Current Events in June 2014

Cars are getting better mileage and consumers are reaping the benefits and expecting even better results in their next car, according to a new study released today by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA).

From 2008 to 2014, the average fuel economy of new cars increased by 20 percent from 21 miles per gallon (mpg) to 25.6 mpg, CFA said. As a result, in 2014, a consumer who drives a typical 2014 new car model will spend almost $300 less for gasoline than someone who drives a typical 2008 new car model (assuming both drove 15,000 miles this year, and in spite of the fact that gasoline was somewhat less expensive in 2008), as shown in Figure 1a.

These savings are likely to increase in the coming years because more than ever, as consumers plan to substantially increase the fuel economy of their next vehicle purchase compared to their current vehicle.

According to the recent survey of 1,000 adults, conducted for CFA by ORC International, drivers expect a median of 30 mpg in their next vehicle purchase.

At current gas prices ($3.56), the increase of over four mpg (25.6 mpg to 30 mpg) would save the typical driver more than $300 in the first year and thousands over the lifetime of the vehicle, compared to new vehicles purchased in 2014 (if the consumer drives 15,000 miles annually).[2]

The ORC survey also revealed that more than four-fifths of those surveyed (83 percent) support (with 56 percent “strongly” supporting) the current federal fuel economy standards of 54.5 mpg by 2025. Support for the current fuel economy standards cuts across partisan lines, with 76 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of Independents and 89 percent of Democrats favoring the standards.

“Consumers want and expect the vehicles they intend to purchase to get significantly higher fuel economy,” said CFA’s director of research, Mark Cooper. “Many Americans struggle to live within their budgets, and a large majority are troubled about future gasoline prices,” he added.  In the ORC survey, 80 percent of those surveyed said that “in thinking about the next five years,” they were “concerned” about gasoline prices with 64 percent indicating “great” concern.

Manufacturers on board

“Car manufacturers are well on their way to meet the 2025 fuel economy standards,” said Jack Gillis, CFA’s director of public affairs and author of The Car Book.  “Because the new federal standards are in line with consumer demand, carmakers understand that meeting those standards is one of the best ways to ensure market success in the future.” 

Of the 29 truly new vehicles introduced in 2014, 19 have a model that is compliant with 2014 requirements, 13 are compliant with 2016 standards and seven meet 2018 standards (Figure 2). Of the all-new 2014 models, 3 are actually compliant with 2020 standards (Mitsubishi Mirage, Nissan Rogue, and Toyota Highlander).

Overall, in 2014, Mazda, Subaru, and Honda stand out as having the highest percentage of models compliant with 2014 standards among manufacturers with multiple vehicle models (Figure 3). Eighty percent of Mazda models, 52 percent of Subaru models, and 51 percent of Honda models met the 2014 requirements.

“Meeting consumer demand, ensuring market success, increasing America’s energy independence and protecting the environment are all coming together with the 2025 fuel economy standards,” said Gillis.

There is an article floating all over the Internet that has dog owners frozen on what to do. It's actually been circulating since 2007. It’s titled, “No Ice Water for Dogs Please Read ASAP.”

The article discusses a close call where the owner gave the show dog ice water and the dog nearly died because the cold water caused him to bloat. Bloating is a life threatening situation where the stomach will actually flip and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, which can cause numerous problems.

Veterinary experts have dismissed the claims in the message as false. Bloat is a real condition and can certainly be very dangerous to dogs. But, there is no credible evidence to support the claim that ice water can cause the condition.

However, if your dog is super thirsty and drinks the ice water fast, it can lead to bloat. It's not the ice cubes causing the problem it's the fast pace of inhaling the water that causes bloat.

Moderation is key

So what about those ice cubes -- are they good for your dog? Well, yes, they can be in moderation. If you give a dog an ice cube they will chew it like food and that can be good for tarter on their teeth. Like anything, moderation is the key. An older dog or a puppy can crack its teeth on ice so you have to be careful -- give an older dog or puppy or even a smaller dog crushed ice.

It's so important in the summer months to keep your dog hydrated. Water is a staple for your pups and there is nothing better then cold water on a hot summer day. Just be careful they don't gulp it down too fast.

Let's go back in time, to a more primitive time, when life was simpler. Like 2007.

In 2007 you could still buy a house for no money down. The economy was headed toward the Great Recession but hadn't quite arrived.

And consumers carried “flip” cell phones that made voice calls and sent and received crude text messages.

In late June 2007 Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, setting in motion a disruptive force that since then has turned the world upside down.

Not just hype

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” said the late Apple co-founder as he introduced the first iPhone.

This wasn't simply marketing hype. This actually turned out to be true. In 2007 almost no one carried what today we think of as a smartphone. Five years later nearly everyone did.

