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The Inexplicable American Consumer Is Putting The Screws To Health-Care Expenses
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
There has been anecdotal evidence. But now The Wall Street Journal in its story about GE's quandary confirmed it: the toughest creature out there that no one has been able to subdue yet, the inexplicable American consumer, is apparently accomplishing a miracle: putting the screws to runaway health-care costs. One of their targets: over-used, over-hyped medical services, such as MRIs and CT scans—an industry bubble that has been ballooning by the double digits for decades. Motive? Profit.
It may be early for a victory lap: critics contend that "the health-care system is still overrun by unnecessary imaging at prices that are much higher than in other countries," the Journal writes. "A study by the International Federation of Health Plans found that US fees for an MRI were about 80% higher than Germany's."
American health care costs are beyond legendary. Employer plans that cover a family of four are expected to break the sound barrier of $20,000 this year, up 7% from 2011, and up 117% from ten years ago. The country is spending $2.6 trillion on health care a year, or 17.9% of GDP! Yet, in terms of life expectancy, these expenditures don't add up. Depending on who is counting, the US ranks somewhere between 38th and 51st place. On the latter list, US life expectancy of 78.49 years is almost 11 years lower than Monaco's.
The Journal describes the inherent conflict between GE's health-care division, which generates $18 billion in revenues by selling MRI machines, CT scanners, and the like, and the health insurance program for its employees, which costs $2.5 billion. While the health-care division wanted to sell as many imaging devices as possible, cost cutters wanted to contain the spiraling health-care costs. The cost cutters won—and introduced high-deductible health plans. After two years, the use of imaging technologies dropped by as much as 25%.
Other large corporations are implementing similar plans. In my experience, high-deductible plans have become nearly standard in small companies—to combat skyrocketing costs. What they have accomplished in the process, without planning it, is introduce a new watchdog into the equation, and not any old watchdog, but the sharpest one out there: consumers motivated by profit.
Many companies offer options, where the employee portion for family coverage may drop from, say, $1,200 per month for a classic plan to $600 per month for a high-deductible plan with a maximum out of pocket of $4,000. People do the math. They'd save $600 per month, or $7,200 per year. Any expenses would be capped at $4,000. Savings: $3,200. Plus any out-of-pocket expenses they would have to pay under the traditional plan. These plans qualify for Health Savings Accounts—and contributions to them are deductible from federal income taxes (but not from California income taxes!!!).
For healthy people, a high-deductible plan with an HSA account is financial nirvana. For people with chronic illnesses that are expensive to treat, such a plan may be less advantageous, but may still be a good deal (check your numbers carefully!). It's a tough plan for those who don't have the discipline to put aside the monthly savings so that they can pay their big deductible down the road. But it's a fiasco for those who can barely pay their premiums and have nothing left to put aside—a growing part of the population [read.... The Pauperization of America].
While it's still nearly impossible to get accurate pricing in advance of medical treatments—and thus price competition remains illusory—it is possible to question the need for certain procedures. Insurance companies who are trying to deny coverage for procedures they deem unnecessary can get into hot water. For them, the path of least resistance is to pay, and then raise premiums. But when a consumer, motivated by profit and a desire to stay healthy, deems a procedure unnecessary, it's a different story. Suddenly, the profit motive of the industry smacks into the profit motive of the consumer. Rudiments of checks and balances!
Those are personal decisions. But consumers are motivated to think about them and empowered to make them—rather than handing the entire process over to the industry. And when the toughest creature out there has a major medical event that fulfills the deductible, he or she can spend the rest of the year catching up with accumulated elective procedures: cataract surgery, hip replacement, brain transplant.... For free.
It has had an impact. In 2012, plans with deductibles of $1,000 or more made up only 19% of employee-sponsored health plans, according to the Journal. But the radiology industry is now contemplating stagnation: demand by privately insured patients (rather than those covered by Medicare) declined by 5.4% in 2010. And GE saved 15%.
The cellphone in your pocket is NASA-smart. Yet it costs just a couple of hundred dollars. So why is it that rising technical capabilities lead to drastically falling prices everywhere, except in your medical bill? The answer may surprise you. Read.... "Why Your Health Care Is So Darn Expensive," by Alex Daley and Doug Hornig.
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There is a limited amount that any medical system can do for a populace that thinks it can eat whatever crap it wants without incorporating any form of exercise other than shoving more crap into its gaping maw. The thought process for many of these stupid, stupid people is, and long has been "Here I am, now fix me!". That they are complicit in their state of ill health is nothing they want to consider, let alone hear about from their doctors -- who don't do much more than pass out prescriptions to deal with the effects of the American lifestyle: Statins, antihypertensives, drugs for diabetes (mostly Type II), antidepressants, antianxiety agents, various drugs for gastroesophaphageal reflux disease (again, so they don't have to deal with the fact that they ought to lose weight) and more. Americans are overweight, obese, morbidly obese and dying from all the consequences of being obese.
It's remarkable that the U.S. life expectancy is still 78.49, given how fat we are getting. Once the process of diabetes is started -- and it is pretty much inevitable once a body reaches a certain point of obesity, the concomminant issues of cardiovascular and peripheral vascular disease via inflammation. Living with chest pain, shortness of breath, neuropathy in the form of pain, tingling and numbness in your feet before they turn cold and start to die off bit by bit (or toe by toe) is no way to go through life. Or the problems of dying kidneys, because the blood vessels become so scarred from inflammation that they no longer are able to function. Being hooked up to a dialysis machine must be a miserable way to while away the days... for those are conscious, I guess.
And that doesn't even address the vulnerabillity of diabetics to infection, but given the above I would imagine that anyone could surmise a few of the ways in which they are at a higher risk than a healthy person.
This is why the last five years of life get so expensive: Managing the wildly expensive cardiac, vascular and end-stage renal effects of diabetes. If they are smokers (and so many are), add in pulmonary complications. (Should they have coronary bypasses, as an earlier post mentioned? I think if they received truly informed consent which depicted what hell they'd be in post-op and realistic odds of the eventual outcome, I don't think many would choose the surgery. But that's not the paradigm under which the health industry operates. Or what I suspect the average patient wants to hear.)
Yes. The great American consumer.
Human growth hormone (HGH) is a natural substance, which is released by the body's pituitary glands Growth Hormone
Here's the Bullshit factor: "the US ranks somewhere between 38th and 51st place. On the latter list, US life expectancy of 78.49 years is almost 11 years lower than Monaco's."
When comparing life expectancy it pays to have every country count the same way. We count abortions and any baby that "has a sign of life; whereas other countries do not. Some - the French for example - only count births after two weeks of life. This is where the quoted phrase becomes meaningless.
We spend too much on medical expenses because the combination of government nannyism and the insurance companies that have figured out how to profit from it, make it happen. This along with a business model that has the average hospital at less than 60% occupancy and absolutely no requirement that prices be published, drive prices through the roof. Hospitals are allowed - and do - amortize all of their costs on a per patient basis. They know their costs and maintain facilities rarely used so thay can "compete" with the neighboring hospital. If the total cost of a days stay is $500 per patient at 100% capacity; at 60% it is $833. Because of system rigging by the insurance Cos., they get to negotiate the rate so it becomes a complicated algorithm to figure out the charges to actually make but my local hospital bills over $3 Billion per year to collect approximately $800 million - which is + or minus break even. State Regs under the McCarran–Ferguson Act prevents insurance competition and further complicates price discovery. Obammy Care will succeed - in driving insurance rates thru the roof. Wait for it.
I have no gripe with doctors and can negotiate with them but hospitals are the evil ones---overcharging,arrogant, etc.
Docs have put in tons of time from what I can see---4 years college, 4 med school, internship, residency then the problems of going into private practice.
Unlike paper-pushers, doctors are probably one of the remaining productive groups in America.
Entire US system is crooked, so why expect medical profession to be different and under some scrutiny and control?
"Troubled youth", turned actor, plays a doctor in his role, lives extremely lavish real life. Real doctors may have noticed that.
One note to your article - Obamacare killed medical savings accounts. Whether or not high deductible plans will be allowed under Obamacare remains a question being pondered by the regulators.
The whole point of Obamacare was to kill any incentives in the system caused by customers thinking about their bills.
Much of the overuse of unnecessary procedures/therapies is probably attributable to the lawyer-driven shift away from a more paternalistic medical culture (say, pre-1980s) to the "consumer" driven one we have today.
In the old days you pretty much did what the doctor recommended but increasingly decisions were put in patients' hands to avoid lawsuits after the fact over whether this or that procedure/drug/therapy could have delivered a more favorable outcome.
Many female infertility treatments and pre-natal tests for instance are expensive as hell and many, depending on the exact circumstances in question have only a marginal chance doing any "good". Further, many of these things are quite invasive and generate significant health risks on their own. At one point the educated professional (the doctor) would weigh the trade-offs involved and make the call on what was the best risk to take. Now, it's more or less whatever the patient wants to do and the bill is covered by a third party.
What's going to happen next is that decision making authority is going to shift not back to doctors but to centralized, government entities. High-deductible plans are great because they encourage more rational decision making and discourage waste but the government's goal here is to create a very comprehensive entitlement which means they're going to have to ration care and they aren't going to let health care consumers (and thus the price mechanism) make those yes/no decisions beyond a narrow range.
I'm a physician who sees the writing on the wall for healthcare. I'm dropping out and will mostly be doing locum tenens (temp.) work while I sit on my metals investments.
When it comes to healthcare, people just don't know the half of it. It's like the financial world...you can only understand what's going on after reading zerohedge for years.
If there was a blog exposing the healthcare racket that you could read for years on end, you might begin to understand. But to the best of my knowledge, such information just isn't widely available, and if it is, nobody would read it, because everybody is convinced modern medicine will cure them of all of their ills while costing nothing to do so.
Hope you get this dolph but i'm an australian MD and am interested in talking about how the system in the USA can really begin to work.
No one wants something unsustainable which the usa system seems
i came to australia from a different system and the aussie system is the best
the patients are content in the public and private set up where basically if you have a job you are pushed into having insurance. the governement has strict regulations over the insurer and there is competition.
anyone can join (no refusals) and there is a 12 month wait and your period is over - no restrictions.
i tell people to join up - wait the year and then have your operation with or without expensive implants in the private hospital.
doctors are happy - you still get the dollars but you have to work hard for them.
the patient sees a doctor working fucking hard so has a lot of respect, that endears the system to the public.
as a doctor your skills are high so you feel fulfilled and like i say the dollars are good.
the system struggles here when doctors dont want to work less.... but i think USA dr's work very hard, right?
I agree with cifo above, but can understand why you wouldn't want to. Dealing with all the trolling comments and folks who just want to harass would take some of the shine off the endeavor. Good luck anyhow.
"If there was a blog exposing the healthcare racket that you could read for years on end, you might begin to understand. But to the best of my knowledge, such information just isn't widely available, and if it is, nobody would read it, because everybody is convinced modern medicine will cure them of all of their ills while costing nothing to do so."
You should start one, seriously.
I work for a living, and my company(run by cheap Jews), uses a 3rd party health care provider.
I pay a high cost for individual insurance here in MA. I have to go to the ER to take care of an infected wound. I get billed $1700, and after haggling the insurer for claims, they cover $150 of the cost (lol).
Yet there's this guy in MA who kills his wife, and get not only his sex transplant comped by the taxpayers, but also his legal fees.
I clearly need to kill someone to get the quality and good price I need for healthcare.
This is the type of shit that starts riots. I can't wait til someone "John Q's" some dickhead Hospital Administator someday. It's going to be full of anarchist LOL.
For many years neither my wife nor I had health insurance - we have always been self-employed and any insurance worth having was just too expensive. But we discovered long ago that you can almost always negotiate a substantial discount for medical services if you pay cash. As an example, my wife had to have knee replacement surgery. We negotiated with both the surgeon and the hospital and wound up paying @ 25% of what they would have billed our insurance - if we had had any. I know this because when they sent us the receipts the "full amount" and the 'discounted total" were both shown. If we had insurance the total would have been close to $50k - we paid just under $13k. And incidentally, you know that neither the hospital nor the doc were losing money on the deal - just goes to show you what "insurance" has done to the cost of health care in the US.
I needed to get some xrays every year and always paid cash. Saved me about 8 bucks. The problem was they ALWAYS lost the record of payment and would turn it over to a collection agency. Without fail no matter what I would do at the time of payment to ensure that it was logged they would lose it, year after year. I would have to call them screaming my head off and they would have to go and restore my credit rating every single year. It was much more of a hassle for them then me but they never learned.
The most common procedure prescribed by doctors is the walletectomy.
Sorry WSJ but "we're not gonna make it." Cutting the massive health entitlement complex...and it is well underway btw...will not be good enough to save the State. there has to be TRILLIONS in savings...not a couple of billion. hence "don't even bother reading the Wall Street Journal either." living in la-la land just like the rest of 'em.
isn't it amazig what happens when all the factors of price discovery are allowed to do what they do.
Now if only we can do something similar with college tuition.
Tuitions are visible but deferred by government loans so that the consumer isn't forced to take cost into account when selecting a college. Government-backed mortgages have the same effect on home prices.
