text
stringlengths 271
525k
| meta
dict | quality_score_v1
dict |
|---|---|---|
A leading figure in the nation’s cattle trade claimed there would be serious emotional and health consequences for many Australians from the federal government’s suspension of cattle exports to Indonesia for up to six months.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard also refused to commit the government to compensating farmers and businesses impacted by the trade ban.
“I have grave fears for the social wellbeing for these people," Mr Farley said.
“AAco is a big corporation. We have a big, strong balance sheet. There are families out there that can only operate their enterprise for about six months of the year because of the seasonality of [the operation]. Now the cash flow is gone. They are doomed," he said.
Ms Gillard pointedly declined to be drawn on whether the government was considering compensation for farmers in a radio interview and in a press conference in Darwin yesterday.
Mr Farley said the industry body Meat & Livestock Australia needed to find a compensation solution. He said the industry could have solved the issue without imposing a ban on exports.
“The government was smart enough to address the banking system in the financial system in the global financial crisis," Mr Farley said. “This is a crisis in the live exporting business in northern Australia . . . they made the decision to ban it and there are consequences to it and the consequences need to be addressed."
Ms Gillard said assurances provided by the industry to ensure cattle were treated humanely by Indonesian abattoirs had failed.
“The industry has known these issues needed to be dealt with . . . and [though] the industry has responded since the Four Corners report what they have provided so far doesn’t give us the kind of assurance we want that Australian cattle will be treated in a way that all Australians find acceptable,’’ Ms Gillard told the ABC.
She accused the industry of being too slow to clean up its act despite knowing of the problems with the Indonesian live cattle trade.
The allegation was denied by Meat & Livestock Australia chairman Don Heatly, who said the industry would have acted earlier if it knew about the “grotesque brutality".
Ms Gillard said Indonesia didn’t have grounds to challenge the decision in the World Trade Organisation.
“Let’s be very clear here: what we have done does not breach WTO rules,’’ she said.
Mr Farley, who was disturbed by the television images of cattle being mistreated, said the industry had not invested enough time and energy in live export markets.
The Australian Financial Review | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.9632822275161743,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9965265989303589,
"domain1": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score1": 0.2942274212837219,
"domain2": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score2": 0.39658015966415405,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.9396020174026489
} |
The West Australian budget is headed for a forecast $1.79 billion surplus in three years, fuelled by a sharp rebound in royalties from iron ore and other minerals, but debt is still predicted to rise more than $5 billion due to capital works spending.
In a pre-election financial update released before the March 9 poll, an anticipated budget deficit in 2013-14 was wiped away by the return of huge mineral wealth.
State Treasury officials forecast that mining royalties would add more than $1.86 billion to state budgets during the next three fiscal years, compared with estimates published in the mid-year review in December.
WA Treasurer
“These figures, when contrasted with those in the mid-year review, clearly show that there’s a lot of volatility underpinning the state’s finances," Mr Buswell said after the release of the figures on Thursday.
Nonetheless, the substantial change to WA’s books means opposing political parties will be under less pressure to promote austerity measures than they were with a looming deficit.
The forecast gains in royalty revenue are expected to be offset by a $745 million reduction in goods and services tax revenue. A mechanism to distribute GST funds to states and territories works against resource states enjoying strong royalty inflows.
All up, changes to the royalty flows, new exchange rate predictions and GST carve-up forecasts mean the winner of the March state election is expected to have $1.3 billion more, over three years, than was predicted in December.
“While these projections suggest a better outlook for the general government sector relative to the mid-year review . . . they highlight that the state’s finances are very sensitive to changes in global conditions that are beyond the control of state governments," the pre-election papers say.
Mr Buswell said if re-elected the government would continue to work towards large surpluses to protect the bottom line against royalty fluctuations.
“I think West Australians understand we are an export economy and royalties are a big part of our revenue stream and that movements in royalties will impact on government aggregates.
“Part of the strategy has to be to maintain large budget surpluses. Large budget surpluses give you a buffer and … the capacity to pay down debt."
State surpluses are expected to increase from a modest $240 million this financial year to $1.78 billion by 2015-16.
Backed by mining royalties, Liberal Premier
Debt is still forecast to hit $23.7 billion by 2016 from the current $18.3 billion this financial year, rather than the previously forecast $24.8 billion.
The debt levels are largely the result of a big capital works program and had loomed as a key election issue. Mr Buswell justified the high level as debt as necessary.
“In terms of debt, the government made a conscious decision to invest in infrastructure, particularly in hospitals… knowing we would have to borrow money," he said.
Ratings agencies placed the state’s AAA credit rating on “negative outlook".
AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said on Thursday that the rating agency warnings showed that WA governments had not necessarily handled their mineral wealth well.
“I think it was an indictment on the governments over the last few years in WA," Mr Oliver said.
A “negative outlook" warning from Standard & Poor’s means the agency believes there is a one-in-three chance the rating could be lowered in the next two years.
John Nicolaou, chief economist at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA, said resources states still faced structural problems in their budgets. “Revenues in some areas have been flat or declining and in other areas have been very volatile," Mr Nicolaou said.
The Australian Financial Review | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.9101917147636414,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9149109721183777,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.47201767563819885,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.3549887537956238,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.920653223991394
} |
[Part I]
In analyzing the fabric strength of the material that evolutionists have woven together to promote the importance of Archaeopteryx, we must invest some time looking at an important anatomical feature, for it is at this point that we begin to see the threads of evolution unravel. Current evolutionary theory demands that the lungs of certain land-dwelling animals “somehow” evolved into bird lungs. However, birds’ lungs are quite unlike the lungs of other animals because they do not “breathe out.” The lungs of land-dwelling animals work somewhat like a bellows in which the “good” air is inhaled and the “bad” air is exhaled. Birds’ lungs, on the other hand, are unique because they have an opening at each end and thus possess a one-way respiratory system. In birds’ lungs, the new air comes in one end, is stored in special sacs until needed, and then is stored in another sac until it is released out the other end.
So how do the millions of years required for evolution mesh with the fact that “air breathers” can survive for only a few moments (at most) if a disruption to their respiratory system occurs? How can you take a “two-way” reptile lung and over a period of minutes evolve it into a fully functional “one-way” bird lung? The simple answer is, you cannot. John Ruben, an expert in respiratory physiology from Oregon State University at Corvallis, addressed the problem of such a hypothetical intermediate.
Recently, conventional wisdom has held that birds are direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs [those dinosaurs that are said to have been “beastfooted” and bipedal Saurischians—BH/BT]. [or hole—BH/BT] in taxa transitional between theropods and birds. Such a debilitating condition would have immediately compromised the entire pulmonary ventilatory apparatus and seems unlikely to have been of any selective advantage (1997, 278:1269).
To suggest that the “debilitating condition of a diaphragmatic hernia would have immediately compromised the entire pulmonary apparatus” and thus be “unlikely to have been of any selective advantage” is nothing more than scientific “prestige jargon” for stating the obvious: in other words, the animal would not have been able to breathe. We think it is a gross understatement, therefore, to suggest that this “seems unlikely to have been of any selective advantage.” Death—to put it bluntly—is not a good survival mechanism!
Overall, dinosaurs can be divided into two groups based on the shape of their pelvis. The Saurischia are “lizard hipped” dinosaurs, whereas Ornithischia are considered “bird hipped.” Strange as it may seem, Archaeopteryx (and thus all modern birds) allegedly evolved from the Saurischia, not the bird-hipped Ornithischia. Evolutionists, therefore, have spent countless hours trying to connect Archaeopteryx with its fellow Saurischian, the theropod—a “beastfooted,” bipedal, carnivorous dinosaur.
A comparison of the pelvic bones of modern perching birds and Archaeopteryx reveals that both probably assisted their breathing while perching by means of muscles attached between their pubis and tail. In contrast, the pelvic bones of the theropod dinosaurs look nothing like that of either modern birds or Archaeopteryx, but instead look more similar to those of modern reptiles (like the crocodile, for example). There is no way for the pubis of modern reptiles or the theropod dinosaurs to serve as an attachment point for suprapubic muscles that are needed to assist in breathing during perching.
Numerous studies have pointed out that the curvature of Archaeopteryx’s claws, compared to the curvature of modern birds’ claws, puts it firmly in the “perching bird” category (see Feduccia, 1993). In fact, the habits of birds that are similar to Archaeopteryx (such as the earthbound Australian pheasant cuckoo) can be distinguished on the basis of claw curvature. Furthermore, the unusual claws on the wings of Archaeopteryx resemble those of various tree-climbing birds, and differ noticeably from the claws of its supposed dinosaurian relatives. As ornithologist Alan Feduccia put it: “Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origin of feathers and flight in the true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird” (1993, 249:792). Our point exactly!
Much controversy has occurred in scientific circles regarding whether Archaeopteryx should be classified strictly as a bird or as a “transitional intermediate” between dinosaurs and birds. Many researchers automatically place this animal into the “bird” category based solely on the presence of feathers. As Feduccia noted: “Feathers are unique to birds, and no known structure intermediate between scales and feathers has been identified” (Feduccia, 1980, p. 52). Creationists, of course, have long made that very point. In fact, writing in volume two of their Modern Creation Trilogy on this matter in regard to Archaeopteryx, Henry Morris and John Morris stated:
Archaeopteryx is a “mosaic” of useful and functioning structures found also in other creatures, not a “transition” between them. A true transitional structure would be, say, a “sceather”—that is, a half-scale, half-feather—or a “ling”—half-leg, half-wing—or, perhaps a half-evolved heart or liver or eye. Such transitional structures, however, would not survive in any struggle for existence (1996, 2:70).
Recent intriguing discoveries have caused researchers to speculate with wild abandon about exactly how Archaeopteryx fits into the dinosaurs-to-birds theory. As you will see later in this article, some evolutionists have haplessly fashioned a fascinating tale of dinosaur-to-bird descendants, only to realize after the fact that they actually have created a huge time-line fiasco for themselves (and for the birds!). Much of this began after several important recent finds in China, in what some believe is ever-increasing evidence that establishes a direct link between dinosaurs and modern birds. The first find, uncovered in the early 1990s, was a newly discovered bird named Confuciusornis from the Yixian formation of Liaoning province in northeastern China. The find, which is considered more modern in form than Archaeopteryx, was described from three partial skeletons, and is said to be roughly half the size of the London specimen of Archaeopteryx (while sharing several common features). In his 1999 book, In Search of Deep Time, zoologist (and senior editor for Nature) Henry Gee noted:
Unlike Archaeopteryx, which had a conventional reptilian spout, Confuciusornis had a beak, the earliest record of a beak in the fossil record. In more than 150 years, only seven specimens of Archaeopteryx have ever been found, and each one is treated as a priceless relic. The contrast with Confuciusornis could hardly be greater; in only a few years, hundreds of specimens had been excavated from Liaoning province. Confuciusornis joined a steadily accumulating catalogue of fossil birds unearthed in the 1980s and 1990s from a small number of fossil sites in China, Spain, and other countries. Most fossils came from the mid to late Cretaceous. None were [sic] as old as Archaeopteryx itself, which still remained the oldest bird (pp. 188-189).
The exact age of these combined specimens, however, has turned out to be a matter of intense debate among evolutionists, having been reported to be either “as old as” or “older than,” Archaeopteryx (Hou, 1995), or almost the same age (Gee, p. 189).
In 1996, two additional finds were discovered. The first was Compsognathus, a small theropod about the size of a chicken (see Gibbons, 1996a, 274:720-721; Corliss, 1998, p. 281). Dated at 121 million years old, Compsognathus is too recent to have given rise to Archaeopteryx. Initially, it was believed to have had a mane of downy feathers running along its neck, back, and tail, which caused Yale paleontologist John Ostrom to state: “If it does have feathers, it could be a descendant of the dinosaur that gave rise to birds” (as quoted in Gibbons, 1996a, 274:720). At first, Dr. Ostrom believed that the structures on the back of Compsognathus were, in fact, some kind of primordial feathers. Later, however, he abandoned that idea as erroneous (see Corliss, 1998, p. 280). Furthermore, University of North Carolina ornithologist Alan Feduccia and University of Kansas paleontologist Larry Martin have suggested that the creature’s anatomy was all wrong and much too distinctly un-bird-like: Feduccia noted: “It’s biophysically impossible to evolve flight from such large bipeds with foreshortened forelimbs and heavy, balancing tails” as Compsognathus (as quoted in Gibbons, 1996a, 274:721). In his 1998 volume, Biological Anomalies: Birds, scientist William R. Corliss concluded: “Compsognathus was too good to be true.... [T]he structures along the fossil’s back were not really feathers. Just what they were remains a mystery” (p. 280, emp. in orig.).
