Unity Farm Journal - First Week of December 2014
As the snow falls and windy/moist winter weather envelops the farm, the work has become a combination of managing warmth, tending the vegetables in the hoop house, and indoor activities.Woodlot management has become my major winter exercise - walking the trails and inspecting the forest for fallen trees, broken branches, and pieces of long dead cedar that have not decayed. I’m still working on processing ash trees that fell during Hurricane Sandy. Ash does not need to be aged and becomes instant firewood. I do my best to leave stable dead trees in place so they can become bird habitat .I le...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - December 5, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Exposing an Error-Filled Editorial against Educational Choice
Jason Bedrick
Over the weekend, Florida’s Sun-Sentinel editorialized against Florida’s scholarship tax credit law. But, as I detail at Education Next today, the editorial was rife with errors, distortions, and omissions of crucial context. Here’s just one example of many:
Rather than put the scholarship tax credit law in the context of Florida’s overall education spending, the Sun-Sentinel compares it to… Iowa.
“No state has a bigger voucher [sic] system. Last year, Florida spent $286 million on just 2.7 percent of all students. Iowa spent $13.5 million on 2.6 percent of its students.”
Setti...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 4, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Jason Bedrick Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal Second Week of November 2014
The mood at Unity Farm has been somber this week with the death of my father-in-law on Sunday. He was a significant part of seasonal farm activities and was a kind of third parent to my daughter. His death from pancreatic cancer was so rapid that we’re all stuck in the first stage of grieving - denial that it happened so fast.We find ourselves still calling for him to come to dinner, and expecting him to be sitting in his Morris chair as we gather around the hearth in the evening. He will be missed.The duties of farming - seasonal preparation, animal care, and the harvest do no wait for anyone,...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 14, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Research Shows that Small Government Is Efficient Government
The objective of this paper is to provide a proxy for measuring public sector performance and efficiency. To do this we will put together a number of performance indicators in the government’s core functions. …We will set these indicators in relation to the costs of achieving them. We will, hence, derive simple performance and efficiency indicators for 1990 and 2000 for the public sectors of 23 industrialised OECD countries. …As a first step, we define 7 sub-indicators of public performance. The first four look at administrative, education, health, and public infrastructure outcomes. …The three other su...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 10, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel J. Mitchell Source Type: blogs
Lose the Grains, Save Some Green: An excerpt from Wheat Belly Total Health
Here’s an excerpt from the new Wheat Belly Total Health book to be released September 16, 2014.
What’s there left to say after the original Wheat Belly knocked the socks off the dietary community with its upsetting revelations? Plenty! Remove this dietary poison, made worse by the shenanigans of agribusiness, and full health does not return right away–more needs to be done. The conversations in Wheat Belly Total Health show you how to take the reins and regain health as fully as possible, even if your health struggles include conditions such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, or failed...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 3, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly books gluten grains Grasses Total Health Source Type: blogs
How About Them Apples?: Preparation is the Key To Success
Photo by Lance Neilson.
Want your child to have a school year to brag about? Of course you do.
Here are some tips on how to prepare a child on the Autism Spectrum for the upcoming school year:
Pre-teach Rituals and Routines
To the extent you can gather information about the rituals and routines your child’s teacher will follow (e.g., having your child sit on a carpet square during circle time, or, require them to sit Indian-style upon hearing the phrase “Criss-cross apple sauce”), you will want to pre-teach your child to follow the instructions they may encounter in the classroom.
Prime with Pictures and Nar...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - August 27, 2014 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Michael Cameron PhD Tags: Perspectives Autism Source Type: blogs
Red Apples for Returning to School
Photo by Anthony Thomas Bueta.
For a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as their families, returning back to school after a string of relaxed summer days can produce a relevant level of stress.
Although the manifestation of stress may include a range of behavioral (e.g., an exacerbation of repetitious verbal and motor behavior) and physiologic changes (e.g., increase in heart rate and adrenaline), stress can be certainly be prevented, reduced, or managed as a result of good planning. Specifically, planning must be centered on the child, the child’s family, and the child’s teacher.
Every day this week, ...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - August 25, 2014 Category: Pediatricians Authors: Michael Cameron PhD Tags: Perspectives Autism Source Type: blogs
What are my chances of getting pregnant ?
