whom 833,000 were aged 12 to 17.
The health effects can include brain and neural damage, convulsions, deafness, impaired vision, depressed motor skills and death. The social effects, surveys show, include behavioral problems, other drug use and delinquent behavior.

Bad Congress
Fewer Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job than at any time since shortly after Republicans impeached President Clinton, a Gallup Poll finds. Only 37% of Americans gave Congress a high approval rating, down from 45% last month. A total of 53% disapproved, up from 48% in February. It was the worst showing for Congress since September 1999, the year after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached Clinton. The drop in approval for Congress was larger than that found in other measures of public satisfaction. General satisfaction with the way things are going in the country also slipped, but by only 3 percentage points, from 45% to 42%.
American Enterprise Institute congressional expert Norm Ornstein said the poll could spell trouble eventually for Republicans, whose House majority leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, faces mounting ethics questions. Meanwhile, while Congress enacted the pay-as-you-go rule in 1990 as part of a budget law, that law expired in 2002 when President Bush did not supported its renewal.

Men’s Waists
A man’s waist size seems to be a stronger indicator of diabetes risk than the body-mass index, new research suggests. Compared to those in the group with the smallest waists, 29-34 inches, men with larger waist sizes were at least twice as likely to have diabetes. Those with the largest waist size - 40 inches and above - were up to 12 times more likely to have Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with obesity. When the men were divided into groups based on their body-mass index - a formula based on weight and height - or waist-hip ratio, the level of risk wasn’t as pronounced. The findings show the commonly used 40-inch waist circumference benchmark for diabetes risk should be lowered. Exactly how much has not been determined.
Alan Cherrington, president of the American Diabetes Association, said the results support previous research that has found waistline fat “is worse for you than other kinds of fat.” Researchers believe fat cells in that area may affect the liver differently, or there are signaling molecules in that type of fat cell that may affect diabetes.

RE Drops?
Real estate-crazed Americans have started behaving in ways that eerily recall the stock market obsession of the late 1990’s. And although nobody can know whether the housing boom of the last decade will end as the dot-com frenzy did, the parallels are raising alarms among many economists, even those who acknowledge that there are important differences between homes and stocks that significantly reduce the chances of another meltdown. For one thing, houses are not just paper wealth: you can live in them.
Still, perhaps the most troubling similarity, some analysts say, is the claim that the rules have somehow changed. In an echo of the blasé attitude that “new economy” investors took toward unprofitable companies, the growing ranks of real estate investors are buying houses they never expect to be able to rent at a profit. Instead, they think the prices of houses will just keep rising. The National Association of Realtors estimates that nearly one-quarter of home purchases last year were made by people who thought of the house as an investment rather than a place to live.

Allergy Time!
Delaying the introduction of highly allergenic foods — other than milk — does not seem to be effective in preventing food allergies, according to research presented during the 61st annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.
“It is probably not useful for children in families at high risk for to delay the introduction of these foods.” Reserachers cautioned, however, that a significant number of children — 39 percent in this study — may have allergic reactions following their first known exposure to allergenic foods. “Sensitized children are at greater risk, so we recommend that sensitized children should have their first exposure to these foods under medical supervision,” the report said.

Embryo Rights?
When Alison Miller and Todd Parrish filed a wrongful-death suit for the destruction of their frozen embryos by a fertility clinic, they just wanted some compensation for their disappointed hopes. But when a Chicago judge broke precedents by letting the suit stand last month, the decision’s ramifications for reproductive technology, stem-cell research, and abortion stirred debate across the nation. Judge Jeffrey Lawrence’s decision is almost certain to be overturned. But it does serve the purpose of underscoring just how sensitive the issue of “personhood” has become in the highly charged world of reproductive rights.
Central to the emotional and philosophical debate over abortion is defining when an embryo or fetus becomes a whole person. Including a frozen “pre-embryo” in that definition, some say, is only the latest development in a wider struggle over reconciling the law with scientific advances.
“It makes everyone nervous,” says Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who estimates there are 400,000 to 500,000 frozen embryos in the US. “If the embryo is considered human life when it’s first developed, that puts the clinic and lab director at obvious risk. Laboratory mistakes happen.... Even though it’s a state law, the implications are very important for all clinics that perform in vitro.”

