Author: SeniorWomenWeb

To Survive, Rural Hospitals Join Forces: What It’s Like to Lose a Hospital
1951 image from Hospital Library Ward Service, United States Army

Editor’s Note: Hospital Finder
- By Michael Ollove, Stateline
Ask Sam Lindsey about the importance of Northern Cochise Community Hospital and he’ll give you a wry grin. You might as well be asking the 77-year-old city councilman to choose between playing pickup basketball — as he still does most Fridays — and being planted six feet under the Arizona dust.

Lindsey believes he’s above ground, and still playing point guard down at the Mormon church, because of Northern Cochise. Last Christmas, he suffered a severe stroke in his home. He survived, he said, because his wife, Zenita, got him to the hospital within minutes. If it hadn’t been there, she would have had to drive him 85 miles to Tucson Medical Center.

There are approximately 2,300 rural hospitals in the US, most of them concentrated in the Midwest and the South. For a variety of reasons, many of them are struggling to survive. In the last five years, Congress has sharply reduced spending on Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, and the patients at rural hospitals tend to be older than those at urban or suburban ones. Rural hospitals in sparsely populated areas see fewer patients but still have to maintain emergency rooms and beds for acute care. They serve many people who are uninsured and can’t afford to pay for the services they receive.

Several months ago, Northern Cochise sought to strengthen its chances for survival by joining an alliance with Tucson Medical Center and three other rural hospitals in southwestern Arizona. Together, the Southern Arizona Hospital Alliance is negotiating better prices on supplies and services. And the Tucson hospital has promised to help its rural partners with medical training, information technology and doctor recruitment.

“We are committed to remaining autonomous for as long as we can,” said Jared Wilhelm, director of community relations at Northern Cochise. “We think this gives us the best leverage to do so.”

Northern Cochise and the other rural hospitals in the alliance, which is similar to ones in Kansas, Mississippi, Washington state and Wisconsin, hope that by joining they will avoid the fate of 56 rural hospitals that have closed since 2010. Another 283 rural hospitals are in danger of closing, according to the National Rural Health Association (NRHA).

Right now, some Arizonans in the region are learning what it’s like to lose a hospital. Cochise Regional Hospital, in Douglas, near the Mexican border, closed earlier this month, following Medicare’s decision to terminate payments because of repeated violations of federal health and safety rules. The hospital was part of a Chicago-based chain and its closing leaves Arizona residents in the far southeastern portion of the state up to 75 miles away from the closest hospital emergency room.

Sam Lindsey shudders to think what a long drive to Tucson would have meant for him last Christmas.

“If I’d have had to go 85 miles,” he said, “I don’t think I’d be here today.”
August 24, 2015
A Playlist Connected to a Pillow Before, During and After An Operation

Editor’s Note: Recently we had an operation on a little-known type of hernia, the spiegelian, named for a Flemish anatomist and physician, Adriaan van den Spiegel, 1578-1625. Our operation was on an emergency basis, or else we might have opted for a musical playlist of our own (see below).

Title page of Spigelius, De Humani Corpis. Wellcome, Wikimedia Commons

“Listening to music before, during and after an operation can help reduce pain,” BBC News reports. An analysis of data found evidence that people who listened to music had reduced anxiety and were less likely to request pain relief.

Listening to music during a surgical procedure is a very different thing, and it is important to note that this is not routine practice in the National Health Service [United Kingdom]. You would not normally expect to be able to choose to have music played to you while unconscious under a general anaesthetic, for example. But for procedures performed while you are awake under local or spinal anaesthesia this could be possible.

Researchers say that following up this work, the Royal London Hospital is conducting an experiment where about 40 women having either a caesarean section or another gynaecological procedure will be given the chance to have their playlist connected to a pillow with in-built speakers.

There are no known negative effects of listening to music, and you would be expected to be free to listen to personal music before a surgical procedure (for example while waiting to be taken to the operating theatre) or when recovering on the ward after. And if you find music helps you relax in these situations, it must be a good thing.

If you are having an operation in the near future you may want to start putting a playlist together. We recommend something soothing – Mozart as opposed to Motörhead.

The study was carried out by researchers from Queen Mary University, Barts Health NHS Trust and Brunel University, all in London. Researchers say that this study received no funding from any organisation.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. Several UK media sources have covered this story. Overall, media reported the results accurately. However, some of the limitations of the study are not fully explained.