If we could keep the costs down on these 3 key items (1.health care; 2. education; 3. housing) we would actually see a rising standard of living.
A while back, I had a echocardiogram done. The cardiologist wasn't finished with me yet. When I mentioned I had no insurance to cover a stress test they wanted done, the incessant phone calls, originated by them, to set up an appointment, stopped.
Gee, I wonder why?
I had one take a look at my chart and said, I ain't gonna cut you up to fix something that comes and goes. Not yet. See me in two year.
I know a vet who recieved a Stent for a very similar issue. He says to me "Have the doc throw it in there..."
There is a 30,000 dollar charge for the Stent I believe plus the surgery to put it in.
Nah. I'll wait.
In Southern California the absolute best medical care is provided free of charge to the poor and illegal immigrants. These hospitals have the latest equipment, best machines, finest facilities, and sharpest staff. They are often teaching hospitals, too. All paid for by the gummint. For the rest of us, who are laying out $25K a year for a health plan, the facilities are at best mediocre and have the oldest equipment. I've worked many years in medical device research and I know about these places.
Back closer to 9/11 a buddy got really sick. He never could keep a job and liked it that way.
They found a lung infection that was spreading yet could not identify what kind of infection or it's origination (I believe it was from his mouth/teeth based what I seen and known). The CDC was there and used experimental antibiotics according to doctors - 9/11 was still playing green to red safety tabs on the TV.
All in all he was in the hospital for a month. They removed 20% of his lungs (guy still smokes - ugh) and he had to learn to walk again after the hospital never kept his extremities alive as they thought he was a goner. The admitting doctor came in when things looked to see a miracle (my opinion) when he was conscious. Yea they had him in a induced coma to treat this unknown infection.
Total cost he will never pay a dime for:
How is your insurance company treating you?
In Southern California the absolute best medical care is provided free of charge to the poor and illegal immigrants. These hospitals have the latest equipment, best machines, finest facilities, and sharpest staff. They are often teaching hospitals, too.
So they are training ground for 'american' medical students so they capitalize on their educational investment.
Top equipment, guinea pigs who can not protest when used as material for unproven personal to get some experience etc...
What a nice place. Even a nicer place than the places where all those future physicians are going to make enough money to pay back on their student loans...
i am sure that some, but not all, of the discrepancy between american health care costs and those of foreign countries is the enlarged, bovine, ginormous waist lines of americans cultivated from the most unhealthy nutrient-deprived diet in the world. sugar is toxic and should be avoided like a rat infested sewer.
it is not hyperbole to state that american health care is barbaric and ignorant. you give a surgeon a patient and he decides he needs a scalpel to "help" his patient.....and many doctors are pawns of the gigantic pharmaceuticals who never saw a drug they didn't like....
there is so so so much health care which can be administered through vitamins, enzymes, and probiotics that many doctors should be sued out of business.....iatrogenic disease, and unsanitary hospitals are epidemic....in fact they are the number 1 cause for hospital deaths....most of which are entirely avoidable....it is a miracle for anyone to survive a hospital stay.....
insurance was created not to benefit people, but to enrich insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, the rockefeller axis of evil, and wall street.
I have a doctor acquaintance, while quite qualified, prescribes himself statins (anti-cholestorol pills) in order to fight the cholesterol buildup from his sweet tooth. Statins, like most pharmacuticals, can have nasty side effects like liver disease yet his faith in the system allows him to take these drugs without having the symptoms of high bad cholesterol.
Prescription drugs are now marketed directly to the end user with instructions to "ask your doctor if XXX is right for you". The doctor who is being wooed on the supply side by the Pharmas, no doubt obliges with a doctor's prescription. Chemicals like Aspartame, an insecticide, is added to food as a "sweetener", and approved by the FDA after a little arm twisting by the manufacturer.
These represent a miniscule number of the consequences of ethical lapses by industry, government, doctors unions and the patients themselves. The only way this can be turned around is to cancel your health insurance, become your own HMO, pay more attention to your own health and shop for the most cost effective heroic care... go to India, Thailand or Mexico for radical procedures (its OK.. their hospitals are modern and well staffed). Smoke pot for stress and alleviation of pain.
Yep. It's amazing ....
In my case, graduate students get twelve semesters of support (four years if you stretch it) for a program that normally takes 6 - 7 to finish. Your health insurance is tied to your "tuition waiver", so that when you lose that waiver, you also lose your medical insurance. I haven't enough background to know if this is typical; my conditions are so minor I've gone without health insurance for the last two years. I exercise five days / week, take my vitamins, get my rest, have been losing weight (deliberately). I'm about 25 pounds lighter than I was three years ago, my blood pressure is down (on a generic maintenance med) and I walk about a mile (round trip) to my lab and back home every day.
You don't have to have it; but if I'm hit by a truck, I'll probably have no assets left once the sickcare system gets through with me. Makes me extra careful going about my business.
Anyone else lose health insurance during graduate school? Is this a bug or a feature of the graduate school system nationally?
The notion that insurance companies have any incentive to control health care costs is absurd. Insurance is a cost plus business. Besides the interest earned on premium float their operating profit is derived as a percentage of total premiums charged - say around 15%.
What is more profitable - 15% on 1 billion in premiums or 15% on 2 billion in premiums? The faster health costs escalate the more the insurers earn. Since the insurers do not provide any real life health services like doctors, nurses, labs, and hospitals, they are essentially a bookie working the spread and holding the bets. What bookie get 15% margins? We live in an ass-backward world.
I put a lot of blame on doctors for this MRI & CT scan racket!
My wife had a kidney stone smashed by a lithotripsy machine. We received three bills - one from the urologist, another for the facility where the stone smashing was done, and another for the use of the machine plus an anethesiologist expense.
After diligent digging into the Nevada Secretary of State's web site, I found that the urology group owned everything! The building, the machine, etc. They had layers of corporations in Nevada hiding this fact! They are a lot of the healthcare problem in America.
If a doctor owns an MRI machine, do you think its usage will increase with his patients?
They are just as bad as Wall Street in their greed!
Well, with fluoride (and Draino to counteract the corrosive effects of fluoride on the pipes) in the water leaching calcium out of bones and teeth making them hard and brittle, with chlorine/fluoride, among other things, destroying thyroid function and the immune system, with RoundUp, Bt and soon-to-be Agent Orange (2,4-D) as byproducts in almost all processed foods and corn, soy, canola, pharmaceuticals and vitamin/mineral supplements (that are supposed to make you healthy) thanks to the GMO industry and the fox (ex Monsanto executive) running the henhouse, and with just about every prescribed synthetic drug being designed with a huge list of side effects for which there are more drugs with side effects, the pharmacuetical industry has nothing to worry about. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.
The rapid escallation in medical costs really began with the introduction of HMO's. No one got a bill to see what costs really were, and everything was free. People would go to a doctor with sniffles because it was free. And the HMO groups encouraged people to see their doctors often, so that their monthly quota of office visits was met. If you don't get a bill and you have unlimited access to a doctor, the system becomes corrupt. The few times I have gone to a doctor's office, I am amazed by how many people are there to see a doctor for the common cold. Geez, go to bed, get some rest, and eat chicken soup!
I live in Australia and the health care system is a dream. Relatively cheap, top quality, available to all. What's the secret? It's called Single Payer. Instead of five girls in the back room with files to the ceiling, figuring out the thousands of co-pays and reimbursement levels and plans and payment details, each doctor has one girl who manages it all.
I went to the doc the other day, put the treatment on my credit card ($85 bucks for a few suspect moles to be removed), and in less than three days the reimbursement was in my account.
But no, Obama took Single Payer off the table at the start of his health care initiative. Wouldn't want any insurance company CEOs having to sell their fourth vacation homes or anything...
It's not the total solution but it saves at least 25-30% IMO.
I'm pretty happy here in Kanuckistan. I had an Insulinoma that almost killed me. The hospital bill did not kill me either.
Australia is not America. Thanks for sharing how awesome your health care is today. Check in with us in 5 years when China collapses and so do you.
yup. i'm haven't played the doctor game now for over 15 years & feel fabulous ! i avoid doctors like the plague & am healthier & richer for it. it's a racket.
Eventually everyone will get their way and the government will get out of healthcare which means if you are injured in a car wreck forget about 911, call a taxi to take you to ...
... some sawbones with his office in the back room of a bar, a bloody apron and shaky hands.
Just like now but without the high fees.
'Healthcare' in the US is a racket a close cousin to a Ponzi scheme.
The healthcare system is sick and there ain't a fucking honest doctor in the house.
Instead they use financial quackery to cost shift and inflate prices.
Pay doctors for their time instead of testing, and testing plummets. Get the corporations out of health care and the costs will plummet.
Then, eventually, get the government out, and the market will take care it.
Your post is the winner have you read this story
Stung by a Scorpion, Then by a Hospital. This Could Happen to You
An Arizona woman was stung by a scoprion. She went to the hospital. It gave her two shots. Then it charged her $39,652.
Per shot.
In Mexico, the same shot costs $100.
Then it charged her extra fees for the visit. Total bill: over $83,000.
Conclusion: government-regulated health care is not working for patients. It is working great for hospitals.
Nowhere in the world has the "Fee for service" model in Healthcare been able to control costs. This mainly because the consumer operates along the lines of "The Doctor knows best" and is not infomed enough to be able to shop around and compare.
Incidentally, "Doctor DOES know best", which is why around 18% of the top 1% income earners are physicians!!
You should see the insurance rates for OBGYN's. High rates to combat ambulance chasers. But if the problem were just trial attorneys, we would have fixed it a long time ago. One of our local hospitals sold a majority stake HCA over a decade ago; 49% of the hospital is still owned by a surviving Foundation of the original owners. The proceeds of the 51% sale were the seed money of the Foundation and its net assets now sit at well over $200M. Through conservative investments in Treasuries, the Foundation makes roughly $8M per year and spends less than half of that. Just think of all of the hospital bills that could be paid with this largess? However, there is no concern for lowering pricing to increase access to healthcare. The Foundation is happy with its money. Hospitals and non-profits are funny little islands where a small group of doctors/directors spend massive amounts of money (financed by the local bankers) to build one grand project after another. There is never any concern about cost because sickness is the most recession proof business around and ego is the greatest narcotic among the powerful.
Why are the prices high? GE still has to pay Jack's pension.
GE still has to pay Jack's pension.
GE can afford to pay Jacks pension..................
GE is paying Jacks pension with TARP bailout money.
Groupon the entire system. Way overpriced. Starve this beast
When I was a child my doctor treated everything I had with "a shoot."
Now every time I see the doctor ---for anything, even a cough---he says he needs an MRI or CAT Scan. I guess it's just coincidence that he owns the machines?
When you tell your doctor you have a cough, he has to follow a procedure that rules out malignancy, a punctured lung, pneumonia, bronchitis.
If he does not do this, and you return in 6 months with bloody sputum, you have every right to sue him for negligence.
He also has to say "follow up in 6 months" in his report until it is determiend "benign and stable."
I've worked in this field for 30 years and have come across a few swindlers (Pakistani doctor in neurology who turned out to be working with 2 attorneys in workers compensation and minor car accident soft tissue "injuries". He lost his license to practice.
I had cancer myself several years ago and ended up in Santa Barbara's Sansum Clinic as it is close by. My oncologist wanted me to take chemo. In fact, I received 3 different opinions and they all wanted me to do chemo. I then found out that oncologists buy chemotherapy meds from pharmaceutical companies and then sell them out of their office at a marked up price.
In the end, I refused chemo in the end and of course lived to tell about it. I refi'ed my home and sent all my laboratory studies and slides to John Hopkins for 2nd opinion, had a gene profile run on my tumor cells at a lab in San Fran. In the end, I spent about 180,000 for a small nonaggressive tumor (65,000 for radiation therapy with was mammosite - like seeding prostate but somewhat different.
I of course was run ragged in the medical care system. But, thanks to information on the internet at web site forums, and the ability to have your slides read by others (always get 2nd opinion with cancer) for nominal fee (65.00 at John Hopkins) I was able to take charge of my medical care and not put my body through chemo which is quite toxic to heart among other things. So I have run into some crooks
(The Oncotype DX test determines how specific genes are expressed (that is, their level of activity) within a tumor sample. The measurement of these genes is calculated to yield an individualized result called a breast cancer Recurrence Score®.
Very good info bunny. Thanks.
It's hard to starve regulated monopolies. Every ER x-ray has to be diagnosed by a doctor. I have an IT friend who set up a FTTH connection for a local radiologist so that he could remotely "diagnose" ER patients at surrounding rural clinics that do not have a radiologist on staff. This radiologist may get a notification/email in the middle of the night so that he can "diagnose" the x-ray. He earns $2500 per remote diagnosis. The last figure I had (before he began the remote business), he was making in excess of $700k. He's radiologist for goodness sake. It's not like he's fixing hips or doing spinal surgery.
Radiologists do make a lot but they are diagnostic and without an x-ray, who knows what is going on. Remote radiology reading is very common. Nighthawk Radiology is the most common team I have heard of along with Alta Vista Radiology and they cover the midnight shift for radiologists in most hospitals. Where radiologists make their money is having the hospital in their local town covered and then separately creating an outpatient radiology clinic under a corporatoin they form.
A patient coming into the ER with "abdominal pain" could be suffering from a number of things - an aneurysm, gallstone, bowel obstruction or perforation. You must find out exactly what it is initially so the patient does not die in the ER from the consequences of delayed treatment. MVA patients get the full head to toe diagnostic studies to rule out arterial injuries and fractures or contusions to solid organs among other things. Time is of the essence in certain cases.
90 year old and above patients who are given joint replacements, bypass grafts, care just like a 70 year old would is really what I believe needs to be addressed. They may get a 100,000 procedure only to die of a stroke, cardiac arrest or cancer less than a year later.
Radiologists and surgeons do deserve the money they earn in my view.