That was not the end of the story, however, because the discovery of another fossilized creature was announced later that same year (1996). Sinosauropteryx [Chinese winged lizard] originally was uncovered in China in 1992 and is believed by evolutionists to be about 135 million years old. It differs from Archaeopteryx in that its main toes face away from its other toes rather than all of them pointing forward. This placement allows for better gripping of branches, and thus is viewed as an important advance over Archaeopteryx. However, some have suggested that Sinosauropteryx’s features are due to the manner in which the damaged fossil was reconstructed (a not-too-improbable scenario, as you will see later in this article when we discuss the fossil fraud, Archaeoraptor).
The skeleton of Sinosauropteryx was said to be surrounded by a halo of “fuzz,” which resulted in the discovery making headlines on the front page of the respected New York Times and being viewed by many as confirmation of the dinosaurian origins of birds. However, after all the facts were gathered the verdict was somewhat different. Henry Gee stated in regard to the Sinosauropteryx “feathers”:
At the time, there was a great deal of debate about the significance of the fibers. They did not really look much like either hairs or feathers. Chen [Chen Pei-Ji from Nanjing, the Chinese scientist who discovered the Sinosauropteryx fossils (see Chen, 1998)—BH/BT] and his colleagues called them “integumentary structures,” in a way to avoid seeming to prejudge the functions or affinities of these structures. Some even supposed that they were not external at all, but internal collagenous struts supporting a lizard-like frill....
The range of types of skin covering in extant tetrapods is rather limited; apart from bare skin, there are scales, hair, or feathers, and that’s it. The not-quite-feathery, not-quite-hairy fibres of Sinosauropteryx may represent a completely different, hitherto unknown variety of vertebrate skin covering.... [T]he significance of fibres of Sinosauropteryx in understanding the origin of birds in particular is hard to estimate.... Sinosauropteryx remained an enigma: were its puzzling integumentary structures peculiar to itself, revealing nothing about the ancestry of feathers, or did they represent a significant discovery that might further understanding of the origin of feathers, and therefore of birds? (1999, pp. 190,191).
Since the initial find of Sinosauropteryx, two additional discoveries of the creature have been made (one is a dromaeosaur and the other is a therizinosaur), both of which have the same type of Sinosauropteryx-like fibers. Larry Martin of the University of Kansas (Lawrence) thinks the fine structures may be “frayed collagenous fibers” beneath the skin that have nothing whatsoever to do with either feathers or birds. John Ruben of Oregon State University (Corvallis) dissected a sea snake’s tail and showed that such fibers can indeed look feathery [see Gibbons, 1997, 278:1229]. In an intriguingly titled article (“Plucking the Feathered Dinosaur”) published in Science, Ann Gibbons referred to “roughly a half-dozen Western paleontologists who have seen the specimens” and who admitted that “the structures are not modern feathers” (1997, 278:1229).
And now, to add to the confusion, hotly disputed claims from China of the discovery of two species of dinosaurs that allegedly possessed feathers (Protoarchaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui) have many evolutionists scratching their heads and reevaluating their time lines altogether. Protoarchaeopteryx, the larger of the two specimens, is about the size of a turkey and has a patch of bird-like feathers at the tip of its tail. Caudipteryx had a fairly short tail, a fan of tail feathers, and a fringe of feathers along the trailing edges of each of its forearms. Two Chinese scientists, Ji Qiang and Ji Shuan, discovered these so-called “feathered dinosaurs” in the same location as the Sinosauropteryx, and suggested in an article in Chinese Geology (and then later in another article in the June 25, 1998 issue of Nature [393:753-761]) that the feathers link these creatures both to theropods and to birds. That same year, in an article in Science, Philip Currie asserted: “You can’t get around the fact that these are feathers on dinosaurs” (as quoted in Gibbons, 1998, 280:2051). In his book, In Search of Deep Time, Gee wrote
This time, the nature of the skin was quite unambiguous, because these dinosaurs had unmistakable feathers, rather than enigmatic fibres.... The feathers are like those of birds; each one has a central stalk, and vanes on either side. Given the smallness of these creatures’ arms, it is extremely unlikely that either dinosaur was capable of flight.... The implications of these discoveries are profound: the discovery of feathers in patently non-flying dromaeosaurs demonstrates that feathers existed before the evolution of flight. It can no longer be claimed that the origin of birds is inextricably linked with the origin of flight or denied that the heritage of the birds is closely linked with that of the theropod dinosaurs.... The discovery of these feathered dinosaurs has brought the debate about the origin of birds to a close (1999, pp. 191,192).
Even evolutionists who do not accept the dinosaur-to-bird concept of evolution agree that the feathers are real. They stress, however, that the feathers document the fact that the two creatures were birds, not dinosaurs. Larry Martin wrote: “I think they’ve found a group of flightless birds” (as quoted in Gibbons, 1998, 280:2051). The radiometric dating of the sites in which the finds were discovered has presented serious problems as well. In an article in Science, Ann Gibbons reported on this aspect of the controversy.
Until recently, many paleontologists thought that Archaeopteryx itself gave rise to opposite birds [birds whose foot bones are fused from the top down, as opposed to modern birds, whose foot bones are fused from the bottom up—BH/BT] which in turn gradually evolved into modern birds.... [Alan] Feduccia and his colleagues now challenge that view with fossils of a bird the size of a sparrow, called Liaoningornis. The specimen, unearthed by a farmer in the Yixian formation in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province, lacks a skull but includes a nearly complete skeleton with foot bones and a keeled sternum that resemble those of modern birds. Yet the Chinese scientists cite radiometric dates of 137 to 142 million years for the volcanic rock of the Yixian formation, which would make the bird almost as old as Archaeopteryx. And the same beds also yielded a magpie-sized primitive bird called Confuciusornis, which shares many traits with both Archaeopteryx and modern birds.... According to Feduccia and Martin, the discoveries imply that by the time of Archaeopteryx, birds had already diverged into two lineages and had a rich history that is missing from the fossil record. One lineage led to modern birds. Another led to Archaeopteryx and the opposite birds, which they view as sister taxa, closely related to each other but distinct from the line that led to modern birds. And both of these bird lineages must have descended from a much earlier ancestral bird. Feduccia reckons that the first bird must have lived about 76 million years before the birdlike dinosaurs of the Cretaceous—a fact that he says raises questions about the dinosaurian origins of birds (1996b, 274:1083, emp. added).
Evolutionists admit that radiometric dates for the Yixian formation (estimated at anywhere between 121 million and 142 million years) are controversial. As Feduccia has suggested: “Whatever the date is, we’re getting both types of birds shortly after Archaeopteryx” (as quoted in Gibbons, 1996b, 274:1083). His point is well taken. Ann Gibbons noted in another Science article: “...the Chinese fossil is too recent—121 million years old—for the dinosaur to have given rise to the 150-million-year-old Jurassic bird, Archaeopteryx” (1996a, 274:720). In his article in Science (“The Forward March of the Bird-Dinosaurs Halted?”), Richard Hinchliffe commented on the controversy over the “recent nature” of these fossil finds when he noted that “most theropod dinosaurs and in particular the birdlike dromaesours are all very much later (i.e., more recent—BH/BT) in the fossil record than Archaeopteryx (1997, 278:597). So unless birds perfected time travel millions of years ago, these latest finds do little to support the theory that dinosaurs gave rise to birds.
In the February 1998 issue of Scientific American, Kevin Padian and Luis Chiappe, while fully backing the dinosaurian origin of birds, added a sidebar explaining the major points of contention:
1. The hands of theropod dinosaurs and birds differ in important ways.).
In his review of an article on “Developmental Patterns and the Identification of Homologies in the Avian Hand” by Ann Burke and Alan Feduccia in the October 24, 1997 issue of Science, Richard Hinchliffe reiterated many of these same problems by pointing out problems with the “dinosaur-to-bird” hypothesis. These included:
1. The much smaller theropod forelimb (relative to body size) in comparison with the Archaeopteryx wing. Such small limbs are not convincing as proto-wings for a “ground-up” origin of flight.).
The controversy over the alleged connection between reptiles and birds in the evolutionary scenario increased dramatically with the publication in November 1999 by National Geographic of).
It is unlikely that anyone—outside National Geographic’s offices—ever will know the severity of the damage massive debacle transpired (Simons, 2000). [For additional information on how this story unraveled, see also: Dalton, 2000a, 2000b; National Geographic, 2000; Rummo, 2000.] chose to run its submitted to National Geographic, Lewis Simons documented the fact that authors of the original account were told several times of discrepancies in their data and problems with the fossil, but apparently never took the opportunity to establish the accuracy of the specimen (Simons, 2000). The desperate desire to find the long-sought-after “missing link” between dinosaurs and birds overshadowed the truth. As American humorist Mark Twain suggested in Life on the Mississippi: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” (1883, p. 156).
In the short span of time that has passed since we mailed Part I of this series, yet another “missing link” has been reported in the scientific and popular media. The paper describing the latest in a long (but failed) series of missing links, “The Distribution of Integumentary Structures in a Feathered Dinosaur” (Qiang, et al., 2001), appeared in the April 26, 2001 issue of Nature. In a review article, Time magazine extolled this latest find as “as good a missing link as anyone could want” (Lemonick, 2001, 157[18]:56).
Interestingly, one of the authors of the Nature paper, Ji Qiang, had made the same type of claim regarding an earlier “missing link” known as Caudipteryx zoui, boasting that it represented “a missing link between dinosaurs and birds which we had expected to find” (as quoted in Chang, 1998). University of Kansas biologist Larry Martin was not so quick to agree with Ji Qiang’s expectations regarding “feathered dinosaurs.” In referring to Caudipteryx zoui, Martin suggested that it was merely a flightless bird, and stated: “You have to put this in perspective. To people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur” (as quoted in Chang, 1998). Martin’s words of caution are especially important in light of the last report of “feathers” from Liaoning fossils, since those “feathers” eventually were dismissed as little more than frayed internal fibers of collagen (a structural protein found in connective tissue).
With memories of Archaeoraptor still fresh in their minds, Ji Qiang and his colleagues included the following statement in the second paragraph of their latest “feathered dinosaur” report: “Although some specimens from Western Liaoning have been shown to be composites or forgeries, the integrity of the specimen described here is assured because both slabs match up exactly...” (2001, 410:1084).
Fossil composition data and X-ray computed tomography results were not included in Qiang’s latest report of this “feathered dinosaur,” so further research will be necessary to determine its authenticity. It is a well-known fact that many fossils from this area of the world have been unwittingly or deliberately subjected to misleading reconstruction. Additionally, Ji Qiang and his team explained that the fossilized bones were brittle and that “most shattered when the specimen was collected by splitting the slab, so many skeletal details cannot be scored adequately” (410:1085). This lack of proper skeletal scoring, and the admission that the tail is “unusual” in that it has “no individual vertebral segments,” make it difficult to determine the exact category in which this specimen should be placed—bird or dinosaur. But if this as-yet-unnamed creature is categorized as a “dinosaur,” then scientists will face an even more daunting task because the date assigned to it suggests that feather “evolution” precedes almost all of the dromaeosaur fossil finds (the theropod from which birds allegedly evolved) [see Padian and Chiappe, 1998, 278[2]:43]. This would indicate that the “insect-catching” theory, the “tree-down” theory, and all other ideas regarding the evolution of feathers for flight, are completely inaccurate. Therefore scientists are left to explain why (and how!) these early dinosaurs “evolved” and maintained feathers that would not be used for flight? Some have suggested that perhaps feathers were used to maintain body temperature. But that then poses the question: Why didn’t other animals (like, for example, crocodiles and snakes) evolve feathers as a means of warmth? Stay tuned; the quest continues..
Lewis Simons, the reporter who was commissioned to investigate the Archaeoraptor fiasco for National Geographic, stated that what he had uncovered was “a tale of misguided secrecy and misplaced confidence, of rampant egos clashing, self-aggrandizement, wishful thinking, naïve assumptions, human error, stubbornness, manipulation, backbiting, lying, corruption, and most of all, abysmal communication” (Simons, 2000, 198[4]:128). It may well be that we routinely witness the same kind of “tale” (albeit admittedly to a much-less-publicized degree) every time a new “missing link” is uncovered and then shown to be either incorrect or fraudulent. The history of science is replete with just such events (to wit, Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, etc.). Certainly many authentic fossils do exist. However, as the late Colin Patterson (who served with distinction for many years as the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London) admitted in his 1999 book, Evolution: “Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else” (p. 109). While the “Piltdown Man” hoax was able to fool evolutionists for more than 40H/B, we certainly can understand why.
