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Business September 14, 2015

Obama Makes College Aid Application Earlier And Easier

FAFSA
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There is big news today for prospective college students and their parents. It comes from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who is in Iowa with President Obama for his annual Back to School Bus Tour.

“Today, we’re lending a hand to millions of high school students who want to go to college and who’ve worked hard,” Duncan said. “We’re announcing an easier, earlier FAFSA.”

That’s the Free Application For Federal Student Aid. With more than 100 questions, it’s a gatekeeper for students hoping to get help paying for college.

“It’s really a win-win for everybody,” says Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “Ultimately, this is gonna mean less work for [students] and less work for schools.”

Usually, students start applying to colleges in the fall, then apply for financial aid in January — when the FAFSA comes out. But that means that many find themselves accepted by a college before they know how much help they’re getting. The new plan would release the FAFSA in October instead of January.

“Very excited” was Margaret Feldman’s reaction. She’s the director of college advising for the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria, Va. Feldman is based at T.C. Williams High School and says that, under the old system, “students were coming in — seniors who had just graduated — who still did not have a financial aid award letter. And so they’d committed to a school, and in August they still didn’t know how much they were going to have to pay.”

Under the new timeline, that’s far less likely to happen.

So, that’s the earlier. Now the part about making the FAFSA easier.

Six months ago, I reported on one thing the government could do to fix the FAFSA. Rachel Fishman, who studies education policy at New America, explained it this way:

“There’s a new IRS data-retrieval tool where parents and students can log onto the IRS through FAFSA, and it will pre-populate much of the form.”

A student’s dream come true: The IRS filling out much of the FAFSA for you!

The problem is, the FAFSA requires parents’ tax information from the prior year. And some 4 million students apply for aid each year before their families’ taxes have been filed. So this great IRS tool … can’t help them.

Well, starting in October of 2016, the FAFSA will require parents’ tax info from the “prior-prior” year instead. That opens the door for the IRS to automatically fill out a big chunk of just about everyone’s FAFSA.

Education Secretary Duncan said Monday morning that he expects the changes will lead to hundreds of thousands of additional students applying for federal Pell grants, though he called the costs “very, very minor.”

By minor he means roughly a 1 percent increase in federal Pell Grant spending — about $400 million.

These FAFSA changes come on the heels of another big push from the White House — the Saturday release of its “College Scorecard.”

It isn’t a rating or ranking system (as many had expected) but a massive collection of data — much of it available for the first time — that students and parents can use to judge colleges for themselves. Among the more than 1,700 variables (for more than 7,000 colleges) are the percentage of recent students paying down principal on their loans, and the average earnings of a school’s graduates.

Anyone looking at colleges should consider rummaging through the data. Call it a useful homework assignment — from the White House.

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Business September 12, 2015

Rich In Charm But Losing Money, Amtrak's Southwest Chief May Fade Away

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Amtrak’s Southwest Chief train line travels from Los Angeles all the way to Chicago. Despite its nostalgic charm, the Chief is now under threat of closure.

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ARUN RATH, HOST:

Amtrak’s Southwest Chief is one of the longest train routes in America, going all the way from LA to Chicago. Despite its nostalgic charm and amazing views, the Southwest Chief has been under threat of closure. NPR’s Kirk Siegler says Amtrak loses money on these long-distance routes.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: A couple of years, actually, I’ve been following this from afar and watching some of the states try to chip in money and matching grants to save the line because there is a lot of concern economically and culturally that this line could go away.

RATH: So Kirk got a ticket and climbed aboard.

SIEGLER: I got on at Albuquerque’s Alvarado station. It’s pretty bare-bones. It’s mostly a bus terminal. And the train was also a couple hours late, which is something that is pretty routine, at least on Amtrak’s cross-country routes.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: For those just boarding here in Albuquerque, we ask that you…

SIEGLER: One of my favorite places was the lounge car. There are sky lights and big windows, and you can see all the scenery. And you’re traveling through places that really look like they could be on the set of a Western. You get a different perspective from that lounge car. I met a lot of people who were on that train because they like the slow pace of it. They thought it was a piece of American history that is sort of slipping away because it is.

SHARON MOORE: I’ve always loved trains since – since I was a kid. I like the rocking and the rhythm.

SIEGLER: Sharon Moore is one of the passengers I met in the lounge car, and she’s taking the Southwest Chief across the southwestern United States to, of all places, as she put it, La Junta, Colo. She was going there because her mother had just passed away. And she was traveling around to different places that her mother lived. And in World War II, her mother had worked for a doctor at what was then a military base in La Junta, Colo.