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Great Experiences that Students at College Online Miss
May 15, 2012 by Justin C59 Comments
Going to college online might seem to deprive students of things that many associate with "normal" college life. Then again, what are the things that students miss by attending online as opposed to a normal campus? Let us count the ways that online differs from IRL campus life if that is really what it is.
Online students probably won't experience the joys of having a drunken dorm rat end up wandering into their room and go to sleep on their floor. Yep. Happened to a friend of mine and his girlfriend, they awoke to find a young woman recumbent upon their dorm room floor snoring. She woke up saying, "Oh, Donna, I had the weirdest dream about riding the elevator last night."
Suddenly, the young woman realized that the person with the beard couldn't be Donna. Nope, it was some guy and the carpet beneath her wasn't hers and, by the way, this wasn't her room…it wasn't even her dorm. She fainted. When she came to again, two faces hovered over hers. Neither one was her roommate, Donna. That's when she said, "Okay, so that elevator thing probably wasn't a dream was it?" Both heads moved back and forth in the universal negative. Hastily locating her purse from beneath their bed, the young woman left embarrassed by an unplanned drunken sleep walk.
That was just one of the great college memories that at online student won't have. They aren't in dormitories with universal keys etc. But, that young woman's experience wasn't all that embarrassing, a potential student might think. Surely, the rest of the college experience would be worth it. That brings up item two of the things that online students miss. Three months later, the same young woman met a very funny and familiar-seeming young man. They were very attracted to one another.
The young man seemed like someone that she had known. The young woman seemed strangely familiar. They began a round of the "weirdest things that had happened to them in college." After the normal round of when Professor So and So did this, the young man said, "I think that the absolutely strangest thing that every happened to me was when I was dating X. We were in her dorm room one night. We went to sleep just like any other night, but in the morning, there was a drunken girl on the floor of our room. I guess she had gotten lost from the kegger in one of the downstairs rooms." The young women grew flushed. "What dorm does X live in?" She said very quietly.
"Dorm N," The young man replied suddenly noticing that his date looked very uncomfortable, "why do you ask?" "Room B8?" she asked. "No, D8," he replied, "that's two floors above B…hey, she had red hair. You have red hair. Did, do, was she?" Nodding the young woman said, "That was me. All I remember was riding in the elevator like that ad about painting the town red in my bra. I have no idea how I got into your room that night. I guess I walked in my sleep."
Yep. An online student wouldn't have that stellar experience either. Online students might have a sick roommate puke in their shoes. That might happen. Probably not with the regularity that it does on a campus with a central health clinic conveniently located as far as possible from the dorms. That might happen. An online student might have a roommate from a country with an unpronounceable name who likes to cook in their room with a wood fire in a fire pit. That might happen, but probably not as often as on a college campus where the computer matches roommates.
There are so many things that online students miss out on by not going to college on a traditional campus including monster tuition and giant student loans. They probably kick themselves every time that they realize that they will miss out on some of the experiences above. But…that's the beauty of online, accredited schools courses transfer.