Burke, Ann C. and Alan Feduccia (1997), “Developmental Patterns and the Identification of Homologies in the Avian Hand,” Science, 278:666-669, October 24.
Chang, Kenneth (1998), “A Feathered Dinosaur,” [On-line], URL:.
Chen, Pei-ji (1998), “An Exceptionally Well-Preserved Theropod Dinosaur from the Yixian Formation of China,” Nature, 391:147-152, January 8.
Corliss, William R. (1998), Biological Anomalies: Birds (Glen Arm, MD: The Sourcebook Project).
Dalton, R. (2000a), “Feathers Fly Over Chinese Fossil Bird’s Legality and Authenticity,” Nature, 403:689-690, February 17.
Dalton, R. (2000b), “Chasing the Dragons,” Nature, 406:930-932, August 31.
Feduccia, Allan (1980), The Age of Birds (Cambridge, England: Harvard University Press).
Feduccia, Allan (1993), “Evidence from Claw Geometry Indicating Arboreal Habits of Archaeopteryx,” Science, 259:790-793, February 5.
Friend, Tim (2000), “Dinosaur-bird Link Smashed in Fossil Flap,” USA Today, [On-line], URL: htty://.
Gee, Henry (1999), In Search of Deep Time (New York: Free Press).
Gibbons, Ann (1996a), “New Feathered Fossil Brings Dinosaurs and Birds Closer,” Science, 274:720-721, November 1.
Gibbons, Ann (1996b), “Early Birds Rise from China Fossil Beds,” Science, 274:1083, November 15.
Gibbons, Ann (1997), “Plucking the Feathered Dinosaur,” Science, 278:1229, November 14.
Gibbons, Ann (1998), “Dinosaur Fossils, in Fine Feather, Show Links to Birds,” Science, 280:2051, June 26.
Hinchliffe, R. (1997), “The Forward March of the Bird-Dinosaurs Halted?,” Science, 278:596-597, October 24.
Hou, L., Z. Zhou, L.D. Martin, and A. Feduccia (1995), “A Beaked Bird from the Jurassic of China,” Nature, 377:616-618, October 19.
Lemonick, Michael D. (2001), “Down-Covered Dinosaur,” Time, 157[18]:56-57, May 7.
MacBeth, Norman (1971), Darwin Retried (Boston, MA: Gambit).
Monastersky, Richard (2000), “All Mixed Up Over Birds and Dinosaurs,” Science News, [On-line], URL:.
Morris, Henry M. and John D. Morris (1996), The Modern Creation Trilogy—Volume 2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).
National Geographic (2000), “Archaeoraptor A Composite, Panel of Scientists Determines,” [On-line], URL:, April 4.
Olson, Storrs L. (1999), Letter to Dr. Peter Raven, Secretary of the Committee for Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society, [On-line], URL:. org/docs/4159.asp.
Padian, K. and L.M. Chiappe (1998), “The Origin of Birds and Their Flight,” Scientific American, 278[2]:38-47, February.
Patterson, Colin (1999), Evolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), second edition.
Qiang, J., P.J. Currie, M.A. Norell, and J.I. Shuan (1998), “Two Feathered Dinosaurs from Northeastern China,” Nature, 393:753-761, June 25.
Recer, P. (1999), From Dinosaur to Bird, [On-line], URL:.
Rowe, Timothy, Richard Ketcham, Cambria Denison, Matthew Colbert, Xing Xu and Philip Currie (2001), “Forensic Paleontology: The Archaeoraptor Forgery,” Nature, 410:539-540, March 29.
Ruben, J.A., T.D. Jones, N.R. Geist, and W.J. Hillenius (1997), “Lung Structure and Ventilation in Theropod Dinosaurs and Early Birds,” Science, 278:1267-1270, November 14.
Rummo, G.J. (2000), “Another ‘Missing Link’ Proven to be a Fraud,” Independent News, November 9.
Simons, Lewis M. (2000), “Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail,” National Geographic, 198[4]:128-132, October.
Sloan, Christopher P. (1999), “Feathers for T. Rex?,” National Geographic, 196[5]:99-107, November.
Twain, Mark (1883), Life on the Mississippi (Boston, MA: J.R. Osgood).
Xing, Xu (2000), “Feathers for T-rex?” [Letter to the editor], National Geographic, 197[3]:no page number, March. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7753761410713196,
"registry": "IN",
"registry_score": 0.6791887283325195,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.40528109669685364,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.4623987078666687,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.7111847400665283
} |
'What's the minimum you can do to make a painting?'
Royce Weatherly lets his paintings—and oil paint itself—reveal the workings of time. Many of his painstakingly composed, hyperrealist still lifes take decades to complete. He acknowledges and even welcomes the medium’s natural pigment changes and the decay of the objects he depicts. Untitled (Black Walnuts #2), 2012, for example, shows walnuts rotting in their shells, and the blue rim of a coffee cup in another work might turn yellower with age. “I want to see if I make a piece,” the artist says, “that over time, as it yellows, it will become more gray and more like a shadow.”
Royce Weatherly.COURTESY ARTHELIX, BROOKLYN.
Having worked on and off for years as an installer and conservationist for the Whitney Museum and other institutions, Weatherly, 56, knows a lot about how art materials can age. Born in North Carolina, he got his B.A. in political science and art from Wake Forest University, and then received an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In the 1980s and early ’90s, he was a preparator at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, had a solo show at the then brand-new Gavin Brown’s enterprise, and soon found his work in a handful of private European collections. But then he disappeared from the art scene—or at least from galleries. He moved to Maplewood, New Jersey, where he still lives with his wife and two daughters, working in carpentry and art installation.After a 12-year hiatus, Weatherly made a triumphant return last spring with an exhibition at Bushwick’s Bogart Salon, a space run by his longtime friend, the artist and gallerist Peter Hopkins. The show’s three Morandi-like still lifes of what Weatherly calls “dumb objects”—potatoes, rocks, walnuts, coffee cups—sold out, for $12,000 apiece. According to Hopkins, one buyer was Richard Prince, Weatherly’s friend from the Gladstone years. Prince purchased Untitled (Bupkis), a small 2012 oil on linen depicting spilled coffee in a Greek-deli cup and the cellophane wrapping from a cigarette pack against a white field. Weatherly’s new series of still lifes—one featuring lard and butter—was recently included in an exhibition that opened in April at Hopkins’s latest Bushwick venture, ArtHelix, where the artist is represented.
Royce Weatherly, Untitled (Bupkis), 2012. Purchased by artist Richard Prince.COURTESY PRIVATE COLLECTION.
When selecting the everyday items that will become the subjects of his meticulous focus, Weatherly says he often asks himself, “‘What’s the minimum you can do to make a painting?’ A flower is too loaded, but a potato is good.” He then sets things up in his basement studio where seashells, coral, and cellophane cluster in careful piles. He paints slowly, over the course of months if not years, building up thin layers of paint to capture the arrangement and any weathering—of subject matter or medium—that occurs with time.“Sometimes an object looks better as it gets older,” Weatherly says. “Everything around it will get richer and deeper. It’s all about slowing down and looking.”
Pingback: Royce Weatherly: Making Dumb Objects Speak | Nick Socrates Contemporary Art()
Pingback: Royce Weatherly: Making Dumb Objects Speak | Art of JD Parrish()
Pingback: Rob Zombie brings Mayhem to Denver, the Colorado Burlesque Festival Returns, and Boring Objects Go Artistic | The CO Creatives()
Pingback: Royce Weatherly: Making Dumb Objects Speak | KELLY 2D()
Pingback: ARTnews June 2013 | KELLY 2D()
Pingback: Royce Weatherly: Making Dumb Objects Speak from ARTnews | KELLY 2D()
Pingback: Untitled (Bupkis) | Ang Fierra ni Juana() | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.8237487077713013,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.41490885615348816,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.5229192972183228,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.5451088547706604,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.6956813335418701
} |
With his 2008 debut, A Larum, Johnny Flynn snuck into the collective consciousness with fellow Brit-folksters like Mumford And Sons and Laura Marling. His latest, Been Listening, is soulful and simple. His songs are eclectic, charmingly verbose and, above all, endlessly listenable. Judging by the way the careers of Mumford and Marling have skyrocketed in the past year, good things may be in store for Flynn. The A.V. Club caught up with him to talk about his influences, from Shakespeare to 78s, in anticipation of his show tomorrow at World Cafe Live.
The A.V. Club: How did the title track of the new record come about?
Johnny Flynn: I was listening to a whole bunch of really old 78s, all of which were just incredibly scratchy. I have loads of that stuff. One of the songs, I could only make out the words “been listening,” and to me, listening is really important.
It kind of spun me out on my own take on that song, where I imagined a scenario where all music disappears from the universe and humanity. Society becomes more complicated and more confused. Values are lost. We need an idea of what music is, what connects people. Then, in this scenario, one single song comes to replace all music, and it is the answer. It’s like quantum physics—like one big thing comes and answers everything.
AVC: Is that always what writing a song is like for you?
JF: It’s always like learning something, or discovering something about the universe. I don’t really write songs. They’re just there anyway, chiseling away at the atmosphere, and suddenly they’re like, “Oh, thanks for coming. Thanks for finding me. We’ll share each other now.”
AVC: Why is listening so important to you?
JF: I think the truest things come from silence, but everything’s always so clogged up with noise. If everything falls away, and you can truly listen to someone, giving them yourself and generosity, you can truly lose yourself in what they’re saying. Like, not impose your ideas on what they’re saying, but really tune into them.
I think it’s just the most joyful way to go about things, even a picture gallery exhibition or listening to music. It’s nice to discover that stuff rather than have ideas about what they might be beforehand. Not listening is the reason for so many misunderstandings and conflicts.
AVC: What draws you to older music like those 78s?
JF: It’s just good, honest music. There was no A&R guy walking into a studio thinking, “Yeah, we could make this a radio hit.” The music came from people who were just doing what they did, and someone just happened to record them. They were just writing for themselves in the immediate situation, and weren’t conscious of people in other countries 80 years later listening to it, or whatever. It’s just much more of an insight, old music, into these people. Bands that make music now are so much more self-conscious about the whole process.
The songs are strange, and old, and ancient, and wise. Sometimes they’re really angry or sad. They’re not rounded-off or neatened-up and made into two-minute-30 Radio 1 playlist hits. They’re just really rough and good.
I’m also obsessed with field recordings. That’s my favorite stuff to listen to, just really incidental music.
AVC: Is there anywhere you’re especially looking forward to going on this tour, music history-wise?
JF: I’m really looking forward to going to Nashville for the first time. I always love going to New York. I’ve been to Chicago once before, but I didn’t get much of a chance to look around. I’ve always wanted to go to blues clubs there.
Actually, have you seen that documentary Desperate Man Blues? It’s about a guy who’s spent 60 or 70 years of his life collecting old 78s, finding things that were only pressed locally. He goes out and collects them. It’s a really great film. It’s got great music, and he knows a lot about the history of musicians. He’s discovered musicians a ton of people know about now just by knocking on doors and picking up records from the attics.
AVC: I haven’t seen that, but I did see something about a guy digging for hi-life records in Africa, which actually segues perfectly into talking about “Churlish May,” the kind of hi-life song on your record. How did that one come about?
JF: My drummer, Dave, is really into a lot of good music, and he’s gotten me into a lot of it. I get really excited about trying different things with music, like different drumming styles, so we went there on that song. It’s not like we were trying to really go there and get a conga player and stuff, but we were just edging into new rhythmic dimensions.
AVC: The press release for your record talks about how you had kind of an idyllic Roald Dahl-like childhood, growing up catching trout and living on a farm. Weirdly, “Kentucky Pill,” on your record, reminds me of Roald Dahl, but in another way. Like in the “I’m secretly better than everyone and I will ultimately persevere” Matilda way. Did you mean to go there with that?
JF: It’s generally a song about a sense of growing up. It’s about finding yourself to be slightly more dangerous and effective as a human being than you thought you could be. When you’re young, you live in a state of innocence, but eventually you realize that actions have wider consequences than you thought. As you grow up, as you get a sense of time, you stop living in your immediate presence. Your emotional world grows and you can kind of start being hard.
It’s an abstract thing, but the song’s about all these situations you experience growing up that stop you from being innocent. It’s about wanting to hurt people and get hurt.
AVC: Is that based on any specific personal experience?
JF: It’s not explicitly a story from my own life, but it’s about little snippets and things. I used to go cow tipping, for one. I grew up in the country, so that’s par for the course, but then I started thinking about the cows, and that upset me. I realized that they were actually being hurt.
AVC: You recorded your first record and part of this record outside Seattle. What made you want to go there?
