Schizophrenia and a link with Infections

  By Frank Roylance, The Baltimore Sun

Johns Hopkins University scientists trying to determine why people develop serious mental illness are focusing on an unlikely factor: a common parasite spread by cats.

The researchers say the microbes, called Toxoplasma gondii, invade the human brain and appear to upset its chemistry — creating, in some people, the psychotic behaviors recognized as schizophrenia.

If tackling the parasite can help solve the mystery of schizophrenia, “it’s a pretty good opportunity … to relieve a pretty large burden of disease,” said Dr. Robert H. Yolken, director of developmental neurobiology at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

The cause of schizophrenia is unknown, but both genetic and environmental factors likely play a part, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.   Yolken is among the researchers worldwide examining whether certain viral infections can increase the risk of developing the illness.   Other studies have focused on flu and herpes viruses as possible triggers.

Yolken, a cat owner who says he has tested positive for Toxoplasma antibodies, said the potential link between Toxoplasma infections and mental illness is no reason for cat owners to panic — they just need to keep some basic hygienic precautions in mind.

“I couldn’t understand why a disease like schizophrenia persists in humans,” he said. Through much of our history, “people who have these diseases don’t reproduce very well, either because they’re sick, or they’ve been locked up, or because they were killed.”

If the disorder were strictly genetic in origin, he added, those genes should have been culled from the gene pool long ago.   But they weren’t.   That raises the question of an environmental, perhaps infectious origin — a germ that has evolved to benefit by infecting other species.

Schizophrenia is a severely disabling brain disorder characterized by confusion, delusions and hallucinations. Someone with a toxoplasma infection, called toxoplasmosis, is more than twice as likely to develop schizophrenia, according to Yolken.

First isolated in 1908, T. gondii is present in the bodies of a third of the world’s population, on average. It is a lifelong infection.

“Humans can get infected either directly [from contact with cat feces], or from eating the [undercooked] meat of an animal that was itself infected by a cat,” Yolken said.   Some toxoplasmosis outbreaks have been traced to water supplies contaminated by cat feces.

When they’re initially infected, most people have little more than flu-like symptoms, or none at all.   But young children, people with weakened immune systems and women infected while pregnant can develop a brain inflammation called encephalitis, or suffer miscarriages, damage to the heart, liver, eyes or ears.   Infection can be fatal, and fetuses that survive their mother’s first infection may be born with retardation, deafness and other problems.

Life cycle of the parasite

Felines are typically infected when they eat an infected mouse or bird.  They don’t usually get sick.  So far, there is no vaccine to prevent cats from becoming infected.  So the microbe reproduces in the cat’s gut.  Its eggs, or oocysts, develop there, and are later shed with the cat’s feces.

When another warm-blooded animal such as a mouse ingests the oocysts through contact with cat feces, the oocysts enter its gut.  There they release cells that migrate mostly to muscles and the brain, forming cysts to protect themselves from the mouse’s immune system.

But T. gondii must get back into a cat to reproduce again.  To get there, it needs the mouse to be eaten by a cat. Scientists believe the parasite raises its odds of success by changing the mouse’s behavior and reversing its natural fear of cats.

Glenn McConkey, a researcher at the University of Leeds in England, reported last year that two genes in T. gondii’s DNA contain instructions for the production of an enzyme that makes a brain chemical called dopamine.

“But in higher animals with nervous systems, dopamine is a neurotransmitter with important roles in regulating behavior.  Some anti-psychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia work by blocking dopamine action in the brain.

Recent studies have found that a variety of viral infections, early in life, appear to carry risks of brain changes.

In May, Hopkins researcher David J. Schretien published a study suggesting that some brain changes and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenics may be caused or worsened by exposure to a herpes simplex virus.   A 2005 Czech study found evidence of personality changes in humans infected by another herpes virus called cytomegalovirus.   And numerous studies have suggested that flu infections during pregnancy may increase a child’s risk of schizophrenia and autism.

Studies have linked a history of toxoplasmosis with increased rates of other mental changes, too, including bipolar disorders and depression.  A 2002 study in the Czech Republic noted slowed reflexes in Toxoplasma-positive people and found links between the infection and increased rates of auto accidents.