subset: commoncrawl


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EpiCentre, with its 15-story hotel, movie theaters, bowling alley, bars, stores and offices, covers a block of downtown Charlotte. Developer Afshin Ghazi estimates it has cost about $180 million. Some subcontractors who have worked on it and didnt get paid fear it might cost them their businesses.
Its been devastating, says Mike Treadaway, owner of Treadaway & Sons Painting & Wallcovering Inc. in Charlotte. I have exercised every option that I have as far as borrowing money. I borrowed $50,000 from my line of credit from the bank. Ive used $5,000 of my overdraft protection on my checking account. Now, to make my payroll this week, Im going to have to go into my personal savings.
Treadaway has filed liens against Ghazis company, Pacific Avenue LLC, and the general contractor, Lancaster, S.C.-based Advanced Construction & Consulting LLC, hoping to get nearly $60,000 he says hes owed for work done last winter. There are so many people that are involved in this. Ive got a list right in front of me of at least 15 subcontractors that have done work and not gotten paid. And theres probably another 10 or 15 I dont even know about.
Treadaway says he had to cut staff from 25 to six earlier this year, partly because of the sluggish economy, partly because he hasnt been paid for the work at EpiCentre. This summer, he got some new projects and added a dozen employees but struggled to find money to pay them. Karen Codespoti says her $500,000-a-year business, Concord-based Luna Stone Inc., is out about $50,000 for an installation of quartz in the bowling alley last winter and has laid off four workers. In early August, it was just her and her husband, trying to keep money coming in to pay off creditors. Were on the verge of being out.
Advanced Construction referred questions about EpiCentre to its attorney, Bill Navarro of Charlotte, but he didnt return phone calls. Ghazi says Advanced Construction was hired by EpiCentre tenants, not by his company, to upfit their space. He says he talked about the problems with Rob Lenderman, Advanced Constructions vice president of business development. He told me he had been commingling his funds, and it had gotten him in trouble because he was using money from first jobs to pay for second jobs and so on, Ghazi says.
Tenants told Ghazi they had paid Lenderman in full. He failed to pay his subcontractors. So this is an Advanced Construction issue as far as Im concerned.
CHARLOTTE Diagnostic Devices will shift production here from China and add about 100 jobs, bringing employment to 150 within a year. The company, which moved its headquarters to the Queen City in 2006, makes blood-glucose meters for blind diabetes patients.
WADESBORO Yale Industrial Products plans to spend $3 million to expand its plant and add 65 jobs within three years, giving it about 200 here. The Charlotte-based company, part of New York-based Columbus McKinnon, designs, makes and markets material-handling equipment.
WOODLEAF Hooker Furniture plans to close its local Bradington-Young plant by the end of the year. The Martinsville, Va.-based company will transfer production to its Cherryville factory. About 23 employees will lose jobs.
GASTONIA Greenville, S.C., health-system executive Valinda Rutledge will become president and CEO this fall of CaroMont Health, parent of Gaston Memorial Hospital. Rutledge, 53, will replace Wayne Shovelin, who in February said he planned to retire after more than 20 years as chief executive.
CHARLOTTE McKay Belk, 52, stepped down as co-president and chief merchandising officer of Belk to take a yearlong sabbatical. When he returns to the department-store chain, hell become vice chairman of the board. His brother Tim is CEO and chairman, while brother Johnny is co-president and chief operating officer.
SALISBURY Rowan Regional Medical Center hired Melissa L. Robson as chief operating officer, replacing John Pruitt, who resigned in May. Robson was president of Presbyterian Hospital Huntersville.
CHARLOTTE Duke Energy plans to build a wind farm near Burlington, Colo. It will have 34 turbines on the 6,000-acre site and sell the electricity to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, based in Westminster, Colo.


text: I have used Federal HST .40 in my nightstand gun for a while, and I recently got my new XDSC 9mm, and my permit, now I need to find a source for Federal HST in 9mm. The .40 seems easier to get, than the 9mm, anyone have a good place to order it from??


