Garage destroyed in Aliso Viejo fire - The Orange County Register

ALISO VIEJO ? Flames were contained to the garage in a fire at a two-story home early Tuesday morning, fire officials said.

A family of four and their dog were alerted to the flames by a smoke detector and got out of the house at 37 Sandbridge unharmed, said Capt. Marc Stone of the Orange County Fire Authority.

Orange County Fire Authority firefighters return to put out a hot spot after fighting a garage fire on Sandbridge in Aliso Viejo early Tuesday.

KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The fire caused about $105,000 in damage, he said.

The fire was reported before 2 a.m. Tuesday.

Though the garage and a vehicle inside were heavily damaged, the flames did not spread to the rest of the home, Stone said.

"(Firefighters) did a good job of keeping the fire to the garage," he said.

Firefighters battled the fire for about 45 minutes, Stone said. The flames were fed by the fuel in a vehicle in the garage.

The flames caused about $60,000 worth of damage to the home and $45,000 to its contents, officials said.

Fire investigators believe the flames may have been caused by an electrical problem.

Contact the writer: shernandez@ocregister.com or 949-454-7361

Source: http://www.ocregister.com/news/fire-379562-flames-garage.html

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Communications training, surgical checklist can reduce costly postoperative complications

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2012) ? As the nation grapples with surging health care costs, researchers at the University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, and Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Hartford, have confirmed two simple cost-effective methods to reduce expensive postoperative complications -- communications team training and a surgical checklist. Investigators found that when surgical teams completed communications training and a surgical procedure checklist before, during, and after high-risk operations, patients experienced fewer adverse events such as infections and blood clots.

The study is published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Surgical teams come together for one common goal -- to treat patients using surgical procedures -- but occasionally unforeseen circumstances can occur during the process. Sometimes surgical equipment isn't on hand, or the patient requires more blood than expected, which delays the procedure and requires dispensing more anesthesia while a team member hurries to get needed supplies. Also, surgical team members may have inconsistent information about priorities for the procedure, explained Lindsay Bliss, MD, lead study author and general surgery resident at the University of Connecticut. As many as five to 20 clinicians can be involved in a single operation, depending on its length and complexity. In a larger hospital, some team members may meet for the first time during the procedure. "Everyone brings to the team a different aspect of patient care that they think is the most important," Dr. Bliss said. "But the team has to understand all aspects of patient care and agree on what's important."

Although surgical checklists have existed for a while, they are not universally used. For the University of Connecticut study, Dr. Bliss's colleagues compared three groups of surgical procedures to determine whether communications training coupled with a standardized checklist could bring surgical teams into agreement and reduce patients' complications.

The communications training included three sessions on topics such as differences between introverts and extroverts, effective dialogue among all operating room personnel, and how to use a surgical checklist. Dr. Bliss's team used the one-page Association for Perioperative Registered Nurses Comprehensive Surgical Checklist developed in April 2010. It includes protocols mandated by the World Health Organization, The Joint Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and has been endorsed by the American College of Surgeons and other surgical organizations. For one group of procedures, the surgical team selected operations from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP^?) database. These operations occurred between January 2007 and June 2010 and served as the baseline group, since these surgical teams neither had gone through the communications training nor had they used a checklist. Dr. Bliss said pulling this information from the ACS NSQIP database allowed the researchers to access standardized clinical and demographic data on the patients, along with information about 30-day surgical outcomes.

These procedures were compared with two other groups of surgical procedures that occurred between December 2010 and March 2011. In one group, 246 procedures involved surgical teams who had undergone communications training, while the other group included 73 procedures involving surgical teams who had not only gone through the same communications training but also used the checklist.

Study results showed that the communications training coupled with the checklist curbed complications within 30 days of the procedures. Complications included surgical site infections, vein blood clots, lung blood clots, and urinary tract infections. When surgical teams had no communications training and did not use checklist, more than 23 percent of the procedures resulted in complications within 30 days. About 16 percent of procedures by surgical teams who only participated in communications training led to complications within 30 days, and only 8.2 percent of the procedures had a 30-day complication when the surgical teams used both the communications training and the checklist.