A University of Maryland study last year found that people with mood disorders who attempt suicide had higher levels of T. gondii antibodies than those who don’t try to take their own lives.   Still, the links between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis are not simple.   For example, most people infected with T. gondii never become schizophrenic. And not all schizophrenics have been exposed to toxoplasma.

Yolken believes additional factors, such as an unlucky combination of genes, are probably needed to produce schizophrenia among Toxoplasma-infected people.  The parasite’s DNA may also be important, since some strains are known to cause more disease.

Studies have also suggested that the timing of the infection — early in life when the brain is developing — and the place in the brain where the cysts settle, may be important, he said.

But once the T. gondii cysts are established, how might medical science find and kill, or at least silence them?

Yolken said that while T. gondii cysts are invisible to the immune system, they are not totally passive. Inside the cysts, the microbes are alive, sensing their environment, periodically trying to break out, multiply and form more dopamine-making cysts. The flare-ups probably occur when the host’s immune system is weakened by illness or stress.

Scientists believe these “reactivations” of the infection could explain the emergence or worsening of cognitive symptoms as people with schizophrenia reach adolescence and young adulthood.

Researchers have also noted that toxoplasmosis is similar to malaria in its persistence in the body, its flare-ups, and its ability to hide from the immune system, Yolken said.  So Sabunciyan and researchers elsewhere are investigating whether anti-malarial drugs might work against T. gondii cysts.

Sabunciyan has reported promising results with a class of anti-malarial drugs, called artemisinins, which appear to be effective at killing T. gondii in tissue cultures.  “The next step is to do that in animals,” Yolken said.

If it works in animals, that would raise hopes for a toxoplasmosis treatment for people, and perhaps, one day, some relief for people with schizophrenia.

frank.roylance@baltsun.com

Legality of Video and Audio Recording in MD

By Justin Fenton The Baltimore Sun

Marylanders appear to have the right to record interactions with police officers with devices such as video cameras and mobile phones, according to an opinion by the state attorney general’s office.  The advisory letter was issued as several people face or have been threatened with criminal charges for taping police.

It’s unlikely that most interactions with police could be considered private, as some law enforcement agencies have interpreted the state’s wiretapping act, wrote Assistant Attorney General Robert McDonald.   The conclusion is based on prior rulings and opinions of courts in other states.

The advisory letter from the attorney general’s office, dated July 7, was requested by Democratic and Republican state lawmakers, who asked if police were twisting the law and whether a legislative remedy was necessary.  The opinion does not carry the weight of law but is meant to guide judges and state agencies.

The opinion “makes the point that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when a police officer arrests a citizen, which makes it perfectly legal for a citizen to videotape or have an oral record of the arrest,” said Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat.   “We want to know whether we have to change the law, and the answer seems to be no, we do not.”

For years, compelling audiotapes of criminal behavior have been routinely thrown out in court after defense attorneys cited the current statute.  The law can’t be applied differently when police say they’ve been recorded without their consent, he said.

David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland ACLU, argues that a police officer stopping someone as part of his official duties has no expectation of privacy.  Telling citizens they can’t record, he said, improperly intimidates and chills attempts by people to hold law enforcement accountable.

The state’s wiretapping law was enacted in 1973, and since then the number of video and audio recordings made by both law enforcement agencies and citizens with hand-held and portable recording devices has exploded.

The Maryland statute is generally focused on matters of eavesdropping and says individuals may not “willfully intercept” any “oral communication,” defined as “any conversation or words spoken to or by any person in private conversation.”  That has raised the question of what can be considered a private conversation.

“It is possible that a court might find that a particular encounter between an individual and a police officer involved a ‘private conversation’ and thus qualified as an ‘oral communication’ subject to the wiretap act,” McDonald wrote. ”  This seems an unlikely conclusion as to the majority of encounters between police and citizens, particularly when they occur in a public place and involve the exercise of police powers.”

State supreme courts in Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington have upheld people’s right to record police officers, though Illinois has since made it illegal to record anyone without their consent.

Maryland State Police record traffic stops themselves, via dashboard cameras required by a settlement in a 2003 racial profiling lawsuit.  Rocah noted that should the state police face a lawsuit over the issue, the attorney general’s office as state legal counsel would be called to defend their position.

“Under those circumstances,” he said, the attorney general’s letter “is pretty extraordinary in going as far as it does.”