In 2007 Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia and Palm all made phones that had built-in keyboards and allowed users to send and receive data, technically falling into the category of smartphone. All were mostly mobile email devices, favored by business users.

The iPhone, and the Android devices that followed, went beyond email and allowed users to easily access the Internet through simple, easy-to-use apps. The devices also contained video and still cameras and could download and store hours of music.

Here today, gone tomorrow

In introducing the iPhone, Apple essentially made its iPod music player obsolete. But that was not the extent of the smartphone's disruption.

In 2006 the Flip camera appeared on the scene. It was a small, point-and-shoot video camera that didn't use tape, but digital files that could be transferred to a computer.

It was easy to carry, easy to use and proved to be such a popular product that tech giant Cisco Systems bought the company in 2009 for $590 million. But by 2010 smartphones all had video cameras with higher resolution, better optics – and didn't require you to carry a separate device.

In one of the fastest flame-outs in business history, Cisco pulled the plug on the Flip camera, just two years after buying the company.

In 2007 GPS navigational systems were popular after-market additions to cars. The devices sat on dashboards, providing turn-by-turn directions.

By 2010 consumers with smartphones didn't need to buy these separate navigational devices since they came as a standard app on their smartphone.

For decades if you wanted to save money, you went through the newspaper and clipped coupons. When coupon sites began springing up on the Internet, consumers found it easier to save.

With smartphones, a growing number of “daily deal” sites began offering coupons sent to consumers' mobile devices. Some even tapped into the users GPS and sent coupons for businesses near the user's current location.

Making Uber possible

These apps have had a disruptive impact of existing businesses, but perhaps none more disruptive than Uber. Uber is an app that matches people who need rides with drivers.

By downloading the Uber app and loading credit card information, consumers may summon a ride with the touch of a button. No actual money changes hands, the fare is charged to the user's credit card on file.

The taxi industry has geared up to fight the spread of Uber, which continues to expand into cities around the world. Though it has no physical assets, the company was recently valued at $18 billion.

Bionic pancreas

While the smartphone's disruptive effects have caused their share of economic pain, the device has also been at the center of purely positive developments. A medical engineer in Boston, whose teen-aged son has type 1 diabetes has developed a “bionic pancreas.”

At the heart of the device, which monitors blood sugar levels and delivers insulin as needed, is an iPhone app. The developers hope to win FDA approval and begin making the device available next year.

The growth of smartphones in the U.S. has been explosive. According to an October 2013 study smartphone penetration had reached 74% of mobile phone users. It was a rise from 58% from a year earlier.

But perhaps more impressive that the growth of smartphones in such a short period of time is the radical change these devices have produced.

Companies large and small are spending billions to advertise on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so forth, producing lots of ads that break up the stream of cute kitten photos and news from the folks back home, or wherever.

Are they getting their money's worth?

A new study suggests they may not be, although Facebook disputed the findings. "The only thing this poll shows is that self-reported behavioral data is unreliable," Facebook said.

Gallup found that a clear majority of Americans say social media have no effect at all on their purchasing decisions -- with 62% saying the sites do not have any influence on their decisions to purchase products.

Only 5% say social media have "a great deal of influence" on their purchasing decisions, while another 30% say these channels have "some influence."

These data, from Gallup's new State of the American Consumer report, are based on Americans' self-reported estimates of how much social media campaigns affect their purchasing decisions. While social media may have more influence than some Americans realize or will admit, these data show that relatively few consumers consciously take into account what they learn from social media when making purchases, Gallup said.

Even among American consumers who "like" or follow a company on Facebook or Twitter, 34% say that social media have no influence at all on their buying decisions, while 53% say they have some influence.

What works

So what does influence buying decisions?

Gallup says consumers are much more likely to turn to friends, in-store displays, television commercials, and even mail catalogs and magazines than to consult a company-sponsored Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Also, Gallup said that consumers who engage with brands often do so when they are already attached to a product or service. Companies that engage their customers -- by providing exceptional service and a pleasurable in-store experience -- will, in turn, drive those customers to interact with them on social media. Simply promoting products and services on Facebook or Twitter is unlikely to lead to sales.

Even Millennials -- a generation that many companies regard as a key social media audience -- tend to say that social media marketing is not much of a factor in their decision-making, with about half saying social media have at least some influence on their buying decisions (50%), the other half saying social media have no influence at all.

Facebook responds

A Facebook spokesman said the results were flawed because they relied on self-reported behavioral.

"For decades, studies that look at people’s actual, real-world behavior have shown that ads on all mediums, including social media, affect the things people buy."

In a prepared statement, Facebook said advertisers demand proof before shelling out huge sums for advertising.

"The most successful marketers in the world don’t just take our word for it when it comes to ad effectiveness, they’ve asked us to prove that our ads work. And we have. Those marketers hold us to a very high standard; we look at actual changes in attitudes and behaviors using experimental design — the same approach used in medical trials," the company said.