Even small steps like making sure everyone on the team introduced themselves before the procedure helped reduce complications. "The theory is that this brings a sense of accountability and makes sure that everyone's voice can be heard," Dr. Bliss explained. "No one on the surgical team is a nameless, faceless body. The checklist makes sure everyone is advocating for the patient."

Dr. Bliss said that while this study builds on previous research about the benefits of using checklists, it is the first to look at how communications training can help surgical teams have productive conversations around patient care while using the checklist.

The drop in postoperative complications also has implications for national health care spending because Medicare and other health insurance providers are now starting to decline reimbursement for complications that result from the clinicians' errors, especially just a month after the patient's procedure. The authors note that postoperative infections are among the most expensive medical errors, costing $14,500 per case on average.

"I don't think anyone goes into this profession expecting to hurt the patient, but it happens more than any of us would like," Dr. Bliss said. "Every adverse outcome results in more expense. It means a longer stay in the hospital and more treatment. Communicating and using a checklist do not just add extra minutes on to the procedure. There is an ethical and financial obligation tied to both tools."

"The checklist is publicly available online," Dr. Bliss concluded. "The cost of a photo copy in exchange for reducing patient morbidity is a fabulous return on investment."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American College of Surgeons.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Lindsay A. Bliss, Cynthia B. Ross-Richardson, Laura J. Sanzari, David S. Shapiro, Alexandra E. Lukianoff, Bruce A. Bernstein, Scott J. Ellner. Thirty-Day Outcomes Support Implementation of a Surgical Safety Checklist. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2012; 215 (6): 766 DOI: 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2012.07.015

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/KqXy5BvBJso/121205121155.htm

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CSC to sell credit services unit to Equifax for $1 billion

(Reuters) - U.S. technology services provider Computer Sciences Corp will sell its credit services unit to business information provider Equifax Inc for $1 billion in cash, and record after-tax proceeds of about $750 million to $800 million.

CSC said in May it was looking to sell its "non-core" assets and would cut costs by $1 billion over the next 12 to 18 months.

The company said it intends to use about $300 million to $400 million of the proceeds to buy back shares, and contribute another $300 million to $400 million to its pension plans.

The credit services unit provides financial services and consumer credit information to the automotive industry, banks, retail establishments, mortgage companies, medical entities, and utilities in the United States.

CSC's business solutions and services unit, which includes the credit services business, contributed 23 percent to its total revenue in 2012.

The company said the deal is expected to close this month.

CSC had been losing money over renegotiating a multibillion-dollar contract with Britain's National Health Service.

It was also looking to change its management to turn the business around.

The company hired Paul Saleh from Gannett Co as chief financial officer earlier this year.

CSC, currently valued at about $5.91 billion, said the sale of its credit services unit would help it focus on its technology solutions and services business.

The company's shares closed at $38.06 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Equifax shares closed at $51.24.

(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Don Sebastian)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/csc-sell-credit-services-unit-equifax-1-billion-131910967--sector.html

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An 'ethical vacuum' in Internet media?

An official inquiry into the abuses of British newspapers calls for tougher regulation of journalist behavior. But it holds little hope for ethics in online media. This ignores the history of journalist ethics.

By the Monitor's Editorial Board / December 2, 2012

Actor Hugh Grant speaks on a BBC show Dec. 2 about the Leveson report into press standards and ethics. He was a victim of phone hacking by a newspaper.

REUTERS/Jeff Overs/BBC/Handout

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As you read these words, does it make a difference if they are in print or online?

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Yes, if you accept one conclusion of an official inquiry on the British press released last Thursday.