BBC News reported a quote from one of the lead authors of this study, Dr Catherine Meads, who said that listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album helped soothe her pain three hours after hip surgery in April 2015. She says, “music was a safe, cheap and non-invasive option that should be available to everyone having surgery”.

She added: “Currently music is not used routinely during surgery to help patients in their postoperative recovery. The lack of uptake is often down to the scepticism of professionals as to whether it genuinely works, and of course issues of budget and the integration into daily practice.”

The Daily Mirror also provides some song suggestions of its own, including Smooth Operator by Sade, Getting Better by The Beatles and The First Cut is the Deepest by Rod Stewart.

This was a systematic review and meta-analysis that aimed to assess the effects of music before, during or after surgery in reducing pain and anxiety in postoperative patients. Researchers say that music was first found to be helpful in patients during operations in 1914 and since then several studies have investigated the effects of music on emotions, pain and sensation. There are even reports of Florence Nightingale using music to improve her patients’ morale.

August 21, 2015
The So-called Mirror Image Has Become Oddly Suspect

The Mirror, Sir William Orpen, 1878-1931. Oil on canvas, 1900, The Tate

By Joan L. Cannon

Mirrors are so common we tend never to notice them. They’re everywhere, much of the time nowadays as ornaments rather than tools. Over millennia they have existed in one form or another according to recorded history, paintings in Egyptian tombs, the Bible, and literature.

Our relationships with reflections of ourselves are doubtless as varied as the images we see. For some, they are merely literal and useful. As symbols, mirrors offer superior metaphors. They’re revealing literally and figuratively. We all depend on them almost unconsciously to tell us something about how we appear to those who see us.

There’s a teenager who feels less than handsome. In short order, the mere sight of a mirror is unpleasant. It becomes something to be avoided, even to the extent of not wishing a plate glass display window to show a reflection. There is as well the inverse of this feeling about mirrors for the ones who are pleased with what they see. We all can spot the vain very quickly wherever a reflecting surface is available.

So-called ‘primitive’ people have an enormous curiosity when presented with a mirror. If superstitious fear doesn’t overcome them, they crowd to see what is revealed in a mirror.

For some of us who no longer see an image in a mirror with which we feel familiar, we may be incredulous, or discouraged, or simply saddened or resigned, or all of the above. Looking into a mirror, one can’t avoid facts.

Yet, there are unrealities that face us when we look into mirrors. The most obvious is that we don’t see precisely what others see because what we’re looking at is reversed. Except for that rarity, perfect bilateral symmetry, what we see is subtly different from what we appear to be to anyone looking directly at us. It’s surprising to see the effect of covering half of a portrait with a card, for instance, so that only half the face in the picture is visible, and then changing which half shows. The so-called ‘mirror image’ has become oddly suspect.

Consider those for whom mirrors are purely utilitarian, often the military. The necessity of using reflection to amplify light, to see around obstacles and corners makes mirrors essential. There’s the submariner who depends on his periscope to tell him what he needs to know but can’t see. The same is true for the driver of a military tank. Mirrors enable telescopes to reveal images of otherwise unimaginable sights. The past decade has emphasized that vital role more than perhaps at any other time in history. Imagine modern surgery without the aid of mirrors.

The ubiquitous cameras of our daily lives may is some ways replace some of the older functions of the looking glass, but they don’t give rise to the emotional resonances stirred by passing a household fixture or treasure that has seen most of one’s years of consciousness. The missing image of a loved one who saw the same reflected surroundings we can still see becomes a nearly visible ghost. There’s a forbidding precision in a photograph, precious as it may be. A shared home, visible in reflection behind the viewer is like an echoing chord of familiar music or the faint scent that memory never erases.

There comes a time when one is looking in a mirror and sees much more than a likeness.

©2015 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com

August 20, 2015
Editorial in JAMA Journal Oncology: Rethinking the Standard for Ductal Carcinoma In Situ Treatment

Laura Esserman, MD, MBA1; Christina Yau, PhD1

[+] Author Affiliations

JAMA Oncol.

Published online August 20, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.2607

Text Size: A A A

Ductal Carcinoma In Situ; National Cancer Institute Visuals

The original goal of mammographic screening was to identify invasive cancers at the earliest stage, because of the superior prognosis of stage I cancers. Prior to the advent of screening, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) made up approximately 3% of breast cancers detected. As we pushed to find smaller and smaller cancers, and targeted calcifications instead of just masses, we began to identify DCIS more frequently. Now DCIS accounts for approximately 20% to 25% of screen-detected breast cancers.

