Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of renters have pets, the hassle of trying to find a pet-friendly building doesn't have tenants purring. According to a new Apartments.com survey, 75 percent of renters said they own pets (mainly cats and dogs), which is a significant spike from only 43 percent who said so a year ago. But despite that large percentage, most are still finding it difficult to find buildings with pet-friendly options, the survey shows.
The majority of the 1,100 renters surveyed by Apartments.com have encountered strict restrictions as to the types of pets that they're allowed to have in their apartments -- if they're even allowed them at all. More than 60 percent of respondents revealed that they struggled to find pet-friendly accommodations. Of those who did, 63 percent said that they had to pay a one-time "pet deposit" or expensive monthly fees in order to keep their furry friends.
"Clearly, pets are a deal-breaker for many, and apartment buildings with more flexible pet policies will be the ones to attract this growing group of pet-owning renters -- and possibly keep them for a longer period of time," said Tammy Kotula, a spokesperson for Apartments.com. "Nearly all pet owners surveyed said pet policies play a major role in their decision of where to live."
But, according to Kotula, many landlords and animal-free neighbors are increasingly recognizing that pet owners are, for the most part, "responsible and respectful neighbors." Our take is that owning a pet while renting shouldn't be too much of a problem, as long you're willing to cough up the fees -- and refrain from turning your apartment into a pet's wonderland.
See more about pets in apartments: California Law Bans Landlords From Requiring Declawed, 'Devoiced' Pets Condo Owner in Dog Fight to Keep 'Prescription Pet' Snakes, Alligators and Other Exotic Animals Found Inside Brooklyn Apartment
More on AOL Real Estate: Find homes for rent in your area. Find out how to calculate mortgage payments. Find homes for sale in your area. Find foreclosures in your area.
Follow us on Twitter at @AOLRealEstate or connect with AOL Real Estate on Facebook.
Fisker Automotive is on life-support despite a government loan, but electric vehicle innovators continue to draw a road map for the industry
By Dina Fine Maron
Weak Fisker: On April 11 the federal government seized $21 million from the company?s cash reserves.Image: Flickr/Fisker Auto
U.S. electric car pioneer Fisker Automotive onceposted a manifesto on its Web site: ?New isn?t easy.? Not for them, it wasn?t. Now their site is defunct and the company is scrambling to find a funder or face bankruptcy.
An electric car company buoyed by federal dollarsin 2010,Fisker has now been crippled by supply chain and other problems, and joined legions of start-ups that get dragged down by technical glitches and financial woes. The capital backing from taxpayers caused a dustup that has kept Fisker in the limelight.
The greater question now is whether Fisker?s crash will have repercussions for the electric vehicle industry, which has seen some sales successes with Tesla?s Model S in recent months but largely remains unrealized.
Rewind to just a few years ago when the future for electric vehicles looked promising. In 2010 the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt hit the road. Gas prices were rising and Pres. Barack Obama pledged to put one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. With climate change legislation on the table in Congress as well, the EV market seemed primed for an upswing.
Enter Fisker, whose electric sports sedan Karma rolled into showrooms in 2011amid fanfare. TIME listed it as one of the 50 best inventions of 2011. The Anaheim, Calif.?basedcompany netted a $529 million government-backed loan to help fuel its efforts. In recent years it reportedly raised $1 billion more in private funds.
But things started to fall apart. Its lone battery supplier, A123 Systems,floundered and eventually went bankrupt?a significant blow when as much as half of electric cars? price tag comes from that piece of technology. Karma?had to halt production. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) froze Fisker?s loan at $192 million in June 2011. A flawed cooling fan was also linked to a fire in 2012, prompting recalls.? In October Hurricane Sandy destroyed several hundred Karmas waiting for shipment at Port Newark, N.J. Fisker?s founder left last month, leaving the company to contemplate its next steps. This month it laid off the majority of its employees. It is also reportedly being sued by a Web designer, an investor and some former employees.
And the hits keep on coming: On April 11 the federal government seized $21 million from the company?s cash reserves. Fisker did not respond to a request from Scientific American for comment on this story.
Republican lawmakers blasted the company at a House Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation and Regulatory Affairshearing on Wednesday, accusing Fisker of profiting from close connections with the Obama administration. But lawmakers saved most of their fire for the DoE, blaming it for continuing to dole out funds when some lawmakers believe there were early indications the company was not delivering on its product. ?The real issue here?is the government shouldn?t be in this business of actually trying to be a venture capitalist. The government is a very poor venture capitalist,? said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R?N.C.). ?We lose taxpayer dollars, and when we lose taxpayer dollars it outrages the public.?Armed with private e-mail correspondence House Republicans obtained between the company, DoE and related consultants, it tried to pin down who knew what and when.