MOORE: She started out with – hard in life, but she did really good. There was things that she wanted to do in life. She set out to do them, and she did them.

SIEGLER: She got a bit choked up when she told the story. But, you know, we were sitting there for long enough, and she just opened up and shared why she was going there.

MOORE: And it’s, you know, out in the flat of Colorado. And…

SIEGLER: I met a lot of people like Sharon Moore, who said that this was part of the country’s heritage. And they hated the fact that it may be going away, even though they understood that for financial reasons, these types of things may not go on for much longer.

BEVERLY OCHIAI: I would really hate to see this route changed, the line change. The scenery is stunning.

SIEGLER: This woman who overheard me talking to some other passengers chimed in. Her name’s Beverly Ochiai (ph). And for her, it was a – it was a time to sort of unplug.

OCHIAI: There’s no newspapers. There’s no Wi-Fis. Cellphone is very sporadic. Of all the lines, we’ve really loved the Southwest Chief.

SIEGLER: If there was one common theme with a lot of the passengers I spoke to, it was nostalgia

MOORE: We just enjoy it. I’m looking for elk right now or some horses or…

SIEGLER: I had considered taking the train all the way back to LA, where I live now. But then there were delays and, you know, unplanned and unannounced and unexplained stops in the middle of nowhere. After sitting on the tracks for so long, I got off and flew home (laughter). A good friend of mine who’s covered New Mexico politics for a number of years, who described the Southwest Chief to me as this sort of fixture that everyone loves and everyone wants to keep, but yet not that many people actually take in reality.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH TRAINS”)

MERLE HAGGARD: (Singing) But that train keeps rolling down the track, bringing my old memories back. Making hobo blood…

RATH: You can hear more of Kirk’s reporting on the Southwest Chief on MORNING EDITION next week.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH TRAINS”)

HAGGARD: (Singing) Reviving my old love affair with trains.

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Business September 11, 2015

Oh, Nuts! Why California's Pistachio Trees Are Shooting Blanks

This year, many of the pistachios grown in California's San Joaquin Valley are missing the green, fatty meat that nut lovers crave. Instead, they're empty inside, the result of drought, heat and weather pattern changes that have messed with pistachio tree fertilization.

This year, many of the pistachios grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley are missing the green, fatty meat that nut lovers crave. Instead, they’re empty inside, the result of drought, heat and weather pattern changes that have messed with pistachio tree fertilization. Kreg Steppe/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Kreg Steppe/Flickr

In California’s blazing hot San Joaquin Valley, millions of pistachio trees are now buried in clusters of small pinkish-green fruits — what would seem like a bumper crop.

But for many growers of the popular nut, the season is shaping into a disaster. Jeff Schmiederer, who farms 700 acres of family-owned pistachio trees on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, says about 90 percent of the nuts he has sampled from his trees are hollow — what growers call “blanks.”

“I’ve never seen a year this bad for blanks,” says Schmiederer, who has been farming pistachios since the mid-1990s.

Richard Matoian, executive director of the Fresno, Calif.-based industry group American Pistachio Growers, says hollow nuts are always present in the pistachio crop, but usually the blanking rate runs about 10 percent. This year, as much as 50 percent of the harvested nuts could be hollow, Matoian says. He estimates this year’s harvest could be 300 million pounds or less — down from 520 million pounds in 2014.

Behind the blanks are the same culprits as in many other ongoing agricultural crises: drought, heat and abnormal West Coast weather. Pistachios need plenty of cold during the winter — what farmers call chilling hours. This is essential for the female and male trees to properly bloom and pollinate. But if the winter doesn’t provide the minimum chilling requirements, the male trees, which are scattered among the females, malfunction. So the male trees bloom and release pollen at the wrong time — often, after the female trees have bloomed.

“It could be compared to a bunch of guys going to a party, but getting there late — after all the girls have gone home,” Matoian says.

Last winter was unusually balmy in interior California, with very little fog or rain in the normally wet months and a record-warm February.

For pistachios, the result of such conditions can be hollow nuts. The trees almost always produce shells, even after a winter of suboptimal conditions. However, they don’t necessarily fill out with green, fatty pistachio meat. A pistachio tree full of blanks can easily fool a farmer scoping out his or her orchard from the roadside into thinking they’re looking at a whopper crop.