The cells that make up DCIS look like invasive cancer both pathologically and molecularly, and therefore the presumption was made that these lesions were the precursors of cancer and that early removal and treatment would reduce cancer incidence and mortality. However, long-term epidemiology studies have demonstrated that the removal of 50 000 to 60 000 DCIS lesions annually has not been accompanied by a reduction in the incidence of invasive breast cancers.1 This is in contrast to the experience with removal of colonic polyps and intraepithelial neoplasia lesions of the cervix, in which the removal of precursor lesions has led to a decrease in the incidence of colon and cervical cancer, respectively.2 We now know that breast cancer encompasses a range of behaviors, from aggressive to indolent; the latter are more likely to surface with screening.3 The analysis of Narod et al4 fuels a growing concern that we should rethink our strategy for the detection and treatment of DCIS.

As demonstrated by Narod and colleagues4 in this large observational study of more than 100 000 women with a diagnosis of DCIS, the risk of dying from breast cancer is low. Less than 1% of patients in this 20-year study died of breast cancer (compared with 5% of patients who died of other causes). Using the Kaplan-Meier method, the breast cancer–specific mortality rate is 3.3% at 20 years, not dissimilar to the statistic that the American Cancer Society5 says is the chance that the average woman will die of breast cancer. This is welcome news and suggests that we can embrace evaluation of alternative strategies to surgery and radiation therapy. CALGB 40903,6 a neoadjuvant study of 6 months of letrozole therapy, is an example of a new approach and should open the door to trials of observation and endocrine risk–reducing therapy. If invasive cancer develops after DCIS, the risk of dying of breast cancer increases substantially. Because the biological characteristics of DCIS often predict the type of cancer that may develop in the future, the value of a DCIS diagnosis may be in providing a clue about how to more specifically prevent a potentially lethal breast cancer.

A second important insight from the article by Narod et al4 is that there are uncommon cases in which DCIS has a higher risk than has been appreciated. When DCIS is diagnosed before the age of 35 or even 40 years, some of these lesions do pose an increased risk of breast cancer–specific mortality. Ductal carcinoma in situ diagnosed before the age of 40 years is likely different because it would present as a symptomatic event (eg, a mass or bloody nipple discharge), as screening prior to the age of 40 years is rare.

Among patients with DCIS, breast cancer–specific mortality is associated with age at diagnosis, ethnicity, and DCIS characteristics such as estrogen receptor status, grade, size (>5 cm), and comedonecrosis. Despite their significance in a multivariable analysis, we note that high-risk characteristics, such as hormone receptor negativity, HER2 positivity, and high grade, often overlap. But only a small minority of patients will have 1 or more of these high-risk characteristics.

For young women (<40 years) who present with symptomatic DCIS — approximately 5% of the population — we should be cognizant that this is a different disease than the typical DCIS. As well, African American women (who have higher risk for hormone receptor–negative breast cancer) and women with hormone receptor–negative or HER2-positive DCIS should continue to be treated according to today’s aggressive standards. In total, these groups probably constitute approximately 20% of the population of patients with DCIS.

The majority of DCIS is detected in women undergoing screening and who are recalled for biopsy of calcifications. To minimize the risk of overdiagnosis and/or overtreatment, it is time to reassess whether clustered amorphous calcifications should be a target for screening, recall, and biopsy, especially in older women.7 Our focus should be instead on lesions (eg, pleomorphic, linear) that more commonly accompany invasive cancer or are associated with hormone receptor–negative or HER2-positive DCIS. Breast imagers should be reassured by the low mortality rate associated with a DCIS diagnosis.

August 20, 2015
Mary K. Gaillard: One Woman’s Journey In Physics

By Robert Sanders | AUGUST 17, 2015

“I became a feminist by necessity,” writes Mary K. Gaillard, known simply as Mary K around the UC Berkeley physics department. “My passion was physics.”

Gaillard teaching at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s. Courtesy of Emilio Segre archives, LBNL

In her new book, A Singularly Unfeminine Profession: One Woman’s Journey in Physics, Gaillard writes about the slights and frustrations that gradually raised her consciousness as she rose to the top among theoretical physicists trying to understand the complexities of the universe’s fundamental particles. The wife of a physicist, she mothered three young children while simultaneously laying the theoretical groundwork for key experiments that proved the validity of the Standard Model, now accepted as the best description of three of the four forces of nature.

