Good Morning and welcome to the Monday Innovation Trail Mix.
New York spends $6,859 on every person in the state and health and education makes up 68% of the total expenditure.
Home rule emerging as one of the major factors in how the fracking debate will play out across the state.
RIT's Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies is hosting a panel to discuss jobs in manufacturing later today.
Politics
A rather frosty exchange between candidates for the newly drawn 25th New York Congressional District, incumbent congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D) and challenger Maggie Brooks (R) took place on Friday night in our Rochester studios.
Video of the debate will be posted by WXXI news later today. They'll also be speaking at the RIT manufacturing summit this afternoon.
A poll by the Siena College Research Institute of 800 likely voters in the Monroe County district - which covers most of Great Rochester - has found that 56% supported the continuation of government incentives, including tax credits, for the renewable energy industry in New York.
Business
The Voice of the Voter pollasked 43 questions in total, and an even higher level of support (at 64%), supported local and state tax breaks and other incentives to attract businesses to the area. Interestingly, this support was split fairly evenly along party lines with 66% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans in favor.
Nearly half of the identified Republican and Democrat respondents were in agreement that they didn't have very much confidence that they'd see Eastman Kodak emerge from bankruptcy in 2013 at 43% even.
Energy
Tom Wilber - in the latest posting on his Shale Gas Review - reports on some recent legal developments that highlight the power that local zoning boards are likely to have when deciding whether hydraulic fracturing will be allowed go ahead in their district.
On the same topic, the most interesting result in the Siena poll was not the fairly even split in total numbers for and against fracking, (although support was higher amongst Republicans), but the relatively high level of Democrats still undecided, who came in at 29%.
Just outside the Rochester city limits, the folks of the town of Stafford aren't taking any chances,reports the Batavian.
We've been reporting on some of the energy research and development being done in the defense sector and here's some additional background from Technology Review.
As we mentioned last week, gas-fired energy generation is having an impact on natural gas prices. (Bloomberg)
Business
A new poll by American Express shows confidence amongst half the small business owners in New York that they will be growing their business, reports the RBJ.
Health
Upstate Medical University's http://www.upstate.edu/news/article.php?title=4849Center for Vision Research is 15 years young.
What you might have missed since Friday:
Average student debt levels have increased by around 5% in the past year, and the graduates of class 2011 in New York owe around $26,600 each, as Kate O'Connell reports.
The CEO of the parent company that owns the iconic Rochester-based clothing company Hickey Freeman, told the Innovation Trailthat layoffs are not planned at its operation despite going Chapter 11.
It's been nearly a month since the DEC announced its internal review of the way that health impacts have been assessed in the dSGEIS, but the role of the external experts remains a little unclear and the actual experts haven't been put on the books yet, as Karen DeWitt found out when she spoke with DEC Commissioner Joe Martens on Friday.