Study details

These results are based on a Gallup Panel Web and mail study of 18,525 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Dec. 12, 2012, to Jan. 22, 2013. All surveys were completed in English.

The Gallup Panel is a probability-based longitudinal panel of U.S. adults who are selected using random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone interviews that cover landline and cellphone telephone numbers. Address-based sampling methods are also used to recruit panel members. The Gallup Panel is not an opt-in panel, and members are not given incentives for participating. The sample for this study was weighted to be demographically representative of the U.S. adult population, using 2012 Current Population Survey figures.

For results based on this sample, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error are higher for subsamples.

Sales of previously owned homes posted a solid gain during May as price increases moderated, thanks to gains in inventories.

Figures released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) show total existing-home sales -- completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops -- rose 4.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million.

While that's the highest monthly rise since August 2011, sales remain 5.0% below the 5.15 million-unit level in May 2013.

A second-quarter rebound

Current sales activity is bouncing back after the lackluster first quarter. “Home buyers are benefiting from slower price growth due to the much-needed, rising inventory levels seen since the beginning of the year,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. “Moreover, sales were helped by the improving job market and the temporary but slight decline in mortgage rates.”

Total housing inventory at the end of May was up 2.2% to 2.28 million existing homes available for sale. That translates to a 5.6-month supply at the current sales pace, down a touch from April. However, unsold inventory is 6.0% higher than a year ago, when there were 2.15 million existing homes available for sale.

Pricing gains

The median existing-home price for all housing types in May was $213,400 -- 5.1% above May 2013. The median is the point at which half the prices are higher and half are lower.

“Rising inventory bodes well for slower price growth and greater affordability, but the amount of homes for sale is still modestly below a balanced market,” Yun pointed out, adding that new home construction is still needed to keep prices and housing supply healthy in the long run.

Earlier this month, NAR reported new home construction activity is currently insufficient in most of the U.S., and some states could face persistent housing shortages and affordability issues unless housing starts increase to match up with local job creation.

Across the board gains

• Existing-home sales in the Northeast rose 3.3% to an annual rate of 620,000 in May, but are 3.1% below a year ago. The median price was $256,700 -- down 0.9% from May 2013.
• In the Midwest, existing-home sales shot up 8.7% to an annual rate of 1.13 million, but remain 7.4% below the same time last year. The median price there was $165,900 -- up 4.0% from a year ago.
• Sales of existing homes in the South increased 5.7% to an annual level of 2.05 million last month, but are down 0.5% from the same time last year. The median price was up 4.4% from a year earlier -- to $184,800.
• Existing-home sales in the West rose 0.9% to an annual rate of 1.09 million, and are 11.4% below a year ago. The median price was $297,500 -- 8.4% above May 2013.

An operation that swindled Spanish-speaking consumers across the country by routinely sending unordered or defective products has been stopped in its tracks.

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a federal judge has temporarily frozen the assets of and halted the operations of the outfit that sent such items as a phony weight-loss belt, and then made it difficult, impossible, or costly for consumers to obtain relief.

The FTC seeks to put a permanent halt to the illegal practices and make the defendants return victims’ money.

“The defendants tricked consumers into purchasing unwanted goods, and then left them holding the bag,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. The announcement, she sayd, “should serve as notice to other would-be scammers that the FTC will take action against such conduct.”

Bogus services and products offered

The complaint filed by the FTC says the defendants -- Hispanic Global Way, Hispanic Network Connections, and several other companies run by Maria Elizabeth Vera, Rafael Martin Hernandez, Roberto Carrasco Macedo, and Maria Gisella Carrasco -- used TV ads to offer English-language courses, cell phones, ladies’ garments, exercise equipment, and the “Molding Motion 5” belt, with no mention of refund and exchange policies.

Consumers, the agency said, often received incomplete orders, the wrong or defective products, products of the wrong size or color, and products that did not perform as advertised, the complaint alleges.

Regarding the purported weight-loss belt, the defendants’ advertising allegedly indicated that consumers could expect rapid and substantial weight-loss regardless of diet and exercise habits, with no reasonable basis to substantiate such claims.

No relief

When consumers called to complain, the defendants routinely placed them on hold for long periods, disconnected them, or otherwise ignored or insulted them, the complaint alleged. If consumers persisted, sales representatives said they could not return or exchange defective products or products the consumers never ordered, or that consumers would have to pay additional fees, ranging from $20 to $299, to do so. The most persistent consumers received promises of refunds or exchanges that never materialized.

The defendants are charged with refusing to provide refunds for, or imposing substantial fees to exchange, unwanted or unusable products; misrepresenting that consumers could return products, even after use, for refunds at no additional cost; and making false, unsubstantiated claims about the weight-loss belt, in violation of the FTC Act.

