Quality News

Changes are in the works for some area students after the adoption of new state educational standards. In language arts and math, the changes will align Wyoming standards with the Common Core State Standards, which were developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. “We were kind of hung out, not knowing which way to go. At least this gives us a direction,” said Jack Cozort,

Carey Fitzmaurice, a mother of two in Bethesda, MD, was battling ovarian cancer last spring with Doxil, a key part of a chemotherapy mixture that looked as if it was working. But last summer, supplies of Doxil dried up. When we spoke to Fitzmaurice in October, she was on a waiting list. The drug never came through. She continued therapy without it. Since then, the markers for her cancer have risen. And on Wednesday, she learned

It takes more than one person’s story to make a connection between those who live near natural gas wells and illness. Scientists say they want to study detailed information on a large group of people over a long period of time. And there is an effort to do that in the mountains of northern Pennsylvania. Energy companies have drilled about 5,000 gas wells in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, and they plan to drill thousands more. That makes

Andrew Ng is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and he has a rather charming way of explaining how the new interactive online education company he cofounded hopes to revolutionize higher education. The company, called Coursera, would allow students from all over the world to not only hear his lectures, but also do homework assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing the course and use that to get a better job or gain

Chinese police have launched an investigation after a batch of fake pigs’ ears reportedly made from gelatin was discovered in yet another food-safety scare in the country. The bogus ears were discovered in a market in Ganzhou city in the eastern province of Jiangxi in late March after a customer complained of a strange smell when cooking them, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported. Food-safety officials tested the “ears” and found they had been made

Facing crushing healthcare costs, Oregon lawmakers found the political will to transform the state’s Medicaid program by creating a system in which competing providers and payers voluntarily collaborate under per-member, per-month global budgets with the potential for shared savings and financial risk. While other states are experimenting with variations on the accountable care organization theme for their own Medicaid programs, Oregon officials believe theirs to be unique because of its global, locally controlled budget framework, commitment

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) generally approves drug therapies faster and earlier than its counterparts in Canada and Europe, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers. The study counters perceptions that the drug approval process in the United States is especially slow. Led by second-year medical student Nicholas Downing and senior author Joseph S. Ross, assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, the study will be

Twenty-five percent of 800 tested sunscreens are effective at protecting your skin without the use of potentially harmful ingredients, according to the 2012 Sunscreen Guide released Wednesday by the Environmental Working Group. “The results are slightly better than previous years, but it continues to surprise us that we can recommend such few products,” said Nneka Leiba, an Environmental Working Group senior analyst. To make the watchdog group’s safe list, sunscreens must be free of oxybenzone, retinyl palmitate

When Red Robin Gourmet Burgers introduced its new Tavern Double burger line last month, the company needed to get everything right. So it turned to social media. The 460-restaurant chain used an internal social network that resembles Facebook to teach its managers everything from the recipes to the best, fastest way to make them. Instead of mailing out spiral-bound books, getting feedback during executives’ sporadic store visits and taking six months to act on advice from

In a wood-paneled office lined with books, sports memorabilia and framed posters—including one of John Belushi in the movie “Animal House”—E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, keeps a framed quotation that reads, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Mr. Gee, who is often identified with a big salary and spendthrift ways, says he has taken the quotation to heart and is now trying to persuade Ohio State’s

Merle Bushkin is one of the more unlikely people working today to reform the healthcare industry. He has no medical background. In fact, Bushkin has spent his 40-year career as an investment banker. And, at the age of 77, he probably should be putting his feet up and relaxing in his hilltop home in Brownsville, VT. Instead, Bushkin has been spending his time thinking about a vexing problem for doctors and hospitals across the nation: how

The body scanners widely used for security screenings at U.S. airports have raised concerns about privacy, health risks and long lines at security checkpoints. But now, a more fundamental issue is getting attention from U.S. lawmakers: whether the scanners effectively detect explosives. At a congressional hearing last Wednesday investigating how the Transportation Security Administration acquires and deploys security equipment, members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee sharply criticized

If you’re a typical American, chances are about 50-50 that you take at least one prescription drug. If you’re upwards of 60, the odds are nearly two in five that you take five drugs or more. Some may be lifesaving, especially for those with potentially deadly chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. But how many drugs in those mountains of pills add years to the lives of people who don’t suffer from

Few argue that Ohio needs a more-demanding way of rating schools and districts on annual state report cards. But fierce debate has broken out among educators and political leaders over how new A-through-F grades are calculated and when new report cards will be issued. Gov. John Kasich wants a tougher grading system to start with report cards issued by the state this summer; that’s the centerpiece of education reforms he is asking lawmakers to approve. Under

You’ve had those days at work: Your boss doesn’t listen to your suggestions about how to do things better. The same problems keep cropping up. Nobody does anything about them. New conundrums pile up. Your time, maybe even the company’s money, is wasted. Rewind. Repeat. Pull hair. Your savior? Lean. Not as in exercising to shed weight and stress, but as in embracing a way of doing business that cuts waste, boosts teamwork, systematically tracks and fixes

A survey of customer satisfaction released Tuesday underscored the importance of a new line of BlackBerry phones for reversing the fortunes of the beleaguered Research In Motion. The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which is affiliated with the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is based on surveys of about 70,000 consumers a year, found that RIM’s customers were the least-satisfied cellphone users among customers of the seven phone makers it tracked in its survey

Surgeons contacted the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2006 to highlight concerns that PIP breast implants were splitting more frequently than other brands, the report by Health Minister Lord Howe said. But the implants were not removed from the market until March 2010, when the French authorities found that silicone gel used as a mattress filler had been fraudulently substituted for the approved material. Almost 50,000 women in Britain have had

Around 117,000 deaths in 2010 were caused by conditions and diseases that could have been treated or prevented with good quality healthcare, the U.K. Office for National Statistics has found. It’s the first time data on so-called “avoidable mortality” have been released by the ONS. The figures include deaths from cancer, asthma, suicide, tuberculosis, alcohol, flu and HIV/AIDS, among others. They show that since 2001, there has been a drop of more than a quarter

Department of Health plans to toughen up food-safety regulations following an outbreak of E. coli in New Brunswick that officials believe may be linked to a Miramichi restaurant. Starting in July, anyone who handles food sold to the public will need to take a course and maintain certification, said Denis Allard, M.D., the deputy chief medical officer of health. The course will go along with the province’s restaurant inspection rankings, he added, noting that even the

Jason Lizakowski frowned as he studied a map of the room he was standing in. His workday, now nearly 18 hours old, had proceeded smoothly until a glitch in the form of Ben Francisco’s equipment bag appeared at his feet shortly before 2 a.m. in the visitors clubhouse at Target Field. A small problem, some might say. But in Lizakowski’s world, there are no small problems. His reputation, his income, his livelihood depend on eliminating