After harvest, the truth is revealed when the pistachios are dumped into a water bath as part of standard processing. Blanks float, while full nuts sink.

Hollow pistachios aren't spotted until after the harvest, when they're dumped into a water bath as part of standard processing. Blanks like the ones seen here float, while full nuts sink.

Hollow pistachios aren’t spotted until after the harvest, when they’re dumped into a water bath as part of standard processing. Blanks like the ones seen here float, while full nuts sink. Courtesy Andrew Howe/Horizon Nut Co. hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy Andrew Howe/Horizon Nut Co.

California is home to 99 percent of the nation’s pistachio orchards. But not all of the growing regions are showing high ratios of blanks. In lower-lying parts of the San Joaquin Valley, where sinking cold air tends to pile up in the winter, the crop is looking relatively good. Kevin Herman, a grower with about 1,200 acres of pistachios in Merced and Madera counties, is having a fine year.

“I’m not really being affected,” he says. “My blanking levels are only about 5 percent.” Ditto, Herman adds, for his nearby neighbors.

But on the higher-elevation edges of the wide agricultural valley, and in the southern regions, pistachios have not experienced adequate chilling hours for for at least two winters in a row. Yields here have been severely depressed.

The erratic blooming of the trees has also led to timing problems with the harvest. Because the bloom may last longer during warmer winters, fruiting in the summer becomes spread over a longer period of time. For processors, this is a major nuisance and cost. It means operations must keep running for two or three times as long to handle a smaller-than-normal crop.

“Most years, we harvest 90 percent of the crop in a 21-day window,” says Andrew Howe, general manager of Horizon Nut Company, a processor with headquarters in Tulare, Calif. “Last year, it took 60 days.” This year, harvest started in mid-August, Howe says, and will probably run into October.

Gurreet Brar, a nut crop specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension program, says there may be ways to help pistachio farmers deal with warmer winters. Brar’s research is geared toward understanding how pistachios react when chilling requirements are not met. The hope is to better predict the trees’ behavior and develop chemical treatments to ultimately boost crop yields following warm winters. Breeding new male and female pistachio varieties that require fewer chilling hours to bloom in sync is also a possible solution, Brar says, but one that is decades away.

Pistachios have become a lucrative crop for farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. As with almonds, demand for pistachios is huge, and new acreage is being planted rapidly. Currently, California is home to about 225,000 acres of mature trees, with another 75,000 acres maturing toward full production age — which usually comes at seven to nine years. Pistachios are less demanding of water than almonds are. However, to produce a bumper crop, the trees require generous irrigation — a tall order in times of drought.

Scientists are anticipating a massive El Nino this winter, which could deliver gushing downpours and, hopefully, snowpack in the high mountains. For farmers, many of whom have been struggling to keep their crops irrigated, this is excellent news. But for pistachio growers, it might come with a bitter aftertaste.

“We could get a lot of rain and help refill our groundwater reserves,” says Carl Fanucchi, a retired farmer from Bakersfield who now offers consulting services for pistachio farmers. “But it might mean warm weather, too, and less chilling hours.”

That would set the stage for another bum year in the pistachio business.

Trends toward increasingly warm weather even have Herman, virtually untouched so far by blanking, unsure of the future.

“The coffee shop talk around here is speculation on whether the weather patterns we’re seeing are just a cycle, and [we’ll] eventually go back to getting colder weather,” Herman says. “But if this isn’t a cycle, and these changes in the weather are permanent, we’re wondering what the future is going to be for pistachio growers in California.”

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Business September 10, 2015

New EPA Rules Motivate Montana To Look Beyond Coal

Kevin Murphy says he is proud of what he and the other workers do at the Rosebud mine, including digging the coal and reclaiming the land afterward.
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Kevin Murphy says he is proud of what he and the other workers do at the Rosebud mine, including digging the coal and reclaiming the land afterward. Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio

Colstrip, Mont., is true to its name — it exists because of coal.

“Our coal’s getting deeper, like everywhere else, because everybody’s mining. They’re getting into the deeper stuff,” says Kevin Murphy, who has worked in the Rosebud Mine for 15 years running a bulldozer in the open pits.

Everything about the mine is enormous, especially the dragline, a machine as big as a ship with a giant boom that extends 300 feet up into the air. The dragline perches on the lip of the pit, scraping away hundreds of feet of rocky soil to reveal the black seam of coal below.