The report?s author, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, offers many recommendations on how to restore the integrity of British newspapers after recent scandals, which included hacking of personal cellphones, even one belonging to a deceased girl. His main proposals to Parliament are to pass a new law and use a government regulator to help hold newspapers to account for lapses of their own ethical codes.

While he is optimistic that traditional newspapers can be reformed ? although his peculiar solutions may be a slippery slope to censorship ? Sir Brian is strangely pessimistic that news consumers can ever trust much of what they read in the new digital media.

?The [I]nternet? does not claim to operate by any particular ethical standards, still less high ones. Some have called it a ?wild west? but I would prefer to use the term ?ethical vacuum?,? he wrote.

Bloggers and others who write on public topics can act with impunity, he states. Newspapers, however, already have ethical codes and promise a quality product. ?The [I]nternet does not function on that basis at all. People will not assume that what they read on the [I]nternet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy; it need be no more than one person?s view.?

History would argue against the view that ?new media? ? bloggers, tweeters, citizen journalists, or news aggregators like Google ? may not ever adopt principles such as truthfulness and fairness. After all, digital media already generally conform to laws on copyright, defamation, and contempt of court. Is it really a big leap to expect them to conform someday to ethical codes like those of traditional journalism?

Most American and British newspapers began to adopt codes a century ago in response to reader outrage over inaccuracies, sensationalism, personal attacks, and bias in news reporting. This publication, for example, was founded in 1908 with the mandate to ?injure no man, but to bless all mankind.? In the United States, the Society of Professional Journalists continues to upgrade its code as new ethical challenges are exposed. Sir Brian acknowledges that ?most of what the [British] press does is good journalism free from the sort of vices I have had to address at length.?

Journalists do keep an eye on each other. The press scandals in Britain, for example, were first brought to light not by the government but by The Guardian newspaper.

Indeed, the best guardians of the old and new media are the people who practice it as well as readers who can choose to ignore any website or publication that operates unethically. And no new law need target journalists that doesn?t also apply to all citizens. Libel is libel, for example, as is illegal invasion of privacy.

In the US, some independent news bloggers have begun to set their own standards. Even more promising, schools have begun to teach students how to use information on the Internet, sifting truth from falsehoods and distortions.

Digital media do offer new challenges, in large part because anyone with a modem or even smart phone can now practice journalism with little oversight or professional vetting. Internet journalism is also more immediate and interactive. The pressure to publish quickly can more easily lead to mistakes or the harming of others. The business incentives to chase a mass audience can lower standards, including news judgment.

The ?democratization? of media will require an effort to form a consensus on ethical standards for online media. The Internet itself is a powerful feedback loop for correcting ?entrepreneurial? journalists who, say, have a conflict of interest or hide behind anonymity. Even defining who is a journalist these days needs work.

That last task can?t be left to government through its credentialing of journalists. The Fourth Estate, whether in print or online, is the news consumer?s best way to keep a check on government. And it is news consumers, as well as journalists, who must hold any media to account with ethical codes.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/WoaSIbDAXi8/An-ethical-vacuum-in-Internet-media

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Police: 2 dead, injuries, when tall bus carrying church group hits overpass at Miami airport

MIAMI - At Miami International Airport, two large signs warn drivers of large vehicles not to pass beneath the 8-foot-6 inch concrete overpass. Authorities say two passengers are dead and others have been critically injured after a too-tall charter bus smashed into the overpass, crumpling metal.

One of the signs attached to the top of the concrete barrier reads: "High Vehicle STOP Turn Left." The other, placed to the left of the driveway and several feet in front of the barrier, says all vehicles higher than the 8-foot-6 threshold must turn left.

Authorities said the large, white bus carrying 32 members of a church group hit the overpass after the driver got lost Saturday, killing two male passengers and leaving three other passengers critically injured.

Airport spokesman Greg Chin said the bus was too tall for the entrance to the arrivals area and that buses are supposed to go through the departures area because of its higher clearance.