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Who would have guessed that the air-traffic controllers and meat inspectors would be the first ones lucky enough to avoid the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration?
So it went on Friday, when Congress passed legislation to give the Federal Aviation Administration special flexibility in implementing its sequester cuts. The bill exempted air-traffic controllers from furloughs, which had caused flight delays at major airport hubs throughout the Northeast for the past five days. Meat inspectors also received a carve-out in late March following a powerful lobbying push and under the guise of ensuring food safety.
Now, with two sequester tweaks on the books, other special-interest groups, unions, and lobbyists are planning to rev up their efforts to undo the cuts bit by bit or, in this case, by a few billion dollars here or there. The actions of the FAA over the past week, alongside airline groups and unions, offer a playbook for others to use as they too seek exemptions.
?What you?re seeing now is an unraveling of the sequester. This is predictable as the sun rising in the east, and it will happen piece by piece over the next 60 to 90 days,? says Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former staff director for the Senate Budget Committee.
Already, interest groups are plotting new ways to cast their particular sequester cuts as dire or unfair or safety hazards since they see an opening to escape the full force of the legislation. Remember the hollering a few weeks ago about cancer patients being turned away from treatment or clinical trials? Well, the American Cancer Society Action Network plans to ramp up its pressure on lawmakers following the FAA legislation. The group has an energized grassroots organization; a lobbying team in Washington; and lots of face time with lawmakers. After all, if air-traffic controllers can get a pass, then the cancer advocacy group thinks patients should too.
?We?re no longer just talking about why we need this additional funding. We?re talking about people who are dying because of what politicians are unable to do,? says Christopher Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society Action Network, the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society. The message, he adds, ?is going to get more edgy.?
It took a mere six days for the FAA to push Congress to change its language on the agency?s sequester cuts. The furloughs of air-traffic controllers began April 21. Each ensuing day, the agency released a press release and tweeted about the number of flights delayed due to sequestration and the resulting reduced staffing at airports.
On Wednesday alone, 863 flights were delayed at major hubs in New York, Washington, Cleveland, Dallas, and Jacksonville, Fla. On average, New Yorkers? flights were delayed by one hour, while delays at the Los Angeles airport spanned into two hours, says Mark Duell, vice president of operations at FlightAware.com, an industry tracking group. The airlines also threatened to undo their rule to not keep passengers waiting on the tarmac for more than three hours.
Forget that an additional 2,132 flights were delayed on Wednesday, due to weather or other typical airline mishaps. This week, for instance, New York suffered from high winds, and Florida experienced thunderstorms, Duell says.
When the flights were delayed, the message from the airlines was clear: This is all the fault of the sequester. Pilots and flight attendants in their announcements attributed problems to the government cuts, says airline industry analysts. This riled up consumers and made them aware of the sequester cuts in a way they may not have experienced them before. (In mid-March, a majority of Americans had yet to see evidence of the sequester in their lives, says Gallup pollsters).
Then came the lobbying muscle to fight the FAA cuts. That?s the thing about the airline industry?it has lots of manpower. The airline pilots have a union, as do the air-traffic controllers. Major airlines have an industry group alongside the regional airlines. Even companies involved in shipping, transportation, air express, and postal delivery got involved.
It was all-out blitz, from the cable-news shots of angry passengers delayed at major airports and missing connecting flights to websites set up by the industry to decry the issue. ?Don?t Ground America? was the slogan of one industry advocacy site. ?The FAA?s unnecessary and reckless action will disrupt air travel for millions of Americans, cost jobs, and threatens to ground the U.S. economy to halt,? says the site.
This combination of angry consumers and a powerful industry?combined with a lack of opposition?forced Congress to vote to give the FAA more room to maneuver with its sequester cuts. In the weeks to come, the question is: Will this prove as a successful template for other industries or a one-off lucky break for the FAA on the sequester?
The Internal Revenue Service recently announced its plans to furlough its employees. The group representing them, the National Treasury Employees Union, wants those furloughs scaled back. ?Congress just voted to make it more likely that their flights home for another vacation today will not be delayed, but they should be staying here to find a way to stop the sequester and prevent the loss of services the American people rely on,? said NTEU President Colleen Kelley in a statement.?
In the coming weeks, the cuts least likely to receive much attention are those that affect the poor or the unemployed. Already, workers who?ve been out of job for six months or more have seen ?federal unemployment checks cut by about 11 percent cuts due to the sequester.
?It pains and saddens me that there is no outcry to undo the sequester cuts for them,? says Judy Conti, a federal advocacy coordinator with the National Employment Law Project. ?The political reality is that members of the House are not willing to do that.?