JF: We recorded the first record there with Ryan Hadlock, and we just wanted to go back for the second record. It’s a really nice place to do the record, his studio. It’s an isolated barn out in the middle of nowhere, and it really accentuated who we were.
It’s a weird landscape out there. Like, that’s where they filmed Twin Peaks. There are all these Native American place-names, big waterfalls, and huge forests.
It’s very far from home for us, which increases the sense of what you’re doing. You’re not in your environment, doing what’s familiar to you. It’s a good way to bring out what you are really trying to say or do.
AVC: You toured with a Shakespeare company for a year as an actor. Do you think that experience shaped your songwriting at all?
JF: Definitely, yes. Hugely. We toured the world and were very entrenched in the plays we were doing, Twelfth Night and Taming Of The Shrew, which are quite different plays, really.
Twelfth Night especially had a big impact on me. There’s such an ambiguity to it, and it’s very poetic. It’s more about learning to say what isn’t there, and how what’s not say is more important than what is. It’s a good lesson in pre-emptive storytelling. Good poetry doesn’t have to say much. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.8395369052886963,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.7310686111450195,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.5835576057434082,
"domain2": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score2": 0.42192426323890686,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.7528741955757141
} |
Archive for Thursday, July 30, 2009
Side Pockets closes; blames economy
July 30, 2009
As more new businesses pop up in the area, one long-standing Bonner Springs business has finally become a product of the current economy.
Side Pockets closed its doors Wednesday, July 22, after being open for almost 4-and-a-half years. With the majority of clientele ranging from plumbers to electricians to construction workers, owner Richard Hawkins said the lack of sales at Side Pockets was reflected in the lack of hours these workers had been receiving of late at their jobs.
“As their work has fallen off, a lot of these people are either out of work or working a lot fewer hours,” Hawkins said. “So they don’t have that discretionary income to come here on a regular basis and enjoy our food, our drinks and our pool. And what’s happened is our business has declined from a high three years ago to the point now where we’re probably 38 to 40 percent off of where we were at that time.”
That 40 percent drop, Hawkins said, had been enough to close down his bar and grill. He said he had started seeing a decline a year-and-a-half ago, but hadn’t started to worry until this year, when sales began to drop significantly. Though cutbacks were made, last week’s closing was an eventuality he couldn’t have prevented, Hawkins said.
“We cut back our payroll, we cut back our overhead, we watched every penny that went out the door, we were as lean as we could be,” Hawkins said. “And yet the economy is such that people didn’t have the money to come out and spend the dollars doing this.”
A Side Pockets in Olathe will also be closing its doors, Hawkins said, which still leaves several open in the Kansas City metro area. Some of the Bonner Springs employees will be finding work at one of these locations.
For others, the closing has effectively put them out of work and on the hunt for yet another job.
“Most of them it’s gonna be too far for them to travel so, consequently, they’ll just have to seek work elsewhere,” Hawkins said.
As for Hawkins, he says he will stay afloat. He is co-owner of a Side Pockets in Lenexa and also maintains ownership in Side Pockets Franchise Systems, Inc. He said this may not be the last Bonner Springs has seen of Side Pockets, however. Though too early to tell, possible future uses of the building may include opening up another bar and grill, Hawkins said, or turning it into another Side Pockets once the economy improves.
His current situation is one that doesn’t quite defy the idea that people drink more in a recession, but just goes to show that people are more apt to choose the cheaper option of a liquor store than head to their local watering hole when times are tough, Hawkins said. He said it wasn’t a lost cause for anyone interested in opening a new bar at this time, but that it would be hard going, guaranteed.
“I think it’s still going to be a tough business market for at least another year, year-and-a-half,” Hawkins said. “And if someone wanted to work through this for that amount of time, and had the wherewithal to do it, than I would say good luck to ‘em.”
Hawkins said, for him, that waiting game was one he simply wasn’t interested in playing anymore.
“Being 65 years of age, I don’t have the patience to wait for the comeback if you will,” he said.
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Commenting has been disabled for this item. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.9396257400512695,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.9879562258720398,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.8375039100646973,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.42626136541366577,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8465577363967896
} |
THE glamour girls of motoring were on display as the Autosport International show got underway.
The huge event at the NEC has been welcoming the trade for the last two days, but has now opened up to the public.
The industry’s latest technology was showcased, including the launch of several new race car projects.
British supercar manufacturer Radical unveiled its fastest sports car yet, the 175mph RXC.
“It’s been an incredibly exciting day, with so much new technology on display ahead of the new season,” said Ian France, the Autosport International Show Director.
“It’s really encouraging to see how strong the motorsport industry is, even with the tough times the economy has been through.”
A car auction is being held by Coys at the show, which will sell off a Rolls-Royce owned by former Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury a green Ford Capri S which appeared in the BBC sitcom Only Fools And Horses. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.8851571679115295,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.9993221759796143,
"domain1": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score1": 0.5327136516571045,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.51373690366745,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.7819802165031433
} |
Monica McGrath is an adjunct assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She's the former director of leadership development for the Wharton MBA program and was instrumental in the design and delivery of Wharton's first leadership course for women, "Women in Leadership: Legacies & Opportunities."
Marla Driscoll has 20 years of consulting experience in the areas of planning, operations improvement, and IT across a variety of industries. She has been an independent consultant for two years and earned an MBA from Wharton in 2001.
Mary Gross is a director with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, where she's head of learning and development. A 2002 Wharton graduate, Gross has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, working in the areas of human resources and finance.
McGrath, Driscoll, and Gross recently co-authored a study, Back in the Game: Returning to Business after a Hiatus, which was completed under the advisement of the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management and through the support of the Fort? Foundation, an Austin (Tex.)-based nonprofit organization working to advance women in business.
Through a survey and focused interviews, the research team examined the challenges these women -- 81% of whom held MBA degrees -- faced when they return to work after "stepping out" of the workforce for a period of time. The authors also provide recommendations that women, as well as employers and universities, can use to facilitate their reentry into business.
McGrath, Driscoll, and Gross recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Jeffrey Gangemi. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
Q: What motivated you to do the study?
McGrath: We did it for two reasons. First, we saw our friends, peers, and students languishing without being able to reenter the workforce. That impacted us on a personal level, so we wanted to see why these bright, energetic, creative women weren't able to find work again.
The second reason is that we had our own experiences and assumptions, but we wanted to see if they matched those of other professional women, particularly MBAs. Drawing conclusions would allow us to eventually stimulate change.
Q: When should a woman time a step-out?
McGrath: Timing is really up to the individual person, but planning for the eventual step-out should be part of the ongoing leadership-development game plan. That's what we're finding that women aren't doing. The best way to prepare is to establish a network before stepping out and maintain it while out.
Q: Is it possible to time a step-out to coincide with business school?
Gross: Several of our survey respondents did that. There were women who started school as they were stepping out, and there were others that began school after a couple of years of being out to coincide with stepping back in. Business school helps prove to employers that a woman has up-to-date skills, even if she has been out of the workforce for the past five years.
Q: What can MBA programs do to help women plan and execute step-outs?
Driscoll: About 90% of our survey respondents want their university to supply targeted career resources for alumni returning to work. Because most universities have career resources that are aimed at people just graduating, the issues are often different.
McGrath: In reality, career centers aren't offering much support, don't have the resources dedicated to this, nor do they have an educated counseling staff member who knows what the challenges are. Universities need someone to believe that the service is important enough to devote funding to it.
Q: What can be done to help universities get the hint?
Gross: By presenting our findings to the Fort? membership and at the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) conference, we've generated some interest within university career centers. They are looking to us for guidance.
Q: Why do women tend to go into smaller companies when they reenter the workforce?
Driscoll: In general, women who work for large corporations have found it difficult to have meaningful balance in their lives. The challenges that they face before they step out evoke such powerful emotion that they often decide that they want nothing to do with a particular industry or company, and they decide to make a shift. About 61% of the women we surveyed switched industries consciously.
Q: Isn't it good for business that women join smaller companies?
McGrath: It's great for small companies. It's not good for large corporations, because if they're not attracting and retaining the best people, then it adversely affects them. If large corporations are expecting to attract women to their business, then they'll need mentors within business.
Q: Why were some of your respondents more successful than others?
Driscoll: [Those who were successful] often stayed in contact with their work colleagues, and in some cases, went back to their previous employer to pick up some project work.
McGrath: Many women think if there isn't a program in place to help them with part-time or alternative job situations, then it can't exist. In fact, women can work with their employers and within their networks to find or invent these opportunities.
Q: How can business schools attract more women?
McGrath: If women who attend business school can't get back into their industry after taking time to raise a family, then what good is it? Until the biological imperative [of having children] changes, this is going to be an issue that we need to address.
Gross: We all need to take off our blinders and challenge our assumptions. It's easy for a manager to say that a woman can't do a job telecommuting or that they can't manage people unless they're in the office 50 hours a week. Looking for solutions instead of creating walls is something we all need to focus on more.
Driscoll: It's time for business schools to put their money where their mouth is and really live up to their commitment to lifelong education. There are decades after students get out of business school, and the schools need to dedicate more resources to improving their services for alumni.
Q: What else should we know about this topic?
Driscoll: We should raise awareness while people are in business school about how alternative career paths are O.K.
McGrath: Men and women alike are finding themselves in their 50s with up to 20 years of work left. Twenty years is a long time that offers the possibility of making significant contributions. MBA programs need to stop ignoring older women in their recruiting.
Gross: Many of our survey respondents said they want to talk with people who have done this already. It would be great for universities who have kept a large database to connect alums to each other for networking about these kinds of issues. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7268590331077576,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.4843900501728058,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.34195494651794434,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.4622749388217926,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8430996537208557
} |
The biggest, Chegg.com, has scored $2.2 million in funding. The idea: sell cheaper books to students, bypass the textbook monopolies—and make money
The college textbook market has functioned as a near-perfect monopoly. Consider: How often does someone have the authority to order consumers to purchase a product with a limited number of vendors? University professors have just that power, requiring students to purchase particular books for their courses. The often obscure titles must typically be purchased from the college bookstore, which obtains them through special order. With limited competition, at best, prices for new textbooks can easily climb to $100, and have tripled since the mid-1980s (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/12/06, "Textbook Costs Stir Concern").
Now a group of small Web sites is trying to provide students with a cheaper alternative for textbooks and other school supplies, such as computers. The largest of the sites, Chegg.com, has just received $2.2 million in funding, BusinessWeek.com has learned. The company, based in Santa Clara, Calif., raised the money from Gabriel Venture Partners and angel investor Mike Maples. Maples also participated in an earlier angel round.
Chegg allows students to buy and sell used textbooks and other school-related goods and services for free. It's a huge market, generating $11 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit a year, according to Rick Bolander, a Gabriel co-founder and a member of the Chegg board. "If we can take just 5% of that market, we'll be very happy," he says.
Helping Students Save
Chegg provides goods at lower prices than traditional campus outlets. The margins on used textbooks are often as high as 40%, according to Chegg Chief Executive Osman Rashid. It's just one example of rising education costs (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/10/06, "America's Priciest Dorms"). By eliminating the middleman, the student buyer and seller can split the profit margin among themselves, Rashid says. He added that a $100 textbook that might be resold at the campus bookstore for $70 would go for about $50 on Chegg. "The used textbook business has been wildly profitable for retailers. Our whole notion is to save some money for students," says Rashid, an electrical engineer who previously worked as a sales executive for Chordiant Software (CHRD).
One Chegg user says her book expenses have dropped to $200—from $500 to $600—since she began using the site in September. "It's a really great way for students to find textbooks, tutors, or jobs. The prices are cheaper than other sites," says Stacy Lynn Austin, a junior who is studying journalism and creative writing at New York University.
Chegg has its roots in a site known as Cheggpost.com. It was founded in 2001 at Iowa State University by Josh Carlson, a student at the university. It incorporated as Chegg in 2004, with Carlson and Rashid Aayush Phumbhra at the helm. It expanded nationally last fall, although it's focusing on certain universities and groups of schools. As for the name, it refers to the "chicken and egg" problem that confronts students who are pressed to come up with the money they need for textbooks that will help them earn a living later in life, according to Rashid.
Chegg has been growing through acquisition. It has merged with several smaller sites including UFlipit, Textopedia, and UTank. It's now several times larger than rivals such as Collegemedium.com and DormItem, according to market researcher Alexa Internet.
Staying Competitive
Chegg faces plenty of challenges, though. Online retailers such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and Half.com sell used textbooks, too. And as a free classified service, Chegg depends heavily on advertising for revenue, which can be particularly tough for a small site. Chegg also charges fees to certain nonstudents who live near campuses and want to sell goods to students. It sells new books and computers at a discount as well, by reaching agreements with wholesalers.