McDonald’s letter references a 2000 opinion by then-Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., who told Montgomery County police that it was legal for them to mount cameras in their police cars and record video and audio of traffic stops.   Curran wrote that such recordings “could hardly be characterized as private conversations.”

“Any driver pulled over by a uniformed officer in a traffic stop is acutely aware that his or her statements are being made to a police officer and, indeed, that they may be repeated as evidence in a courtroom,” Curran wrote.

Collecting Personal Communication Records

By Pete Yost, Associated Press

Federal law requires communications providers to produce records in counterintelligence investigations to the FBI, which doesn’t need a judge’s approval and court order to get them.

 They can be obtained merely with the signature of a special agent in charge of any FBI field office and there is no need even for a suspicion of wrongdoing, merely that the records would be relevant in a counterintelligence or counterterrorism investigation.  The person whose records the government wants doesn’t even need to be a suspect. 

The bureau’s use of these so-called national security letters to gather information has a checkered history. 

The bureau engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority to issue the letters, illegally collecting data from Americans and foreigners, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded in 2007.  

Weathering that controversy, the FBI has continued its reliance on the letters to gather information from telephone companies, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses with personal records about their customers or subscribers – and Internet service providers.

 That last source is the focus of the Justice Department’s push to get Congress to modify the law.

 The law already requires Internet service providers to produce the records, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s national security division.  But he said as written it also causes confusion and the potential for unnecessary litigation as some Internet companies have argued they are not always obligated to comply with the FBI requests. 

The administration’s proposal to change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act “raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns,” Leahy said Thursday in a statement.

 “While the government should have the tools that it needs to keep us safe, American citizens should also have protections against improper intrusions into their private electronic communications and online transactions,” said Leahy, who plans hearings in the fall on this and other issues involving the law.

Critics are lined up in opposition to what the Obama administration wants to do.

 Boyd, the Justice spokesman, said the changes being proposed will not allow the government to obtain or collect new categories of information; rather it simply seeks to clarify what Congress intended when the statute was amended in 1993, he argued.

 Critics, however, point to a 2008 opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel which found that the FBI’s reach with national security letters extends only as far as getting a person’s name, address, the period in which they were a customer and the numbers dialed on a telephone or to that phone.

 The problem the FBI has been having is that some providers, relying on the 2008 Justice opinion – issued during the Bush administration – have refused to turn over Internet records such as information about who a person e-mails and who has e-mailed them and information about a person’s Web surfing history.

 To deal with the issue, there’s no need to change the law since the FBI has the authority to obtain the same information with a court order issued under a broad section of the Patriot Act. 

The critics say the proposed change would allow the FBI to remove federal judges and courts from scrutiny of its requests for sensitive information.

 “The implications of the proposal are that no court is deciding whether even that low standard of `relevance’ is met,” said Nojeim.  “The FBI uses national security letters to find not just who the target of an investigation e-mailed, but also who those people e-mailed and who e-mailed them.”

Small Business and Healthcare

By Kent Hoover, Baltimore Business Journal

Small businesses contend the healthcare legislation will increase business costs and lead some firms to refrain from hiring additional workers in order to avoid requirements that kick in for companies with 50 or more employees.

The chamber also launched a new website, http://www.healthreformimpacts.com, to collect stories from small businesses about how the law is going to affect them.

NFIB already exercised a legal option: It joined a lawsuit filed by 20 states challenging the law’s requirement for individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine to the government.

Business groups are gaining support on Capitol Hill for one legislative fix: repealing the law’s provision that requires all businesses, whether sole proprietors or giant corporations, to file 1099 forms with the Internal Revenue Service any time they pay more than $600 a year to another business.

That requirement already is in effect for payments made to unincorporated service providers.  The health care reform bill expands that requirement in 2012 to all corporations, and covers payments for goods as well as services.

This will heap added paperwork on up to 40 million small businesses, many of them self-employed individuals, who will have to track every payment made to every vendor, and get each vendor’s taxpayer identification number.

“This just adds another burden to your accounting staff,” said Lester Miller, a partner in Miller’s Minuteman Press in Baltimore, which employs about 50.  “We’re just going to be pushing out a pile of extra paperwork that I don’t think anyone has the staff to handle.”

The 1099 provision was added to the bill to raise revenue to help pay for health care reform’s cost.  The theory is that third-party reporting of these payments will make recipients less likely to try to hide this income from the IRS.