AP10ThingsToSee - A man takes pictures inside a work of art entitled "Poetic Cosmos of the Breath" by Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno, which is part of an exhibition at the waterfront of West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
AP10ThingsToSee - A man takes pictures inside a work of art entitled "Poetic Cosmos of the Breath" by Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno, which is part of an exhibition at the waterfront of West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
AP10ThingsToSee - Kashmiri Muslim devotees participate in a torch lightimg procession on a hilltop near the shrine of Muslim saint Sakhi Zain-ud-din Wali, in Aishmuqaam, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Srinagar, India, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)
AP10ThingsToSee - A man squats near the collapsed remains of a building destroyed by an earthquake in Lushan county in southwestern China's Sichuan province, Monday, April 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
AP10ThingsToSee - Indian policemen try to remove protestors shouting slogans outside Prime Minister's residence during a protest against the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi, India, Sunday, April 21, 2013. The girl was allegedly kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man and then left alone in a locked room in India?s capital for two days. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
A moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing is observed on Boylston Street near the race finish line, exactly one week after the tragedy, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Here's your look at highlights from the weekly AP photo report, a gallery featuring a mix of front-page photography, the odd image you might have missed and lasting moments our editors think you should see.
This week's collection includes a moment of silence in Boston, a protest against the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi, a North Korean army colonel standing near the demilitarized zone, "Poetic Cosmos of the Breath" by Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno and a frightening scene from the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh.
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This gallery contains images published April 18-25, 2013.
Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://apne.ws/XZy6ny
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See other recent AP photo galleries:
From finish line to capture: The week in Boston: http://apne.ws/15QSX0Y
Manhunt: 48 hours in Boston: http://apne.ws/XZyr9Y
Boston Marathon bombings: Suspects caught on camera: http://apne.ws/15QTjVz
China rushes relief after Sichuan earthquake: http://apne.ws/10fvmPs
In 2007, Blessing Makwera found a device with wires sticking out of it in his native country of Zimbabwe. Not knowing what the device was, the then-15-year-old placed it in his mouth. It exploded, causing him to lose his jaw, teeth and part of his tongue. The device was a landmine.
Makwera had the majority of his jaw removed and tried to recover in a hospital in Zimbabwe for two months, with only a piece of piano wire holding his jaw in place.
"Initially I felt like I wasn't a normal human being in my community after the accident," Makwera told ABCNews.com. "After the surgery I was in a lot of pain for four months-there was no doctor there, and no one that can do the surgery, and I thought there was no way I am going to be normal again."
After hearing Makwera's story, Operation of Hope, a non-profit organization that provides surgical care, healthcare and medical training programs in under-served areas of the world- along with then 12-year-old Portland, Ore., native Hayden Skoch-decided to take action.
Maimed African Teens Amazing Journey to America
"We met Blessing and everyone fell in love with him," said Jennifer Trubenbach , president of Operation of Hope. "The doctor who operated initially took away probably more than he needed to, and luckily it was able to heal, but it was a miracle he was able to survive. He had a wash cloth on his chest, and he just drooled and drooled, so we worked on getting that corrected first by removing the wire holding his jaw and creating a better structure. Basically we got him out of a bad situation of living, and gave him the opportunity to go to a private school in Habari, Africa, the city we do our operations in."
Skoch, now 16, who heard about Makwera's story from a family friend associated with Operation of Hope, also wanted to help. She arranged for the profits made at her middle school dance to be used to create a fund to get Makwera sent to the U.S. for post-operative care. She raised $1,100.
"It was that even though he was far away he was another kid who was my age and I just thought his story was so amazing and I couldn't relate to any story like that in my life or in the U.S. And the story was so amazing to me that I was compelled to be involved and help out," Skoch said.
With both Operation of Hope and Skoch's help, Makwera was able to finish high school in Africa. He then traveled to the U.S. for the first of three surgeries two months ago in San Diego, Calif.
"We were able to find a hospital to donate their hospital and surgeons to help him," Trubenbach said. "They took a bone out of his leg and rebuilt his jaw, and it ended up being a 13-hour surgery."
This trip to the U.S. was the first time Skoch and Makwera met. "It was crazy when I helped him four years ago, I didn't imagine it would be four years until I met him," Skoch said.
"It was very exciting knowing that someone who has helped me four years ago, was meeting me for the first time," Makwera said. "I felt she was another member of my family that I had not discovered and not known my whole life, but meeting her made me feel good. I also think knowing Jennifer and Stephen [Clawson] and their organization in my life has been a blessing."
