Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Invasion of the Unregulated Chemicals

June 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Legally Poisoned

Let's say you want to live a healthy life. You eat organic food to avoid pesticides, and you buy free-range chicken to steer clear of antibiotics. You stay away from swordfish because of the mercury warnings. You move out of the smoggy downtown. But hard as you try, you will not be safe, says Carl F. Cranor, author of an unnerving new book, Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants. Since 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has measured 219 environmental chemicals in the bodies of Americans. Most of the population carries around measurable levels of lead ... Read More

More like this: Health, July-August 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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U.S. Middle Schoolers Are Behind in Math

June 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
U.S. Middle Schoolers are Behind in Math

A new study of mathematics curricula and classroom content in 40 countries reveals that while most eighth-grade teachers are focused on algebra and geometry, their U.S. counterparts are teaching simple fractions, ratios, percentages and other topics that come up in the sixth grade internationally. Researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Oklahoma compared 37,000 American eighth-grade math students and 1,900 math teachers across nine states and 13 school districts with their peers in other countries, showing that the U.S. is two years behind in terms of math rigor. The ... Read More

More like this: Education, Findings
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More Food Banks Offering Fresh Fruits, Vegetables

June 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
(Natalie Maynor)

On a recent afternoon after school in Isla Vista, Calif., 35 children invited by the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County got lessons on healthy snacks, starting with the serving size for a bag of tortilla chips (10 chips). They helped the teacher make salsa (tomatoes, avocados, cilantro, limes, garlic and red onions) and they ate the chips and dip. Then they helped themselves to fresh pears, potatoes, cabbage and carrots from boxes on a table, and each student took a big bag home. The program, called the Kids’ Farmer’s Market Program, operates in 10 locations once a month, drawing from ... Read More

More like this: Health
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Mentally Ill Homeless Improve With Group Living

April 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Homelessness, Housing and Mental Illness

In 1990, a research team in Boston launched an ambitious experiment with some of the city's sickest residents — the chronically homeless and severely mentally ill. With $13 million in federal funding, the team recruited 118 volunteers from the shelters and randomly placed them in group homes and independent apartments. The group homes were envisioned as a kind of utopia, in which the mentally ill clients — up to 10 in each of six homes — would become "active agents in shaping their future." By the end of 18 months, they were supposed to replace the paid staff. The project team, led by ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, May-June 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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The Cash Benefits of a Catholic Education

April 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Catholic high schools in the United States have long boasted a 99 percent graduation rate compared to 73 percent for public schools, and they report sending twice as many students to four-year colleges. Now, an education study from Michigan State University system's Oakland University finds there may be a substantial cash benefit for those who obtain a Catholic high school degree. On average, it shows, students who graduated in 1957 from Catholic high schools earned 18 percent higher wages in their mid-30s and mid-50s than their peers in public high schools. It's true that Catholic ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Education
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Obama’s Vow to Cut Oil Imports Sounds Familiar

March 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

"In the last third of this century," the president said, "our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy." That was President Richard Nixon in 1973, calling for the United States to kick its addiction to foreign oil by the end of the 20th century. As Miller-McCune noted last year ("Business as Usual: Hooked on Foreign Oil"), nearly every U.S. president since Nixon has tried and failed to turn a reluctant nation away from its dependence on oil imports. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared, "The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Politics
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Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia

March 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Honing in on the risks of cannabis, scientists have found that marijuana use hastens the onset of schizophrenia by nearly three years for those already at risk for the disorder. In the Archives of General Psychiatry, a team of researchers reports that the onset of psychosis occurs about 2.7 years earlier for people who use marijuana than for those who don’t. And the loss of even 2.7 symptom-free years can worsen a patient’s prognosis for life, they say. “We’ve known for many years that people who develop schizophrenia earlier have a number of poorer outcomes,” said Michael ... Read More

More like this: Health
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Unions, Wages and the ‘Moral Economy’

March 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The public sector unions fighting for their lives in Wisconsin likely have had an influence well beyond their own members. It's called the "threat effect," as when a private schoolteacher gets a wage increase because her peers in public schools are under union contract. In this way, workers who don't pay union dues are beholden to those who do. But it's not just the direct threat of unions that can make employers more generous, researchers say. A new study from Harvard University ("Unions, Norms and the Rise in American Wage Inequality") contends that unions historically have been the ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Report: Europe Competed to Sell Libya Weapons

March 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

European nations that are busily destroying Libyan weapon systems on the ground these days were lining up to sell the authoritarian state major weapons systems a few months earlier, notes the latest survey on international arms sales from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Four European nations — France, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom — had been competing for expected orders from Libya for combat aircraft, tanks, air defense systems and other weapons before the United Nations imposed an embargo on arms sales to Libya last month, SIPRI said. The report was ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Findings
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When Bird Watching Means Dog Watching

March 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When Bird Watching Means Dog Watching

Jennifer Stroh hasn’t forgotten the day 10 years ago when two western snowy plover chicks were spotted on the beach at Coal Oil Point, a popular surfing spot near the University of California campus in Santa Barbara. Nobody had seen a plover chick at the point for 30 years. The entire Pacific coast snowy plover population was on the federal list of threatened species. In California, the birds had stopped nesting at 33 out of 53 coastal breeding locations, driven away by human footprints, mechanized beach raking, dredging and mining operations, and the construction of seawalls and ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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