The coal goes directly to the power plant across the highway, where it’s pulverized and burned. This mine-to-mouth operation is the second-largest coal-fired power plant west of the Mississippi. But Murphy’s wife, Marti, says if you’re picturing blackened skies and sooty streets, you haven’t actually been to Colstrip.

Marti and Kevin Murphy at home with their children

Marti and Kevin Murphy at home with their children Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio

How Montana Compares With Other States

“I feel like that is how we’re perceived, as a dirty coal mining town. It’s just not true,” she says.

Marti works in the accounts payable office at the mine. She points out the money generated from coal has given her community amenities you wouldn’t normally find in a town of just over 2,000 people.

“We have free golf if you live in the city limits, free gym membership if you live in the city limits, walking paths all around town, a park in every single neighborhood that you could think of,” she says.

The goal of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is to reduce carbon emissions from the power sector by 30 percent nationwide from 2005 levels. Marti says she wants a healthy environment, but talk of shutting down coal-fired power plants feels threatening in Colstrip.

“It’s pretty scary because you think about it, and then you have to think, ‘Well, where would we go if something happened?’ ” she says.

Economist Mark Haggerty is with Headwaters Economics, an independent research group in Bozeman, Mont., that studies energy issues across the West.

“I would be worried,” he says.

Haggerty says the real threat to Colstrip may not be the Clean Power Plan. “There are larger market trends that are already forcing a big transition away from coal towards natural gas,” he says.

Those trends could be good for Montana. The state does produce some natural gas, and it’s also rich in renewable resources, like wind. The American Wind Energy Association ranks Montana third among states with potential land-based wind power generation. But it’s currently 21st in the nation for actual wind production. Haggerty says the infrastructure to move wind energy toward population centers is one of the primary things holding it back.

“Those issues I think will be resolved, and I would expect that we could see renewables being a significant competitor with both coal and natural gas over the next decade,” Haggerty says.

Jenni Bryce's cattle graze around her family's wind turbines and solar panels at her home near Belt, Mont.

Jenni Bryce’s cattle graze around her family’s wind turbines and solar panels at her home near Belt, Mont. Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Amy Martin/Montana Public Radio

That transition is well underway for Jenni Bryce, who lives near the town of Belt, in central Montana. In the pasture behind her house, cattle are grazing, solar panels are collecting sunlight and several turbines are whirling in the wind.

“We have a Bergey 10-kilowatt wind turbine, which is probably the standard size for residential,” she says.

Bryce founded Pine Ridge Products 16 years ago. It’s a small-scale solar and wind installation company that she runs from her home. Bryce didn’t plan to become a renewable energy entrepreneur — she’s actually a speech therapist — but after she and her husband put up solar panels and a wind turbine for their own use, other families started asking them for advice. That led them to start consulting, manufacturing parts and designing new turbine models.

Climate change was not what motivated Bryce to start her business. She points out that families like hers have been using windmills for a long time.

“They’ve been using them for water pumping,” she says. “And you look back at our history of rural electrification and before that they used windmills connected to batteries for their power in their houses.”

In true Montana fashion, Bryce’s commitment to renewable energy grows out of her rural roots — and her passion for self-sufficiency. That passion will be needed to bring Montana into compliance with the new EPA rules and to help ease the transition away from coal in coming decades.

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Business September 8, 2015

Seattle Teachers To Strike; First Day Of Classes Canceled

Teachers in Seattle will walk picket lines Wednesday after last-minute negotiations over wages and other issues failed to avert a strike in Washington state’s largest school district.

Classes for 53,000 Seattle Public Schools students were canceled Wednesday, on the scheduled first day of school.

Phyllis Campano, the union’s vice president, said Tuesday night that the district came back with a proposal that the union “couldn’t take seriously,” and they decided to end for the night.

Members of the Seattle Education Association, which represents about 5,000 teachers and support staff, plan to picket at all 97 schools.

“Nobody really wants to strike, but at this point the school board has not come to the table with a serious proposal to get it done,” Campano said. The union voted to walk out last week if a tentative agreement wasn’t reached by the first day of school.

“Bargaining teams for both sides have worked hard over the past months and practically round the clock in recent days_putting in marathon hours over the Labor Day weekend,” the school district said in a statement. “We are hopeful talks can resume and agreement can be reached to allow our students to start school.”

Both sides remained far apart on key issues, including pay raises, teacher evaluations and the length of the school day. The district earlier offered an increase of nearly 9 percent over three years. The union countered with a 10.5 percent increase over two years, Campano said, but she said the district barely budged from its previous proposal.