Business groups, however, doubt this provision will bring in anything close to the $17 billion projected by Congress. They also question whether the IRS has enough resources to handle the millions of additional 1099s it will receive every year.

Nina Olson, who heads the IRS’ independent Taxpayer Advocate Service, agrees the burdens imposed on small businesses by the 1099 requirement “may turn out to be disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance.”

In an effort to reduce this burden, the IRS plans to exempt credit card transactions from the 1099 requirement.  These transactions already are going to be reported to the IRS by credit card payment processors, so separate reports from purchasers aren’t necessary, according to the agency.

That exemption doesn’t go far enough, small-business groups contend.  Using credit cards instead of cash or vendor credit would raise business costs.   Plus, some vendors will insist on cash, because of the interchange fees they have to pay banks on credit card transactions.

““I think I will get a vote,” Johanns said concerning his bill.

Lower-wage firms with fewer than 25 employees are eligible for a tax credit of up to 35 percent of their premium costs.

Read more: Changes sought to health law – Baltimore Business Journal

Cognition Pill

BY: Meredith Cohn, The Baltimore Sune

University of Maryland scientists have linked a brain compound called kynurenic acid to cognition, potentially opening the door to development of a drug that could aid learning in healthy people — and in those with disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

scientists have been studying the link for more than a decade and can now show that mice genetically engineered to produce 70 percent less kynurenic acid had markedly improved cognition. They were better able to explore and recognize objects, remember unpleasant experiences and navigate a maze.

In humans, the acid is produced after consuming food containing tryptophan, such as turkey. Tryptophan is an amino acid essential to the human diet because it helps the body produce serotonin, which promotes healthy sleep and stable mood.

scientists have been studying the link for more than a decade and can now show that mice genetically engineered to produce 70 percent less kynurenic acid had markedly improved cognition. They were better able to explore and recognize objects, remember unpleasant experiences and navigate a maze.

In humans, the acid is produced after consuming food containing tryptophan, such as turkey. Tryptophan is an amino acid essential to the human diet because it helps the body produce serotonin, which promotes healthy sleep and stable mood.

Scientists have been studying the link for more than a decade and can now show that mice genetically engineered to produce 70 percent less kynurenic acid had markedly improved cognition.  They were better able to explore and recognize objects, remember unpleasant experiences and navigate a maze.

In humans, the acid is produced after consuming food containing tryptophan, such as turkey.  Tryptophan is an amino acid essential to the human diet because it helps the body produce serotonin, which promotes healthy sleep and stable mood.

Conversely, abnormally high levels of kynurenic acid are found in people with brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s, which may contribute to cognitive problems.  Further, more acid is produced with age, possibly leading to dementia in some or creating those “senior moments” when people can’t recall a memory or fact.

The acid inhibits brain receptors that stimulate learning and memory.  So scientists needed to determine how they could reduce the acid and interrupt the process without inhibiting the serotonin and another neurotransmitter, dopamine, which is associated with feelings of pleasure.

Such a drug could buy time for those with Alzheimer’s if treatment were given early on.  A schizophrenia patient, on the other hand, could benefit at any point, and the earlier the better.

Foreclosure Avoidance

By Dalia Fahmy, AOL.com

It’s sad but true. Americans are increasingly filing for bankruptcy in order to avoid foreclosure.

If you’d like to file for bankruptcy but are worried about your credit, Porter says don’t worry. ” Those who have a foreclosure filing against them, their credit score has already taken such a big hit that the additional blemish of bankruptcy is not particularly significant,” she says.

It’s sad that we’ve had to resort to this, but the truth is that bankruptcy filing stops the foreclosure process cold. Lenders aren’t even allowed to try collecting debts until a judge gives them the OK.

It’s only a short reprieve though, says Porter, lasting a couple of months at the most because by then most court cases have been resolved.
So how do you go about this delicate maneuver?

The first step is filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.  You could also file for Chapter 7, but that doesn’t really work very well, as CNN Money points out.   Borrowers usually lose their homes in a Chapter 7, because the home becomes an asset that can be used to pay off other debtors.

Porter recommends sticking to Chapter 13 filings because a court will look at all your finances — incomes, bills and disposable income — and set a three to five year repayment plan that determines how much you must pay each month to make up your arrears.   Someone with good income might be all caught up by the end of five years, but most people end up just paying off a fraction of their debt.