Among her credits were correct predictions of the masses of the charmed and bottom quarks, two of the six quarks that make up all the matter we see around us. And 40 years before the world heard of the Higgs particle, she produced the roadmap experimentalists needed to find it. And they did, in 2013, a feat that earned theoretical physicists Peter Higgs and François Englert the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics.

After 17 years as a visiting scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) outside Geneva, Switzerland, Gaillard joined the UC Berkeley physics department in 1981 as its first woman faculty member. Now 76 years old, a professor in the graduate school and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, she is an inspiration to young women students in physics, particularly graduate and undergraduate students interested in theoretical physics.

Why did you write this book?

I had never thought about writing a book until I went out to dinner with an old friend, someone I knew when he was a postdoc at CERN, and he talked about a book he had written. At the end of the dinner his wife asked me when I was going to write my book. I was sort of surprised, but I started to think about it and talked with students. And I found out that they were interested in knowing something about my history and background, and I thought that maybe other people would be too. One woman student asked me why I stayed in the field when I told about some of the worst experiences I’d had.

Your book’s title comes from an offhand remark made by a fellow high school student when you told him you planned to pursue a career in physics. Did this reflect the attitude you encountered growing up?

I lived in a small town in Ohio, and everybody treated me there pretty much like anybody else. A lot of that has to do with my family, but I think it was also just part of the culture in the school. I was always good in math, and the teachers encouraged me.

When did you get interested in physics?

When I took physics in my senior year in high school. I liked pulling things apart and putting them back together when I was just a kid, but I didn’t think of it as a career.

It sounds as if you had a generally positive experience at Hollins College in Virginia and as a summer student at Brookhaven National Laboratory. But you wrote that when you were a master’s degree student at Columbia University, your professors didn’t seem to take you seriously, assuming that you would get married and have children and drop out of physics. What happened when you went to Europe to get your doctorate?

When I went to Europe I felt like I’d been punched in the face. It was just a total shock the way I was treated when I first went there. I got the tour of all these labs in Paris, and they turned me down. Essentially, they took only people from two schools, which were all male. But it wasn’t just that. The comments people made were unconscionable. You would be kicked off the faculty for saying some of the things they said to me.

What did they say?

“You came to France to get married, not to do physics.” To my husband, in front of me: “You already bought the merchandise.” “Men do theory; women do experiments.” The ‘proof’ that women can’t do theory is that “Yugoslavia is a perfectly egalitarian society and there are no women theorists there.” And some that I prefer not to repeat.

August 17, 2015
Facial Recognition Technology: Commercial Uses, Privacy Issues and Applicable Federal Law
What GAO* Found

Tek Time System sells face recognition time clocks to maintain employees attendance and accesses record (2014 image)
Facial recognition technology can be used in numerous consumer and business applications, but the extent of its current use in commercial settings is not fully known. The technology is commonly used in software that manages personal photographs and in social networking applications to identify friends. In addition, several companies use the technology to provide secure access to computers, phones, and gaming systems in lieu of a password. Facial recognition technology can have applications for customer service and marketing, but at present, use in the United States of the technology for such purposes appears to be largely for detecting characteristics (such as age or gender) to tailor digital advertising, rather than identifying unique individuals. Some security systems serving retailers, banks, and casinos incorporate facial recognition technology, but the extent of such use at present is not fully known.

Privacy advocacy organizations, government agencies, and others have cited several privacy concerns related to the commercial use of facial recognition technology. They say that if its use became widespread, it could give businesses or individuals the ability to identify almost anyone in public without their knowledge or consent and to track people’s locations, movements, and companions. They have also raised concerns that information collected or associated with facial recognition technology could be used, shared, or sold in ways that consumers do not understand, anticipate, or consent to. Some stakeholders disagree that the technology presents new or unusual privacy risks, noting, among other things, that individuals should not expect complete anonymity in public and that some loss of privacy is offset by the benefits the technology offers consumers and businesses.

Several government, industry, and privacy organizations have proposed or are developing voluntary privacy guidelines for commercial use of facial recognition technology. Suggested best practices vary, but most call for disclosing the technology’s use and obtaining consent before using it to identify someone from anonymous images. The privacy policies of companies GAO reviewed varied in whether and how they addressed facial recognition technology.