Makwera is now living in Portland with Clawson, brother to Trubenbach and vice president of Operation of Hope, and volunteering as a teacher's aide at private school in Oregon. He still has two more surgeries, the second slated for mid-June. He is expected to be about "80 percent back to his original form after the third and final surgery," Trubenbach said.
"The sensitivity towards an individual with a disability in this country is not very accepting. They assume that because his face was damaged, his brain was too and that is not the case," she said. "He has been called monster to his face, and I know this surgery will help him with gaining a better sense of normalcy."
Trubenbach, who Makwera calls his "American mother," said her wish for Makwera post-surgery is for him to continue his education.
"You can have a beautiful face but if you don't have an education life can be very difficult," she said. "My personal hope and wish is not only would he have an opportunity to have normal speech and face but to get to go to school in the states. And his hope is to return to Zimbabwe someday. But if he could get an education here and apply it there it would be my greatest hope of all. He is so smart, takes the bus to get to work every day, and takes advantage of the gifts he has been given and he is really thankful. That is my wish for him."
For now, Makwera will stay in the U.S. until his next three surgeries are complete. He said he will always treasure his new American family and will never give up on his dreams.
"My advice to anyone is never give to up on yourself , you should always strive for the best in life. Don't listen to the negative because they don't know how you feel," he said. "You should know that you are great and to never give up on yourself. I feel like my world is coming back to normal, and I feel like a community loves me and still needs me. This experience has made me realize that the world is a great place to live in."
You have three bars of Wi-Fi signal strength, but your browser won't budge and your apps won't fire. That means a bad connection is preventing information from getting from the Internet to your phone. If you've exhausted everything on the network's end?like asking the guy next to you in the coffee shop if his Internet is working?then start fresh.
One option is to forget the network. Hit the arrow next to the desired network name, tap Forget This Network, and then reconnect. If that doesn't work, do a hard reset (you'll hear this a lot) by holding the home and sleep buttons simultaneously for a few seconds. Then try again.
If you're using an older phone, the router could be the problem. One option: Go into the router's settings and find the section with the acronym WPA. Switch that to WEP. It's a less secure but more accessible security protocol that will let your older phone get on the network.
When all else fails, perform a broader reset. Go to Settings > General > Reset, and hit Reset Network Settings. Be warned: You'll lose all the stored passwords for all your networks. However, this will fix a majority of connectivity issues.
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Students develop sophisticated analyses of design problems behind huge disasters
A classroom approach that helps high school seniors analyze engineering disasters as though the students were professional investigators has been selected to win the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.
"When you compare what the students say and write with what the National Transportation Safety Board has in monographs about these disasters, they're comparable," says Joe Immel, who teaches the course module, called Root Cause Analysis, at Technology High School in Rohnert Park, California. "The students' products are really amazing."
The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Root Cause Analysis will be published on April 26.
"Improving science education is an important goal for all of us at Science," says editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts. "We hope to help those innovators who have developed outstanding laboratory modules promoting student inquiry to reach a wider audience. Each winning module will be featured in an article in Science that is aimed at guiding science educators from around the world to these valuable free resources."
Immel first got interested in science when he was in junior high. An eighth-grade teacher took him and his classmates through what Immel would later learn was generally taught in college-level invertebrate zoology classes. As a student, he was locked on, and as a future educator, he would look back at the experience and realize that young students are more capable than is often believed.
"When it comes to kids, you can ask them to do something and as long as no one tells them it's impossible, they can do it," Immel says.
Immel went on to earn degrees in biology at the University of California, including a PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He worked as a scientist, then as an engineer. He and his wife, Barbara Kephart Immel, then started a consulting firm for the biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical industries.
At age 50, Immel earned a teaching credential, having discovered he really enjoyed volunteering in schools when his own children were small. He took a job at Technology High School, a public alternative school with a project-based, group-oriented curriculum.
Having seen how a kind of root cause analysis was routinely used as a part of quality control in the pharmaceutical industry, Immel says it occurred to him that the process would provide an interesting approach for students. "I said, 'I bet seniors would like to do that,'" he says.
Immel's curriculum module "Root Cause Analysis: Methodologies and Case Studies" helps students use a systematic approach to analyze engineering failures such as the Titanic disaster and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. As Immel predicted and has had confirmed, "Spectacular failures interest high-school students greatly."
As the students consider each disaster, they are coached to pursue root causes by persistently asking "why" at least five times, and to keep asking "who, what, when, where, how?" They are encouraged to pursue a course of thought beyond where they would normally go, keeping an open mind as they push through premature conclusions.