Don’t do it if you’re not sure this will work, however.  Legal fees for Chapter 7 will cost you more than $1,500; for Chapter 13 it’s around $3,000.

Beware: Filing for bankruptcy doesn’t work for everyone.   Says Porter: “Chapter 13 works poorly for people whose mortgage is totally unaffordable.”   It only makes sense if you have a job, and enough income to pay your mortgage and other bills.   Otherwise you could find yourself unable to keep up with the court-mandated payment plan, which would put you in the same tight spot again a year from now.   At that point, you won’t be able to file for bankruptcy because there are legal limits on how often you’re allowed to do it.

MICA PLACE

By Ed Gunts, Baltimore Sun

A renovated Catholic school in East Baltimore will soon be the home of more than two dozen graduate-level art students who will collaborate with area residents in what educators see as a pioneering effort to address urban problems with “art-based” solutions.

When complete in September, the $1.3 million MICA PLACE will contain an art gallery, computer lab, studios, seminar space, community meeting rooms and upper-level apartments for 26 graduate students.   The facility is the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Maryland Institute College of Art to develop community arts programs that immerse students in “real world” settings from which they can draw inspiration for their work and where they can have an impact on the city.

“The programming that will occur in East Baltimore takes that original, transformational curriculum to the next level in what we hope will become an international model for collegiate civic engagement — immerse your students in the community, listen and learn from the community, and then create projects that make life measurably better for the citizens that live there,” said MICA President Fred Lazarus IV.
MICA PLACE, which stands for “Programs Linking Art, Culture and Education,” also will add a new dimension to East Baltimore Development Inc., an 88-acre, mixed-use community north of Johns Hopkins that’s known for its research-oriented “biopark” for companies that want to be near the medical campus.

MICA’s decision to open a satellite in East Baltimore, inside the former St. Wenceslaus School on North Collington Avenue, puts it at the forefront of a relatively new field of arts education that combines art and design with community development.  It represents one of the first times that MICA has expanded beyond its main campus in the Mount Royal cultural district, and it marks a long-term commitment by MICA to the East Baltimore revitalization effort.

“We think it adds a strong, vibrant use” to the renewal area, said Christopher Shea, president and chief executive of EBDI.   “It’s a creative use for the building.”

MICA isn’t the only school to offer community arts courses.  Other institutions that offer them include the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Oregon. But MICA took the lead in 2005, when it became the first art school in the country to offer a master of arts degree in community arts.  In 2011, it will be the first arts institute in the country to offer a graduate-level program in the related area of “social design.”

Students who enroll in these programs aren’t content to paint murals on dilapidated buildings.   They want to use their artistic talents to help the community meet needs and solve problems.   They may teach photography to senior citizens or coordinate after-school arts programs in public schools or redesign a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  Last semester, MICA students looked for evidence of climate change along North Avenue and examined themes of social justice through quilting.

One student who just completed MICA’s community arts program is Robert Fitzgerald, a 45-year-old Connecticut native who is graduating this week.   For the past year, he has been the “artist in residence” at EBDI, where one of his main projects was helping residents create a community garden.   Fitzgerald said he never dreamed that he would be working on an organic vegetable garden, but that’s what the residents decided they wanted to do.

Letting solutions come from the residents is the key to any successful community arts program, said Ray Allen, MICA’s provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“The idea is not to come in and superimpose a solution on a community,” he said.   “It’s to build trust and work with residents and help them find their own solutions.”
 “It will foster greater communication, trust and solidarity by allowing students and faculty to live and work in the community and interact with its residents on a daily basis,” Allen said.

“Community engagement is quickly becoming one of the most distinguishing characteristics of MICA’s education, in comparison to its competitors,” Allen said.   The new building “is not a place that is about offering courses.   This is a center for people to come together. I  t’s going to be in flux all the time.”

Claiming an old pension

By Eileen Ambrose, Baltimore Sun

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which oversees terminated private pensions, announced this month it’s holding $197 million in unclaimed benefits for more than 36,000 people.

So how do you hunt for a lost pension or 401(k)?

Pull out as much of the old paperwork about your plans that you can get your hands on.  Documents hold important clues to where a pension might be, what financial firm is holding your money or what benefits you’re due.  You also can get information about a pension or 401(k), such as the name and address of the plan administrator, by searching for its annual filing: the Form 5500, available at FreeERISA.com.