No federal privacy law expressly regulates commercial uses of facial recognition technology, and laws do not fully address key privacy issues stakeholders have raised, such as the circumstances under which the technology may be used to identify individuals or track their whereabouts and companions. Laws governing the collection, use, and storage of personal information may potentially apply to the commercial use of facial recognition in specific contexts, such as information collected by health care entities and financial institutions. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission Act has been interpreted to require companies to abide by their stated privacy policies. Stakeholder views vary on the efficacy of voluntary and self-regulatory approaches versus legislation and regulation to protect privacy. GAO has previously concluded that gaps exist in the consumer privacy framework, and the privacy issues that have been raised by facial recognition technology serve as yet another example of the need to adapt federal privacy law to reflect new technologies.

Why GAO Did This Study

Facial recognition technology — which can verify or identify an individual from a facial image — has rapidly improved in performance and now can surpass human performance in some cases. The Department of Commerce has convened stakeholders to review privacy issues related to commercial use of this technology, which GAO was also asked to examine.

This report examines (1) uses of facial recognition technology, (2) privacy issues that have been raised, (3) proposed best practices and industry privacy policies, and (4) potentially applicable privacy protections under federal law. The scope of this report includes use of the technology in commercial settings but not by government agencies. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed laws, regulations, and documents; interviewed federal agencies; and interviewed officials and reviewed privacy policies and proposals of companies, trade groups, and privacy groups. Companies were selected because they were among the largest in industries identified as potential major users of the technology, and privacy groups were selected because they had written on this issue.

What GAO Recommends

GAO makes no recommendations in this report. However, GAO suggested in GAO-13-663 that Congress consider strengthening the consumer privacy framework to reflect changes in technology and the marketplace, and facial recognition technology is such a change. GAO maintains that the current privacy framework in commercial settings warrants reconsideration.

For more information, contact Alicia Puente Cackley at (202) 512-8678 or cackleya@gao.gov.

GAO-15-621: Published: Jul 30, 2015. Publicly Released: Jul 30, 2015.
HIGHLIGHTS

VIEW REPORT (PDF, 54 PAGES)
Editor’s Note: SeniorWomen.com has been using GAO reports for well over a decade; the text below is taken from the GAO site. For aUS government approach to the technology, see the FBI’s Next Generation Identification website: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/ngi

The executive assistant director of the FBI’s Science and Technology Branch, Amy Hess, says that the Next Generation Identification system “does not use facial recognition analysis to positively identify individuals.” (Source, NYT’s To The Editor response to an August 13th article on Police Department’s use of ID tools).

GAO: Our Mission is to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. We provide Congress with timely information that is objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced.

Our Core Values of accountability, integrity, and reliability are reflected in all of the work we do. We operate under strict professional standards of review and referencing; all facts and analyses in our work are thoroughly checked for accuracy. In addition, our audit policies are consistent with the Fundamental Auditing Principles (Level 3) of the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions.
August 16, 2015
Fireflies And Summer Rain … Stars at Night, a Million Stars, Hung Low

**Updates and links below

by Julia Sneden

Summer has many wonderful things to recommend it: long hours of daylight; fruits and vegetables fresh from the garden or a Farmers’ Market; swimming outdoors in ocean, lake or pool; the distinct lack of formality in dress; outdoor sports like tennis and golf; comfort in one’s loose-fitting clothes; and a chance, perhaps, to enjoy a bit of vacation at home or away.

For children, of course, there is that delicious anticipation of the last day of school, and the thrilling first moments after the final bell when the whole beautiful summer spreads itself before you in your imagination, not one minute of the precious time yet squandered. For teachers, too, it’s a buoyant moment, followed shortly by the exquisite treat of going to bed and NOT setting the alarm clock.

Growing up in northern California, I loved to spend idle summer hours sitting up in the top of my special live oak tree, or playing wild games of Monopoly or Canasta with my best friend from next door. Once a week my mother would take us to the library and we’d stock up on books, three or four at a time. I can still recall the scent of that library, and see in my mind’s eye the wooden card catalogue and metal shelving in the children’s section. The name and face of the librarian are long gone from memory, but she was a beloved resource who kept tabs on everyone’s special interests and level of proficiency, and could suggest books that were an appropriate next step.