Meanwhile, the Seattle School Board voted Tuesday night to authorize the district superintendent to take legal action against striking teachers.

Seattle parents were scrambling to come up with day care options, including working from home, swapping care with other parents or signing up for other programs. The city parks department was expanding before- and after-school care programs into all-day offerings because of the strike.

Seattle isn’t the only district in the state facing a teacher labor action. Teachers in Pasco in southeast Washington have voted not to return to the classroom despite a court order to end the strike. In Pasco, teachers decided Monday night to remain on strike, idling 17,000 students on Tuesday in a dispute over pay and curriculum. Classes were canceled for another day Wednesday.

The strikes are happening at a time when Washington officials are under growing pressure to increase the amount of money the state spends on K-12 education.

Washington state is being sanctioned $100,000 a day by the state Supreme Court because the justices say lawmakers have failed to adequately pay to educate the state’s 1 million school children. The court has said the money is to be put in a separate fund for education.

Lawmakers have allocated billions of dollars toward public schools, but critics say that’s not enough to meet the requirements in the state Constitution that education be the Legislature’s “paramount duty.”

The Washington Supreme Court decided in 2012 that state funding for education is not adequate. The justices said the state was relying too much on local dollars to make up for an inadequate state budget for education. Overreliance on local dollars makes the inequity worse because school districts with higher property values can raise more money more easily.

Rich Wood, a spokesman for the Washington Education Association, said the strikes were mainly about local issues not tied to the larger state debate about funding.

“The negotiations are about meeting the needs of students in school districts,” Wood said. He noted that teacher strikes are relatively rare in Washington, with the last major one in 2011 in Tacoma. The state has 295 school districts.

This is the first strike by the Seattle Education Association over contract negotiations since 1985, Wood said. Seattle teachers participated in a statewide walkout in 1991 to urge the Legislature to spend more money on schools.

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Business September 7, 2015

Presidential Candidates Campaign In New Hampshire, Iowa On Labor Day

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Politics mixed with picnics and parades Monday as the candidates fanned out for an end of summer blitz of campaigning. Many discussed jobs — an issue that tops just about every voter’s list.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

There is no break this Labor Day for those who want to be the next president of the United States or who are at least thinking about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOE BIDEN: The tax code’s not fair. It’s simply not fair.

(APPLAUSE)

BIDEN: The wealthy aren’t paying their fair share. It used to be one America.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HILLARY CLINTON: One of my principal jobs as your president will be to defend the right to organize and bargain collectively on behalf of hard-working Americans.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BERNIE SANDERS: Throughout this country, millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages.

CORNISH: That’s Bernie Sanders at an AFL-CIO breakfast this morning in Manchester, N.H. Before that, we heard Hillary Clinton speaking at a labor event in Hampton, Ill., and Joe Biden in a speech to Steelworkers in Pittsburgh. It’s a symbolic day for Democrats, but Republicans are out and about too. And NPR’s Don Gonyea joins us from the Labor Day picnic – a chicken fry, actually, on the banks of the Mississippi River to talk more about it. And Don, the Mississippi River is long. Where exactly are you?

DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Well, I have been in Iowa all weekend, but I drove across the bridge onto the Illinois side. I’m right on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois with a beautiful view of Iowa. I came here for the Labor Day rally where you – we just heard the clip of tape from Secretary Clinton’s speaking.

But I also came earlier in the day because there was one of those big Labor Day parades, a big celebration of organized labor. We had union floats. We had marching bands. We had a group marching on behalf of Bernie Sanders. There was, right behind them, a Hillary Clinton group – a bunch of her supporters with signs and T-shirts.

And this is what Labor Day really is for Democrats and for the labor movement. If it’s the end of the summer for everybody else, in an election season, this is when they really start gearing up and putting people on notice that the big push is about to begin.

CORNISH: And people often link the Labor movement with Democrats, but is that beginning to actually sort out? Are you actually seeing unions back specific candidates?

GONYEA: To some, it’s just beginning to sort itself out. Again, you know, the occasional Republican gets an endorsement from a labor union and from the AFL-CIO. But this year, there’s not a lot of love for the Republicans in the field when you talk to these union members and activists. A couple of the big unions – the American Federation of Teachers and the nurses union – have endorsed. The teachers went with Hillary Clinton. The nurses went with Bernie Sanders.