"People in general look for an answer, and when they get one, they stop and say, 'This is it,'" Immel says. "We teach the students that we're liable to be fooled by symptoms, we're liable to be fooled by things that are more superficial than we think they are."
The students are asked to find at least two root causes for each disaster case study, and then to explore corrective and preventive actions first in class discussions and then in the "executive summaries" they prepare.
The fifth and final case study is presented in a way that puts the students in the role of real engineers. The students are put into six groups, with each group privy only to what one real-life engineer knew at the time of a disaster, in this case the Columbia space shuttle disaster. Each group goes over the phone calls, memos and documents belonging to that real-life engineer.
One representative from each group speaks at a mission management meeting in a kind of role play. After the meeting, the setting switches to the day of the disaster, and the students as engineers must face the public and the media in a brutal mock press conference.
After the press conference, students are sent off to individually prepare their executive summaries. Unlike with usual term papers or exams, however, they are required to communicate via phone, text, email or even Facebook with their classroom peers from all of the groups, in order to prepare the best analyses. The summaries are due the very next day.
"The members of each group only initially learned one-sixth of the information, so they have to fill in the blanks," Immel says. "We have instant communication, it's the way of the world. So we need to use it."
Students often stay up all night conferring and preparing their summaries. "They are fascinated by the case studies, and they throw themselves into it," Immel says. "That's all they want to do. We have to negotiate with other instructors at the end of the year while this is going on, because the students don't want to do anything else."
Immel says the collaborative aspect of the process is key to the success of the analyses. Melissa McCartney, associate editor at Science, lauds the approach.
"While this module is specific to engineering," McCartney says, "it employs collective intelligence and collaborative learning, both of which are important in any STEM discipline."
The process of figuring out what went wrong in a disaster can be very compelling, Immel says. "It's just immense fun," he says. "It's what piques the intellect of the people on the National Transportation Safety Board." Immel adds that the human tragedy associated with the case study disasters is not overlookedan analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout begins with a slide show of the 11 people who died there, for exampleand students develop a profound appreciation for the care that should go into every engineering task.
Students who have experienced the module often report back to Immel that they have continued to use Root Cause Analysis as they move on in their education and training.
Immel believes Root Cause Analysis should be a part of new science education standards, which call for more emphasis on engineering.
"I would love to see a full-semester course with many more case studies," he says. "The more you do it, the better you get."
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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Students develop sophisticated analyses of design problems behind huge disasters
A classroom approach that helps high school seniors analyze engineering disasters as though the students were professional investigators has been selected to win the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.
"When you compare what the students say and write with what the National Transportation Safety Board has in monographs about these disasters, they're comparable," says Joe Immel, who teaches the course module, called Root Cause Analysis, at Technology High School in Rohnert Park, California. "The students' products are really amazing."
The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Root Cause Analysis will be published on April 26.
"Improving science education is an important goal for all of us at Science," says editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts. "We hope to help those innovators who have developed outstanding laboratory modules promoting student inquiry to reach a wider audience. Each winning module will be featured in an article in Science that is aimed at guiding science educators from around the world to these valuable free resources."
Immel first got interested in science when he was in junior high. An eighth-grade teacher took him and his classmates through what Immel would later learn was generally taught in college-level invertebrate zoology classes. As a student, he was locked on, and as a future educator, he would look back at the experience and realize that young students are more capable than is often believed.
"When it comes to kids, you can ask them to do something and as long as no one tells them it's impossible, they can do it," Immel says.
Immel went on to earn degrees in biology at the University of California, including a PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He worked as a scientist, then as an engineer. He and his wife, Barbara Kephart Immel, then started a consulting firm for the biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical industries.
At age 50, Immel earned a teaching credential, having discovered he really enjoyed volunteering in schools when his own children were small. He took a job at Technology High School, a public alternative school with a project-based, group-oriented curriculum.
Having seen how a kind of root cause analysis was routinely used as a part of quality control in the pharmaceutical industry, Immel says it occurred to him that the process would provide an interesting approach for students. "I said, 'I bet seniors would like to do that,'" he says.
Immel's curriculum module "Root Cause Analysis: Methodologies and Case Studies" helps students use a systematic approach to analyze engineering failures such as the Titanic disaster and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. As Immel predicted and has had confirmed, "Spectacular failures interest high-school students greatly."
As the students consider each disaster, they are coached to pursue root causes by persistently asking "why" at least five times, and to keep asking "who, what, when, where, how?" They are encouraged to pursue a course of thought beyond where they would normally go, keeping an open mind as they push through premature conclusions.
"People in general look for an answer, and when they get one, they stop and say, 'This is it,'" Immel says. "We teach the students that we're liable to be fooled by symptoms, we're liable to be fooled by things that are more superficial than we think they are."