This is the commonest question the IVF specialist is asked – especially by someone who has failed an IVF cycle.In one sense, it’s an easy question to answer. IVF clinics keep statistical records of the pregnancy rates we achieve in the women we treat, which means we can quote success rates in various groups of women ( for example, women under 35; women over 40; and so on.)The trouble is that these figures apply to groups of women . How can we intelligently extrapolate these to the individual patient sitting in front of you and asking the question?Thus, not all 40-year olds are the same. Some have good ovarian res...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - August 25, 2014 Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Tags: American Society for Reproductive Medicine Anti-Müllerian hormone Antral follicle Clinic In vitro fertilisation Ovarian reserve patient Pregnancy rate Source Type: blogs
Implementing Health Reform: New Accommodations For Employers On Contraceptive Coverage
TweetOn August 22, 2014, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury released an interim final and a proposed rule providing for the accommodation of religious objections on the part of an employer or institution of higher learning to providing their employees or students coverage for contraceptive services. A fact sheet on the rules was also released, as was a notice on the revision of the form used to collect information on religious objections to contraceptive coverage.
The proposed rule, which applies to for-profit entities, is being issued in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 22, 2014 Category: Health Management Authors: Timothy Jost Tags: All Categories Employer-Sponsored Insurance Health Law Health Reform Prevention Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - 4th week of August 2014
Over the past week, the combination of rain and cool Fall-like temperatures caused our 165 shitake logs to fruit, resulting in over 50 pounds of fresh mushrooms. We inoculated 5 tons of oak logs last August and throughout the year have had a few pounds to deliver to local farm stands. We really did not know if our work would be successful, since this is our first effort at growing mushrooms to commercial scale. We’re guided by this excellent research paper which illustrates how a family can create a 500 log Shitake operation yielding $5000-$10000 in farm income per year.Now that we know that the comb...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - August 21, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Food Sensitivity and Intolerance Testing Changed Their Lives
Susan was tired; tired of feeling foggy, bloated and unable to lose weight. Her thyroid levels were out of whack and she felt awful. Having just recently passed her 50th birthday, she assumed that this was what it meant to be a woman of a “certain age”: A little heavier and slower than she would have liked, not quite as sharp, and generally, just feeling old.
It wasn’t until she watched other people coming into a lab that she co-owns and heard them talk about food intolerances did she consider that food might be causing her problems, not her age. Changes to their diets, made after food intolerance testing, se...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - August 18, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Consumer Health Care Food Source Type: blogs
What I thought/What I said
The interviewer asked, "What's making you want to leave your current job?"I'm tired of watching my coworkers coming in, looking defeated.I haven't had a sit-down lunch in six weeks. One of my coworkers weaned her baby early because she couldn't get anybody to relieve her so she could pump breastmilk.Our acuity increased at the same time our director cut our staff, so there are delays in care that I find unacceptable.We've been rebranded a "step-down" unit, so none of us will get critical-care raises or credit, but we're still taking CCU patients. We still float to the CCUs.The attitude of the administration to our unit is ...
Source: Head Nurse - August 13, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Comparing apples with oranges? How to make better use of evidence from the voluntary and community sector to improve health outcomes and supporting case studies
NHS Confederation - The briefing, primarily aimed at members of health and wellbeing boards, but relevant to both statutory and VCS partners, gives an overview of the knowledge, expertise and insight that voluntary and community sector organisations may hold about their local communities and diverse groups of people within these, as well as the different ways this knowledge can be used to enhance joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs) and commissioning.
Briefing
Poster
NHS Confederation publications (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - August 8, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Commissioning Integrated care Local authorities, public health and health inequalities Source Type: blogs
Can Gingko and Turmeric Help Stop Ebola?
Summary
There is no known pharmaceutical currently available that specifically treats Ebola disease.
One treatment modality that should be considered is the use of herbal medicines, which have both centuries old anecdotal success as well as recent modern biochemical and formal research rationales for their use.
Five areas of action that could be addressed by the herbal medicines as it relates to Ebola would be:
VP24/immune system evasion
GP protein/replicatio;
herbal strategies effective against similar hemorrhagic disease
beneficial modulation of patient immune and inflammatory response systems
prophylactic use for heal...
Source: Inside Surgery - August 1, 2014 Category: Surgery Authors: Editor Tags: Infectious Disease ayurvedic baicalen cathepsin b dengue Ebola gingko herb Quercetin resveratrol rosemary sage st johns work turmeric Source Type: blogs