Kraft Foods Group is recalling 260 cases of Velveeta Original Pasteurized Recipe Cheese Product.

The product does not contain appropriate levels of sorbic acid, a preservative ingredient, and the . affected product could spoil and/or lead to food borne illness.

The single recalled batch of product was shipped to three Walmart distribution centers and may have been redistributed to stores in up to 12 Midwest states: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

The product was not shipped outside the U.S.

The following specific batch of product is being recalled:

Consumers can find the case code date on the side of the package. No other Kraft or Velveeta products are affected.

Consumers who purchased any of these products should not eat them, but return them to the store where purchased for an exchange or full refund.

Consumers may contact Kraft Foods Consumer Relations at 1-800-310-3704 between 9 am and 6 pm (ET).

E-cigarette manufacturers are free to use just about any medium they want to market their products. Unlike tobacco cigarettes, e-cigarette commercials may be broadcast on radio and TV and displayed online.

But the marketing medium of choice, it appears, is social media. A study in Tobacco Control may have implications for future Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations on the marketing of e-cigarettes and related products, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

“There’s this whole wild west of social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – and the FDA has no way to track what’s happening in those platforms,” said Jidong Huang, senior research scientist at UIC’s Institute for Health Research and Policy and lead author of the study.

The researchers collected tweets and metadata that mentioned e-cigarettes during a two month period in 2012. They captured more than 70,000 tweets related to the cigarette substitutes.

Most of the 70,000 tweets, it turns out, were commercials for brands of e-cigarettes. Only 10% were “organic,” or legitimate consumer opinions.

Links to products

The researchers found that 94% of the commercial tweets included a website link while only 11% of the organic tweets did.

E-cigarettes deliver nicotine in water vapor, often accompanied by flavorings, and simulate the physical act of smoking. Many of the users are former smokers and people trying to quit, who say e-cigarettes keep them from using the real thing.

Public health advocates worry that e-cigarettes will hook young people, who don't currently smoke, on nicotine. The FDA is in the process of drawing up regulations that will bar sales to minors.

The UIC researchers say that of the commercial tweets they monitored, only 11% mentioned quitting smoking. More than one-third directed viewers to a place where they could download coupons or get discounts to purchase e-cigarette products.

Twitter is the second-largest search engine after Google and that gives the UIC researchers pause.

“If kids or youth search for ‘vaping pen’ or ‘e-cig’ on Twitter, they will get links to commercial sites where they can purchase these items,” said Huang.

Unlike Facebook and some other platforms where one can set privacy controls, all information on Twitter is accessible to anyone.

Jury still out

So far the jury is out on whether e-cigarettes are a good way to help people stop smoking, as the industry claims, or a gateway to eventual tobacco use, as the industry's public health critics claim.

Previous research has shown rapid growth in both use and awareness of e-cigarettes among adults and young people in the last couple of years. However, there is limited evidence that can settle the argument about the product's merits or threat.

“We know very little about what these products are made of and what kind of chemicals are in the e-juice,” Huang said.

In an unrelated study, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine also conclude the FDA will have its hands full trying to draw up and implement e-cigarette regulations.

The study found that an average 10 new e-cigarette brands entered the Internet marketplace every month from 2012 to 2014. At present online consumers can choose from 466 e-cigarette brands.

Advice for the FDA

The researchers urged the FDA to tread carefully in drawing up regulations, warning against unintended consequences. Overly-stringent regulations, they say, would likely favor brands with strong financial backing and most of these would be owned by tobacco companies.

“Obviously, tobacco companies would be more concerned with protecting cigarette market share than smaller e-cigarette companies,” said lead author Shu-Hong Zhu.

In other words, put too many regulations in place and you run the risk of changing only the market share of different e-cigarette brands rather than reducing the prevalence of smoking.

The most important goal in e-cigarette regulation, says Zhu, is to reduce the number of people smoking cigarettes.

A Chinese firm that sells signal-jamming devices in the United States faces fines and penalties of nearly $35 million, the Federal Communications Commission said. The fine will be the largest in the FCC's history.

The FCC said in a statement it will fine C.T.S. Technology Co. for each of the 285 models of signal jamming devices it has been selling in the United States for more than 2 years, Courthouse News Service reported. 

The illegal jammers have become popular in churches, theaters, schools and other venues where cell phones frequently interrupt the proceedings.

"Signal jammers present a direct danger to public safety, potentially blocking the communications of first responders," FCC acting chief of enforcement Travis LeBlanc said in the statement. "Operating a jammer is also illegal, and consumers who do so face significant civil and criminal penalties."

The company's site -- aiswa.com -- promotes the inexpensive jammers for us in "jails, churches, meeting rooms and cars." 