Don’t launch what can be a time-consuming investigation before making sure you’re vested in the pension, meaning you logged enough years with an employer to qualify, Medeiros says.

If you’re vested and your old employer is still operating and running the plan, you’re lucky.  Contact the company’s human resources department.

Many times, though, a company merges with another and changes names or an employer goes out of business.  You need to find out what happened to an old employer, and if a new company has taken over the pension. 

The federal EBSA’s benefits advisers help resolve problems with retirement funds, including in situations where companies have merged or a 401(k) plan has been abandoned.

If your old company went bankrupt or terminated its pension plan, check the PBGC’s pension search directory online. The agency posts information on about 6,900 shuttered pensions for which workers who are owed a benefit can’t be found.

Sometimes, even if you locate an old pension, your job isn’t done.  The company’s records might be so poor that there is no documentation you worked there, or the records might incorrectly show you got a lump sum distribution years ago, Medeiros says.

That’s why Medeiros recommends that workers never throw out their tax returns.  Old returns can prove that you worked at a company, or the fact that you didn’t receive a pension distribution, she says.

For more proof, request a Form 7050 from the Social Security Administration that will give you a detailed record of your earnings, including the name of your employer, Medeiros says.  The fee for a detailed statement runs $15 for a single year and up to $80 for 40 years.

Of course, the best way to make sure you don’t lose track of retirement money is to not lose track of your old employer.

“If you hear about a company about to close its doors or file for bankruptcy, that’s the time to contact them and find out from people in human resources what is happening with the pension,” Medeiros says.

Tracking down a pension or 401(k)•An Employee Benefits Security Administration adviser at 866-444-3272 can help with problems with a pension or 401(k). Find a list of abandoned 401(k)s at http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/.

•Look for a private pension that’s been terminated on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.’s website at pbgc.gov or call 800-400-7242.

•For more resources, check the PBGC site for the helpful handbook, Finding a Lost Pension.

MD Cash for Appliances

By:  Liz P. Kay,  Baltimore Sun

Starting July 30, Marylanders can apply for rebates for replacing appliances with energy-efficient models in four new categories under a federal program backed by stimulus dollars.

State residents will be able to apply for $500 rebates on new central air conditioners and air source heat pumps, $100 for freezers and $25 for room air conditioners.

Only purchases of Energy Star-rated models made after July 30 will be eligible, according to the Maryland Energy Administration, which has been running the state’s program.

www.energy.maryland.gov.

Customers of the state’s five largest utilities apply for the rebates through their electric company; all other ratepayers would apply directly to the state energy administration.

The same caveats apply for all: The new appliances must be purchased from stores within Maryland or online.   They also must replace existing appliances in Maryland homes.

The state has until March 2012 to dispense of all funds.

Google Cloud Computing

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP Technology Writer 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google Inc. is gearing up to sell its e-mail and other Web-hosted applications to a wider range of government agencies after winning a prized security clearance.

The sales push announced Monday marks Google’s latest attempt to siphon customers away from rival Microsoft Corp., whose Office suite of e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and other programs is widely used by government agencies and businesses.

Google is hoping that more federal, state and local government agencies will feel comfortable buying its online applications now that they have the U.S. government’s seal of approval.   The Federal Information Security Management Act certification means that Google’s system for running the online programs is considered reliable enough to store most electronic data handled by U.S. government employees.  The clearance doesn’t cover classified information.

It’s the first time the U.S. government has certified a bundle of software programs delivered over the Internet, a trendy concept known as “cloud computing.”

Google has been trying to promote cloud computing as a way for businesses and government agencies to reduce their technology expenses.   

As they grapple with widening budget deficits, many government officials are looking to reduce their expenses by considering money-saving options such as cloud computing.   The upfront and maintenance costs of cloud-computing applications are generally lower than that of software installed on individual computers because the programs are leased and automatically updated by the Web host – in this case, Google.

Google charges $50 per user annually for the premium version of its applications suite.   The company won’t say precisely how many businesses and government agencies pay for its top-of-the-line apps as opposed to Google’s more popular free version.

To gain the federal government’s endorsement, Google agreed to store all government data in data centers located in the U.S.   Google also is catering to government agencies with a new version of its applications tailored to their needs.