The bus was going about 20 mph when it struck the overpass Saturday morning, Chin added. News photographs showed the front of the vehicle's rooftop crumpled beneath the overpass.

Osvaldo Lopez, an officer with the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, said he heard a loud noise Saturday morning and rushed to help. He said he went inside the bus and found several passengers tossed into the centre aisle. He said the passengers, many of whom were elderly, remained calm.

"It was just very bloody," he added.

Police said that one man, Serafin Castillo, 86, of Miami, died at the scene. A second man identified by authorities as Francisco Urana, 56, also of Miami, died later at a hospital.

Chin said passengers told him they were part of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses headed to West Palm Beach. Police said in a news release that the group had chartered the bus to take them to a church convention there.

The group was made up of congregation members of Sweetwater's Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, said Sweetwater Mayor Manny Marono.

"This is a tragic accident that has affected many families, as well as, our Sweetwater family," Marono said in a statement.

A phone number listed for the centre in Sweetwater went unanswered in the hours after the crash.

Three people were at hospitals in critical condition. The other 27 surviving passengers were hurt, but their injuries were less extensive, authorities said.

Eight of the 14 patients initially taken to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital were in stable condition while two others were in critical, said hospital spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti. Local reports said three people with lesser injuries were later released.

A majority of the injuries were facial due to the frontal impact, said Miami-Dade Police spokesman Det. Alvaro Zabaleta.

He said the driver was not familiar with the airport area and it was too early to say if charges would be filed. Investigators said they had conducted interviews Saturday with the driver, who suffered minor injuries.

"The preliminary info tells us that he wasn't too familiar with the area surrounding the airport, and that's what led him to take perhaps the wrong ramp that led him onto the property of the airport, and because of not being familiar with the airport, did not know or really see the height requirement in order for that bus to clear the overpass," Zabaleta said.

The bus was privately owned and typically used for tours, authorities said.

Markings on the bus show it was owned by Miami Bus Service Corp.

The company owns three motor coaches, according to the records. Miami Bus Service Corp. officials did not immediately respond to a phone message Saturday.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records found online show the company has had no violations for unsafe driving or controlled substances and alcohol. It also had not reported any crashes in the two years before Oct. 26, 2012.

The records show it did receive three citations related to driver fatigue in April 2011.

___

Associated Press reporter Jackie Quinn in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-2-dead-injuries-tall-bus-carrying-church-141601088.html

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Spectator falls from stands at ACC Championship

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) ? Authorities say a spectator has life-threatening injuries after falling about 40 feet from a ramp outside Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Saturday night at the ACC Championship football game between No. 13 Florida State and Georgia Tech.

Michael Stanford, the supervisor of special operations for Mecklenburg County EMS, says his agency responded to an incident in which a spectator fell from the ramp leading to the stands shortly after the 8 p.m. kickoff. The fall is the first of its kind from Bank of America Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers.

The stadium opened in 1996.

Stanford says the spectator was transported by ground to the trauma center at Carolinas Medical Center with "life-threatening injuries."

Stanford would not say if the spectator was a male or female.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/spectator-falls-stands-acc-championship-021246960--spt.html

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Castle in the Sea: Homeschooling High School: Math

Well, this should be short.

I am not a math person. Some of my children are not math persons. Others of them are. Over the years, as I have dealt with both math persons and non-math persons, in the context of having to launch them, eventually and more or less single-handedly, into the rest of their lives, I have distilled my philosophy of math education to the following single word:

Whatever.?

*

OK, that's not really acceptable as a philosophy of anything. Try again.

*

I have often observed that one of the real advantages of homeschooling is the way that it gives the student opportunities to struggle honestly with something difficult and not (ultimately) fail. That is, the student may fail the first time, or the fifth time, but because we're not rushing on to the next thing, we can count those as attempts toward a summit of mastery. We work at what doesn't come easily to us until we can get it at least acceptably right, and the getting it right is what we count in the end. Nobody says, Oh, you didn't climb Mount Everest that time; ?obviously you're a loseroid at climbing, generally, and will never climb anything ever. Maybe you're a hole-digger, have you ever thought of that??

