HHS extends more Obamacare deadlines

The Obama administration on Thursday announced it would take steps to push back an already-delayed deadline to help those struggling to obtain health coverage on Jan. 1 -- and extend a federal insurance program for those with preexisting conditions.
Amid lingering questions about the health law's insurance exchanges, the tweaks were yet another attempt by the administration to quell concerns that the botched rollout of healthcare.gov would keep consumers from receiving coverage.
The administration had already delayed the deadline to receive insurance coverage on Jan. 1, moving the cut-off date from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23. On Thursday, they made yet another change.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/hhs-extends-more-obamacare-deadlines/article/2540659?custom_click=rss 

Science journal rejections suppress clean energy research

The recently published Volume 12 December 2013 Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science has an article detailing censorship by science journals.
“How the Flawed Journal Review Process Impedes Paradigm Shifting Discoveries” by P.A. Mosier-Boss, L.P. Forsley, and F.E. Gordon describes the experience of these researchers as they submitted papers describing their low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR )experiments to mainstream science journals.
From the Abstract:
The purpose of scientific journals is to review papers for scientific validity and to disseminate new theoretical and experimental results. This requires that the editors and reviewers be impartial. Our attempt to publish novel experimental results in a renowned physics journal shows that in some cases editors and reviewers are not impartial; they are biased and closed-minded. Although our subject matter was technical, its rejection was not: it was emotionally charged. It was an agenda-laden rejection of legitimate experiments that were conducted in US DoD and DoE laboratories. This paper describes the flawed journal review process, detailing our own case and citing others. Such behavior on the part of editors and reviewers has a stifling effect on innovation and the diffusion of knowledge.

http://coldfusionnow.org/science-journal-rejections-suppress-clean-energy-research/ 

Get off that couch

THE tentative budget deal being worked out by Paul Ryan and Patty Murray will probably not include an extension of long-term unemployment benefits, reports Greg Sargent. And while much of the brewing tea-party anger over the deal is driven by opposition to government spending tout court, the specific opposition to long-term unemployment insurance has a theory behind it. That theory conforms to Albert Hirschman's classic "perversity, futility, jeopardy" model of conservative rhetoric: as Rand Paul (pictured) put it on Fox News on Sunday, conservatives think that offering unemployment insurance for longer raises the unemployment rate.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/12/unemployment-insurance 

Chinese Chicken Processors Are Cleared to Ship to U.S.

The Department of Agriculture on Friday approved four Chinese poultry processors to begin shipping a limited amount of meat to the United States, a move that is likely to add to the debate over food imports.

Initially, the companies will be allowed to export only cooked poultry products from birds raised in the United States and Canada. But critics predicted that the government would eventually expand the rules, so that chickens and turkeys bred in China could end up in the American market.

“This is the first step towards allowing China to export its own domestic chickens to the U.S.,” said Tony Corbo, the senior lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, an advocacy group that works to promote food safety.

The U.S.D.A.’s decision follows years of wrangling over the issue, and comes as Americans are increasingly focused on the origin of their food. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/business/chinese-chicken-processors-are-cleared-to-ship-to-us.html?_r=0 

Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans

A new study, published December 5 in the international scientific journal Nature, reveals that an estimated half a million cubic kilometres of low-salinity water are buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world.
The water, which could perhaps be used to eke out supplies to the world's burgeoning coastal cities, has been located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.
"The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900," says lead author Dr Vincent Post (pictured) of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131208085304.htm 

The FDA Stifles the Advance of Modern Molecular Medicine

We are at a turning point in medicine. Knowledge of the individual's genetic makeup will soon allow molecular medicine to reach deep inside each of us to cure most of the maladies that afflict us—and perhaps even slow the rate at which we age. First we will learn to understand each person's genome; then we will learn to craft treatments tailored to his or her genetic constitution.
But it may not be so easy—and not for purely scientific reasons. Consider 23andMe, a commercial enterprise launched in 2006 that was merely looking to inform Americans about their potential genetic vulnerability to certain diseases. Regulators from the Food and Drug Administration have dropped the hammer on the company, citing baseless fears that its customers will do something dangerously stupid in reaction to the information that the tests provide. The FDA's regulatory labyrinth is not only slow to digest the science behind the genetic testing involved in 23andMe. It also can't quite figure out what to do with the proliferation of molecular biomarkers that can predict treatment efficacy more quickly than the conventional clinical trials the agency relies upon.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/08/how-the-fda-stifles-the-advance-of-moder 

ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation

Aaron Key wasn't sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint.
But the guys running Squid's Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store.
They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards.
Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed.
He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid's. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, "Squid," and the store clerks.
So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones.
It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid's were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street.

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html#ixzz2mw59BC2O