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Same battery for mount and dew system?
Posted 13 November 2012 - 09:25 PM
CCD makers asking for a separate battery is probably for a different reason. There were some reports that radio interference from dew heaters caused noise in cameras. How widespread this was I have no idea. I have not seen this in my own work.
It is well documented that some CCD cameras (Atik 383, see Atik forums) do not work to specs at low voltages. Most 12V devices work just fine with voltages as low as 11.5V but the Atik 383 becomes very noisy if the voltage dips below 12V. Most owners have purchased a regulated supply to solve this issue.
The mount issue can only be a fear of inductive back voltages from the drive motors. No need to speculate, it's an easy thing to see if you have an oscilloscope. Hook up your mount and look for voltage spikes across the battery terminal as you slew. Any volunteers? I don't have an o'scope.
Posted 13 November 2012 - 09:52 PM
Posted 13 November 2012 - 09:56 PM
Sigh...and I was just getting into AP....
Posted 14 November 2012 - 12:23 AM
It has not been a problem for me. I am not going to carry five batteries into the field for five devices. Reasonable precautions like having fuses and modern electronic design should take care of most likely scenarios.
Could we have even hearsay evidence (not theoretical possibilities) of mounts or other devices kicking the bucket because they were plugged into the same battery?
Posted 14 November 2012 - 01:42 AM
Posted 14 November 2012 - 09:03 AM
There is no "Inductance" in a splitter. Inductance takes a coil, and these devices do not use coils. They simply have buss bars to distrubute the voltage to the different sockets.
And inductance by itself will not cause a spike that is bigger than the voltage put into it.
In other words, if you pass current though a coil, and then remove the current, when the field collapses, it can induce a current into a nearyby coil.
If the nearby coil has more widings than the first coil, you can get more voltage out of the second coil than you put into the first coil. This is a "Step-Up" transformer.
If the second coil has fewer windings, you get a step-down transformer.
But even here, the amount of induction is tiny. So, to get enough efficiency, you need a bunch of steel plates that carries the magnetic force efficiently betwen the coils.
This is why transformers are so big and heavy.
So, there really isn't any mechanism in a splitter that would allow the voltage to triple.
The last method would be a pulse forming network where you use inuctance and capacitance together to build up a large charge so you can discharge it at once. Radars used to use these pulse forming networks, but they are generally large and expensive, and not typically found in 12 volt splitters.
This is what my electronic engineering education and background would have to say on the topic.
You can't get a 40 volt spike out of a baattery, a splitter, or a battery/splitter combination.
To get more voltage than you have from a battery, special circuitry would be required, and this circuitry is not inside of a splitter. They are simple devices with little or no electonic circuitry.
Sorry, but I strongly believe that the OP is being given bad advice on the "Don't run booth of a battery because of 40 volt spikes" point.
If he wants to run it this way, he will not damage his mount because of spikes. There is not a mechanism in the battery or splitter that would allow for the voltage to go over the rated voltage of the battery.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 11:13 AM
But, what do I know? I have already given you my advice: batteries are cheap, power sources are cheap and if you use unregulated and dual-operational power along with your electronic mount you WILL ultimately end up with dead components. Maybe not now, maybe not until 2014, but you will end up with a spike."
"If using DC battery power, the current is regulated naturally and will not spike unless you have other devices connected to the same battery.
Regulated would be if you are using an AC-to-DC converter."
I do not use an AC to DC converter. I only use a full size car battery. Going by what he says would I be ok to ditch the splitter and wire in a seperate cigarette lighter plug? No disrespect to anyone here because you have been at this much longer than me but I'm sure Dr Clay has his reasons for telling me this and knows what he is talking about. I just DO NOT want to take any chances with my equipment because I cant just run out and replace it the next day if it tears up
This is the splitter I'm using and here is the battery.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 11:15 AM
Attached Files
Posted 14 November 2012 - 11:29 AM
The only way to get more voltage than the battery can provide would be to use some kind of electrical circuit to build up a charge (a pulse forming network using capacitors and inductors working together) or a transformer, which is only used with AC power.
I do not know what DR. Clay is a doctor of, but as an electronics engineer, I would say that however he came by this position, it is in error.
Anyone that has a formal education in electronics engineering would tell you that you can't get a 40 volt peak from a 12 volt battery/splitter combination. There is no mechanism to amplify the volatge over the 12 volts that the battery can provide.
To get a higher voltage, you need some circuitry to create it and none exists in this configuration.
But I don't care what the OP does really. If Dr Clay scared him bad enough with this information that he will base his telesecope buying decision on this information, that is his problem.
For the rest of the people that are using this and not experiencing problems, you can rest assured that there are not going to be any 40 volt spikes due to running a dew heater off of the same battery as the telescope even if using a splitter.
If that were the case, my guess is that we would have many many reports of burned out hand controllers from people doing it, and as best as I know, I have not seen this reported by anyone on the forum in 10 years.
I guess we have beat the topic to death now, but I feel bad that the OP has based his decision on what I know to be faulty data.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 11:31 AM
There is no "Inductance" in a splitter. Inductance takes a coil, and these devices do not use coils. They simply have buss bars to distrubute the voltage to the different sockets.
Actually, any conductor (i.e. any wire) has inductance. While a coil has MORE inductance than a straight wire, the wire between the source (battery) and load (mount or heater) can certainly have enough to cause a voltage spike. And if you look a the formula for induced voltage (V=L di/dt), you'll see that it has NOTHING to do with the supply voltage. It's only related to the inductance and the rate of change of the current. Thus, when you have a large current that you're trying to instantaneously make zero (turning it off) it doesn't take much inductance to get a really hefty voltage.
And lest someone wishes to question my credentials as at the start of this thread, I actually have a Ph.D. in Physics, and am Director of Technology Development for the world leader in test equipment for evaluating electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Thus, this is pretty much the type of stuff I've dealt with on a daily basis for about 25 years! It's pretty easy to get both conducted and radiated interference from unexpected sources. At the same time, there are some simple rules of thumb that will make a lot of difference too. People generally don't realize that there's no such thing as a true "ground" or a perfect conductor, and that the weird rules that electrical codes impose, etc. really do come from somewhere and have reasons to exist.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 11:44 AM
Hmmm...for some reason the pic didnt come up. I'll try again. I can easily wire in another plug next to the one I already have if the splitter is what he's saying could cause the problem. From what I understand he's saying a 12v battery IS regulated unless something else is plugged into the same socket?
The voltage AT THE BATTERY TERMINALS is going to be pretty constant. But if any loop of wire has an inductance, can anyone see the loop in this picture? The larger the loop, the larger the inductance. One of those rules of thumb I mentioned is that you always try to minimize the size of a wire loop and you NEVER put something metallic/magnetic in between a large loop, especially for AC (that inductive coupling thing that was mentioned previously). To minimize the inductance, your supply wires should come together as quickly as possible and ideally be twisted together. There's more to the idea of a zip cord or a twisted pair than just the convenience of having a single cable vs. separate wires flopping about.
Again, we're generally talking about small contributions and a limited chance of a problem, but accidents do happen. Chances are that a lot of the surges people experience occur when connecting/disconnecting the different components.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 01:33 PM
Posted 14 November 2012 - 01:50 PM
Posted 14 November 2012 - 01:56 PM
One large battery ,good connections, reasonably sized wires, should suffice;and I wouldn't worry.We're NOT dealing with voltages induced by EMP ,lightning, only a couple amps at most.The battery itself is a giant capacitor that will absorb voltage spikes.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 02:44 PM
In the real and ordinary world of automobiles ONE battery powers multiple computerized processor units controlling the engine ,brakes,etc,,also there are power doors and windows, and seats,electrical defrosters,GPS units, stereo radios, and they seem to do pretty well.
Yeah, but do you have any idea just how much testing those systems go through to make that happen? Take a look at this lab's website to get an idea of the number of standards every component gets tested to. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers the days of ignition noise on my radio, and that was before there were any other electronics in your car.
Now, while I'm sure that companies like Celestron have to worry about some of the emissions directives (as evidenced by the ferrite core they're now sticking on the end of the hand controller cable as a last-minute fix), I would be very surprised if any of the dew heaters or other after-market components that we all love have ever seen the inside of a lab!
So while many of us (including myself) have never had a problem running mutliple items off the same power supply (AC or battery) that doesn't mean that others haven't or that it can't happen. I'm certainly not going to tell ANYONE that "It'll never happen to you." because it just might, and I don't want to be responsible for the decision that led to their problem. Like anything else, there are precautions that can be taken to minimize the chances of a problem, the most drastic being completely independent supplies. Even there you aren't guaranteed of no problems due to unexpected disconnects, electro-static discharge (ESD), etc.
Heck, one of the coolest catastrophic failures I've ever seen was caused by an ESD on a powered variable speed drive system. A switching power supply was used for the 12V low voltage supply that drove some control electronics for a DC brushless motor. The weird thing on the motor drive was that all of the control circuitry was mid-rail on a ~200V DC supply, meaning that everything had to remain isolated from "ground" to give a +/- 100V supply for the motor. With the unit powered up, a technician was putting the plastic safety cover back on that went behind the power supply board and across all the components, and all of the sudden, every drive transistor on the drive unit blew! It turns out that there was enough static on the plastic cover that it caused an ESD to the back of the 12V power supply. For an instant, there was an ionized path between the isolated supply and the chassis of the case, and the 200V supply shorted right across that, blowing up everything.
BTW, on a related note, I know that the RCA jack on my particular brand of dew heater is wired backwards from anything I would have ever expected. Thus, the outside shell is the +12V, meaning that if it ever comes in contact with my mount when running on the same supply, BOOM! Arcing and blown fuses, and who knows what else. So again, it's just a question of how much of your investment you want to risk.
Posted 14 November 2012 - 09:39 PM
6000 ft?
Posted 15 November 2012 - 01:13 AM
No one has volunteered even anecdotal or hearsay evidence to show that a mount was damaged from being plugged into the same power source as a camera or dew heater. All that was offered was a faint theoretical possibility.
So all this remains is a gaggle of opinions.
Posted 15 November 2012 - 04:23 AM
How many feet of wire are in the motor of your mount? And what's the di/dt of an open circuit? Zero times infinity is still somewhere in between zero and infinity. The inductance is non-zero and the di/dt is darn high. I'm surprised an EE isn't intimately experienced with the ringing of circuits, which is what we're talking about.
And how much wire would be required to produce an inductance required to triple the input DC voltage?
6000 ft?
Posted 15 November 2012 - 10:21 AM
Posted 15 November 2012 - 04:10 PM
Here's the test setup. A three-way cigarette lighter splitter is plugged into the truck accessory port with the engine off (12V battery power only). The oscilloscope is connected to the power cable that would normally run my Meade mount. The cigarette lighter is used to simulate the load of a dew heater, and the oscilloscope is configured to trigger on any voltage rising above about 16 volts.
Here's what happens when the lighter reaches temperature and pops out, breaking the circuit to the "dew heater". There are actually a number of spikes due to the lighter not switching off all at once, but the final disconnect results in a spike of about 37 volts! Note too how the voltage going to the mount is not at the battery voltage to start with due to the load of the heater and the losses in the cable that it's pulling the current through. After the current shuts off and things settle down, it's back to full power.
Here's a zoomed in view of that biggest pulse. Note that if it wasn't for a second harmonic riding on top of the first oscillation, this would have easily exceeded the 40V or more pulse that's been warned of here
It should be noted (in case someone bothers to check) that this splitter came with a "battery protection circuit" that didn't work and wouldn't have done much for the battery if it did. That was removed and the outputs cabled directly, so there's nothing in line with this other than the single zip cord you see. Note that I also ran this same test monitoring directly off the truck auxiliary port with the lighter in the normal lighter port and got pretty much the same result. So much for all the electronics in the vehicle, huh? Thing is, those are DESIGNED to handle the fluctuations caused by this sort of thing, not to mention the noise from an alternator, the ignition, the starter motor, electric windows, power locks, etc. Do you trust that your mount was built to the same standards?
So, feel free to re-run this experiment yourself. It's your choice whether you want to experiment with your expensive scope equipment or not. Myself, I think I'll be re-thinking my own lazy behavior about running multiple equipment off the same supply and see about putting some signal conditioning and suppression in front of my good stuff. I'm not sure I trust that Celestron and Meade did it for me.
And as a final note, remember that this can happen easily with ANY sudden discontinuity in a high current load. I'd suspect that accidentally unplugging your scope while it's slewing is probably as bad or worse than your dew heater flipping on and off.
At any rate, it's up to you who you want to believe. I know what the data shows me, and I always do my best to not mislead people because I THINK I'm an expert. It just so happens in this case I did know what I was talking about. And so did the much maligned Dr. Sharrod.
Happy Viewing!
Posted 15 November 2012 - 09:36 PM
Now that's great info. Surely we see transients. By the way is the timescale in microseconds?
The question is what damage follows. As Eddgie and others, including me, have pointed out years of use has not resulted in damage.
As you point out the voltage spikes whenever there is a rapid rise in the current (L.di/dt and all that). Now wouldn't that also be the case if one were to simply switch ON a mount? The current goes from 0-2A in a very small time interval. So if transients were to damage mounts wouldn't turning on a mount itself pose a hazard? Most light bulbs blow from the transient when they are turned on.
Now I don't know about specific mount designs. It would seem from the fact that many users are using a setup with multiple inputs and not seeing problems that mount electronics must have some protection built in against these type of transients. That is just an inference. You are better qualified to comment on this than I am.
My own setup has four outputs branching out from an 85 AH wet lead acid battery. These are not scopestuff splitters, but permanent branches made of large gauge cables. I turn on the dew-controller, then my mount, then laptop (plugged in) and finally my imaging gear one by one - not all at the same time. Haven't had any problems.
Meade mount owners who use the DS system have seen some problems. These were not from transients but from power interruptions from voltages running low (brown outs) or the power cable getting accidentally pulled in the middle of a slew. This didn't fry the mount but just garbled the firmware. That is a major headache. I have successfully reset the code in the autostar microcontroller after a cable pull snafu.
So in sum I've not heard of a mount being fried by transients. I am willing to take the risk. To each his own ...
Posted 15 November 2012 - 10:49 PM
Yes, the highest spike only lasts for a few tenths of microseconds which means that even though there's a pretty good voltage, there's not a lot of energy there. That's still longer than a typical ESD event, although the voltages there can be in the kV range. The full event was about 50 uS, and you can see on some of the earlier peaks that only hit 25V or so, there's considerably more energy involved there (they stay at a higher voltage longer).
I too have used multiple items on one linear power supply (gasp! that's worse than a battery, right?!! ) for quite a while, and although the total number of hours probably aren't huge, I haven't had a failure either. Whether that's because the equipment I'm using is relatively immune, the way I have it set up is relatively safe, or I've just been lucky and the clock is ticking, who knows. The important point is that just because you or I haven't had a failure is not definitive proof that someone else won't, or that the next time you fire up your system something won't go wrong. So telling someone else not to worry about it and there's absolutely no chance of a problem is just irresponsible. It may be that there's a statistically small chance of a problem, but even that's not clear from a handful of users saying "I haven't had a problem."
And no, powering on doesn't cause the same type of spike as powering off does. It's a matter of where the currents and voltages are. When you power on, there is NO current and only the 12V at the battery. The 12V is applied across the resistive, inductive, and capacitive load of the equipment that you're turning on. The voltage has to force the current to start flowing by the inverse of that equation. That is, the rate of change of the current from zero to full current is the voltage applied by the battery divided by the inductance. If the inductance is high, it takes longer to get the current flowing than if it's low. This is also of course an exponential relationship (as were all of the curves I measured) since as more current flows, the voltage differential moves from the battery terminals out to the point where the load is.
That leads to your next point, which is that the closer the split is to the battery, the less likely you are to have a problem. Nice big cables also have lower inductance (as well as lower resistance) than small ones. The closer the split point is to the source, the less likely the stray reactance (combination of C, L, and R) will cause significant voltage differences on the various supply lines.
All of these topics touch on things that are part of good power supply design. All well designed DC electronics should have a nice range of capacitors at their inputs to help mitigate the effect of supply line inductance. When the electronics need a quick source or sink of current, it goes to the capacitors rather than building up voltage trying to force it down the line. Unfortunately I've repeatedly seen engineers (with EE degrees ) forget the most fundamental aspects of power supply decoupling. So who knows what's in the various equipment we're using? Some may be pretty robust, but I suspect most of it (especially the items that are likely to CAUSE the interference) aren't designed or tested to the level of most of your mainstream consumer electronics.
At any rate, as I said early on in this thread, there are some simple rules of thumb that will help minimize the potential of problems, and thus conversely it's possible to have BIG problems if you get things set up poorly or if you aren't careful when you fire up and shut things down. Chances are pretty good that some of the problems reported are due to ESD when people are connecting and disconnecting things in the dry cold air. So regardless of what you do there's always the potential to damage something electronic, especially when it has exposed connections like most mounts do. At the end of the day it's up to each user to decide what they're comfortable with. We just all need to be considerate of our fellow enthusiasts and avoid making unsupported blanket statements about things where they could encounter a very different experience than we've had.
Posted 16 November 2012 - 09:55 AM
Any exposed socket or plug above or below ground is a disaster waiting to happen.Like the "connector cable " consisting of two male AC plugs for emergency power hookup-a BAD idea that is VERY dangerous.
Posted 16 November 2012 - 10:15 AM
Posted 17 November 2012 - 02:27 PM
But, seriously, great stuff. I'm in sunny SoCal, so haven't been using dew heaters, but I am interested in an order/procedure for turning OFF the equipment (if that could cause spikes). Also, I'm running my mount, CCD, focuser and USB hub (when I bother to power it) off of one battery (an 80ah LiFePO4) and my laptop off of another battery (20ah LiFePO4). I don't use a cigarette lighter splitter, but Anderson PowerPole connectors/splitter and inline fuses.
So, any particular order to turning things off, and when I do, should I unplug them from the splitter before turning the next one off? Hey, if it's simple, better to be safe than sorry, and if it's difficult...screw it.