The students are asked to find at least two root causes for each disaster case study, and then to explore corrective and preventive actions first in class discussions and then in the "executive summaries" they prepare.
The fifth and final case study is presented in a way that puts the students in the role of real engineers. The students are put into six groups, with each group privy only to what one real-life engineer knew at the time of a disaster, in this case the Columbia space shuttle disaster. Each group goes over the phone calls, memos and documents belonging to that real-life engineer.
One representative from each group speaks at a mission management meeting in a kind of role play. After the meeting, the setting switches to the day of the disaster, and the students as engineers must face the public and the media in a brutal mock press conference.
After the press conference, students are sent off to individually prepare their executive summaries. Unlike with usual term papers or exams, however, they are required to communicate via phone, text, email or even Facebook with their classroom peers from all of the groups, in order to prepare the best analyses. The summaries are due the very next day.
"The members of each group only initially learned one-sixth of the information, so they have to fill in the blanks," Immel says. "We have instant communication, it's the way of the world. So we need to use it."
Students often stay up all night conferring and preparing their summaries. "They are fascinated by the case studies, and they throw themselves into it," Immel says. "That's all they want to do. We have to negotiate with other instructors at the end of the year while this is going on, because the students don't want to do anything else."
Immel says the collaborative aspect of the process is key to the success of the analyses. Melissa McCartney, associate editor at Science, lauds the approach.
"While this module is specific to engineering," McCartney says, "it employs collective intelligence and collaborative learning, both of which are important in any STEM discipline."
The process of figuring out what went wrong in a disaster can be very compelling, Immel says. "It's just immense fun," he says. "It's what piques the intellect of the people on the National Transportation Safety Board." Immel adds that the human tragedy associated with the case study disasters is not overlookedan analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout begins with a slide show of the 11 people who died there, for exampleand students develop a profound appreciation for the care that should go into every engineering task.
Students who have experienced the module often report back to Immel that they have continued to use Root Cause Analysis as they move on in their education and training.
Immel believes Root Cause Analysis should be a part of new science education standards, which call for more emphasis on engineering.
"I would love to see a full-semester course with many more case studies," he says. "The more you do it, the better you get."
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WEST, Texas (AP) ? From money, food and clothing to new appliances and crews armed with chain saws, help is pouring into the tiny Texas town where a fertilizer plant exploded.
As the donations come in, how long and how much it will take for West to come back aren't yet known.
Residents have just started burying the 14 people who died in last week's blast. Some don't yet know what happened to their homes. They're struggling to replace missing medications and documents.
Others are just starting to work with insurance companies to figure out how much money they'll get for repairs.
The explosion last Wednesday at West Fertilizer left a crater more than 90 feet wide and blasted the walls and windows off dozens of buildings in the town of 2,700.
If you're looking for a fresh take on a get things done app, Catch Notes for iPhone and iPad does just that. Not only does Catch Notes combine reminders, notes, ideas, and checklists into one app, it does it with a great interface while also supporting many common task types. Whether you want to upload photos, take free hand notes, or be reminded to do something, Catch Notes can do it all within one singular app.
Catch Notes starts by allowing you to create spaces for better organizing your data. By default, you can create up to five spaces for free. After that, you can buy additional spaces as an in-app purchase. For most users, five spaces will be plenty to at least get started. These areas can be used in any manner you'd like. For instance, you can have one space for work and another for home. You can also choose to re-order them by simply dragging them in the main list in any order you'd like. If you consistently work on several projects at one time that you'd like to keep separate, you may have a need for more spaces.
Once you have set up your spaces and organized Catch notes the way you'd like, you can start adding notes and other types of content into any space you'd like. Along the bottom of Catch Notes, tap on the "+" sign to start creating and adding content. Supported media types include standard text notes, reminders (with notifications), photos, audio notes, and checklists. You can create as many of these items as you'd like within any space. For people attempting to organize many projects, you can create several checklists within a space for as many projects as you'd like. Catch Notes also supports hashtags which makes searching for notes easier. Just tag them however you'd like. Catch Notes will start aggregating tags you use frequently as you type them for quicker tagging.
You can share spaces with other Catch Notes users as well. This way you can collaborate on projects or group tasks easier and without having to email or compare notes. If you do need to share something with someone that isn't using Catch Notes, you can always do so by emailing any note you have stored. You can also attach photos to existing notes by either snapping a new picture or using one that already exists in your camera roll.
