Brain Drain

AFTER MANY years of steady brain drain, South Africa and some of its neighbors have decided to fight back. They realize their future is doomed if they keep losing their best and brightest to richer countries. "The crM-hme de la crM-hme of our country in terms of skills, qualifications and financial resources has bled out of South Africa," said that country's home affairs minister, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. He recently announced a "Come Home" campaign to recruit back professionals who have emigrated.

Letter writer Thomas F. McDonough has it all wrong ("Social Security boondoggle proves conservatives' point," July 29). Not so long ago, the Social Security Administration was faced with a similar programming embarrassment. There was a scandal involving losing people's records. What was happening was that each of the national programming centers and the headquarters here in Maryland had their own individual tracking systems that worked by reading a punch card kept in a pocket in the file at each location the file passed through.

"Brain drain," much discussed during the 1960s when the Third World's best and brightest scientists were being lured away to the United States, carries sinister overtones when applied to nuclear technologists from the former Soviet Union. That's why the Americans are not the only ones trying to prevent it. Germany's Hans-Dietrich Genscher recently signed an accord with his Japanese counterpart, Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe, to support an international center that Americans have pushed to help the bomb specialists keep working while they convert to more peaceful pursuits.

Here's a no-brainer for you: Your memory doesn't have to get worse with age. In fact, you can actually grow the short-term memory portion of your brain -- and possibly even stave off the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Or so says Dr. Majid Fotuhi, a Harvard- and Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist who has operated a brain center in Lutherville for the past two and a half years, and who this winter opened an even larger brain center in Columbia, a 6,000-square-foot facility on Charter Drive, behind Howard County General Hospital.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Less than three years after it went public, Google is confronting one of the more confounding consequences of its phenomenal success: a potential brain drain if its earliest - and richest - employees quit after earning the right to cash in the last of the stock options that made them millionaires. Hundreds of the 2,300 Googlers hired before the Internet juggernaut's initial public offering in August 2004 are hitting their fourth anniversary. When they do, they'll be free to cash in the final portions of their pre-IPO stock options, collectively worth an estimated $2.6 billion before taxes.

Here's a no-brainer for you: Your memory doesn't have to get worse with age. In fact, you can actually grow the short-term memory portion of your brain -- and possibly even stave off the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Or so says Dr. Majid Fotuhi, a Harvard- and Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist who has operated a brain center in Lutherville for the past two and a half years, and who this winter opened an even larger brain center in Columbia, a 6,000-square-foot facility on Charter Drive, behind Howard County General Hospital.

AMES, Iowa - The ads flopped. The cocktail parties the governor threw came and went. All the mailings touting the virtues of living a long way from the bright lights of big cities never helped, either. Iowa, ever the humble suitor, is still struggling to persuade well-educated young adults to stay put, or move back. But now the state may get brash - by offering them cash. Iowa's legislature has begun debating an extraordinary bill to exempt anyone under 30 from paying state income tax. No other state with the same affliction - an exodus of residents commonly called "brain drain" - has taken such a step.

The office of Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot recently released a report suggesting that Maryland students start school after Labor Day so that families can take one last summer-fling vacation, thereby giving the state a nearly $75 million economic boost. I haven't crunched any numbers on the topic but, as a parent with school-age children, I believe the report's glowing financial projections fail to take into account several factors that work against this predicted surge in tourism-related dollars.

WORLD With oil money, new leverage The increase in oil prices is the common denominator in some of Washington's most implacable foreign-policy challenges. From the U.S. government's perspective, oil money in the hands of unfriendly nations empowers regimes to defy American policy on everything from nuclear nonproliferation to human rights. pg 16a Hunger adds to AIDS scourge Starvation and malnutrition are fast becoming the twin perils of the AIDS fight, and doctors say millions of infected people in the developing world are rapidly approaching a tipping point where food will replace drugs as the biggest need.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is preparing an nTC initiative to ensure full employment for an estimated 2,000 nuclear scientists in the former Soviet Union, including U.S.-funded jobs overseeing the destruction of Soviet atomic weapons and a multinational effort to provide jobs in civilian research institutes, officials said yesterday.The plan, which is under discussion in a high-level interagency group, is intended to head off attempts to hire the scientists by Libya, Iran or other countries that may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons, the officials said.