One model, which sells for $70, has three 2-watt transmitters covering a wide range of cell phone frequencies and is said to be capable of jamming all types of transmissions, including GSM, CDMA and DCS.

"C.T.S. operates a website that markets consumer electronics to individuals in the United States, where it allegedly misled U.S. consumers by falsely claiming that certain signal jammers were approved by the FCC. In fact, the use of such devices by U.S. consumers is illegal under any circumstance," the FTC said in a prepared statement.

It alleged that C.T.S. also sold 10 high-powered signal jammers to undercover FCC personnel.

FCC rules prohibit purposely interfering with licensed radio communications and also prohibit operating unlicensed transmitting devices. 

Future historians will surely look back on this time as the beginning of the end of American marijuana prohibition (1937-20??).

With the benefits of hindsight and an outsider's perspective, they'll be able to draw straightforward timelines discussing, for example, exactly when the federal government rescinded its last criminal laws against marijuana, and even include such milestones as “First sale of stock shares in a publicly traded marijuana company.”

But here in June 2014, it's too soon to predict when any of those things will happen. And many Americans, especially those whose paychecks and livelihoods come from organizations with names like “Drug Enforcement Administration” or “National Institute on Drug Abuse,” keep their focus on predicting the real or perceived downsides of making marijuana the legal equivalent of alcohol, where adult possession and use are concerned.

Locked down

On June 19, for example, Bloomberg news gave a detailed summary of the then-current status quo, headlined “Pot scientists brace for marijuana abuse as laws ease.”

And those “laws,” at the time of writing, were briefly summarized at the federal level:

The only marijuana available for research in the U.S. is locked down by federal regulators who are more focused on studies to keep people off the drug than helping researchers learn how it might be beneficial.

Marijuana is a trend that “will peak like tobacco then people will see their error,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which serves as the gatekeeper for U.S. Marijuana research through its oversight of a pot farm that grows the only plants that can be used in clinical trials.... Volkow said that long-term pot use, as well as some experimenting, can lead to addiction. About 4.3 million people ages 12 and older abused the drug or had marijuana dependence in 2012, about the same as in 2002, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“I’m open to the data, that’s why we do research,” she said in an interview. “But based on what I’ve seen, I predict that it’s going to be negative and we’re going to be in a position of trying to deal with the consequences.”

It's not certain if “marijuana abuse” is being defined as “the excessive use of marijuana, to the point where it harms or interferes with the user's daily life,” or merely “any use not required for medical reasons.”

As of June 2014, marijuana is legal for medical use in 22 states, and for purely recreational use in two.

Yet the U.S. federal government still classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — which means that, according to the law, it has absolutely no medicinal or therapeutic use whatsoever (although “Marinol,” synthetic marijuana produced by a pharmaceutical company in pill form, is legal and does have medicinal value, provided you get a doctor's prescription first).

Supply shortage

Even in Colorado and Washington, the two states with legal recreational marijuana, there's nothing remotely close to a free and open market yet. Indeed, Washington's on the verge of a legally imposed supply shortage. Reason magazine's July 2014 issue discussed “Washington's legal marijuana mess,” wherein marijuana is regulated by a state Liquor Control Board (LCB) seemingly opposed to the very market it's supposed to regulate:

Washington's regulators are deliberately engineering a shortage. Keen to prevent diversion of newly legal marijuana to other states, which might trigger a federal crackdown, the LCB is imposing a cap on production and strictly limiting the number of retailers. The amount of marijuana cultivation allowed by the state is calculated to supply just 25 percent of the market, while the number of retail licenses will be much smaller than the number of existing medical marijuana suppliers. Seattle, which has about 200 dispensaries (including delivery services), has been allotted just 21 state-licensed pot stores.

Colorado has had “supply” problems since the beginning of the year; throughout the month of January, media headlines ranged from the straightforward “Colorado Pot Supply: Marijuana businesses fear shortage” (Time.com, Jan. 8) to the more tongue-in-cheek “Bummer: the great Colorado weed shortage of 2014” (The Daily Beast, Jan. 11).

It's easy to see why marijuana retailers would have supply problems alcohol retailers do not: among other things, maintaining inventory of a consumable product is tricky when that product remains thoroughly illegal on the federal level and in 28 states.

Child custody

Supply and demand aren't the only problems generated by the contradictory nature of current marijuana laws. The Associated Press reported another new legal trend on June 16: “Marijuana laws complicate child custody, abuse cases.”

In Colorado, for example, a man lost custody of his children after he got a medical-marijuana prescription. Such anecdotes are not unusual in medical-marijuana states, again because the law can't decide the exact status of marijuana (let alone those who use it): Useful medication? Recreational intoxicant which responsible adults can enjoy without harm? Or a Schedule 1 narcotic so nasty, any use of it automatically makes you an unfit parent?