The good
Easy to set up and start using in a matter of seconds
The initial five space allotment will be plenty for most users
Notifications work well eliminate the need for a reminders app on top of a task management app
Great interface that's not only clean, but has a sensible workflow
Native sync at no additional cost, which is great if you want to use both the iPhone and iPad version
The bad
No way to change notification tone
It'd be nice to see more share options, such as to other apps or via other delivery methods other than email
The bottom line
Catch Notes is very reminiscent Evernote with the added ability for reminders. The only down side is that Catch Notes doesn't have a Mac counterpart at this time. For most users that have a need to manage multiple projects or notes, they'll most likely want the ability from their Mac as well. If that sounds like you, a productivity suite such as Things is probably a better option.
If you aren't a Mac user or don't care about having a desktop client, Catch Notes makes a great alternative to some of the more expensive get things done apps out there. Considering you can get started at no cost to you, there's nothing to lose by at least giving it a try.
Apple is set to release their Q2 2013 financial results, and conduct their usual conference call, today at 2pm PDT, 5pm EDT. Most times the only news we get out of it is how many more billions Apple made, and what kind of shots Tim Cook took at competitors and analysts asking about TVs for the umpteenth time. Today's narrative will, of course, be focused -- or unfocused -- around Apple is doomed.
Apple wil still earn billions, way more than competitors who enjoy huge market and media support while seldom if even earning a nickel of profit. And there's a good chance they'll be killed for it.
Either way, we'll be back later to sort through all of it, and try to attach some sanity to the narrative. If you want to follow along, you can listen live or catch the recording later via the link below.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index closed little changed on Tuesday as sluggish economic data from China, Germany and the United States revived concerns about the global recovery.
Lackluster earnings reports from some Canadian companies also weighed down investor sentiment.
The latest Purchasing Managers' Indexes for the euro area showed business activity in Germany shrank for the first time in five months in April, while China's April HSBC flash PMI fell. Also, U.S. manufacturing grew at its most sluggish pace in six months as domestic demand dried up.
The resource-heavy index, which is sensitive to global growth trends because of their impact on commodity prices, was up for the fourth straight session, but is down about 3 percent on the year.
"The market?s got this rally going, but we don't think we're out of the woods yet," said Robert McWhirter, president and portfolio manager at Selective Asset Management. "There is probably another 2 to 3 months of pullback to occur."
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed up 0.26 of a point at 12,090.94.
Last week, the index posted its second-biggest weekly decline of the year, triggered by a rout in commodity prices, including the biggest single-day drop in gold prices ever.
"Commodities are under pressure," said Kevin Headland, director, portfolio advisory group, at Manulife Asset Management. "The Asian growth story that we're seeing is slower than we're used to."
Headland does not see too many catalysts for commodity prices, but still expects the index to end the year higher.
A 1 percent fall in the price of gold and a decline in Teck Resources Ltd hurt some material stocks.
Teck was down 1.6 percent at C$25.60 after the miner reported a 40 percent fall in first-quarter adjusted profit due to lower coal prices. The company said economic uncertainty might affect prices and shipments.
Goldcorp Inc fell 3 percent to C$28.44.
Among energy companies, EnCana Corp lost 1.7 percent to C$18.96 after the natural gas producer reported a 25 percent fall in first-quarter operating profit due to hedging losses.
Rogers Communications Inc declined 3.5 percent, a day after it reported first-quarter results.
TransAlta Corp was down 2.6 percent at C$13.70 after the power generation company reported a first-quarter loss, hurt in part by a one-time charge related to pension funding obligations.
(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Andre Grenon)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Clothing retailer Ralph Lauren Corp will pay more than $1.6 million to settle a criminal and civil investigation of allegations that one of its subsidiaries bribed government officials in Argentina.
U.S. authorities agreed not to prosecute the company after allegations surfaced that it bribed Argentinian customs officials in order to clear merchandise, some of it prohibited, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The company received the lenient treatment because of its "extensive" cooperation in the inquiry and new anti-bribery training for its employees, a world-wide risk assessment it conducted and other remedial measures.
The company will pay an $882,000 penalty to the DOJ and disgorge more than $730,000 in illicit profits and interest to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the two agencies said.
Ralph Lauren did not have an anti-corruption program or provide training to employees at its subsidiary in Argentina in the five-year period over which the bribes occurred, prosecutors said.
A lawyer for the company, Thomas Hanusik, said Ralph Lauren investigated the allegations, reported them to authorities and cooperated in the government probes.
The agreement with the SEC is the first non-prosecution agreement the agency has entered in the foreign bribery context.
In recent years both agencies have stepped up efforts to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1970s-era law that bars bribes to officials of foreign governments.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Dan Grebler)
BERLIN (AP) ? A German data protection agency fined Google Inc. 145,000 euros ($189,000) for illegally recording information from unsecured wireless networks ? an amount it acknowledged is "totally inadequate" as a deterrent to the multinational giant.