But most of the 56 unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO are just beginning their process. This weekend in Iowa, AFSCME, the big government employees union, had individual closed town halls with Sanders, with Clinton and with Martin O’Malley. So they’re beginning their process, and they’re trying to work their leverage on these candidates.

CORNISH: Leverage for what? I mean, what do they want or hope to achieve in this process?

GONYEA: They want the debate to be about their issues. They want these candidates to commit to being in a certain place on these issues – the minimum wage, the right to organize, worker safety, fair trade deals – things like that. And one guy in Newton, Iowa, at one of these events, said to me – he said, there’s no hurry for us to endorse. Why give it away too soon? The longer we push them, the better the chances that they’ll be talking about our issues. And we also need to impress upon them that it doesn’t stop the day they get elected.

CORNISH: And meanwhile for the GOP, what were you hearing?

GONYEA: They’re out campaigning today as well. Labor Day’s a little different for them. They celebrate American workers, but they don’t celebrate labor unions ’cause labor unions are generally on the other side. But candidates have also been out all over the place. It’s a great day to find groups of people, to bring people in, maybe hire a country band or something else and have a big festive day rooted around politics and the coming election season.

CORNISH: That’s NPR’s Don Gonyea in Hampton, Ill. Don, thanks so much.

GONYEA: My pleasure.

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Business September 6, 2015

Why Google Is Going All In On Diabetes

An experimental contact lens being developed by Google can painlessly measure glucose levels in tears.

An experimental contact lens being developed by Google can painlessly measure glucose levels in tears. Google hide caption

itoggle caption Google

Millions of people with diabetes prick a finger more than five times a day to monitor their blood glucose levels. It’s a painful and expensive process.

But now, Google’s Life Sciences division is putting its immense resources behind new initiatives aimed at helping them better live with the disease.

“It’s really hard for people to manage their blood sugar,” said Jacquelyn Miller, a Google Life Sciences spokeswoman, in an interview with KQED. “We’re hoping to take some of the guesswork out of it.”

Earlier this week the new Google Life Sciences unit announced that diabetes is the company’s first major disease target. It may come as a surprise that Google, a company that helps people search online for flights and restaurants and dabbles in other ventures like self-driving cars, is investing in new therapies to treat disease.

But according to Michael Chae, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter at the American Diabetes Association, Google’s decision is a no-brainer. It’s a highly lucrative opportunity. In 2012, the total cost of managing diabetes was put at $245 billion in the U.S. alone. The timing also appears just right for technology companies to enter the field.

“There’s been an explosion of wearables, data and analytics,” Chae said. “People with diabetes are more comfortable living in a measured world.”

He envisions a future where people with diabetes can measure their blood glucose levels on a continuous basis, using painless methods. One of Google’s emerging products is a contact lens embedded with a glitter-sized sensor that can measure glucose levels in tears. “There’s a whole lot of innovation at once,” he said.

‘I Didn’t Feel like a Normal Human Being’

The methods that Cyrus Khambatta uses to manage his Type 1 diabetes haven’t changed much in the past decade.

Khambatta, a nutritionist based in San Francisco, was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 22. Each day, he pricks a finger between six and 10 times. He uses a lancet to draw a little blood, which he puts on a test strip, and then he feeds the strip into a glucose meter to check his blood sugar levels.

Nutritionist Cyrus Khambatta uses his glucose meter and lancets to check his blood sugar six to 10 times a day.

Nutritionist Cyrus Khambatta uses his glucose meter and lancets to check his blood sugar six to 10 times a day. Courtesy of Cyrus Khambatta hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Cyrus Khambatta

Before meals and exercise, he injects himself with a syringe filled with insulin. He dials up the amount of insulin based on the data from the glucose meter. The insulin required depends on many factors, including stress, sleep, exercise and diet, Khambatta explained, and involves a lot of attention to detail plus a little intuition.

“Unlike a migraine or acne, diabetes management is all about developing an understanding and manipulation of numbers over time,” he said. “Diabetes is very quantitative.”

Khambatta describes his style for managing disease as “old school” compared with some of his peers. Many other people with diabetes use more modern alternatives for glucose monitoring, such as a patch with tiny needle-based sensors under the skin that connects to a transmitter and an insulin pump.

But when Khambatta tried those options, he found they were still a lot of work. The sensor needed to be changed every two to three days, and the equipment served as a constant visual reminder of his condition. “I didn’t feel like a normal human being,” he said.

In the near future, he said, he also hopes that companies will develop non-invasive, continuous glucose monitoring, which wouldn’t draw blood or cause pain or trauma.