Homeschooling also means that what works for one child does not have to work for the next, that a "good" curriculum is only as good as the good it does that student.

*

Thus far I have educated one person who would not voluntarily touch anything mathematical with a ten-foot pole, and one person who embodies the title of a book I picked up once at a library sale: ?A Romp Through Mathematics. The only thing that really worked for the former student was the Teaching Textbooks series, which I wish I had bought sooner than I did, because it would have saved us endless algebraic angst early on. She could self-teach, which was what she wanted, and while various mathematically-inclined friends of mine have opined that the program lacks depth and rigor, it was the right choice for a student who was, as my own college math professor put it, "not making a career of mathematics." In this instance, the question was not whether the student was going to learn mathematics deeply enough; ?it was whether she was going to learn mathematics at all. My own experience has been that it is, truly, entirely possible to spend fourteen years in school and not learn mathematics at all; ?as a parent?I was eager that my daughter not relive that part of my life. Teaching Textbooks was the answer in this instance, and while her standardized test scores in mathematics were not that impressive, she did pass her one college math class (Euclidian and Non-Euclidian Geometries) with a B+, which we both regarded as a highly satisfactory closure to the mathematical chapter of her story.

UPDATE: ?I should add that this child completed Algebra 1, which took the better part of two years, Geometry, and Algebra 2, finishing in her senior year. She did get into all the colleges to which she applied, and she handled her one math credit well. Now, of course, you tend to see that colleges want four credits in high-school math; ?we felt lucky to squeak by with three, but with all my other children, I am anticipating the need to do four.?

My second child, and current high-schooler, began working through Saxon Algebra 1/2, which I'd picked up off a freebie table at a homeschool-support-group meeting,?as a sixth grader. I have never been particularly a fan of Saxon and have always said, Hear hear, when people have described it as dull, dry, repetitive, and so on. Saxon looks to me the way math classes felt?to me. Brrrr. Prickly. Unfriendly. Inhuman.?No, thanks.?My son, on the other hand,?credits Saxon with awakening him to the enjoyment of math. He is also very much a self-teacher, and my approach to his math has been to buy the Saxon books, because that's what he's requested, and to find some video-teaching component to accompany them, either the D.I.V.E. CDs or the Art Reed DVD class lectures, for the times when he gets stuck. He also leans heavily on Khan Academy?for help when he needs it. Thus far he has not needed actual tutoring in math, though we do have access to a college tutoring center.

He has so far worked through Saxon's Algebra 1/2?and Algebra 1, and is currently in Algebra 2. Though, supposedly, the two algebras are supposed to cover geometry as well, I've had him do as much of Teaching Textbooks Geometry as he could get through last summer, for the sake of dealing with proofs, and he will probably finish that course next summer (Because we already own it, that's why). From there he will either move into Saxon's Advanced Mathematics or begin taking classes at the college, as math professors advise us. His ultimate interests have to do with science, and it will behoove him in high school to take as much math as he can as well, to be a strong candidate for the kinds of things he wants to do in the future.

ADDENDUM: ?This student has also enjoyed math literature -- Flatland, which he read as a sixth- or seventh-grader, comes to mind, though I know he's read other things, too: ?Game, Set, and Math, by Ian Stewart, math puzzle books, Penrose the Mathematical Cat . . . He has Life of Fred: ?Advanced Algebra, and he's read it some, but time constraints have meant that he's mostly just concentrated on Saxon.?

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Unlike me, my friend Anne-Marie is a math person, and I rather suspected that her philosophy with regards to mathematics would not be whatever. I was glad that she responded to a plea for input on this subject with the following:

Source: http://fineoldfamly.blogspot.com/2012/12/homeschooling-high-school-math.html

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