The office of Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot recently released a report suggesting that Maryland students start school after Labor Day so that families can take one last summer-fling vacation, thereby giving the state a nearly $75 million economic boost. I haven't crunched any numbers on the topic but, as a parent with school-age children, I believe the report's glowing financial projections fail to take into account several factors that work against this predicted surge in tourism-related dollars.

Scientists at the nation's leading research institutions are warning that continued uncertainty over federal funding could lead to a brain drain that will undermine the country's global status in medicine. With funding at the National Institutes of Health stagnant since 2003 and other countries increasing research spending, some scientists have chosen to work overseas rather than endure what they expect will be a years-long wait for the grants they need to launch their careers in the United States.

With baby boomers hitting retirement age, federal agencies expect challenging years ahead in grooming the next crop of leaders, managing heavier workloads, and attracting skilled professionals to work for the government, according to a recent survey of federal executives. Fifty-five federal executives told the Partnership for Public Service that their main challenges were declining budgets, high turnover due in part to retirements, inadequate leadership and succession planning and competency gaps in human resources and agency leadership skills.

"Near-retirees," as those of us of a certain age are often called, are getting a lot of mixed messages. Fortune magazine reports that companies are hanging onto their baby boomers because they fear a brain drain - a loss of skills and institutional knowledge. In 1985, the magazine says, about 11 percent of people over 65 worked full- or part-time. This year, the figure is more than 18 percent. However, while unemployment among older workers is 6.2 percent, significantly below the national rate of 9.1 percent, it is double what it was three years ago. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office says that those 55 and older who lose their jobs wait an average of three times longer than they did in 2007 - from 11 to 31 weeks - before they find work.

SANTA BARBARA, Philippines - -Looking down the main drag of this farm town, Police Chief Eric Noble marvels at the modern conveniences - byproducts of the fierce ties binding Philippine families. Sturdy houses with concrete foundations now replace the thatched huts of a generation ago. There are new cars, washing machines, children attending private schools and former sharecroppers who have purchased the farms where they once worked as lowly laborers. Such economic progress has come from remittances, the staggering $1 billion sent to families nationwide each month by Filipinos working overseas in an attempt to overcome extreme poverty and joblessness in their native land.

U.S. law requires anti-missile system The Sun's editorial position on the U.S. missile defense program is not only misinformed, it is irresponsible ("The missile gap," Dec. 9). To tell readers that "the only way an Iranian missile could inflict really serious damage" is if it had a nuclear weapon completely disregards the deadly consequences of a ballistic or cruise missile loaded with a chemical, biological or even a high-explosive warhead. Any of these weapons could kill thousands of people, and are readily available to North Korea, Iran and non-state terrorist organizations.

Letter writer Thomas F. McDonough has it all wrong ("Social Security boondoggle proves conservatives' point," July 29). Not so long ago, the Social Security Administration was faced with a similar programming embarrassment. There was a scandal involving losing people's records. What was happening was that each of the national programming centers and the headquarters here in Maryland had their own individual tracking systems that worked by reading a punch card kept in a pocket in the file at each location the file passed through.

"Near-retirees," as those of us of a certain age are often called, are getting a lot of mixed messages. Fortune magazine reports that companies are hanging onto their baby boomers because they fear a brain drain - a loss of skills and institutional knowledge. In 1985, the magazine says, about 11 percent of people over 65 worked full- or part-time. This year, the figure is more than 18 percent. However, while unemployment among older workers is 6.2 percent, significantly below the national rate of 9.1 percent, it is double what it was three years ago. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office says that those 55 and older who lose their jobs wait an average of three times longer than they did in 2007 - from 11 to 31 weeks - before they find work.

WASHINGTON -- The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say. The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain," part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House two...

Plans to put $300,000 condominiums on two key parcels in Reservoir Hill are on hold after the city received a stern reminder from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development about building restrictions imposed when the properties were transferred from the federal government to the city nearly a decade ago. Once the sites of low-income apartments, the vacant parcels across from Druid Lake may be used only for affordable rental units for 20...