Or an unfit employee — despite marijuana's legal status, Colorado employers who require drug tests of their employees can still fire or refuse to hire marijuana users, even those who only use it under a doctor's care.

So even if you are among the growing number of Americans who can, at least in some circumstances, legally acquire and use marijuana, you still might want to err on the side of caution and continue to think of marijuana use as a “legal” rather than “consumer” issue — because so many levels of authority in your life still think that way, and it's far too early for historians to say when that stopped being the American status quo.

Do you ever sit on the couch and watch a good movie and just wish that your dog would move a little closer and snuggle up? Seems like every time you wiggle closer he moves away. Well, you might want to try a little nasal spray on him.

When scientists in Japan gave dogs a quick whiff of an oxytocin nasal spray, the pooches became more affectionate toward their owners. Oxytocin is a chemical and it carries the title of the "love hormone."

In humans it's naturally released from our pituitary gland, located at the base of our brains. It's released during special moments like snuggling or the good ole orgasm.

The new findings suggest that it might also help maintain non-romantic relationships between different species. It could come in handy on walks in the park where your dog might see a rabbit and want to go after it. One spray of oxytocin and that natural instinct may be lessened.

Any mammal

The co -author of the spray study, Miho Nagasawa, said "As far as we know, there are no studies on cats, but we believe that oxytocin is a hormonal mechanism that facilitates the maintenance of close social bonds not only in dogs or cats, but also in any mammal species since the oxytocin system is very ancient and has similar functions in a wide number of taxa."

Sixteen dogs of different breeds participated in the study, which examined how they behaved before being sprayed and after. Doggy disposition toward both other dogs and their human companions was monitored. According to the lead author of the study, Teresa Romero, after the dogs were sprayed they were more affectionate to their owners than during the controls.

The spray was found to promote natural secretion of oxytocin in the brains of the dogs. A high degree of heart rate variability was also observed. The spray will be a valuable tool for dog training and perhaps taming the family dog and cat so they can snuggle up together on the couch!

All of a sudden, the medical community is second guessing the recent low benchmarks for “safe” blood pressure. In short, some are suggesting “the lower the better” approach might not be the right one after all.

The latest questions appear in a study published in the online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center report that lowering systolic blood pressure below 120 does not appear to provide additional benefit for patients.

Systolic pressure is the top number in a standard blood pressure reading such as 120/80.

“Frequently we treat patients’ blood pressure to the lowest it will go, thinking that is what’s best,” said Carlos J. Rodriguez, M.D., associate professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study.

Lower not necessarily better

But the researchers found that pushing blood pressures to the lowest levels possible didn't provide any benefit to patients with risk of dangerous events like heart attack, heart failure and stroke.

“This calls into question the notion that lower is better,” Rodriquez said.

Previous studies had claimed a progressive rise in heart disease risk as systolic blood pressure (SBP) rose above 115. According to the Mayo Clinic, normal blood pressure is below 120/80, which is often difficult to achieve without medication.

However, that's a relatively recent change. Until 2003 most doctors considered 120/80 an ideal blood pressure and a systolic reading up to 140 to be satisfactory.

But a report that year from the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure warned that blood pressure needed to be lower. It said systolic pressure as low as 120 might be risky. For millions of patients, that meant taking medication.

Drug industry influence?

It has to be asked what role the pharmaceutical companies might have played in developing these new standards. A 2005 investigation by The Seattle Times alleged 9 of the 11 authors of the new guidelines had drug company ties.

A new panel on hypertension issued new guidelines last December, suggesting patients over 60 were fine with a blood pressure reading of 150/90. Blood pressure goals were also eased for adults with diabetes and kidney disease.

In March researchers at Duke University ran an analysis and determined that an estimated 5.8 million adults no longer needed blood pressure medicine under the new guidelines.

Controversial

“Raising the target in older adults is controversial, and not all experts agree with this new recommendation,” said lead author Ann Marie Navar-Boggan, a cardiology fellow at Duke University School of Medicine. “In this study, we wanted to determine the number of adults affected by these changes.”

Based on their study, the Duke researchers estimated the proportion of U.S. adults in need of hypertension treatment would decrease from 40.6% under the old guidelines to 31.7% under the new recommendations, resulting in a pretty big hit for drug companies.

More bad news for drug companies

The new Wake Forest study is likely to be seen as more bad news in the pharmaceutical industry. It found that among people with high blood pressure, once SBP is below 140, lowering it below 120 did not reduce heart risks.

“Our study found that the optimal blood pressure range for people with hypertension is 120-139, which significantly reduces the risk of stroke, heart attack or heart failure,” Rodriguez said. “These findings suggest that you don’t need to go lower than that to have the benefits.”