How can Chegg hope to compete? Bolander says the company benefits from a lean cost structure and a "hyper-local" business plan. "Everyone from Google (GOOG) to Yahoo! (YHOO) and MSN (MSFT) is going local, and that is an area of strength for us," Bolander says.
The issue of rising textbook prices actually sparks global concern. An online organization called the Global Text Project seeks to distribute free digital textbooks in developing countries (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/11/06, "The Worldwide Textbook"). While Chegg still allows users to make a profit on their goods, the era of a monopoly market—with 40% margins—may be drawing to a close. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.921749472618103,
"registry": "IN",
"registry_score": 0.9324633479118347,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.47536754608154297,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.45519912242889404,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.9059656858444214
} |
Love Limbo in Shanghai as Singles Frozen From Home Market
Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Tank Zhao is being forced to ditch tradition by taking a bride before buying a home as Shanghai bans unmarried non-locals like him from purchasing property.
The 28-year-old software engineer from Fujian province had been looking for an apartment ahead of plans to marry his girlfriend next year, in accordance with the Chinese proverb “Zhu Chao Yin Feng” -- build a nest before attracting the phoenix. He’ll now have to secure the phoenix before the nest.
“The policy is unreasonable; we aren’t speculators, we just need a place to live,” said Zhao. “Getting married first goes against our culture. I’ll have to explain to my girlfriend’s family that the Shanghai policy is what it is.”
Shanghai last year started limiting locals to owning two homes, while families among the city’s 9 million non-local residents were capped at one..
Chinese males are expected to own a home before they approach their would-be wife’s family for approval to wed. In rural parts of the country, parents extract most of the family’s wealth to build houses for their sons ahead of the marriage; in cities, securing an apartment is the equivalent.
New-home prices in China fell for nine straight months through May as government restrictions achieved the goal of cooling the market, according to SouFun Holdings Ltd., the country’s largest real estate website owner. In July, values bucked the trend, posting the biggest gain in more than a year, SouFun said Aug. 1.
Stop Rebound
“China’s property policies will definitely focus on those first-tier landmark cities,” said Alan Jin, a Hong Kong-based property analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. “If all the current curbs are not working, the government may have to be more hawkish in the second half. Their bottom line is to stop prices from rebounding.”
After stricter implementation of its curbs, Shanghai’s new home sales fell 16 percent in July from a month earlier to 7,025 units, according to data from Century 21 China Real Estate, the country’s second-biggest property brokerage. Sales had surged 24 percent to 8,365 units in June, the highest in 17 months.
“The policies did have some impact on the market,” said Huang Hetao, Shanghai-based researcher at Century 21.
China’s second-largest city by population, Shanghai had about 23 million residents at the end of 2010, about 9 million of whom were non-locals, according to the nation’s statistics bureau. An influx of construction, information technology, and other workers almost tripled the cost of homes in Shanghai in the past 10 years, according to government data.
‘It’s Discrimination’
Zhang Lei, a blogger from eastern Zhejiang province who has lived in Shanghai for eight years, has set up a “non-local singles anti-purchase restriction alliance” online. The 31-year-old, who says she doesn’t plan on ever getting married, was ready to pay a deposit for a 3 million yuan home ($471,000) in northern Shanghai in June, she said. Then the government crackdown nixed her plan.
“This is very, very irritating; it’s discrimination,” said Zhang, who boasts more than 110,000 fans at Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog portal. “I’ve been making money and waiting for the time that I can finally buy a home. Then all of a sudden the government told us that we couldn’t buy.”
Non-Chinese people are allowed to buy one home in Shanghai as long as they show proof that they don’t own other properties in the country and have been employed for a year. Overseas companies are allowed to buy offices in the city if they are registered, according to the housing ministry and currency regulator.
Shanghainese Chauvinism
“We pay our tax here and make contributions to the city’s development, the same as locals and foreigners,” Zhang said. “Why is it just us that can’t buy?”
Shanghai, with its own dialect, has some of China’s strictest population controls. To be defined a “local,” one must be born in the city to Shanghainese parents, be a skilled professional with residence of at least seven years and tax receipts to prove it, or marry a Shanghai local and remain married for 10 years.
The residency policies fuel chauvinism by Shanghainese against newcomers and reinforce divisions between the two groups, said Wang Xiaoyu, an associate professor and social critic at Shanghai’s Tongji University.
“Had the policies been based on tax payments, it would be closer to concepts of citizens’ rights,” he said. “Instead, we have the idea that locals come first, so people from different places fight with each other over the Internet.”
Forged Marriages
Previously, unmarried non-local residents were qualified to buy a home as long as they worked and paid tax in the city for a year, according to Lu Qilin, senior research manager at Deo Volente Realty, Shanghai’s third-biggest property brokerage. That changed after Wen ordered the crackdown.
Buyers could try forged marriage licenses, and the city government is unlikely to check as long as they aren’t from Shanghai, said Lu. Such licenses cost about 100 yuan, he said.
“Compared with what they pay for a property, this is small money,” Lu said.
As prices rose last year, some couples faked divorce to skirt the two-property limit.
In China, couples are typically wed in a formal process that can be done at short notice, much like renewing a driver’s license. The marriage is then celebrated at a banquet with family and friends that marks society’s recognition of the union, often months after the official event.
Deferring Marriage
The average age at which Shanghai residents get married has climbed along with housing costs. Shanghai men averaged 32.45 years and females 29.89 years when they wed, according to the city’s statistics bureau. That’s up from 28.64 years for males and 26.43 years for females in 2007.
Shanghai’s home-price surge fueled concern a bubble was arising and housing was becoming unaffordable. A standard two-bedroom apartment about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Shanghai’s center costs about 3 million yuan, versus an average annual wage of 52,655 yuan.
China responded in April 2010 with policies to deter speculators and curb price growth. It raised down-payment and mortgage requirements, imposed property taxes for the first time in Shanghai and Chongqing, increased building of low-cost social housing, and implemented purchase restrictions in about 40 cities.
As nationwide prices eased in the nine months to May, the government tolerated minor easing of curbs in some cities to ensure economic growth didn’t slow too quickly. China’s economy expanded 7.6 percent in the second quarter from a year ago, the slowest pace in three years.
Sales Surge
China’s central bank cut interest rates in June for the first time in three years, and lowered them again in July. Home sales jumped 41 percent in June, according to government data.
The speed of the rebound prompted action. The central government ordered local counterparts that had relaxed housing policies to “strictly implement” them to prevent prices from taking off again, the land and housing ministries said in a jointly issued “urgent notice” on July 20. Real estate curbs are still at a “critical stage,” the government said.
China sent eight teams to 16 provinces in late July to check on the implementation of its property curbs, according to a statement on the central government website on July 25. New property curbs may result as the inspection teams return to Beijing, the official China Securities Journal reported Aug. 9.
Pent-Up Demand
“Real demand is very hard to restrain; you can try administrative measures, but demand from people is there,” said Albert Lau, Shanghai-based China head and managing director at London property broker Savills Plc. “Pent-up demand will be released as soon as they see any positive signals, because people need to live under a roof and get married.”
Premier Wen said easing inflation allows more room to adjust monetary policy and positive signs are emerging in the economy, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday, citing Wen’s comments during a two-day inspection tour to the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The comments may bolster speculation China will cut banks’ reserve requirements or benchmark interest rates again after inflation slowed to a 30-month low in July, export growth collapsed and new yuan loans trailed estimates. A gauge tracking property shares on the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.1 percent at the local close and is up 11 percent this year.
Zhao, the information-technology engineer who’s been dating his girlfriend for three years, said he had been facing pressure from her family to buy a home. He’s looking for an apartment, priced around 1.5 million yuan, in eastern Shanghai near his employer.
“I’ll now really have to calculate the timing: get a marriage license right away when I see the right property,” he said. “But that’s hard, isn’t it?”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Bonnie Cao in Shanghai at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andreea Papuc at [email protected] | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7634033560752869,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9990989565849304,
"domain1": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score1": 0.5053285360336304,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.6338227987289429,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8953216671943665
} |
The School Improvement Council (SIC) of Okatie Elementary School was honored Saturday as the recipient of the 2014 Dick and Tunky Riley Award for School Improvement Council Excellence.
Port Royal Elementary’s SIC was one of four schools to earn honorable mentions. The awards were presented during the South Carolina School Improvement Council Annual Meeting at St. Andrews Middle School in Columbia.
The annual Riley Award for SIC Excellence was created in 2002 to recognize the significant contributions made to public education by the nearly 15,000 School Improvement Council members who volunteer in every public school in the state. The award is named in honor of the former South Carolina governor and U.S. Secretary of Education and his late wife, and recognizes the couple’s longstanding commitment to quality public education.
“The Okatie Elementary School Improvement Council has done some wonderful work that is well-deserving of this award,” said SC-SIC Board of Trustees Chair Ellen M. Still. “When parents, educators and community members cooperatively come together as an SIC to look at needs of their school and then undertake effective steps to meet them, it has a positive and lasting impact on the lives and futures of their school and students.”
Okatie Principal Jamie Pinckney commended the SIC’s work and said the statewide recognition was well deserved. “The Riley Award is a reflection of a unified effort among our school’s staff, our parents and our community, with everybody focused on doing the best we can for our kids,.” she said.
In the last school year, the Okatie Elementary SIC took steps to enhance communication with parents on school district issues and decisions, specifically those related to rezoning issues in school’s growing attendance area. SIC members and school administrators participated in the school board’s Bluffton Community Committee, working with other SICs and community members to discuss new school needs, rezoning and community involvement in the process. boxes providing a week’s worth of food each month.
Additionally, the SIC worked to improve procedures and safety of student car rider drop-off and pick-up, to include traffic direction, improved signage and a no cell phone use policy.
Port Royal Elementary’s SIC partnered with a local church to provide scholarships for a number of needy students to receive after-school care at the nearby YMCA. This partnership also led to the establishment of a school uniform voucher program sponsored by the church, as well as the provision of school supplies for the entire student body for the year.
As Port Royal Elementary celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2011, the SIC worked with the Town Council and the Historic Port Royal Foundation on the challenging process of getting the school listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with a decision on the designation by the National Park Service expected this spring. The SIC also believed that the historic and cultural nature of the Town of Port Royal had considerable educational value. Walking field trips called “In Our Own Backyard,” were initiated by the SIC, utilizing a map of designated sites developed for them by the town.
“It was tremendous for our district to be home to two of South Carolina’s five state finalists for the 2014 Riley Award,” said Superintendent Jeff Moss. “So many parents and community members work to support our schools, and these recognitions are a partial reflection of that.”
The other three finalists for the Riley Award – and recipients of Honorable Mention recognitions today – were Buena Vista Elementary SIC (Greenville County); Irmo High SIC (School District 5 of Lexington & Richland Counties); and Ridge View High SIC (Richland District 2).
In the past year, local School Improvement Council members across South Carolina committed more than 230,000 volunteer hours to their schools at an estimated value of nearly $4 million – a substantial return on the state’s current annual SC-SIC budget allocation of approximately $200 per school.. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.8854254484176636,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.6224693655967712,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.2889058589935303,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.5290435552597046,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.9547563791275024
} |
SALEM — It has hardly been smooth sailing for Salem Harbor workers in recent years.
The 630-megawatt power plant was the epicenter of a struggle between the power industry and environmentalists over reducing air pollution.
In the last 20 years, Salem Harbor has had five different owners. But plans to install clean-coal technologies and make other improvements to cut toxic emissions from the plant never materialized.
Salem Harbor seemed headed for extinction, until Footprint Power of New Jersey bought the plant two years ago.
Footprint plans to tear down the old plant and replace it with a new $1 billion gas-fired facility scheduled to open in 2016.
Continue reading it below
The firm last month agreed to a settlement with the Conservation Law Foundation , a statewide environmental group that had appealed a state permit for the plant, alleging the gas-burning plant would not meet the state’s strict law to reduce greenhouse gases.
As part of the settlement, Footprint agreed to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, when the plant also would be closed.
Now the plant faces a new obstacle, an appeal filed on March 3 by four Salem residents to the Environmental Appeals Board of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The filing asserts that the new plant would violate the federal Clean Air Act.
Footprint plans to close Salem Harbor on May 31, but the new appeal could delay the demolition schedule, according to the company.
“The latest appeal could slow the demolition progress, delaying the positive impact the new plant will have on the city and the environment,” Footprint said in a statement to the Globe.
Footprint’s new facility would run on the latest power plant technology. It will have about 30 employees, Footprint’s top leader said.
“Some of the jobs will be similar to what’s here now,” Peter Furniss, chief executive officer of Footprint, said in an interview at the plant.