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text:
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November 28, 2014 – ongoing
Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 W. 60th St. (bet. Amsterdam and West End Aves.)
Manhattan, NY
- website: berenstainbearslive.com
get directions
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The Eerie concept is a group of bars with a ghoulish gothic theme throughout. Think alchemy bottles of spells and potions, hidden doorways and lots of different nooks and crannies. Come Whether you choose a creepy cocktail from our seven deadly sins menu or some good honest food from our devilish food menu, we will guarantee you a truly eerie time! Scroll across a book and select to explore your nearest venue.
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Manufacturer's Description
The Canon i550 Color Bubble Jet Printer delivers professional-level performance with the ultimate home-printer value. Speeds of up to 18 ppm in black and up to 11 ppm in color will let you race through Web pages and documents faster than you ever thought possible. Quality is amazing with an ultra-high resolution of up to 4800 x 1200 color dpi. The i550 printer even turns your desktop into a virtual photo lab-enjoy stunning borderless 4 x 6 prints in less than 48 seconds and photos in sizes up to 8.5 x 11. The i550 printer features the unique Canon Think Tank System that combines individual ink tanks with intelligent ink management for ease-of-use and lower printing costs


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UPDATE 05-31-2011 at 6:30pm by Jerry Askin
A woman and her young daughter killed in an accident last week were laid to rest Tuesday morning.
Eric Reeves joined hundreds of people Tuesday as they remembered 24-year old Nicole Powell and her 5-year old daughter Hannah. Both who died last week in a car accident.
Reeves says, "This is a major catastrophe. You only lose one family member you lose two, and anytime there's a child involved, it magnifies it."
Troopers say last Wednesday Nicole was riding on highway 27 when the car she was driving, overcorrected and landed in a ditch. Five-year old Hannah died on the scene. Nicole died the next day at TMH.
"People will remember what beautiful people they were and help them memory survive," says Alison Allen.
Alison Allen has known Nicole her entire life and she can't imagine life without her.
Allen says, "Nicole was just a beautiful, energetic spirit. Loved life, loved her family, loved her friends."
"They were wonderful people, they went to church down here and they brought those kids to Sunday school and church," says Sammie Gray.
The mother leaves behind a husband and 8-year old son. Troopers are still investigating the exact cause of the accident. We'll let you know when more information becomes available.
[UPDATE] 5-31 Noon --
Family and Friends are gathered in Jefferson County to pay their respects to a mother and her young child. The two were killed in a car accident last week.
Troopers say last Wednesday, Nicole was riding on Highway 27 when the car over-corrected, hit a pickup truck, and landed in a ditch. 5-year old Hannah died on the scene and Nicole was pronounced dead the next day at TMH. The family requested there be no media inside, but we were outside at the funeral. At least 200 people are here to say a final goodbye to this mother and her daughter.
We'll bring you more reaction from those who knew Nicole and Hannah personally and the latest on the investigation tonight on Eyewitness News.
Eyewitness News is at the funeral for Hannah and Nicole Powell at Wacissa Pentecostal Holiness church.
Pictures are attached above
Stay with WCTV for details.
Funeral services have been arranged for a mother and daughter killed in a tragic car crash earlier this week.
24-year old Nicole Powell and her five-year-old daughter Hannah will be laid to rest Tuesday at 11 a-m at Wacissa pentecostal holiness church.
Powell crashed her car on hwy 27 on Wednesday.
The viewing will be held Monday at 6p-m at Culley's Meadow-Wood Funeral Home.
(Update) 5-26 10:38pm by Amy Long
A Tallahassee family deals with heartbreak after a mother and daughter die as a result of a car wreck.
Billy Powell keeps a picture of his little girl in a homemade popsicle stick frame in his work truck at Mr. Rooter in Tallahassee.
Five year old Hannah was riding along Highway 27 with her mom and Billy's wife, 24-year-old Nicole Powell Wednesday afternoon, when according to police reports, the car they were in over corrected, slammed into a pick-up truck and landed in a ditch.
Hannah died on the scene and Nicole fought for her life until around 1 o'clock Thursday 5/26 afternoon.
Official reports as to what happened have not been released.
Holly and Justin Tillman , who own Mr. Rooter and have a son in the same class as Hannah's brother, are still trying to grasp the reality.
"I drove by. Her and I always intercept and we'd like wave at each other or something. I actually saw the car and called my husband immediately and said, 'will you have Billy call his wife?" says Holly Tillman.
"In a blink of an eye, you know, your whole world can change. For something like this to happen it's kind of unbelievable." says Justin Tillman.
Powell was on her way to pick up her son from school when the wreck took place.
The FHP report says Nicole wasn't wearing her seat belt. She was ejected from the car. The driver of the pick-up truck involved, Dylan Ortiz was left with minor injuries.
Authorities say they aren't sure what caused Powell's car to go off the road in the first place.
Justin and Holly Tillman have set up a memorial fund for Billy Powell and his 8-year-old son:
Nicole and Hannah Powell Memorial Fund
Set up at Hancock Bank and Mr. Rooter
c/o Mr. Rooter
500 Capital Circle SE, Suite B2
Tallahassee, Florida 32301
Check back to WCTV.TV for updates.
[UPDATE] 5-26 2:30pm -
Nicole Powell died around 1:00pm on May 26 when she was taken off life support. She was on her way to pick up her 8-year-old son from school when the accident took place.
[UPDATE] 5-26 Noon -
A Tallahassee mother clings to life. Her daughter died in yesterday's car crash. Today, investigators are working to figure out what caused the accident.
We've called multiple times Thursday morning and still no change. 24-year-old Nicole Powell is in critical condition at TMH.
The car driven by Nicole Powell hit a pick-up truck on Highway 27 near Raymond Tucker Road. Powell's five year old daughter Hannah died. The FHP report says Nicole wasn't wearing her seat belt. She was ejected from the car. The driver of the pick-up truck involved, Dylan Ortiz was left with minor injuries.
"I saw five or six ambulances go up and down the road. I saw the truck and the car on a flat bed, they drove by. The truck was pretty messed up on one side. The car was totally totaled on the passenger side," says witness Charles Harris.
Authorities say they aren't sure what caused Powell to lose control of the car.
We will continue to check on Nicole's condition and update WCTV.tv as soon as more information is released.
[UPDATE] 5-26 11am -
Eyewitness News contacted TMH to find out the status of Nicole Marie Powell. According to the TMH, Powell is still listed as in critical condition as of 11am.
[UPDATE] 5-26 7:45am -
Eyewitness News contacted TMH to find out the status of Nicole Marie Powell. According to the TMH Public Relations Office, she is still listed as in critical condition as of 7:45am.
UPDATE 5-25 8:45 pm
Tallahassee, FL - FHP releases accident report (attached above) which states Hannah Marie Powell, 5, died in the afternoon accident on Apalachee Parkway near Raymond Tucker Road. Nicole Marie Powell, 24, was taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital where she is in critical condition.
Charges are pending the outcome of the investigation.
UPDATE 5-25 5:32pm
Tallahassee, FL - FHP is now reporting this accident is a fatal one. Traffic is still being blocked off, so drivers in the area of Apalachee Parkway and Raymond Tucker Road should use caution and plan for delays.
Tallahassee, Florida - May 25, 2011 -
Pictures are attached above
Eyewitness News is at the scene of a car wreck where a woman was reportedly ejected from her vehicle. The crash happened at around 2:59pm at the intersection of Apalachee Parkway (US-27) and Raymond Tucker Road.
The crash is listed as a vehicle crash with injuries, according to the FHP website.
The westbound lane of US-27 is blocked off at this time.
The Florida Highway Patrol will not release any details at this time, and will not confirm in there was a fatality.
Stay with WCTV for updates.