On hot days, my brother and I could bike down one hill and up another to a little green puddle partly ringed with a stone wall and a gate with a curved sign above it that said: “Emerald Lake Country Club.” There was no clubhouse; no tennis court; no amenity beyond a couple of outdoor restrooms and a trucked-in sandy beach. The lake had a raft in the middle, and a tall swing next to the high diving platform on the edge. On the Fourth of July, there were swimming races for children. I won mine a couple of times when Kay Belden moved up to the older age group, but in the years that we were in the same group, there was no touching her. I learned to dive by watching Kay, and every now and again she’d deign to notice my efforts, and offer advice, which thrilled me.

My brother used to drive the lifeguard (and my mother) mad by slipping beneath the surface and disappearing for a long time. He was a natural sinker, and could hold his breath for what seemed like forever. The water was so green that you couldn’t see three feet beneath the surface, so you never knew where he’d come up next. Often he shot out of the water beneath the inner tube on which I was floating, turning me over. Sometimes he grabbed me by the feet and yanked me down. Try as I might to swim underwater, I always bobbed back up, so he could easily escape my outraged efforts for revenge. I suppose that there’s an advantage to being naturally buoyant (it’d be hard to drown me), but at the time it seemed like the bane of my life.

In California, the grass-covered hills turn golden in the summer. It doesn’t rain from May to September, so the tall grass cures in the sun. That was when we got out the cardboard cartons we’d saved all winter, flattened them, and rode them down the hill in the same way that children in the East use sleds in the snow. It could be a hard and bumpy ride, but the dry grass was slick and the slopes were steep, and we could gather enough speed to shoot the small, dry creek at the bottom of the hill. (Well, at least my brother and the other big boys did).

Once or perhaps twice a summer, we’d have a really hot spell, as high as 90°. There would be headlines in the newspaper about little old ladies collapsing from the heat. But usually the “marine layer,” as the weathermen now refer to fog, would roll in over the coastal mountains that were known simply as Skyline, pouring over the slopes like a great ocean comber, making our nights chilly enough to sit by the fire, even in summer. It was nature’s own air conditioner, at least for those of us who lived near enough to the ocean.

August 15, 2015
Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Blogcation and Poor Oak Trees

Blogcation

I always loved summer as a kid. Besides it bringing my birthday, school was out and my friends and I spent most of the long, hot days outside. I also spent lots of time in the library catching up on books by my favorite authors. Sometimes my family would have a picnic with the cousins or we’d spend a day at the beach. It was welcome time away from our usual activities. So when summer came upon us this year I decided to take a needed blogcation for a few weeks to regenerate myself.

Now it’s time to return to my backyard. My blogcation helped me look at things through refreshed eyes. And I see that the yard needs tending. Things have grown abundantly over the years. The trees we planted for shade have done their job very well. The yard looks wooded and natural but we see that the bulbs we had planted no long bear flowers because of the shade generated by the trees. The privet hedges are long and lanky, reaching up through the tree branches to find the sun. The lovely Rose-of-Sharon (also known as Hibiscus syriacus) bush spread to the other side of the yard and the seedlings seem to want to take over. Yes, tending is in order.

At least I have the choice of gardening or resting; not everything in nature has that option. The bees have been busy gathering nectar and pollen from the Hibiscus and Echinacea flowers. They sing their way around the purple Salvia and Butterfly Bushes. Their visitations help distribute the pollen that fertilizes the plants. I hear them buzzing in the vegetable garden and I am grateful for their help. They make the juicy tomatoes we so love possible. In fact, a good portion of everyone’s diet is facilitated by honeybee pollination.

Which brings up the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Our honeybees are in trouble. More colonies than ever have been failing. Several dead hives have been found. Sometimes a queen bee and immature bees are present but no adult bees to do the hive’s work. The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA’s internal research agency, is trying to find out what causes CCD. Is it due to pesticides? Is it merely cyclical? Does it reflect poor management?

It makes a case for all of us being dependent upon each other. Bees are important to our survival — and we are necessary to theirs. As I enjoy the fruits — and vegetables — of their labor, I hope that we find a way to guarantee their continued presence. Come autumn, the old guard will be over and the new queens will hibernate until the next spring approaches. I understand about down time, even in Nature, but let’s not make CCD a permanent state for the bees.

