Unemployment in China worsened in October and is likely to deteriorate through the first quarter of 2009, officials said in an unusually frank discussion of their concerns about joblessness.
[Hiring Freeze]
The global slowdown has had a particularly harsh impact on exporters and labor-intensive small businesses in China's coastal areas, costing many rural migrant workers their jobs, said Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security.
"The current employment situation is still grim," Mr. Yin told a news conference in Beijing. "Our judgment is that in the first quarter of next year there will be even greater difficulties." Bankruptcies and temporary shutdowns of factories have cost many rural migrant workers their jobs, he said.
The comments come amid what appears to be a rise in work-related protests as China's economy slows sharply. Cab drivers in several major cities have staged work stoppages in recent weeks, while laid-off workers have protested at closed factories in southern China.
Mr. Yin said his ministry is trying to reduce labor disputes and unrest by helping employers keep people at work through measures such as putting off minimum-wage increases and helping the newly unemployed get back pay and assistance in finding new jobs.
[China Jobs photo] China Photos/Getty Images
Graduating university students crowd a job fair in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, China.
Keeping such local strains from escalating into broader political tensions is a high priority for the government. The nation's top public-security official, Zhou Yongkang, addressed a leadership conference Thursday with a call to identify and control risks to social stability, state media reported.
Mr. Yin said he expects the outlook to improve in 2009. "From the second quarter of next year the employment situation will start to turn around, although the number of people who find jobs will be somewhat lower than this year," he said.
Separately, China's National Development and Reform Commission said Thursday that government ministries had met to discuss a lowering of state-set fuel prices, which could help consumers and car makers. Analysts have been expecting such a move given the fall in global oil prices. Officials are also discussing removing some transportation fees and replacing them with a fuel tax, so the ultimate effect on prices at the pump isn't clear.
It's also unclear just how many companies have closed and how many people have lost their jobs in recent weeks. China's government doesn't regularly conduct surveys that attempt to estimate the number of unemployed people, and the few numbers that it does publish aren't generally thought to provide much useful information about job-market trends. The official urban unemployment rate, for instance, has been unchanged at 4.0% all year. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
That makes getting a read on what's happening in China's job market difficult. China has already exceeded a government target of creating 10 million jobs in 2008, thanks to strong growth earlier this year, but some of those gains could reverse. http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Zhang Xiaojian, one of Mr. Yin's deputies, said the ministry has seen warning signs in some data it collects. Employers' demand for workers was down 5.5% from a year earlier in the third quarter, a sharp reversal from the 4.7% gain in the second quarter. Mr. Zhang said nearly half of the companies surveyed have had net job losses in recent months.
Still, he said the government could meet its target of keeping unemployment for 2008 at 4.5% or less -- though the migrant workers who are worst-hit by the downturn aren't included in that figure. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
dendrite 883.den.1002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Preliminary evidence indicates that a specific class of frontal-brain-cell connections shows dramatic reductions in schizophrenia. This disengagement of certain neurons from several other brain regions may contribute to thinking and memory problems typical of schizophrenia, contend Leisa A. Glantz and David A. Lewis, neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh.
Glantz and Lewis obtained samples of brain tissue taken at the autopsies of 15 adults who had experienced schizophrenia, 15 adults who had dealt with major depression or other psychiatric conditions, and 15 adults who hadn't received any psychiatric diagnosis. Next of kin granted consent to the researchers for each brain donation.
Cell staining combined with computer-enhanced reconstructions of neurons showed that the schizophrenia group had a much lower density of projections from neurons in a specific tissue layer of the frontal cortex, the scientists report in the January Archives Of General Psychiatry. The sprouting branches, or dendrites, receive messages from other neurons. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com/
Reduced dendrite branching in this particular frontal location—which maintains contact with several brain structures that help to organize thought—occurred regardless of whether individuals with schizophrenia had received antipsychotic medication, the researchers say. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Glantz and Lewis obtained samples of brain tissue taken at the autopsies of 15 adults who had experienced schizophrenia, 15 adults who had dealt with major depression or other psychiatric conditions, and 15 adults who hadn't received any psychiatric diagnosis. Next of kin granted consent to the researchers for each brain donation.