Green Tea!
Spanish and British scientists have discovered how green tea helps to prevent certain types of cancer, showing that a compound called EGCG in green tea prevents cancer cells from growing by binding to a specific enzyme. Green tea has about five times as much EGCG as regular tea, studies have shown. It decreased rates of certain cancers but scientists were not sure what compounds were involved or how they worked. Nor had they determined how much green tea a person would have to drink to have a beneficial effect, he said. Doctors are now saying that EGCG is probably just one of a number of anti-cancer mechanisms in green tea, but the compound will now be looked at as a means of producing new anti-cancer drugs. The findings could also explain why women who drink large amounts of green tea around the time they conceive and early in their pregnancy may have an increased risk of having a child with spina bifida or other neural tube disorders. Women are advised to take supplements of folic acid because it protects against spina bifida. But large amounts of green tea could decrease the effectiveness of folic acid.

Rural Obesity
Rural communities, health officials have started saying, are currently witnessing a growing tide of obesity that’s rising faster than anywhere else, due to increasing availability of junk foods and boredom on the part of many residents, especially teens and children. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania released a study recently that showed that while 16 percent of urban students qualified as obese, rural school districts showed higher averages of 20 percent. More alarmingly, researchers found that during the years of the survey, between 1999 and 2001, the number of obese students in rural school districts rose between 5 and 15 percent, more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts. Researchers are not ready to point a finger at any one culprit for rural obesity, but they have some theories. For one thing, with fewer family farms and more mechanization, children are not burning many calories, but they’re still eating high-calorie meals passed down from previous generations.
Meanwhile, it was recently announced that U.S. life expectancy will fall dramatically in coming years because of obesity, a startling shift in a long-running trend toward longer lives. By new calculations by a number of leading health scientists, within 50 years obesity likely will shorten the average life span of 77.6 years by at least two to five years, more than the impact of cancer or heart disease. This would reverse the mostly steady increase in American life expectancy that has occurred in the past two centuries and would have tremendous social and economic consequences. Among findings are that -Two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese; one-third of adults qualify as obese. -Up to 30 percent of U.S. children are overweight, and childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 25 years. -Childhood diabetes has increased 10-fold in the past 20 years. The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group for the restaurant and food industry, argues the obesity problem has been exaggerated and all recent studies should be discredited.
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Schiavo…
For most people in the world, living in poor countries with few sophisticated life-support machines, the debate swirling in the United States around the recent Terry Schiavo case is almost unimaginable.
The dilemma facing Schiavo’s family members “is not a major issue at all” for Indians, says Roopinder Singh, a commentator for The Tribune newspaper in Chandigargh. The huge costs involved in keeping someone alive for 15 years would be “killing for the family,” he adds.
Similarly, at the world’s largest hospital, in the black South African township of Soweto, AIDS is a much more pressing problem. Nearly 2,000 people - half of them HIV positive - check into Chris Hani-Baragwanath each day. “A lot of resources would be going to maintain” a patient like Schiavo, “and you might say they could be used elsewhere,” explains Natalya Dinat, a specialist at the sprawling complex. Philosophical debates about life and death are a luxury, she says, and “you only have these luxuries where death is a rare thing.”
Also, for many outside the US, the very public twists and turns of Schiavo’s case through the courts and Congress are hard to fathom. Brazilians, for example, who rarely resolve their problems through the judiciary, tend not to feel that such personal issues are a matter for courts to decide, but one for families to wrestle out.