Become familiar with the life of the honeybee:

http://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/lifecycle/

Understand the problems bees currently face:

http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/5112/20130508/colony-collapse-disorder-honeybees-danger-dying.htm

Poor Oak Trees

I’m feeling kind of sad about my oak tree. It has been gracing our house at the curb for almost forty years, supplying acorns for the squirrels, a fine nesting place for the birds, shade on hot summer days, and lovely, graceful leaves for atmosphere. This summer it is having troubles. Some of its branches are bare and on those that still have greenery, the leaves are not as abundant as they had been in the past. I wonder if the poor tree will last through the winter.

We go for walks every night after dinner when the heat of the day starts to mellow and we are noticing that many oak trees in our development are showing the same kinds of symptoms. There are woodpeckers in the area and sapsuckers are known to “bleed” a tree to get the sap, which harms the tree. Is there an oak tree disease ravaging these beauties? But then, their environment may be the problem. They were planted in a confined space. Their roots are reaching out desperately for somewhere to grow, raising concrete slabs, sending roots out along the curbside seeking nourishment. Or is it Oak Wilt? Photos from various botanical gardens seem to suggest that it is. My heart aches for the trees I see with receding growth as I learned that it is usually fatal.

Dieback on oak (Quercus) caused by oak wilt; Missouri Botanical Garden photo

There is a time for everything to flourish, I guess, and then to draw away. It’s hard to accept that sometimes that withdrawal is hastened; the oaks should last longer than this. Nature is a continuum of growth and loss. We can delay the process now and then but there is a time for it all. Perhaps our appreciation of what we have is the best way to understand the cycle — and to live life fully.

About Oak Wilt:

Missouri Botanical Garden and Oak Wilt

©2015 Ferida Wolff for SeniorWomen.com

August 13, 2015
Is your neighbor a Democrat or Republican? Desirability of Partisan Composition on Real Estate

By Clifton B. Parker

People who identify as either Democrat or Republican desire neighborhoods with people who share their political preferences when they are given that information, according to a new study.

Americans today appear more divided along partisan lines than ever, and this polarization extends to where they choose to live, a Stanford scholar has found.

San Jose demographics, 2010, Wikimedia Commons

People who identify as either Democrat or Republican desire neighborhoods with people who share their political preferences when they are given that information, according to a new study by Iris Hui, a Stanford postdoctoral fellow at the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

In an interview, Hui pointed out that the most important factors continue to be safety, amenities, schools and distance to workplaces. Political affiliation serves as a “tiebreaker” of sorts to the more primary reasons for neighborhood choice.

“Depending on the partisan composition, the desirability of a place can increase by 20 percent when respondents are informed the location has a sizeable presence of co-partisans,” Hui wrote.

She noted that about the same magnitude of decline (20 percent) in desirability occurs when respondents are told the opposite. And, respondents who report themselves as independents or unaffiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties do not care as much about neighborhood partisanship, she added.

August 10, 2015
Museum of Imaginary Instruments Exhibits

Curators of Museum of Imaginary Instruments: Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson

Auditory Extensions

This collection features primarily what might be called “listeners’ instruments” – that is, devices that aid in the audition of music, rather than its production. Such technologies remind us that our notion of music is determined in large part by what we can hear, and ask us to imagine sonic universes of micro- and macro-scales and distant times and places — worlds of sound lying beyond the “doors of perception” we call our ears.

Musica ex machina

For as long as suitable technologies existed, human beings have been fascinated with the possibility of automating the production of musical sound. Musical automata were devised as early as the first century AD by the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria, and the histories of music and automation have been entwined ever since. The instruments in this exhibit play upon the fascination with “machine music,” whose apparent independence from human control or skill is at once a source of wonder and terror.

Technological Chimeras

In Greek mythology, the chimera was a hybrid monster: with a lion’s head and body, a snake for a tail, and a goat head rising from its back, it combined elements from different animals into a new beast. The instruments in this exhibit can be thought of as “technological chimeras,” in which distinct units of earlier artifacts are welded together: organ pipes with steam engines, for example, or sound with photography. These devices also partake of another, more general meaning of “chimera”: an impossible or illusory fantasy.

Giganticism

Faster, bigger, louder: the industrial revolution ushered in a new scale of life, and a new notion of progress. In the realm of musical instruments, the pursuit of the louder by means of the larger became a particular obsession, manifesting in both designs for enormous instruments and plans for coordinating ever larger collections of individuals. The “Giganticism” exhibit reflects some of the most awesome and absurd dreams of the technological imagination.

August 8, 2015