Brain Drain

There are few issues that Republicans and Democrats agree on involving immigration, but the need for more visas for foreign students who earn advanced science and math degrees from American universities is one of them. Both parties recognize that it's in our national interest to try and keep the best and brightest students in this country after they have earned a master's or doctorate in math or science. The reason is simple: If the U.S. wants to remain competitive in a global economy, it must be able to attract and retain talent.

There are few issues that Republicans and Democrats agree on involving immigration, but the need for more visas for foreign students who earn advanced science and math degrees from American universities is one of them. Both parties recognize that it's in our national interest to try and keep the best and brightest students in this country after they have earned a master's or doctorate in math or science. The reason is simple: If the U.S. wants to remain competitive in a global economy, it must be able to attract and retain talent.

Stress is your way of life, you're juggling tasks like a circus act, and you think you're operating at peak capacity? Think again, says yet another study on the effect of stress on the brain -- this one from New York's Weill Medical College at Cornell and Rockefeller University and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

KOLKATA, India - The dusty files, manual typewriter, aging books and film reels in metal tins languish in Satyajit Ray's study, largely the way the filmmaker left them on his death two decades ago. Among the most creative Bengalis of modern times, Ray directed 37 films and wrote 75 short stories when he wasn't publishing, illustrating, composing and writing critiques. A few weeks before his death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid tribute to his life with an honorary Oscar.

Today, many view the move of talented and innovative people from established professions and businesses to dot-com companies as a key aspect of the "greed culture." Gone, for many, are loyalties to even the best-paying stodge companies. Aggressive entrepreneurs seduced by start-ups have replaced old loyalists. The concern here is less about individuals or companies than about the nation. Pose the greed culture against a notion of civil society, and service to self against public service.

Message received Re "Taliban sends a message with Afghan hotel attack," June 30 The photo accompanying the piece on the Taliban attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Afghanistan is eloquent. A foreign fighter, haggard and bloodied, confronts the camera, while the apparent Afghan "fighter" to his right hides his face, perhaps fearing he'll be recognized by his fellow "citizens. " Afghanistan has thousands of years of history and a roughly 70% illiteracy rate. The fighting there is a proxy war between Pakistan and India.

The health service of Trinidad and Tobago has sunk into a crisis so severe that nurses wrap newborns in brown packing paper and hospital patients complain about cockroaches in their beds. The health crisis is part of a general malaise whose symptoms include high unemployment, a sharply reduced standard of living and a steady drain of skilled citizens who seek a better life abroad.

Javier Conde is an aerospace engineer, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was time to pack up and move to a foreign land hundreds of miles away. Back in Madrid, where he worked at the Spanish equivalent of NASA, Conde knew that government funding cuts were about to hit the agency and that his position was unlikely to survive. Add to that the fact that already nearly 1 in 4 Spaniards is looking for work, and a man used to complex calculations did a bit of simple math.

A top district attorney's investigator. The longtime head of one of the county's largest agencies. The official in charge of registering voters and running elections. The guy who cut the checks for day-to-day county operations. These are just a few of the Orange County employees who are making for the door in the midst of the government's worst financial crisis.

Along with long-ebbing oil profits, Venezuela is beginning to lose an even more valuable resource--its best-educated minds. Biophysicist Jaime Requena is a product of the oil-bonanza years when this country's technical and cultural sophistication leaped from Third World to world-class levels. Like thousands of Venezuelans, Requena went abroad in the 1970s on a government scholarship.

Javier Conde is an aerospace engineer, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was time to pack up and move to a foreign land hundreds of miles away. Back in Madrid, where he worked at the Spanish equivalent of NASA, Conde knew that government funding cuts were about to hit the agency and that his position was unlikely to survive. Add to that the fact that already nearly 1 in 4 Spaniards is looking for work, and a man used to complex calculations did a bit of simple math.

Message received Re "Taliban sends a message with Afghan hotel attack," June 30 The photo accompanying the piece on the Taliban attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Afghanistan is eloquent. A foreign fighter, haggard and bloodied, confronts the camera, while the apparent Afghan "fighter" to his right hides his face, perhaps fearing he'll be recognized by his fellow "citizens. " Afghanistan has thousands of years of history and a roughly 70% illiteracy rate. The fighting there is a proxy war between Pakistan and India.

UC San Diego faced a losing battle recently when it tried to hang on to three star scientists being wooed by Rice University for cutting-edge cancer research. The recruiting package from the private Houston university included 40% pay raises, new labs and a healthy flow of research money from a Texas state bond fund. Another factor, unrelated to Rice, helped close the deal: The professors' sense that declining state funding for the University of California makes it a good time to pack their bags.

Stress is your way of life, you're juggling tasks like a circus act, and you think you're operating at peak capacity? Think again, says yet another study on the effect of stress on the brain -- this one from New York's Weill Medical College at Cornell and Rockefeller University and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Naqi Shakir sits on a sagging mattress pushed against a wall. His wife and two daughters perch on tattered sofas and chairs crowded into the one room of the house with signs of family life: personal photographs tacked to the wall, a TV, books, and knickknacks on dusty shelves. Except for a folding table and chairs in the kitchen, nearly everything has been sold so the family can bolt as soon as someone rents the two-story home in a relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood.

Yahoo Inc. executives are headed for the door as the struggling Internet pioneer prepares for a major reorganization while fending off a contentious proxy fight that could cost co-founder Jerry Yang his job as chief executive. The brain drain accelerated as a potential buyout by Microsoft Corp. faded and resignation settled in that the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's fortunes would be tied to new ad partner Google Inc.

Economic uncertainty is driving increasing numbers of highly skilled, well-educated Mexicans across the border to work and live in the United States, according to U.S. and Mexican analysts. They say the "brain drain"--university researchers, engineers, nurses, accountants, businessmen and other professionals--hasn't yet turned into a flood, but they see it as a strain on a country that badly needs to keep its skills at home.

Hundreds of civilian engineers working on some of the Navy's most secret projects at Point Mugu and Port Hueneme have quit their jobs because they could not find affordable housing in Ventura County, military officials said this week.

The aerospace and defense sector is bracing for a potential brain drain over the next decade as a generation of Cold War scientists and engineers hits retirement age and not enough qualified young Americans seek to take their place. The problem -- almost 60% of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 were 45 or older -- could affect national security and even close the door on commercial products that start out as military technology, industry officials said. Although U.S. universities are awarding 2 1/2 times more engineering, math and computer science degrees than they did 40 years ago, defense companies must compete with the likes of Google Inc., Microsoft Corp.

Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today. For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.