Work It Off…
Sixty to 90 minutes of exercise? Every day? That’s what the government now suggests. Even people working out at the gym say most folks won’t consider that, and the experts behind the government’s recommendation say 30 minutes a day is enough for most.
The panel of doctors and scientists that developed the recommendations put an emphasis on getting 30 minutes of exercise. But its 25 pages of recommendations were scaled down to three when they were released as part of the government’s new dietary guidelines in January. Those guidelines gave equal billing to the 60- and 90-minute suggestions.
“There’s an enormous need to clarify that,’’ said Russell Pate, a panel member and professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina school of public health. “I have no doubt that if we all met that 30-minute guideline, we’d have a lot fewer of us that have weight problems.’’
The guidelines are being used to update the government’s food pyramid, which is due out this spring. This is what they say about exercise: People need 30 minutes of physical activity on most days to ward off chronic disease. To prevent unhealthy weight gain, people should spend 60 minutes on physical activity on most days. Previously overweight people who have lost weight may need 60 to 90 minutes of exercise to keep the weight off.
About two-thirds of Americans each year try to start regular exercise programs, according to a 2004 Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That contrasts with how many stay with it. Nearly 40 percent of adults said they didn’t do physical activity during leisure time in 2002 data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, though there’s no definitive research showing exercise by itself can cure depression, many mental health experts agree that it has positive mental benefits and can be a useful tool in overall therapy. Evidence shows a link between exercise and neurotransmitters in the brain.

Warming, Yes!
The government will start keeping track of all the “greenhouse” gases that farmers and foresters voluntarily reduce to help combat global warming. Officials in the Energy and Agriculture departments issued guidelines recently for counting those efforts. They said the action indicates how seriously the Bush administration views the problem of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said farm and forest landowners now have “a unique opportunity to be part of the solution to greenhouse gas emissions” such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, refrigerants and other compounds.
David Hawkins, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center, called the reporting registry a “charade that is intended to allow the government and the participants to portray that they are doing something about global warming, when they are not.” For example, companies running nuclear reactors can claim greenhouse gas reductions by saying they would have otherwise operated coal-fired power plants, Hawkins said. In another case, Hawkins said, one coal-fired power plant in Maryland claims reductions for selling some of its carbon dioxide to the food and beverage industry, even though the carbon dioxide is eventually released anyway once a drink is opened and consumed. “To call it a reduction is absurd, but the Department of Energy allows them to file it as a report and call it a reduction,” Hawkins said.

Attack Worries
A sudden surge of physical activity or bout of extreme emotional distress can precipitate a heart attack in people at risk, according to a recent review of medical literature. Investigators from the University College London, UK, found consistent evidence from previous studies that when normally inactive people engage in a burst of physical activity, or when people are emotionally stressed, angry or excited, they are more likely to experience a heart attack.
However, despite the potential danger associated with bursts of physical activity, the benefits of exercise very much outweigh its risks.
Overall, studies found that emotional stress and extreme physical activity were two of the most common triggers reported by heart attack patients. Other studies showed that the risk of heart attack appeared to increase within hours of an earthquake, exciting sports match or high-pressure deadlines at work. Still other research in 1623 heart attack patients found that attacks occurred more often within 2 hours after an angry outburst.
Based on these findings, doctors recommend that people who are concerned about heart attack avoid vigorous exercise in very cold weather, which can place further stress on the heart. People not used to exercise should start gradually so as not to shock the system.

Police Blotter
Shandaken Police report the arrest of 42 year old Michael D. Logan of State Route 42 in Shandaken under the New York State Correction Law for Failure to Register and verify a class A misdemeanor. Logan was charged after failing to verify his current address in person with the Shandaken Police Department as.required by the New York State Sex Offender Registry every 90 days.

Family Casting...
RDF Media is casting for a documentary series for The WB called "Families Reunited". Casting is being held in the Hudson Valley area for both families as well as accredited mediators. Production is aimed for the end of April. The show is looking for family members who are at odds with one another and would like professional help to work out their problems
- specifically to bring resolutions to certain issues: a conflict that is affecting a family-owned business, a family in dispute because of a crisis that they can't handle alone, siblings torn apart by inheritance disputes, relatives who have not spoken in over a year because of a misunderstanding, etc. Contact Justine with any questions, or suggestions. 212-404-1453. jjustine.simonson@rdfmedia.com