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SEEKINGBand to Join, Vocalist, Vocalist - Tenor, Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Bass Guitar, Drums, Keyboard, Piano, Background Singer, Vocalist - Alto.
cheap mic, had to record acoustic songs within guitar, and electric next to amp. sounds better with headphones.
Enjoy if enjoyable.
Not looking to try for a label, just make some cash off to the side eventually with a persistant and unwavering band.
If you don't have a premium account and can't message me, feel free to try s://./#!/dhzurick
Little bit about me:
A friend of mine- Doug Reisinger, taught a power chord to me in standard tuning, back when I was fourteen, showed me dropped D and the rest is history. However being self taught- I don't know how to read sheet music, I'm more of one to fret anything that's possible as long as it fits and sounds right(and doesn't kill my hands) than to learn traditional chords or scales - inspired by few, I don't know much of anything aside from what I've developed for myself. I'm just altered power chords however I do got a good ear for constructing a song, of almost any genre funk, blues, country aside.
- Screen name:
- DavidZurick
- Member since:
- Jan 28 2012
- Active over 1 month ago
- Level of commitment:
- Very Committed
- Years playing music:
- 10
- Tend to practice:
- More than 3 times per week
- Available to gig:
- 6-7 nights a week
- Most available:
- Nights
Tool, A perfect Circle, Deftones, Floater, Ludwig van Beethoven.
Fender cd220sce Electric Acoustic Guitar, Jackson Kelly Ke-3 Electric Guitar, B.C. Rich Warbeast Electric Guitar. Ibanez tbx15r amp, Fender 25R amp, Peavy TNT 150 bass amp.


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The mood will be set with cocktails and silent auction at 7 p.m.; dinner to follow at 8 p.m. Guests will be briefed and receive their case file at 7:30 p.m. with the clues necessary to solve the murder. Because it's a Mint Julep event, guests are encouraged to sport their
Entertainment by Huzzah Productions, now celebrating 12 years of entertaining
Some auctions items include;
· Round of Golf for (4) four at either Fuzzy Zoeller's Covered Bridge Golf Course or Champions Pointe.
· Churchill Downs 3rd floor clubhouse box and lunch for (6) six. Certain exclusions apply.
· Lower Level Tickets for (4) to a
· "Stock-the-Bar" A selection of premium Brown-Forman products.
Tickets are $150 a person, $1,200 for a table of eight and may be purchased by calling 502.562.0164. All proceeds to benefit Stage One.
Sponsored by Humana,
Stage One is a member of the Greater Louisville Fund for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, a state agency in the Commerce Cabinet, provides operational support funding for Stage One: The Louisville Children's Theatre with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
Stage One is sponsored by the Yum! Family Series Program.


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Modern Family's Ariel Winter Rocks "Too Young For Ashton" Shirt at L.A. Farmers Market (PHOTOS)
So maybe Ashton Kutcher rambled a bit during last night's Teen Choice Awards, but that's not stopping us from crushing hard on the 35-year-old hottie. And we're not the only ones.
Modern Family's Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy) was seen at the Los Angeles Farmers Market recently, rocking a black T-shirt with the words "Too Young For Ashton" written in pink. Ariel is a mere 20 years younger than Ashton, but hey, a girl can dream!
After all, Ashton was married to Demi Moore who is 15 years his senior, so it seems like age is just a number for the hunky actor. But seeing as Ariel is far from legal (she's only 15!) and Ashton is hot and heavy with Mila Kunis, it looks like this crush will live on in T-shirt form for the adorable Modern Family chick!
What do you think of Ariel's fashion statement? Sound off in the comments.


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Vondelview Bed and Breakfast Amsterdam
Luxury B&B next to the Vondelpark
Luxury B&B next to the Vondelpark
B&B/Apartment Vondel View in Amsterdam: unique in design, style and comfort. Vondel View is a stately townhouse from 1898, ideally situated in a quiet residential street next to the famous Vondel Park and in very close walking distance to the musea area and city center.
The B&B Suite/Apartment has a lot to offer to make your stay as convenient as possible. It emphasis on relaxed living. You will have a complete private floor with orginal hardwood floors and details from 1898. It includes a living room with a full equiped new kitchen, a separate bedroom and a bathroom with jacuzzi with all modern facilities. Flatscreen TV, a private computer, free wifi-fee, a safe, free coffee and tea facilities. Various maps and tourist information.
The Flower Room/Apartment covers a private half floor with a newly renovated bedroom with a sitting area and a modern private bathroom.
Vondel View Bed & Breakfast is located in a quiet residential part of Amsterdam centre, Very close to the major tourist attractions, including museums, the Concertgebouw (concert hall) and shopping areas. It's only a 10 minute walk to Amsterdam's canal area, or a quick ride on the tram.If you like to take the tram it is just around the corner from our residence.
Rates based on double occupancy start at € 145,- per night, all inclusive. There is a minimum stay requirement of two nights.
You can check availability online and send us a reservation request directly from the calendar: for the B&B Suite or for the the Flower Room. We will respond to your request within 24 hours maximum, but usually within just a couple of hours.


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Alex Kennedy Shows that NASCAR is Going to the Dogs (In a Fun Way)
(August 13, 2012)
NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Alex Kennedy has always had a heart as big as his talent. Racing his way to NASCAR the old-fashioned way, this twenty year old from Aztec, New Mexico has amazed people with his talent behind the wheel. Saturday at Watkins Glen International Kennedy took advantage of pit strategy to lead his first laps in NASCAR Nationwide Series action. Despite being out front on older tires he was keeping pace with leaders with Cup experience such as Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards. The team had a strategy to put them in a position to grab Alex's first top ten finish of his career before he lost his left front tire at the worst place on the track and hit the wall in the esses. Saturday he was racing for Dream Factory, an organization that makes dreams come true for children with chronic or life threatening illnesses. Later this year Alex will show us that NASCAR is going to the dogs…literally!
Ever since he was racing his late model at the tight bullring in Albuquerque, New Mexico Alex Kennedy has used his race car as a rolling billboard to make a difference. Alex volunteered his race car to the local library in Farmington, New Mexico to help grow their summer reading program. When he was running ASA Late Models in the Midwest he started representing Dream Factory Inc and would become one of their three National Spokespersons at just fifteen years of age. (NASCAR star Carl Edwards and game show host Wink Martindale are the other two) The young men from the Dream Factory chapter in Central Missouri became Alex's biggest fans and friends for life. Alex has found another organization to help later this year when he races for "Pilots N Paws" at Texas Motor Speedway.
Pilots N Paws is a unique pet rescue organization. They help match rescue groups in need of transportation with private airplane pilots who want to use their planes to do a good deed. The pilots volunteer their time and fuel. Four million pets are put to death because a good home can't be found. Pilots N Paws goal is to give more shelter pets a second chance at a happy life. Alex Kennedy will help raise awareness and some needed funding for Pilots N Paws by using his race car as a rolling billboard. Alex Kennedy and Pilots N Paws will show you that NASCAR is indeed going for the dogs in a fun way at Texas Motor Speedway this year. The great news for NASCAR fans that are pet owners…your pet can go along for the ride by checking out the link below.
We need your help to make this campaign for Pilots N Paws a success. Please share the link above with family and friends on social media and help spread the word.


