Tag Archives: myriad

Transforming America by Redirecting Wasted Health Care Dollars

Eliminating excessive spending could mean windfall for U.S., study suggests

The respected national Institute of Medicine estimates that $750 billion is lost each year to wasteful or excessive health care spending. This sum includes excess administrative costs, inflated prices, unnecessary services and fraud — dollars that add no value to health and well-being.

If those wasteful costs could be corralled without sacrificing health care quality, how might that money be better spent? (more…)

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Back to the Future: A New Science for a Changing Planet

In a world that is changing on a global scale and faster than ever before, science should rediscover its roots of observing the natural world unimpeded by the strict protocols of experimental manipulations, UA ecologist Rafe Sagarin and co-author Aníbal Pauchard suggest in their book, “Observation and Ecology.”

Mars rover Curiosity is doing it. School children strolling through the woods with binoculars are doing it. Charles Darwin was doing it. Observing the natural world around them was how the early naturalists started what would later become known as ecology – the science of how living things interact, depend on each other and how their habitats and communities change over time.

In their book, “Observation and Ecology,” ecologists Rafe Sagarin and Aníbal Pauchard make the case that if scientists are to tackle the enormously complex problems the world is facing, researchers and funding agencies have to leave their comfort zone of well-controlled experimental manipulations. (more…)

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EL Wire Brightens Our World

Electroluminescence has come a long way since its discovery at the start of the 20thcentury. For many years the scientists who pioneered its development struggled to come up with practical applications for electroluminescent technology – early uses of the discovery lacked the lifespan to work as practical lamps and light sources, whilst its unreliability made it difficult to use in displays and interfaces.

Undeterred by their setbacks, the boffins working on electroluminescence didn’t give up, and thank goodness, because today electroluminescent light has evolved into a technology that has myriad applications all over the planet. (more…)

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