Cell staining combined with computer-enhanced reconstructions of neurons showed that the schizophrenia group had a much lower density of projections from neurons in a specific tissue layer of the frontal cortex, the scientists report in the January Archives Of General Psychiatry. The sprouting branches, or dendrites, receive messages from other neurons. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com/
Reduced dendrite branching in this particular frontal location—which maintains contact with several brain structures that help to organize thought—occurred regardless of whether individuals with schizophrenia had received antipsychotic medication, the researchers say. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
hormone 883.hor.10009 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. There’s yet another reason to track—and curb—nitrate pollution. Toxicologists have just shown that it has a hormonal alter ego, inducing changes within reproductive tissues at concentrations present in many U.S. water supplies.
I should point out early that the health effects being reported in the new Journal of Herpetology paper are subtle. And as the journal title would suggest, the test subjects weren’t college students, but frogs. Still, many of the features and processes that characterize human reproduction also show up in fairly primitive creatures—like these hoppers, notes wildlife endocrinologist Louis J. Guillette, an author of the new paper. As such, the University of Florida biologist explains, frogs can serve as a sort of herpetological lab rat. They not only finger risks to other herps, but also suggest what might happen in mammals, including people.
Nitrate is one of the most common pollutants. In urban areas, it spews from auto tailpipes and smokestacks. In rural areas, it runs off of crop fields that were overfertilized, and out of pastures, feedlots, or anywhere that manure collects.
A contributor to smog and acid rain, nitrate taints the air we breathe. In lakes, streams, and coastal waters, this pollutant acts like a nutrient to fuel the growth of suffocating algal blooms—some of which foster dead zones like the one perennially plaguing the northern Gulf of Mexico. On the basis of these and other concerns, the Environmental Protection Agency limits how much nitrate may be released legally into the environment.
But the possibility that nitrate might also trigger changes normally controlled by steroid sex hormones—we’re talking estrogen, ladies, and testosterone, guys—hasn’t been on federal regulators’ radar screens.
Moreover, the water concentrations to which animals were briefly exposed in the new study are not particularly high, notes Guillette. They can be found in streams and drinking water sources throughout the nation at various times of the year.
So what did the research show when adult female frogs were put in water tainted with 25 to 50 milligrams of nitrate per liter for a week? Their ovarian tissue developed subtle growth changes, at least as compared to tissue from frogs raised in clean water. Ovarian tissue that was removed from treated frogs and allowed to grow in a glass dish also made less estrogen and testosterone than did the same type of tissue from frogs not exposed to nitrate.
Even if there are no human parallels for what is showing up in amphibians, the new data warrant concern, Guillette says; frogs and toads the world over are experiencing epidemic die-offs. Anything that increases their vulnerability should raise a red flag. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
I should point out early that the health effects being reported in the new Journal of Herpetology paper are subtle. And as the journal title would suggest, the test subjects weren’t college students, but frogs. Still, many of the features and processes that characterize human reproduction also show up in fairly primitive creatures—like these hoppers, notes wildlife endocrinologist Louis J. Guillette, an author of the new paper. As such, the University of Florida biologist explains, frogs can serve as a sort of herpetological lab rat. They not only finger risks to other herps, but also suggest what might happen in mammals, including people.
Nitrate is one of the most common pollutants. In urban areas, it spews from auto tailpipes and smokestacks. In rural areas, it runs off of crop fields that were overfertilized, and out of pastures, feedlots, or anywhere that manure collects.
A contributor to smog and acid rain, nitrate taints the air we breathe. In lakes, streams, and coastal waters, this pollutant acts like a nutrient to fuel the growth of suffocating algal blooms—some of which foster dead zones like the one perennially plaguing the northern Gulf of Mexico. On the basis of these and other concerns, the Environmental Protection Agency limits how much nitrate may be released legally into the environment.
But the possibility that nitrate might also trigger changes normally controlled by steroid sex hormones—we’re talking estrogen, ladies, and testosterone, guys—hasn’t been on federal regulators’ radar screens.
Moreover, the water concentrations to which animals were briefly exposed in the new study are not particularly high, notes Guillette. They can be found in streams and drinking water sources throughout the nation at various times of the year.
So what did the research show when adult female frogs were put in water tainted with 25 to 50 milligrams of nitrate per liter for a week? Their ovarian tissue developed subtle growth changes, at least as compared to tissue from frogs raised in clean water. Ovarian tissue that was removed from treated frogs and allowed to grow in a glass dish also made less estrogen and testosterone than did the same type of tissue from frogs not exposed to nitrate.
Even if there are no human parallels for what is showing up in amphibians, the new data warrant concern, Guillette says; frogs and toads the world over are experiencing epidemic die-offs. Anything that increases their vulnerability should raise a red flag. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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