He cited positions such as watch engineers or a plant operator. “But we’re really working with different technology. If a major problem comes up, you call [General Electric] and say, ‘What’s your monitor saying?’ ”
Most of Salem Harbor’s 105 workers will be laid off on May 31. But a handful will be kept on to wind down operations, and some employees could stay on during construction of the new plant, Furniss said.
“We will need a core group here, and hopefully they will be from the existing plant. But we haven’t fully fleshed that out yet,” he said.
Since Salem Harbor is closing, workers may be eligible for federal job benefits under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
Letters explaining benefits available under the Adult and Dislocated Worker Program will be mailed to workers soon, according to Footprint.
Separately, Footprint made $500,000 available to help workers train for new jobs. “We wanted people to be able to start on whatever training they would need to help them get to the next step of a career,” Furniss said.
Some workers already have started to retrain as truck drivers, fuel burner technicians, or in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning field.
“They were pretty much open to helping you retrain for whatever you wanted to pursue,” said Beth Tobin, the plant’s stockroom manager, who has worked at Salem Harbor for 28 years.
“But I would tell you, I think everyone wishes we could come back to work at the new plant if they could. But we also realize this is a whole new industry. It will be all high-tech.”Reach Kathy McCabe | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.9504157304763794,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.9972090721130371,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.4516441226005554,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.6070559620857239,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.9301543235778809
} |
In September 2013 we initiated a review to examine the risks and hazards of offshore helicopter operations in the UK, which was conducted in conjunction with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority. A report of the review was published in February 2014 entitled CAP1145: Safety review of offshore public transport helicopter operations in support of oil and the exploitation of oil and gas. A progress report to this review was published on 28 January 2015 entitled CAP1243 - Offshore Helicopter Review Progress Report.
The review put forward 32 actions and 29 recommendations to helicopter operators, the oil and gas industry, manufacturers and EASA which will improve offshore helicopter safety around the following four main areas:
An action from the review was to set up a CAA-led safety governance body for offshore operations, with representation from key organisations from across the industry, named the Offshore Helicopter Safety Action Group (OHSAG).
The primary purpose of the OHSAG is to:
There is a strong collective commitment to deliver positive safety changes by all parties represented in the OHSAG.
The majority of the actions and recommendations outlined in the Review to improve safety focus on preventing accidents but some also focus on improving survivability following an incident. Safety improvements overseen by the group so far include:
Latest progress against delivery of the Review can be found in CAP 1243
Visit for workforce communications including a helpful dos and don’ts document around clothing policy and a downloadable FAQ sheet on passenger size. Online editions of the ‘Tea Shack News’ publication are also available to view online from the Step Change in Safety website.
OHSAG is very conscious of workforce concerns over plans to prevent helicopter operators carrying passengers whose body size means they couldn’t escape through push-out window exits in an emergency.
The change is to ensure that everyone onboard can escape in the event of a helicopter capsizing after a ditching or water impact.
The Group’s aim is that no one loses their job as a result of the change. While the classifications may present some logistical challenges, we believe the implications for those who travel offshore are manageable within the current helicopter fleet.
Following a study of helicopter exits and of the offshore workforce a shoulder width measurement of 22” or over will be classified as ‘extra broad’ (XBR). Every offshore worker will be measured. Step Change has released details of how this measurement will take place. Workers whose shoulder width exceeds 22” will be classified as extra broad on the Vantage seat booking system. Those passengers will be allocated a seat which has direct access to the larger Type III and Type IV window exits. At least 30% of seats on all helicopters fall into this category which we believe is more than the number of passengers that will be classified as extra broad.
Information on Step Change’s Passenger Size workgroup is available at the Step Change in Safefy website.
Since CAP1145: Safety review of offshore public transport helicopter operations in support of oil and the exploitation of oil and gas was published in February 2014, several further reports have followed, including: | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.6540274024009705,
"registry": "IN",
"registry_score": 0.7310686111450195,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.20961429178714752,
"domain2": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score2": 0.3231501579284668,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.875808596611023
} |
[tag: how-to]
**Post updated belowThe results of a ballot question in St.
**Post updated belowThe results of a ballot question in St. Paul, Minnesota that would change the way voters elect municipal officials remain in a state of limbo Monday. Both sides are awaiting the result of a court challenge that claims the measure passed, in large part, because supporters of the change falsely claimed it was backed by President Barack Obama. The measure to implement Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, passed narrowly last Tuesday winning just over 52 percent of the vote. IRV is a method of voting that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference—so you can identify a second or even third choice for one office on the same ballot. The ballots are usually counted over more than one round of voting, eliminating the worst performing candidates until one wins a majority. Supporters of the measure, led by the group Fair Vote Minnesota, claimed support from President Obama, the DFL (Minnesota’s Democratic Party) and the League of Women Voters. Opponent Chuck Repke, calls all three claims a lie. “These folks deliberately lied to link their campaign to the DFL and President Obama just to win this election,” Repke, who heads the No Bad Ballots Committee, tells Politics. He says the claims of support emerged on the campaign’s literature just days before Election Day, and Repke says he didn’t have the resources to counter them. The legal challenge is centered on a Minnesota state law that requires candidates and campaigns to have a signed letter from any person or third party they claim support from. “It’s a well known and well understood state law,” Repke insists. “It’s a very odd law, but it’s a law nonetheless,” says Ellen Brown, spokeswoman for the St. Paul Better Ballot campaign. “But we certainly weren’t aware of it.”While the campaign admits that it doesn’t have a signed letter of support from the president, Brown says the campaign was never claiming the president explicitly backed the St. Paul initiative, but rather that he supported IRV in principle. Brown cited a bill introduced in 2002 in the Illinois legislature by then-State Senator Obama, which would have adopted IRV for certain contests in that state. “The people we listed [as supporters] have spoken in favor of IRV in concept,” Brown says. “I would hope the president has other things on his mind than a ballot initiative in St. Paul.” After a hearing last week, a judge has until Monday afternoon to decide whether the complaint filed by Repke’s group should move forward. Repke says he’s confident last Tuesday’s results will eventually be thrown out and a re-vote will be set for 2010. *UPDATE: A Minnesota court decided Monday the complaint against the St. Paul Better Ballot Committee will move forward. Another hearing is set for November 18. Shane D’Aprile is senior editor at Politics magazine. He can be reached at [email protected]
Submit a comment | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.941406786441803,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9986850023269653,
"domain1": "StackExchange",
"domain_score1": 0.32331132888793945,
"domain2": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score2": 0.4224091172218323,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.6747786998748779
} |
Gwen Blodgett, 78, of Skowhegan, is weighing nursing home options for her husband of 60 years, Gerald, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
Gerald is living at an Alzheimer’s care center in Gardiner, but she knows at some point he won’t be able to care for himself.
“You just never know how long it’s going to be,” she said. “That’s why they call it a long goodbye.”
When the time comes, Blodgett said, she is leaning toward Cedar Ridge, a 75-bed home in Skowhegan. She’s comfortable with the staff, who she’s seen care for family members and friends over the years. Others whose opinions she knows and trusts — including her neighbor and her hairdresser — have also reported positive experiences at Cedar Ridge.
Blodgett doesn’t expect perfection from a nursing home and knows that they all have some problems.
“It’s probably unavoidable,” she said.
Ceder Ridge is one of five central Maine nursing homes that show no serious deficiencies in a batch of reports recently released on Medicare’s website. The most recent batch of reports, which are published periodically, cover about 40 of Maine’s 107 nursing homes, including five in central Maine.
The five central Maine nursing homes, in Augusta, Hartland, Pittsfield and Waterville, had deficiencies, but they were less serious than those found in other areas of the state.
The ability to track nursing home problems became easier in July 2012 under a provision in the Affordable Care Act, which requires the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to publish the full report of each federal nursing home inspection on its website, Nursing Home Compare.
The reports help consumers learn which residences have the highest quality healthcare and can also lead to improvements, according to Courtney Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the federal center.
With Cedar Ridge’s inspections and ratings online, Blodgett can see what problems have been documented.
The most recent inspection found two deficiencies, neither categorized as serious.
The first was for having separated seams in the floor of the whirlpool room, while the second was for having a freezer that allowed condensation to drip and freeze on items including sealed bags of frozen Brussels sprouts.
Overall, Cedar Ridge gets four of five possible stars from the government, a quality rating of above average.
As it turns out, Blodgett’s positive impressions of Cedar Ridge match its positive rating, but that’s not always the case.
Causing harm
About 40 reports documenting inspector visits between March and August were recently published online by Pro Publica, a journalism and public advocacy organization. The results are published and analyzed under Nursing Home Inspect on Pro Publica’s website.
Some are minor, such as a failure to record the temperature of food or a missing thermostat cover.
Of about 1,600 deficiencies documented during the last three years, the large majority resulted in no actual harm. Industry leaders say the transparency is welcome, but deficiencies should be put in the proper context.
Maine’s rate of serious deficiencies, 0.06 per nursing home, is 10th lowest in the nation, according to a data analysis by Pro Publica.
One Waterville administrator said Maine’s good record is the result of effective state oversight and programs that allow residents to take more control over their environment. Federal inspectors visit each of Maine’s 107 nursing homes annually to document deficiencies, categorized into different levels of severity, depending on the level of harm caused. Nursing homes typically respond with a correction plan.
The most serious violations documented in the state during that inspection period were at Narraguagus Bay Health Care Facility in Milbridge and Mercy Home in Eagle Lake, two nursing homes rated below average by the federal government, with two of five stars.
At Narraguagus Bay, a 35-bed home, a March 20 inspection documented three deficiencies in which harm occurred.
According to the report, in November a doctor ordered that one resident walk only with a rolling walker and the assistance of two staff members, because of a high risk of falls. The doctor’s orders were not followed, which resulted in the resident falling in December and again in January. The first fall resulted in bruises and severe pain, while the second resulted in a fractured hip, according to the report.
Attempts to contact Narraguagus Bay administrators for comment were unsuccessful.
At Mercy Home, a 40-bed residence, an April 17 inspection documented the case of a resident who twisted an ankle on Feb. 5. The next day, when the resident complained of pain, a doctor ordered an X-ray, but one wasn’t made for nine days. The resident complained of high pain levels every day, refused to do a range of motion exercise with the foot, and was only given Tylenol by staff.
When an X-ray was finally done on Feb. 14, it showed the resident had a bone fracture, according to the report.
A message left for Denise Raymond, Mercy’s administrator, was not immediately returned.
Central Maine shines
None of the five recently inspected central Maine nursing homes had serious deficiencies.
Mary Ford, owner of the 57-bed nursing home Pittsfield Rehab, said Maine’s nursing homes try to avoid serious deficiencies because they know the state response will be swift.
“I think Maine has been regulated heavily for a long time, so compliance has been good in our state,” she said.
Pittsfield Rehab gets five of five stars from the government, a rating of much above average.
A July 12 inspection documented two nonserious deficiencies, for not giving patients showers according to their preferences and not communicating a medication order from a resident’s doctor to that resident’s pharmacist.
Ford said the state accepted a correction plan and that the facility is now in full compliance.
Sara Sylvester, administrator at Waterville’s 90-bed Oak Grove Center, said there haven’t been any serious deficiencies because comments from an active resident council allow residents to have more control over their lives.
In addition to organizing outings and choosing meals, the residents voice concerns about problems with the staff and the home.
“If they’re not being treated correctly, if a nurse or an aide is curt with them, those people have to go home,” Sylvester said, “and an investigation has to happen immediately.”
The most recent inspection at Oak Grove, on May 9, found five non-serious violations, including a urine odor in one area, a failure to best manage each patient’s drug regimen and failure to cycle out expired calcium vitamins.
Sylvester said the state approved a correction plan and Oak Grove, rated above average with four of five stars, is now in full compliance.
The Augusta Center for Health and Rehabilitation in Augusta, a 72-bed residence, is also rated above average, with four of five stars.
During a May 16 visit, inspectors documented five non-serious violations at the center, including separated bathroom floor seams, failure to update a patient’s care plan to reflect a worsening pressure ulcer and failure to keep an ice machine clean.
Administrator Cathleen O’Connor said the state accepted a correction plan and the center is now in full compliance.
At Augusta’s MaineGeneral Rehab & Nursing at Graybirch, a May 14 inspection uncovered four non-serious deficiencies, all related to an incident in which a resident left the building and was missing for hours before being brought back by family members.
Graybirch has three of five stars from the government, a rating of average.
Connie McDonald, Graybirch’s administrator, did not immediately return a call for comment.
At Sanfield Rehab & Nursing Center in Hartland, inspectors found four non-serious violations on April 4, including failure to notify a resident’s family about the expiration of a particular Medicare benefit; stains in the kitchen; and failure to update a resident’s medication orders.