“That’s the Holy Grail,” said Cameron Sepah, medical director at Omada Health, a San Francisco-based company that focuses on technology for diabetes prevention. Sepah said such a sophisticated blood sugar-tracking system could be paired with a device that delivers insulin, and thus act as an “artificial pancreas.”

“Health companies have been working on this for years,” he said. “But Google has a history of taking on very ambitious projects.”

Why Google?

Google made a name for itself with search technology, but it has dabbled in more ambitious moonshot projects, from self-driving cars to stratospheric Internet balloons.

The life sciences team, which initially worked out of Google’s secretive research arm, Google X, spun out from the Google search engine business in August. Both entities will be held under an umbrella organization called Alphabet.

The life sciences unit is led by molecular biologist Andy Conrad, who has helped the company secure partnerships with top drug makers and medical device companies. Conrad seems to be taking a different tack than the the ill-fated Google Health team, which offered a personal health record product and closed in 2011 because of a lack of traction. The life sciences team is seeking help from more established players in the medical sector.

Google Life Sciences earlier this week announced a partnership with Sanofi, maker of an insulin inhaler and a slew of other products for people with diabetes. Google is also working with Johnson & Johnson on surgical robots, Biogen on potential treatments for multiple sclerosis and Novartis and Dexcom on diabetes-related projects.

But the diabetes market appears to be the primary focus. Data and analytics is Google’s area of expertise, and as Miller puts it, diabetes management is fundamentally an “information problem.”

Patients with diabetes lack clear information about how variables like nutrition and exercise affect their blood sugar levels, she said. And these kind of insights could help them adjust their insulin levels and avoid serious outcomes, like stroke, heart disease and hypoglycemia.

But don’t expect any of the products from the Life Sciences team to hit the market next week. Given the technical challenges and the regulatory requirements, experts say, it could take years before any new device reaches patients.

Christina Farr is the editor and host of KQED’s Future of You blog, which explores the intersection of emerging technologies, medicine and health care. She’s on Twitter: @chrissyfarr

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Business September 5, 2015

Will The Fed Raise Rates, Or Keep The (Little) Economic Party Going?

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Friday’s decent but unspectacular jobs report didn’t answer the question of whether the Fed is about to raise interest rates. But even if the Fed finally takes the plunge, it will do so very gradually.

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent – a lot better than the 10 percent jobless rate back in 2009. But the economy still has weak spots. The Federal Reserve will take all of this into account in two weeks, when it decides whether to raise rates from the lowest level on record. NPR’s Chris Arnold reports.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: After the financial crisis hit, the Fed did something remarkable. It pushed its benchmark interest rate down to zero, where it’d never been before, and it stayed there for years. Now, the Fed’s poised to start removing that life support for the economy by raising rates. That has some analysts nervous. After all, if you take life support off too soon, the patient might crash again. But economist Diane Swonk says that people shouldn’t be too worried.

DIANE SWONK: The real message for everyone is, no matter what the Fed does, the first move is going to be small, and thereafter it’s going to be a crawl – up on rates. There is no surge in rates out there, and that’s because the economy’s just not hot enough.

ARNOLD: Swonk is with Mesirow Financial in Chicago, and she says the Fed is very aware that the economy still isn’t that great. There are several million working-age Americans without jobs. Wages are stagnant. So until things improve more…

SWONK: The Fed doesn’t want to snuff out what little party we might have going.

ARNOLD: Still, leaving interest rates so low for too long could spark bubbles in the housing market or the stock market, so the Fed is trying to steer a tricky course to keep the economy sailing into a better recovery. And there’s another reason to raise rates. Lisa Lynch is interim president of Brandeis University and a former Labor Department economist.

LISA LYNCH: Right now, the Fed has used pretty much all of its arsenal. And if you do have another negative shock, what do they do?

ARNOLD: In other words, with interest rates at zero, the Fed wants to get back to a place where it could drop interest rates again if it had to. Still, Lynch actually sees enough slack in the labor market and the economy that if she were at the Fed, she would wait a little longer before raising rates.

LYNCH: I don’t think there’s any harm done in doing that. And if you move prematurely and trigger uncertainty and concern and slow down the economy, we certainly don’t want to do that at this stage.

ARNOLD: One cause for uncertainty right now is China. Its economy is slowing down. Analysts say the Fed will be trying to figure out just how big a problem that might be for the global economy. Chris Arnold, NPR News.

