Daily Business Report-July 23, 2018
Loren Firestone (Photo: Higgs Fletcher & Mack)
Higgs Fletcher & Mack partner
appointed to Superior Court bench
Loren G. Freestone, 47, of San Diego, has been appointed to a judgeship in the San Diego County Superior Court. Freestone has been a partner at Higgs, Fletcher and Mack LLP since 2014, where he was an associate from 2008 to 2014 and from 1999 to 2004. He was an associate at Hurst and Hurst from 2004 to 2008 and at McInnis, Fitzgerald, Rees and Sharkey from 1998 to 1999.
Freestone is actively involved and respected within the legal community. He is the Immediate past president of the San Diego County Bar Association (SDCBA) and was president of the SDCBA in 2017. He was elected by his peers to the SDCBA’s Board of Directors in late 2013 and previously served as the SDCBA’s secretary and president-elect. Freestone is the former chair of the SDCBA’s Ethnic Relations and Diversity Committee, former chair of the SDCBA’s Diversity Fellowship Program, and is a past board member of the Tom Homann Law Association.
Freestone earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Diego School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge David J. Danielsen. Freestone is a Democrat.
____________________
San Diego County jobless rate
in June rises to 3.7 percent
Non-farm employment up 22,500 over the year despite month-over decline of 800
The unemployment rate in the San Diego County was 3.7 percent in June, up from a revised 2.9 percent in May 2018, and below the year-ago estimate of 4.2 percent, according to the state Employment Development Department.
This compares with an unadjusted unemployment rate of 4.5 percent for California and 4.2 percent for the nation during the same period.
Between May 2018 and June 2018, total non-farm employment decreased from 1,484,000 to 1,483,200, a reduction of 800. Farm employment remained the same at 9,100.
Between June 2017 and June 2018, total non-farm employment increased 22,500, up from 1,460,700. Total farm employment expanded from 8,700 to 9,100, adding 400 jobs.
____________________
San Diego Business community’s
economic outlook up slightly from last month
Business confidence in San Diego County remains upbeat with the Business Outlook Index at a solid 19.1, nominally up from last month’s 15.9 in this month’s Business Forecast sponsored by CalPrivate Bank. Optimism from mid- to large firms is driving the current positivity. The Forecast also took the annual measurement of business-friendliness of local governments and whether firms are considering moving out of the county. The survey found little change from last year. An overwhelming 60 percent of county businesses say the climate is friendly and only 8 percent, or about 24,000 businesses, are thinking about relocating.
“When it comes to friendliness of local government the main driver is whether a company’s primary challenge is related to government regulations,” said Jerry Sanders, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. “Our survey finds that 77 percent of firms that struggle with government red tape also say their local government is unfriendly to businesses. So it stands to reason that reducing regulations would make governments seem friendlier.”
____________________
How learned behaviors are organized
and controlled by different brain cell types
How the office org chart in your brain helps to organize your actions
Salk scientists discover how learned behaviors are organized and controlled by different brain cell types, offering insight into Parkinson’s, OCD
LA JOLLA—Driving to work, typing an email or playing a round of golf—people perform actions such as these throughout the day. But neuroscientists are still unsure how the brain orchestrates complex actions or switches to a new action—behaviors that are impaired in disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Now, Salk researchers have resolved a longstanding scientific debate about how behavior is organized in the brain. Led by Associate Professor Xin Jin, the team discovered that learned behavior is organized in a hierarchy with multiple levels of control, offering possible new therapeutic targets for disorders that involve an inability to control one’s actions. The work, which appeared in the journal Cell on June 28, 2018, utilized mice trained to perform complex action sequences to make the discovery.
____________________
UC San Diego researchers receive funds
to pursue novel stem cell-based treatments
The governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) unanimously approved two grants worth more than $2.2 million to University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers investigating stem cell-based therapies for a rare genetic disorder that affects the heart and a chronic, progressive affliction of the lungs.
The first grant for almost $1.4 million was awarded to Eric Adler, M.D., cardiologist, to pursue the use of genetically modified hematopoietic stem cells to treat Danon disease, a progressive condition characterized by weakening of the heart muscle, weakening of muscles used for movement and cognitive disability.
The second CIRM grant for $865,282 went to James Hagood, M.D., pediatric pulmonologist and chief of pediatric respiratory medicine at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, to investigate the use of mesenchymal stem cell extracellular vesicles as a therapy for pulmonary fibrosis.
____________________
Gubernatorial Appointment
Edward K. Hadfield, 54, of San Marcos:
Appointed to the State 9-1-1 Advisory Board by Gov. Jerry Brown. Hadfield has been fire chief at the Rincon Fire Department since 2015. He served in several positions at the city of Santa Maria Fire Department from 2013 to 2015, including chief officer, fire marshal and operations chief. Hadfield served in several positions at the city of Coronado Fire Department from 2007 to 2013, including chief officer, fire marshal and training chief. He was chief executive officer at FTS Consulting in 2007. Hadfield held several positions at the City of Paso Robles Fire Department from 2006 to 2007, and held several positions at the city of Huntington Beach Fire Department from 1995 to 2006, including fire captain, fire protection specialist and training officer.
Hadfield was firefighter and acting captain at the city of Vista Fire Department from 1990 to 1995 and a firefighter at the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District from 1987 to 1990. He is Area 4 South director for the California Fire Chiefs Association Board of Directors, director-at-large of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Board of Directors and chairman of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Native American Advisory Council. Hadfield is treasurer of the San Diego County Fire Chiefs’ Association and director of the California Tribal Fire Chiefs Association.
Thes position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Hadfield is a Republican.
____________________
Personnel Announcements
Austin Kim joins ACADIA Pharmaceuticals
ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc. a San Diego biopharmaceutical company, has named Austin D. Kim as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary. The company previously announced that Glenn F. Baity, who served in that role since 2004, would be retiring. Baity will remain with ACADIA through completion of a transition period.
From 2006 until 2017, Kim held several senior legal positions at Teva Pharmaceuticals, a global specialty pharmaceutical company. At Teva, Kim was most recently vice president and deputy general counsel, corporate/M&A, handling corporate and securities law matters, acquisitions and corporate development, capital markets transactions and corporate governance matters.
Before joining Teva, Kim was deputy general counsel at IVAX Corporation, a global generic pharmaceutical company, which was acquired by Teva in 2006. Earlier in his career, Kim was a senior lawyer at Transamerica Corporation, practiced law at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro and clerked for Judge Vaughn Walker of the United States District Court, Northern District of California.
____________________