The federal government rates Sanfield as much above average, with five of five stars.
Administrator Sheila Beasley referred questions to Sanfield Rehab’s owner, North Country Associates, but a call to North Country’s chief operating officer, Mary Richards, was not immediately returned.
Transparency
The nursing home industry welcomes the added transparency, according to Nadine Grosso, vice president of the Maine Health Care Association, which represents nearly every nursing home in the state.
She said prospective residents should pay attention to the scope and severity of deficiencies, rather than the number.
“For example, if a person in the kitchen forgot to wear a hairnet, is that a big deal in the scheme of things?” she said.
Grosso said serious or recurring deficiencies should be taken into account, and the information should be one component of a larger information-gathering strategy.
“If they’re looking at a particular facility and they look at a deficiency report and they see something that they now have a question about, it would be really good to go talk to the facility about that,” Grosso said.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling — 861-9287
Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form.
Send questions/comments to the editors. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7844077944755554,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9219318628311157,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.37824922800064087,
"domain2": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score2": 0.6452789306640625,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8372753858566284
} |
4.1: Atoms
Lesson Objectives
- Explain the law of conservation of mass, the law of definite proportions, and the law of multiple proportions.
- Describe John Dalton’s atomic theory.
Lesson Vocabulary
- atom
- law of conservation of mass
- law of definite proportions
- law of multiple proportions
Early Atomic Models
Democritus was a Greek philosopher who lived from 460 B.C. until 370 B.C. He was among the first known individuals to suggest the idea of the atom as the basic unit of matter. The word atom comes from the Greek word atomos, meaning “indivisible.” Democritus (see Figure below) was indeed ahead of his time, but his ideas were not useful at that time in describing chemical behavior because there was no experimental evidence to support it. His approach was a philosophical one rather than a truly scientific one. Many centuries would pass before the notion of atoms was merged with modern scientific experimentation and thought.
Democritus believed that all matter consisted of tiny, indestructible particles called atoms.
Beginnings of Atomic Theory
By the late 1700s, chemists had accepted the definition of an element as a substance that cannot be broken down into simpler substances by ordinary chemical means. It was also clear that elements combine with one another to form more complex substances called compounds. The chemical and physical properties of these compounds are different than the properties of the elements from which they were formed. There was some disagreement, however, about whether elements always combined in exactly the same ratio when forming a particular compound.
In the 1790s, a greater emphasis began to be placed on the quantitative analysis of chemical reactions. Accurate and reproducible measurements of the masses of reacting elements and the compounds that must always be conserved.
The law of conservation of mass is demonstrated in this video: (1:05).
The discovery that mass (Figure below).
Regardless of its source or its form (solid, liquid, or gas), water always has the exact same elemental composition: 11.19% of its mass is hydrogen and 88.81% of its mass is oxygen.
Experiments also began to demonstrate that the same pairs of certain elements could combine to form more than one compound. Consider the elements carbon and oxygen. Combined in one way, they form the familiar compound called carbon dioxide. In every sample of carbon dioxide, there is 32.0 g of oxygen present for every 12.0 g of carbon. By dividing 32.0 by 12.0, this simplifies to an oxygen/carbon mass ratio of 2.66 to 1. Another compound that forms from the combination of carbon and oxygen is called carbon monoxide. Every sample of carbon monoxide contains 16.0 g of oxygen for every 12.0 g of carbon, which simplifies to an oxygen/carbon mass ratio of 1.33 to 1. In other words, a given mass of carbon needs to combine with exactly twice as much oxygen to make carbon dioxide as it would to produce carbon monoxide. Figure below illustrates the law of multiple proportions. Whenever the same two elements form more than one compound, the different masses of one element that combine with the same mass of the other element are in the ratio of small whole numbers.
Carbon monoxide, on the left, contains 1.333 g of oxygen for every 1 g of carbon. Carbon dioxide, on the right, contains 2.666 g of oxygen for every gram of carbon. The ratio of oxygen in these two compounds is 1:2, which is a ratio of small whole numbers.
Sample Problem 4.1: Calculating Mass Ratios
Copper reacts with chlorine to form two compounds. Compound A contains 4.08 g of copper for every 2.28 g of chlorine. Compound B contains 7.53 g of copper for every 8.40 g of chlorine. What is the lowest whole number mass ratio of copper that combines with a given mass of chlorine?
Step 1: List the known quantities and plan the problem.
Known
- Compound A = 4.08 g Cu and 2.28 g Cl
- Compound B = 7.53 g Cu and 8.40 g Cl
Apply the law of multiple proportions to the two compounds. For each compound, find the grams of copper that combine with 1.00 g of chlorine by dividing the mass of copper by the mass of chlorine. Then, find the ratio of the masses of copper in the two compounds by dividing the larger value by the smaller value.
Step 2: Calculate.
Compare the masses of copper per gram of chlorine in the two samples.
The mass ratio of copper per gram of chlorine in the two compounds is 2:1.
Step 3: Think about your result.
The ratio is a small whole-number ratio. For a given mass of chlorine, compound A contains twice the mass of copper as does compound B.
Dalton's Atomic Theory
In 1808, an English chemist and schoolteacher named John Dalton (1766-1844) formulated an atomic theory based on the law of conservation of mass, the law of definite proportions, and the law of multiple proportions. His theory can be summarized in the following statements, illustrated in Figure below.
- All matter is composed of extremely small particles called atoms.
- Atoms of the same element are identical in terms of size, mass, and other properties. Atoms of one element are different from the atoms of any other element.
- Atoms of different elements can chemically combine with one another in simple whole-number ratios to form chemical compounds.
- Chemical reactions can be described as the separation, combination, or rearrangement of atoms. Atoms of one element cannot be changed into atoms of a different element as a result of a chemical reaction.
Dalton’s atomic theory states that chemical reactions are due to rearrangements of atoms. On the left, hydrogen molecules are shown as two H atoms, while oxygen molecules are shown as two O atoms. The chemical reaction forms water as the atoms rearrange. There are identical numbers of hydrogen and oxygen atoms before and after the reaction.
Sizes of Atoms
The graphite in your pencil is composed of the element carbon. Imagine taking a small piece of carbon and grinding it until it is a fine dust. Each speck of carbon would still have all of the physical and chemical properties of carbon. Now imagine that you could somehow keep dividing the speck of carbon into smaller and smaller pieces. Eventually, you would reach a point where your carbon sample is as small as it could possibly be. This final particle is called an atom, which is defined as the smallest particle of an element that retains the properties of that element.
Atoms, as you probably know, are extremely small. In fact, the graphite in an ordinary pencil contains about 5 × 1020 atoms of carbon. This is an almost incomprehensibly large number. The population of the entire Earth is about 7 × 109 people, meaning that there are about 7 × 1010 times as many carbon atoms in your pencil as there are people on the Earth! For this to be true, atoms must be extremely small. Can we see atoms? It’s not easy, but a modern instrument called a scanning tunneling microscope allows scientists to visualize the atom, as shown in Figure below.
Images of individual gold atoms can be seen on the surface of a smooth sheet of gold metal using scanning tunneling microscopy.
Lesson Summary
- The Greek philosopher Democritus believed that matter is composed of indivisible and indestructible building blocks, which he called atoms.
- John Dalton transformed the ideas of Democritus into a scientific atomic theory, which began to explain the law of conservation of mass, the law of definite proportions, and the law of multiple proportions.
- Matter cannot be created or destroyed in chemical reactions.
- Elements react to form compounds in fixed proportions by mass.
- Elements combine with one another in simple whole-number ratios.
- An atom is the smallest unit of an element that retains the properties of that element.
Lesson Review Questions
Recall
- Describe the contribution of Democritus to modern atomic theory.
- What happens to the total mass of a system during a chemical reaction?
- What does “fixed composition” mean with regard to chemical compounds?
- What law explains the relationships between different chemical compounds that contain only the elements carbon and oxygen?
- What are the four essential points of Dalton’s atomic theory?
Apply Concepts
- Alchemy is an ancient tradition that predated the modern science of chemistry. One goal of the alchemist was to change base metals such as iron or lead into valuable metals such as gold or silver. Explain, using Dalton’s theory, why alchemists were unable to do this.
Think Critically
- If an atom of element A has a mass of 2 units, while an atom of element B has a mass of 5 units, what would be the ratio of element A to element B in a compound that had a mass of 11 units?
- Sulfur reacts with oxygen to form two compounds. Compound A consists of 1.89 g of sulfur for every 1.89 g of oxygen. Compound B consists of 3.72 g of sulfur for every 5.57 g of oxygen. What is the lowest whole number mass ratio of sulfur that combines with a given mass of oxygen?
- Hydrocarbons are a class of organic compounds that contain only carbon and hydrogen. Methane, an important hydrocarbon fuel, has a carbon/hydrogen mass ratio of 3:1. An 80-g sample of a hydrocarbon compound is analyzed and found to contain 64 g of carbon. Is the hydrocarbon sample methane? Explain.
- The mass of 6.02 × 1023 atoms of iron is 55.85 g. What is the mass of one atom of iron?
Further Reading / Supplemental Links
- For more information about Dalton's contributions, go to the video Early Ideas About Atoms at. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7976300120353699,
"registry": "IN",
"registry_score": 0.7879412174224854,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.4364754259586334,
"domain2": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score2": 0.619939386844635,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.7907742261886597
} |
Claflin student editor wins award as top S.C. collegiate journalist
Congressman James E. Clyburn was at Claflin University on Sunday to sign copies of his memoir, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black. Ministers’ Hall was filled with individuals eager to get their hands on a copy of the newly released book.
“Many of you in this room are friends of Jim Clyburn, and you know, as I do, that when he’s passionate about something, his commitment is unwavering,” said Janice Marshall, ’70, a Claflin University Board of Trustees member and the executive director of the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation. “He walks the walk and talks the talk.”
“It is fitting that we’re holding today’s celebration here, in Minister’s Hall,” she continued. In addition to Clyburn’s commitment to education, Marshall said, “Historic preservation is another of his passions, and this building was lovingly restored with federal resources he secured.”
Clyburn “has always been a steadfast advocate for those without a voice and a committed leader,” Marshall said. “His tenacity, endurance, fortitude, patience and faith provide a living example of what it means to be genuinely Southern and proudly black.”
Claflin President Dr. Henry N. Tisdale said Clyburn is a great friend of the institution.
“In fact, he’s been a tireless servant and friend of higher education throughout his career as an elected official,” Tisdale said. “I say with tremendous appreciation to the Congressman that Claflin University has benefitted from the commitment and from the friendship.
“Through his book, our children and grandchildren, and future generations, will have a source to inspire them to dream big, understanding that a setback can be a setup for something grand.”
Clyburn shared with the audience his inspiration for Blessed Experiences and its title. In the book, he tells in his own inspirational words how an African-American boy from the Jim Crow South was able to beat the odds to achieve great success.
“The epilogue in this book is a letter to my children, my grandchildren, and all other children and grandchildren similarly challenged,” Clyburn said. “I wrote this book to take into account all of the challenges that I’ve had, and how I have dealt with those challenges in hopes that children coming along will benefit from them.”
Clyburn said Blessed Experiences has been nearly 30 years in the making. He wrote the first chapter in 1985.
“I set the book aside because I came to the conclusion as I was writing that I had not lived long enough nor had I had enough experiences to write the kind of book I wanted to write,” Clyburn said. “I wanted to write a book that would be motivational, informational, and a book that would tell exactly what … I wanted to pass on to future generations.
“I want this book to be a textbook for young people.”
The title comes from two episodes in the congressman’s life, he said.
“Bill Howell taught me my second year at South Carolina State, and Bill Howell and I were a bit combative in class,” Clyburn said. “One day, we were going back and forth, and he said to me, ‘Young man, you must understand, you will never be any more nor will you ever be any less than what your experiences allow you to be.’ That struck me, and it stuck with me. So I decided that my book had to be about those experiences. But about halfway through the book, I hit a wall and couldn’t write. And I remembered that my father used to spend all day Saturday reading, writing and humming his favorite hymn, Blessed Assurance … so I read the hymn Blessed Assurance. And there it was – I could see what my dad got from that hymn.”
The subtitle comes from an episode Clyburn recalled during his early days at the South Carolina State House. A legislator made a comment that Clyburn felt crossed the line. He approached the legislator after the meeting and was told that he needed to understand that the legislator spoke that way because he was a Southerner.
“I, too, am a Southern,” Clyburn said, adding that was the working title of his book for many years. “My parents were Southerners, and they didn’t talk that way, they didn’t use that kind of language, they didn’t insult people gratuitously. I wanted to make the case that we, too, are Southerners. … But we are a proud people, proudly black.