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Business September 4, 2015

Mixed Jobs Report Adds Uncertainty To Fed Interest Rate Debate

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The August jobs report boosted uncertainty about the Federal Reserve plan to raise interest rates. Employers added 173,000 jobs — fewer than expected — but the unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent.

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

There is a certain level of anticipation each month before the Labor Department issues the U.S. jobs report. Today, the world was definitely watching. Maybe it could help answer a big question – is the Federal Reserve about to raise interest rates? The U.S. gained 173,000 jobs in August – fewer than expected. But the unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent – a mixed report. So, as NPR’s Chris Arnold explains, that big question – it’s still looming out there.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: The U.S. economy is at a historic crossroads. Never before has the Federal Reserve set interest rates this low and certainly not for this long. It did that to boost the badly damaged economy. And, now we’ve seen the longest stretch of job growth ever – 13 million jobs over 66 straight months. So that sounds great, but wages are still stagnant and several million people of working age still don’t have jobs. So the question now is, is the economy strong enough to walk on its own two feet?

LISA LYNCH: The Federal Reserve would like to get to a place where it feels more normal. To have rates this low for so long doesn’t feel normal.

ARNOLD: That’s Lisa Lynch, interim president of Brandeis University and a former Labor Department economist. She knows that keeping rates too low for too long can cause problems – bubbles in the housing market or the stock market. Still, for her part, Lynch thinks that the Fed should wait a little longer before scaling back the life support. So she says when the Fed meets later in September…

LYNCH: If I was sitting in that room, it would be a tough call, but I would err on the side of delaying until later in the year to ensure that there’s nothing that the Federal Reserve does that scuppers the current recovery.

ARNOLD: There are some economic storm clouds, too. Worry about a slowdown in China has been sending stocks sharply lower around the world. The Dow is down about 12 percent from its peak. Randall Kroszner is a former governor of the Federal Reserve Board. We reached him today in the lobby of the Central Bank of Ireland.

RANDALL KROSZNER: One of the key debates at the Fed meeting coming up is going to be the impact of China. Is this something that is really just within China and will not have dramatic spillover effects or is this something that’s going to set and train much bigger issues where they’re going to have to make a decision and unlimited data in less than a couple of weeks.

ARNOLD: For his part, Kroszner thinks the U.S. economy is looking strong enough and unemployment low enough that the Fed will start to remove the life support and raise interest rates at its next meeting. Chris Arnold, NPR News.

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Business September 3, 2015

August Jobless Data To Influence Fed's Decision On Hiking Interest Rates

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, speaks during a Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System meeting in July.

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, speaks during a Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System meeting in July. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

There’s a special significance to the monthly jobs report that will be released Friday morning. It could tip the balance for the Federal Reserve. Policymakers are weighing whether to raise the Fed’s official interest rates later this month. It’s something the Fed hasn’t done since before the Great Recession.

Surveys of economists are predicting that job growth in August will be right around the current trend of about 220,000 new jobs a month, and they think the unemployment rate will tick down a notch to 5.2 percent.

Megan Greene, chief economist at Manulife Asset Management, says that sounds about right. But she says she doesn’t think that will necessarily convince the Fed to raise rates later this month. She says the reason to hike rates is to head off inflation, and there’s no inflation in sight.

Greene believes that’s because U.S. wage growth has stagnated as U.S. workers compete with an oversupply of cheap labor around the globe.

“As long as there is this oversupply of cheap labor, we’re not going to see wages start to push up in the U.S. really, and as long as wages aren’t pushing up, inflation isn’t pushing up,” Greene says.

If wage increases are meager, workers don’t have enough disposable income to compete for goods and inflate the price of things like houses or furniture or restaurant meals.

But the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stanley Fischer said last week that if the Fed waits until it actually sees inflation, it will be too late. And many economists argue it’s time for the Fed to act. They point to strong auto sales, growth in construction spending, an unemployment rate heading toward 5 percent and solid growth numbers in the spring.

But Greene isn’t convinced. “The labor market is very slowly improving but I don’t think it justifies a rate hike. Particularly when you consider all the risks, externally, and that includes China and volatility coming from China, but also don’t forget the Greeks are going back to the polls on September 20th,” she says.

That’s just three days after the Fed meeting. Greene says there’s a good chance the Greek outcome could spark more financial uncertainty. That would add more volatility to global financial markets still recovering from their convulsions over the slowdown in China’s growth. Greene says the U.S. economy could suffer negative impacts as a result, so the Fed should remain cautious.

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