If you are currently taking medication for high blood pressure, you should continue to do so. Never make changes in your medication based on news stories. However, you should discuss these new guidelines with your healthcare provider for advice about whether you need to stay on the medication.

Good news for Android and Nokia phone users (at least, those intending the buy the next upgrade): Google and Microsoft, which make the phones' operating systems, plan to put kill switch options on all upcoming releases.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the policy changes in a  June 19 press release.

The announcement was concurrent with the release of a study showing the unsurprising conclusion that kill switches do indeed deter thieves. Apple started introducing kill switches on its products last autumn, and results have been extremely encouraging:

In New York City, theft of iPhones fell significantly after the release of Apple’s Activation Lock on September 18, 2013 …. In the first five months of 2014, robberies and grand larcenies involving Apple products dropped 19% and 29%, respectively, compared to the same time period from 2013. The decrease in Apple thefts far surpassed the citywide decrease in all robberies (-10%) and all grand larcenies (-18%). Perhaps most tellingly, robberies and grand larcenies from a person involving a Samsung smartphone, which did not have a kill switch during much of this time, increased by over 40%. (Encouragingly, Samsung introduced a kill switch solution in April of 2014 on their Verizon Wireless devices, the impact of which will likely be seen in future statistics.)

Statistics from San Francisco and London show similar outcomes ….

Last February, a proposed “Smartphone Theft Prevention Act” requiring kill switches went before Congress. The bill was introduced on Valentine's Day, although as of June 20, govtrack.us gave it a “1% chance of being enacted” prognosis.

Such a bill may not be necessary anyway, if more companies offer kill switches in response to consumer demand.

As the name suggests, a kill switch is an option that lets you remotely disable, or “kill,” your phone should a thief steal it. (Sometimes, it's referred to as “bricking” —i.e., transforming your phone from a communications device into nothing more than a high-tech brick.

However, if you do get a smartphone (from any carrier) with a kill switch option, remember that it'll do nothing to help you unless you actually activate it first. It's like any other security measure; after all, even the best and strongest lock in the world won't keep thieves out if you forget to close your door.

The award for least-surprising headline of the week goes to MediaPost, which reported on June 19 that “Ad industry urges web standards group to abandon do-not-track effort.”

The ad industry is certainly being proactive here; so far, the do-not-track effort looks to be kind of a bust.

As its name suggests, the “Do not track” project seeks to give users the option to go online without having every website they visit “tracked.” So far, only a handful of companies have agreed to offer and honor Do Not Track options to their visitors, and only two of them — Pinterest and Twitter — are companies recognizable to and patronized by ordinary people (as opposed to IT or advertising professionals).

Indeed, most companies go out of their way to not offer it. At the end of April, for example, Yahoo updated its privacy policies to say that henceforth, “web browser Do Not Track settings will no longer be enabled on Yahoo.”

Not that Yahoo is  unique; Google Chrome's page about “Do Not Track” (last updated in 2012) says “At this time, most web services, including Google's, do not alter their behavior or change their services upon receiving Do Not Track requests.”

Despite this, as MediaPost reported:

The ad trade group Digital Advertising Alliance is urging the World Wide Web Consortium to pull the plug on its tracking-protection initiative, which aims to implement the do-not-track requests that users can send through their browsers.

“By wading into this public-policy matter, the W3C not only duplicates efforts undertaken by legitimate policymakers but also strays far beyond its expertise and mission,” DAA executive director Lou Mastria wrote to the W3C on Wednesday. He added that the DAA wants the Internet standards organization “to abandon this effort and to return to its mission of developing consensus around specifications for web technologies.”

Apparently, the ad industry is also worried that some web users might be tricked into inadvertently being not-tracked when they actually want to be tracked, or something:

Microsoft, for one, now turns on the do-not-track signal automatically for some Internet Explorer users.

The ad industry says that do-not-track signals set by default don't reflect a user's preference to avoid tracking across Web sites. But the industry also says there's no good way to distinguish between a signal set by a user and one set by a developer.

“There’s no mechanism for anyone in the digital media ecosystem to trust any DNT signal they receive,” industry consultant Alan Chapell said in a post to the [W3] group. “As a result, the entire framework is open to question. In any other group, this issue would result in a full stop until the questions are addressed.”

So, Reader: if you're afraid that Microsoft or some other nefarious entity is secretly not-tracking you when you really wish they would, take courage from knowing that ad trade groups like the Digital Advertising Alliance have your back.

When you buy products claiming to be “earth-friendly” because they're made of “recycled content” or similarly environmentally conscious labels, there's always the chance that company is less eco-conscious than it's letting on.

The Federal Trade Commission announced this week that, “for the second time this year,” it settled charges against the American Plastic Lumber company (APL), a seller of trash cans, picnic tables, speed bumps and other heavy outdoor-use products.