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- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
- AHRQ, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the lead agency charged with supporting research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost, and broaden access to essential services. AHRQ's broad programs of research bring practical, science-based information to medical practitioners and to consumers and other health care purchasers.
- Atlas of Stroke Mortality: Racial, Ethnic, and Geographic Disparities in the United States
- Developed by the CDC, this site includes interactive state maps allowing a county-by-county break down of information. It shows local disparities in stroke death rates for the 5 largest racial and ethnic groups in the US.
- Census 2000 Gateway
- This page presents data, facts and reports from the latest US Census
- Current Index to Statistics
- Covers statistics and related fields. Citations and abstracts with some full text. A subset of the CSI database.
- Health, United States, 1975-
- International Society for Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research
- JSTOR Backfiles
- The Archives Collections are multi-disciplinary and discipline-specific collections that include complete runs of journals. These collections span across more than 50 disciplines of academic content.
- National Center for Health Statistics
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
- Office of Research & Statistics, South Carolina State Budget & Control Board
- This site provides statistical information about South Carolina. A wide variety of health statistics, including information about the supply of health professionals, is available. Some manipulation of data relating to inpatient discharges, emergency room visits, outpatient visits and health professionals allows you to tailor a report to a specific county or health care facility. Demographic information collected in South Carolina as well as data from the U.S. Census Bureau relating to South Carolina is included. Reports can be generated to provide information at the community and county levels.
- State Health Facts
- U.S. Census Bureau
(U.S. Census Bureau)


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I get a lot of inspiration for nail art when my own creativity is feeling lackluster, and I have to chalk this manicure idea up to this lovely lady's blog post. I absolutely love that she found a new way to make crackle gorgeous and interesting and I only wish I had all the colors of neon needed to really do her idea justice. I've found that my collection is lacking in a few areas, neons included! So instead of neons I used two of my China Glaze glass fleck polishes to create a subtle gradient over China Glaze White Lightning.
This is all over a base of OPI nail envy, and I used China Glaze 108 Degrees and Blue Iguana for the gradient. It felt a bit boring and plain with just the gradient alone, so I added some boldness by outlining part of the nail in black. It really added the punch I needed to love wearing this mani!
Do you like this new way of using crackle? Is there a nail trend that you still love even though it's no longer popular? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading!
23 May 2013
Nail Art: Crackle, Glass Fleck, and a Pop!
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May 26, 2016
Economic Report:
Does the world feel like it is getting smaller? It could just be the economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, the world economy could shrink by 1.3 percent making it the first time in 60 years the world economy has gone in reverse. If it does shrink leading economists believe that could lead to 10 million more without jobs. On Friday world economic powers will meet to further develop commitments recently made at the world summit in London in March.
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- View photo slideshow
As a field, childhood studies has flourished in large part because scholars have recognized the necessity of moving between and beyond traditional academic disciplines and have resisted the idea that there exists one, normative version of childhood common to all. Indeed, Multiple Childhoods/Multidisciplinary Perspectives seeks participation from those who work to counter the presumption or invocation of an unproblematically normative childhood by making visible how varied material and institutional circumstances, ideologies, beliefs and daily practices serve to shape the unfolding lives and experiences of children.
In this spirit, participants are encouraged to interrogate practices and discourses surrounding childhood and childhood studies, asking, for instance: What forms do childhoods take in various social arrangements? How do the dynamics of social class, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation and religion configure notions of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" childhoods? How do children understand various kinds of social difference and inequalities? What about the understandings of researchers, and those who care for or otherwise attend to children? In what ways do conceptualizations of "the child" and of presumed normative childhoods—in research, in the commercial world, in institutional and everyday settings, in literature and discourse—inform the kinds of actions undertaken by and on behalf of children?
Keynote Speakers
Professor Elizabeth Chin
Occidental College
"Culture and the Politics of Children"
I take as my starting place a reflection on Sharon Stephens' 1995 introduction to Children and the Politics of Culture, reflecting on the ways in which scholarship on children and childhood has grown in the intervening years. Drawing from my emergent thinking on children and childhood in Haiti, I want to talk in particular about 1) children and NGOs; 2) constructions of child vulnerability 3) the need to look at both 'endangered' and 'privileged' children in the developing world. Too often research seems to reproduce the notion that privilege and poverty exist in entirely separate spheres, but these 'multiple childhoods' very often exist side-by-side: in the same schools, the same households and even the same families, patitcularly in what Russell Belk calls the 'less affluent world'.
Dr. Judith Ennew
University of Malaya
"Why childhood? Why now?"
No previous historical period focused on childhood with the intensity of the past century. This was manifest in the increasing development of state-licensed professions, such as social work, education and psychology, which challenge centuries of parenting practices; implemented through political definitions of childhood and children's rights; enshrined in legislative prohibitions against children's involvement in work and war; and backed up in the appearance of studies of children and childhood in various realms of social research. This presentation will examine the socio-economic and political causes of this intensifying interest in childhood, and increasing activism on behalf of children, in the light of Karl Marx's comment in 1859 that 'the child in every epoch [represents] the character of the period in its natural veracity'.
Although current discourses of childhood are increasingly globalized, they are both manifold and contradictory, especially within parallel rapid changes in human rights and social freedoms. This is clearly demonstrated by considering the designation of the twentieth century by Swedish social reformer Ellen Key as the 'century of childhood', in which women and children would become free of male domination. While this may be partially true for some women, children remain under adult control – not least through manipulation of the misconceived couple 'women-and-children' in debates on human trafficking. Ancient patriarchal repression persists in a new guise. Taking a cynical approach to progress towards fulfilling the human rights of children, as well as to the development of 'new' studies of children and childhood, the presentation will ask if (and how) they articulate with the economic and political realities of 2011.
Spotlight of Panel
The conference will culminate with the convening of a Spotlight Panel comprised of scholar-experts from various fields who will address how notions of multiple childhoods and normativity inform their work and may inform social thought and practice. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Sarada Balagopalan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India; Dr. Robin Bernstein, Harvard University, USA; Dr. Marcia Bunge, Valparaiso University, USA and Dr. Roger Hart, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA.
Sarada Balagopalan
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Sarada Balagopalan's work is an attempt to critically theorise the category of Childhood by relating it to discourses of modernity, late capitalism and current transnational efforts to secure "rights" for children. Her doctorate from New York University was an ethnographic study on the literacy experiences of street children in Calcutta, and Sarada's research utilizes the historically mediated specificity of childhood and children's experiences in different social contexts to interrogate present efforts to naturalise a particular bourgeois construction of childhood as the ideal. This work on the politics of childhood also informs her broader intellectual interests in education. She is particularly interested in issues of pedagogy and its reliance on universal constructs of childhood, and their effects on the construction of identities amongst first-generation school goers and their communities.
Sarada has been deeply involved in translating these research interests into pedagogic and curricular interventions and has worked with Eklavya for several years on their social studies textbooks and school-based programmes. Currently she acts as the Chief Advisor for NCERT's middle-school "Social and Political Life" textbooks. Sarada also co-edits Contemporary Education Dialogue, bi-annual inter-disciplinary journal on education in South Asia.
Robin Bernstein
Harvard University
I am a cultural historian who specializes in U.S. performance and theatre during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My interests include formations of race, age, gender, and sexuality, and my research integrates the study of theatrical, visual, material, and literary culture.
A graduate of Yale's doctoral program in American Studies, I am an Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of History and Literature at Harvard University. My books include Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (forthcoming, New York University Press) and the anthologies Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater (University of Michigan Press) and Generation Q (Alyson). I put my scholarly interests in gender, ethnicity, and childhood into creative practice when I published a Jewish feminist children's book titled Terrible, Terrible!. I am currently in residence in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, where I hold a Donald D. Harrington Fellowship. During my year at Austin, I will write a book titled Hand Knife Photograph: The Erotics of Impossible Gender.
Marcia J. Bunge
Valparaiso University
Marcia Bunge is the Dickmeyer Professor of Christian Education. She received her BA in English and music from St. Olaf College and her PhD in religion and literature from the University of Chicago. She taught at Gustavus Adolphus College, Luther College, and Luther Seminary before joining the CC faculty. Bunge has edited and contributed to Against Pure Reason: Writings on History, Language, and Religion (1993), and The Child in Christian Thought (2001). Bunge's most recently co-edited books are The Child in the Bible (2008) and Children and Childhood in World Religions: Primary Texts and Sources (2009). From 2003-07 she served on the National Task Force on Education for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Bunge directs "The Child in Religion and Ethics" project and serves on the international board of the Child Theology Movement and on the steering committees of the "Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation" of the American Academy of Religion and "Children in the Biblical World" section of the Society of Biblical Literature. She regularly lectures at leading universities and conferences in the United States and abroad.
Roger Hart
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
His work focuses on the development of theory and research on children's relationship to the physical environment. He has been particularly concerned with the application of research to the planning and design of children's environments and to environmental education. In recent years, he has been more broadly concerned with developing theory, research and programs which foster the greater participation of young people in articulating their perspectives and concerns as a way of better fulfilling their rights.


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@Inproceedings {export:79160, abstract = {
This demonstration presents two tools, Code Contracts and Pex, that utilize specification constructs for advanced testing, runtime checking, and static checking of object-oriented .NET programs.}, author = {Michael Barnett and Manuel Fahndrich and Francesco Logozzo and Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillmann}, booktitle = {Proc. 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'2009)}, month = {May}, note = {Research Demonstration}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {Exploiting the Synergy between Automated-Test-Generation and Programming-by-Contract}, url = {http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79160}, year = {2009}, }