Hamburg's state data protection agency said Monday that Google admitted collecting data including emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols from 2008-2010 as it prepared to launch its Street View service. Google says it never intended to store personal data and the agency says it has been deleted.
Agency head Johannes Caspar says "company internal control mechanisms failed seriously" at Google but the maximum fine possible was 150,000 euros which was "unlikely...to have a deterring effect." Google earned $3.3 billion in the first quarter.
Caspar urged dramatic increases to possible maximum fines under future European regulations.
Apr. 22, 2013 ? Pioneering biophotonics technology developed at Northwestern University is the first screening method to detect the early presence of ovarian cancer in humans by examining cells easily brushed from the neighboring cervix or uterus, not the ovaries themselves.
A research team from Northwestern and NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) conducted an ovarian cancer clinical study at NorthShore. Using partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy, they saw diagnostic changes in cells taken from the cervix or uterus of patients with ovarian cancer even though the cells looked normal under a microscope.
The results have the potential to translate into a minimally invasive early detection method using cells collected by a swab, exactly like a Pap smear. No reliable early detection method for ovarian cancer currently exists.
In previous Northwestern-NorthShore studies, the PWS technique has shown promising results in the early detection of colon, pancreatic and lung cancers using cells from neighboring organs. If commercialized, PWS could be in clinical use for one or more cancers in approximately five years.
The ovarian cancer study was published this month by the International Journal of Cancer.
PWS uses light scattering to examine the architecture of cells at the nanoscale and can detect profound changes that are the earliest known signs of carcinogenesis. These changes can be seen in cells far from the tumor site or even before a tumor forms.
"We were surprised to discover we could see diagnostic changes in cells taken from the endocervix in patients who had ovarian cancer," said Vadim Backman, who developed PWS at Northwestern. "The advantage of nanocytology -- and why we are so excited about it -- is we don't need to wait for a tumor to develop to detect cancer."
Backman is a professor of biomedical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He and his longtime collaborator, Hemant K. Roy, M.D., formerly of NorthShore, have been working together for more than a decade and conducting clinical trials of PWS at NorthShore for four years. Backman and Roy both are authors of the paper.
"The changes we have seen in cells have been identical, no matter which organ we are studying," Backman said. "We have stumbled upon a universal cell physiology that can help us detect difficult cancers early. If the changes are so universal, they must be very important."
Ovarian cancer, which ranks fifth in cancer fatalities among American women, usually goes undetected until it has spread elsewhere. The cancer is difficult to treat at this late stage and often is fatal.
"This intriguing finding may represent a breakthrough that would allow personalization of screening strategies for ovarian cancer via a minimally intrusive test that could be coupled to the Pap smear," Roy said.
At the time of the ovarian cancer study, Roy was director of gastroenterology research at NorthShore and worked with Jean A. Hurteau, M.D., a gynecological oncologist at NorthShore. (Hurteau is an author of the paper.) Roy is now chief of the section of gastroenterology at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.
The study included a total of 26 individuals. For cells taken from the endometrium (part of the uterus), there were 26 patients (11 with ovarian cancer and 15 controls); for cells taken from the endocervix, there were 23 patients (10 with ovarian cancer and 13 controls). The small size of the study reflects the difficulty in recruiting ovarian cancer patients.
Cells were placed on slides and then examined using PWS. The results showed a significant increase in the disorder of the nanoarchitecture of epithelial cells obtained from cancer patients compared to controls for both the endometrium and endocervix studies.
The cells for the ovarian cancer study were taken from the cervix and uterus. For the earlier lung cancer study, cells were brushed from the cheek. For the colon, cells came from the rectum, and for the pancreas, cells came from the duodenum. Cells from these neighboring organs showed changes at the nanoscale when cancer was present.
PWS can detect cell features as small as 20 nanometers, uncovering differences in cells that appear normal using standard microscopy techniques. PWS measures the disorder strength of the nanoscale organization of the cell, which is a strong marker for the presence of cancer in the organ or in a nearby organ.
The PWS-based test makes use of the "field effect," a biological phenomenon in which cells located some distance from the malignant or pre-malignant tumor undergo molecular and other changes.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Dhwanil Damania, Hemant K. Roy, Dhananja Kunte, Jean A. Hurteau, Hariharan Subramanian, Lusik Cherkezyan, Nela Krosnjar, Maitri Shah, Vadim Backman. Insights into the field carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer based on the nanocytology of endocervical and endometrial epithelial cells. International Journal of Cancer, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/ijc.28122
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.
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Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
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