Under the settlement terms, the company “is prohibited from making misleading statements about the amount of post-consumer recycled plastic content in its products or other environmental benefit claims and must have competent and reliable evidence to support any such claims.”

The FTC says that for at least two years, from June 2011 through 2013, APL's marketing and advertising materials gave consumers the impression that their products were “made virtually all out of post-consumer recycled content such as milk jugs and detergent bottles.”

In reality, the FTC said, the average APL product contained less than 79 percent recycled plastic, and:

about eight percent of APL’s products contained no post-consumer recycled content at all, and nearly seven percent of the products were made with only 15 percent post-consumer content. These deceptive and unsubstantiated claims, the complaint concludes, violate Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits deceptive acts or practices in commerce.

Reliable evidence

The settlement prohibits APL from making any claims about their products' environmental benefits unless those claims are true, and can be “substantiated by competent and reliable evidence” and determined by “experts in the relevant scientific field.” APL also must prove that the products it says are made from recycled plastics are, in fact, made from recycled plastics.

The settlement against APL was the FTC's second such this year; in February the FTC made a similar settlement with N.E.W. Plastics.

Having cancer is bad enough but the financial toxicity that accompanies it can be so devastating that it interferes with recovery.

In the July issue of Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists describe a tool they have developed called COST (COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity).

It consists of 11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer and it is intended to measure a patient's risk for, and ability to tolerate, financial stress. 

"Few physicians discuss this increasingly significant side effect with their patients," said study author Jonas de Souza, MD, a head-and-neck cancer specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine. "Physicians aren't trained to do this. It makes them, as well as patients, feel uncomfortable."

"We believe that a thoughtful, concise tool that could help predict a patient's risk for financial toxicity might open the lines of communication. This gives us a way to launch that discussion," de Souza said.

The timing is right. The cost of health care in the United States is rising faster than the gross domestic product. The cost of cancer care is rising faster than the cost of health care, and the cost of new cancer drugs is rising faster than the cost of overall cancer care.

Job loss

It's not just the cost of treatment but the fear of job loss that torments patients. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 30 percent of cancer survivors are not able to return to work, or have decreased ability to work. Annual medical expenditures increase by more than $4,000 for males who have had cancer and by nearly $3,300 for females.

"We need better ways to find out which patients are most at risk," de Souza said. "Then we can help them get financial assistance. If patients know what to expect, they may want their physicians to consider less costly medications."

The COST questionnaire consists of 11 entries that are short and easy to understand. For example, item 2 states: "My out-of-pocket medical expenses are more than I thought they would be." Item 7, more optimistic, states: "I am able to meet my monthly expenses."

For each question, patients choose from five potential responses: not at all, a little bit, somewhat, quite a bit, or very much.

Learning how a patient responds may help caregivers determine who is likely to need education, financial counseling, or referral to a support network. The quiz may also predict who is likely to have problems and will require interventions.

Interestingly, the study found that income did not correlate closely with financial toxicity: "People with less education seemed to have more financial distress, but variations in income did not make much difference," de Souza said. 

The researchers are now conducting a larger study to validate these findings and correlate the newly developed scale with quality of life and anxiety in cancer patients.

Average fixed mortgage rates did a turnaround this week and moved a bit lower according to 2 leading of rate-trackers.

According to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) fell 3 basis points -- from 4.20% to 4.17% -- with an average 0.6 point for the week ending June 19. A year ago at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 3.93%.

The 15-year FRM slipped to 3.30% -- with an average 0.5 point -- from last week's 3.31%. It averaged 3.04% a year earlier.

Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) averaged 3.00%, down 5 basis points from last week, with an average 0.4 point. A year ago, the 5-year ARM averaged 2.79%.

The 1-year Treasury-indexed ARM rose from 2.40% to 2.41% with an average 0.4 point. At the same time last year, the 1-year ARM averaged 2.57%.

Bankrate

Meanwhile, Bankrate.com's weekly national survey has the benchmark 30-year FRM dipping 1 basis point -- to 4.33%, with has an average of 0.35 discount and origination points.

The average 15-year fixed mortgage rate inched up -- from 3.43% to 3.44%, (average points: 0.19),

while the larger jumbo 30-year FRM slid to 4.38 percent.

Adjustable rate mortgages were mostly higher, with the 3-year ARM rising to 3.27% and the 7-year ARM drifting higher to 3.63%.

At the end of last year, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 4.69%. A $200,000 loan would have carried a monthly payment of $1,036.07. After drifting lower for much of the first five months of of this year, the average rate is now 4.33%, putting the monthly payment for the same size loan at $993.27. Anyone with the patience to wait would have saved nearly $43 per month.