“The whole thing is to say to every child – black or white – in this state that you have a stake in being a South Carolinian. This state is as much yours as anybody elses, and you should be proud of the contributions you make to this state. Throughout this book, you will see time and time again I make the case for being a genuinely Southern and proud black person. And I never ever stray from that.”
Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black is $34.95 and available wherever books are sold. Clyburn said he has plans to write a sequel. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7403396368026733,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.4843900501728058,
"domain1": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score1": 0.35339099168777466,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.7330712676048279,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.7408981323242188
} |
AUSTIN — The Legislature’s top budget writers indicated Thursday that they are pessimistic about the state’s chances of winning in a lawsuit brought by hundreds of school districts, though they said they haven’t seen harm to public schools from budget cuts enacted two years ago.
Sen. Tommy Williams and Rep. Jim Pitts said that the state should set aside money in the budget — or leave money unspent — in case the Texas Supreme Court rules against the state late this year or next year.
The districts’ suit argues that state school aid formulas are unconstitutionally unequal and their funding inadequate.
“We’re looking at … an epic battle on this in 2014,” said Williams, R-The Woodlands. He and Pitts appeared Thursday at a forum sponsored by the Texas Tribune.
He added that some school officials have told him the cuts helped them eliminate unneeded staff.
“I’ve had some superintendents from very large school districts say, ‘Thank you, I never could’ve fired these administrators unless you cut my funding,’” Williams said.
“They won’t say it publicly but they say it privately.”
Pitts, a former school board member, said he’s also not seen devastation from the Legislature’s $5.3 billion in school cuts last session.
“I have not seen the layoffs,” said Pitts, R-Waxahachie. “I haven’t seen the teachers and the school superintendents having to come to me and say, ‘Oh, woe is me.’”
He quickly added, “I’ll probably get the calls now.”
Williams said he agrees with an idea floated by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst several weeks ago that budget writers set aside a couple of billion as a reserve against a court loss. Williams said the set-aside might be between $1.8 billion and $2.2 billion.
Pitts indicated lawmakers will probably have unspent revenue because of the constitutional cap on spending. He didn’t estimate how much.
Pitts, though, said the school lawsuit’s outcome — and Texas’ recent experience with an up and down economy and volatile revenues — gives him pause about Gov. Rick Perry’s call for $1.8 billion in tax relief this session.
“I don’t want to tell Texans that we’re going to do a tax relief [package] when we’ve got all these expenses that we need to cover,” he said.
Pitts also criticized Perry’s proposal to draw $840 million for the unspecified tax cuts from the state’s rainy day fund. For a tax reduction not to be temporary, “it’s going to have to be a continuous draw on the rainy day. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.9337686896324158,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9921941161155701,
"domain1": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score1": 0.5449070930480957,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.45899832248687744,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8598134517669678
} |
- Filed Under
BONN — Rheinmetall will become contractor on the Canadian Forces Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle (TAPV) project under a 160 million euro ($207 million) contract signed with Textron Systems Canada.
Rheinmetall Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of the Düsseldorf, Germany-based company, will earn 120 million euros during the TAPV program’s production phase, performing the final assembly and test of the vehicles. It will also integrate subsystems, such as the remotely controlled weapon station, the vehicle navigation system and the driver vision enhancement system.
The production phase is expected to span from July 2014 to March 2016.
When fielded, Rheinmetall Canada will provide in-service support (ISS) for the entire TAPV fleet at the same facility, earning another 40 million euros. ISS will start with the initial operational capability when the first 47 vehicles are delivered, which is planned for 2014, and is expected to end in 2021, five years after the last vehicle is delivered.
“This partnership with Textron Systems is of strategic importance to Rheinmetall Canada,” said Rheinmetall Canada’s president and CEO, Andreas Knackstedt. “We are extremely pleased to work with Textron Systems delivering state of the art equipment to the Army, and value for taxpayers’ money, while creating highly skilled jobs in Canada.”
Rheinmetall Canada will also fulfill a portion of Textron’s participation in Canada’s Industrial and Regional Benefits (IRB) policy arising from the government’s purchase of 500 Textron TAPV.
The Textron TAPV team was selected in June 2012 to manufacture 500 vehicles with an option for up to 100 more. The team also includes Kongsberg Protech Systems Canada and EODC — Engineering Office Deisenroth Canada.
As the prime contractor, Ottawa-based Textron Systems Canada will provide the overall program and configuration management, act as design authority for change management, coordinate the vehicle integration activities by Canadian subcontractors, and manage the ISS contract. It will also implement a pan-Canadian IRB program designed to bring new expertise and opportunities to Canadian companies. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.7761866450309753,
"registry": "NA",
"registry_score": 0.9935217499732971,
"domain1": "OpenWebText2",
"domain_score1": 0.4747859835624695,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.4804842472076416,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.8665074110031128
} |
[tag: science]
Obama health idea could mean better care, savings
March 31, 2011
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Associated Press
The Obama administration on Thursday outlined a new approach to medical care that it said could mean higher quality and less risk for patients, while also saving millions of dollars for taxpayers.
The plan involves accountable care organizations, which are networks of hospitals, doctors, rehabilitation centers and other providers. They would work together to cut out duplicative tests and procedures, prevent medical errors, and focus on keeping patients healthier and out of the emergency room.
"We need to bring the days of fragmented care to an end," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said as she announced a proposed regulation that defines how the networks would operate within Medicare.
If things work out, medical providers would share in the savings. If the experiment fails, they're likely to get stuck with part of any additional costs.
Sebelius said early estimates are that Medicare could save as much as $960 million over three years. That's not a whole lot for a $550-billion-a-year program, but officials say it's a start. The estimate was prepared by Medicare's office of the actuary, known for its independence.
Eagerly awaited by the health care industry, the new approach was called for in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The first networks would open for business next year.
Unlike some managed care plans, such as health maintenance organizations, these networks would not lock in patients. "The beneficiary has not lost any choice at all," said Medicare administration Donald Berwick.
The U.S. spends about $2.5 trillion a year on health care, more per person than any other advanced country. Yet people in the U.S. lag in some common measures of health and well-being. Researchers estimate that as much as one-third of U.S. spending goes for services that aren't really needed, and that's what the networks are supposed to address.
If the idea succeeds in Medicare, it is expected to spread quickly to employer-provided health insurance. Already in some parts of the country, such as the Minneapolis area, insurers, hospitals and doctors have set up similar networks for privately insured patients.
But there are risks.
The networks could end up costing more money because of the intensive work involved in coordinating among different providers. Medicare recipients now may see four or five different doctors, who never talk to each other or compare notes.
There's another potential problem. What if a network of hospitals and doctors acquires monopoly power in its community and starts raising prices? Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney said the administration won't allow that to happen.
"We believe there is no area of the economy that can benefit more from collaboration than health care," said Varney. "Those who collaborate to fix prices inappropriately will be prosecuted."
Doctors, hospitals and other service providers will decide whether join a local network. They will have to make a three-year commitment to care for a group of at least 5,000 patients.
The Justice Department said providers that control less than 30 percent of the market for a given service in their community probably would not face scrutiny for possible anti-competitive concerns. Those with a market share of 50 percent or more would undergo a mandatory review before their network could be approved. For those in between, the department issued a list of things to avoid if they don't want to face questions from the government.
Once the government has approved a network, Medicare administrators will monitor performance on costs and quality. If the network succeeds in saving money over what its patients' care would have otherwise cost, Medicare will share a portion of the gains. If it loses money, providers could get stuck with a bill.
Providers are required to let their patients know that they are part of an accountable care organization and to get permission to share personal health information within the network. The experiment is focused on traditional fee-for-service Medicare.
"We are committed to getting the details right," said Sebelius. "The rules we are proposing today are just the first step in a long process."
It's unclear what would happen to the experiment if Obama's health care law is overturned in court or repealed.
"I've never seen a time when there was as much positive work being done, although we don't have enough statistical data to show results yet," said Jim Eppel, a senior executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which has several networks of its own. "I think providers in our area have come to the realization that they need to reduce their cost of doing business. This provides a platform for them to do that. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.8471050262451172,
"registry": "ne",
"registry_score": 0.9986429810523987,
"domain1": "PubMed-Abstracts",
"domain_score1": 0.40282121300697327,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.6248982548713684,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.9184474349021912
} |
Archived Story
Food bank assists neighbors in needBy Staff Reports Published 12:00am Friday, May 19, 2006
The Demopolis Food Pantry was established in the early 1980′s, and was started to help provide food for elderly residents in the local community that were unable to qualify for other food programs.
The volunteers, who solely operate the mission, are from several different churches in the area.
Trinity Episcopal Church plays an important role in the charity.
Food is packed into paper bags and distributed by volunteers every Wednesday from 8 a.m. until 9 a.m.
Besides canned goods and non-perishable food items, the food pantry always needs paper bags to distribute the food.
New volunteers are welcome to participate, and anyone interested can come by at 8:30 a.m. on any Wednesday.
“We are all volunteers and this is a community effort,” Byrd Rish said.
Most of the people receiving food from the charity are disabled or are elderly citizens.
Eligible recipients are residents of Demopolis, and also meet the income guidelines set out by the USDA.
In the late 1980′s, the food pantry was moved to the back room of the Jewish Synagogue, B’Nai Jeshurun, where it is still located.
When the group first started, they would distribute food to approximately 12 people every week.
The food pantry has grown a great deal since it was first established a number of years ago.
In 1997, the organization distributed food to over 4,500 people, and for 2003, the organization had distributed food to over 7,000 people.
The Demopolis Food Pantry currently distributes food to approximately 200 people every week.
The Demopolis Food Pantry is dependent on contributions to function.
Food that is not donated has to be purchased.
A large portion of the food the organization provides is purchased from the West Alabama Food Bank and costs 16 cents per pound to buy.
The Demopolis Council of Church Women made generous financial contributions to the Demopolis Food Pantry.
The Bargain Box, which is operated by the Demopolis Council of Church Women, sells donations they receive from the community, which includes clothes and a wide range of other items from magazines to stuffed animals.
The Demopolis Council of Church Women also made contributions to other organizations and causes.
“This is a service group and it is all volunteer help. We recently gave $5,000 in scholarships to DHS students,” Iona Watts, Bargain Box volunteer, said.
Donations of all kinds (such as clothes and household items) would be helpful, and new volunteers would be greatly appreciated.
“We have a drop box for donations and Mondays is work day,” Ion Watts said.
The Bargain Box is open on Mondays through Thursdays from 9:00 a.m. until noon, and 8:00 a.m. until noon on Saturdays. | {
"source": "refinedweb",
"quality_score": 0.6787410974502563,
"registry": "IN",
"registry_score": 0.7606606483459473,
"domain1": "Wikipedia-(en)",
"domain_score1": 0.7132695913314819,
"domain2": "Pile-CC",
"domain_score2": 0.3876592516899109,
"rating": "G"
} | {
"label": "HIGH_QUALITY",
"score": 0.6767950057983398
} |
End of preview. Expand
in Dataset Viewer.
Description of Dataset
This is a subset of the Falcon Refinedweb dataset, with tagging performed using the taggers in the ontocord/riverbed repository. This subset includes approximately 100K items (485MB or approximately 100M tokens). The items have been filtered for moderately high Red-Pajama 1 filter scores (0.65) and Textbook quality scores (0.65). Tags are added to the beginning of some of the items when they have been detected to be science based, how-to, legal, etc. The original tagging was performed by Ontocord for the Aurora-M project, and subsequently further tagged for textbook quality by @kenhktsui here. It was further filtered to create this subset.
Original Refinedweb Dataset
The authors of Refinedweb writes:
RefinedWeb is built through stringent filtering and large-scale deduplication of CommonCrawl; we found models trained on RefinedWeb to achieve performance in-line or better than models trained on curated datasets, while only relying on web data. See the 📓 paper on arXiv for more details on Refinedweb itself.
Purpose
The purpose of the dataset is to investigate filtering of data and creating performant mixtures of data for model training.
Disclaimer
This dataset is provided for research purposes only. We make no claims to ownership of the data and release any of our annotations under ODC-By because that was the original RefinedWeb license. We believe usage of web crawled data is permitted under fair use, but you use this dataset at your own risks, and we disclaim all warranties and liabilities including warranties for non-infringement.
NO PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION REDACTION WAS PERFORMED. ALL SUCH INFORMATION ARE FROM THE ORIGINAL DATASET AND THE CORRESPONDING WEB PAGE.
Contact Us
Please reach out to us in the discussion link above if you have questions.
- Downloads last month
- 41