Current Approaches to Improving the Value of Care: A Physician's Perspective

Evaluates the utility of judgment-based approaches to quality improvement -- pay-for-performance, public reporting, consumer-directed health plans, and tiering -- as ways to control costs. Recommends incentive- and accountability-based programs

Archaeological Survey for the Proposed Seton Home Campus Expansion, City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

During November 2003, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted an archaeological survey for a proposed 9.3-acre development at the Seton Home property in the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The Phase I survey consisted of a 100 percent pedestrian survey and the excavation of 24 shovel tests. A portion of previously recorded site 41BX1570 was investigated with six shovel tests, delimiting the southern boundary of the site. Moderate amounts of burned limestone, burned chert, and lithic debitage comprised the prehistoric artifact assemblage. During current and previous investigations, several modern artifacts were encountered with the prehistoric deposits throughout the vertical column to the terminal excavation depth of 70 centimeters below surface. The presence of these modern artifacts, in concert with evidence of significant historic subsurface disturbance, has provided adequate data to determine this site ineligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places or for listing as a State Archeological Landmark. Under the Scope of Work for the current project, archaeological monitoring of a subsurface utility line is specified. Location of the line is proposed at or near the northern property boundary separating Seton Home and St. Peter-St. Joseph Children’s Home. Site 41BX1570 will be bisected by the utility line, regardless of alternative placement in the general vicinity. The excavation of the utility trench and the monitoring of these excavations will occur during the spring of 2004. The results of this monitoring will be reported within a separate letter report. However, this report is produced to summarize the results of the pedestrian survey and serves to provide for clearance of cultural resources only in the remainder of the project area. It is recommended that construction be allowed to proceed outside of the proposed utility corridor

Archaeological Survey of a Portion of the Proposed Castroville Regional Park Improvement and Expansion, City of Castroville, Medina County, Texas

During January 2004, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted an archaeological survey of a selected portion (300 feet by 7 feet) of the proposed expansion and improvement of Castroville Regional Park in the City of Castroville, Medina County, Texas. The Phase I survey consisted of the excavation of six shovel tests. A single previously unrecorded prehistoric archaeological site (41ME134) was encountered atop a ridge landform. Abundant amounts of burned rock and lithic debitage, along with several tested cobbles, a few cores, and one non-diagnostic uniface were encountered at ground surface and within the upper 10 cm of shallow soils mantling the landform. Due to the primarily surficial nature of this site and the lack of cultural features, the Center for Archaeological Research recommends that site 41ME134 is ineligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places or for designation as a State Archeological Landmark. It is therefore recommended that the proposed improvements proceed without further cultural resources investigations. This work was conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 3328 with Steve A. Tomka serving as Principal Investigator. Burned rock collected from the site was discarded pursuant to Chapter 26.27(g)(2) of the Texas Administrative Code. All other artifacts collected during the survey are permanently housed at the Center for Archaeological Research curatorial facility

Alien Registration- Mahoney, Dennis B. (Old Town, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/5731/thumbnail.jp

The Artist\u27s Hand in the Digital Age

For the first ten years of my career I practiced my craft — advertising art direction — exclusively by hand. To help me in the design process itself, I hired specialists. For typography, for instance, I chose a firm I admired in Minneapolis where the typographers would hand cut the film negatives letter by letter. In those days — the 1980s — each area of design had master craftsmen. I can remember one day walking into a warehouse with thirty-foot ceilings. On the back wall I saw a large horizontal canvas. The artist was suspended from scaffolding and covered in speckled paint dots. I wasn’t in an artist’s studio looking at a masterpiece half-finished. I was admiring a billboard — a hand painted one-of-a-kind billboard. This is not to say that the old methods of working by hand were entirely idyllic. They had countless drawbacks. IT took several days to put together a layout with Pantone paper and transfer type, only to realize the color combination was wrong and the time wasted. Because processes were slow and labor-intensive, choices were limited. In the mid 1980s, design studios and creative departments started using computers. For the first time I was able to select a color scheme, click a button, and see seemingly endless options instantaneously. It wasn’t long before the skilled craftsmen of type were replaced with digitized fonts loaded directly onto hard drives. Suddenly, the idea of working type by hand became economically unfeasible. The typographers closed up shop, threw out their old tools, and went out to look for new jobs. Several years later billboards were being painted on vinyl sheets right from our electronic files. Perfect replications of the original reproduced with speed and precision saved time and manpower. The new process had replaced the billboard artists almost overnight. I saw a generation of artisans exchanged for a generation of desktop publishers. Just like the craftsmen of the past, older methods of graphic design have been cast aside finding their way uneasily into the category of fine art. And now fine art, too, may cast them aside. Recently the Dean of the Fine Arts Program at Virginia Commonwealth University has held several meetings where he discussed the elimination of older printmaking methods in order to expand digital printmaking. Computers, it seems, will not be simply content with displacing the old hand processes; they want to eliminate them. For most young designers the computer has completely replaced the hand in every stage of the design process. I’ve noticed in many cases designers aren’t problem solving outside of the computer. It isn’t even considered. Certainly, the goal and outcome of my creative project were not intended to revive antiquated hand methods, at least as they historically existed. But hopefully, I’ve created something original by combining both hand methods and modern technology. If nothing else, I want younger designers to think beyond the 20GB hard drive as the only tool in their process

Elihu B. Washburne Westward Migration in Antebellum America

In the spring of 1840 Elihu B. Washburne (he added the “e” to his last name early in life) set out from New England to seek his fortune in the “wide, wide world. ” Eventually the young Harvard educated lawyer settled in Galena, Illinois, where other New Englanders were already shaping the fluid and diverse western society according to their own notions of genteel civilization. A representative New England migrant, Washburne participated in the creation of a self-conscious, regional middle class, with its own sense of gentlemanly conduct, its own definition of gentility, and its own aspirations for egalitarian interaction

Archaeological Survey for the Proposed St. Peter-St. Joseph Children\u27s Home Expansion, City of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

During September 2003, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted an archaeological survey for the proposed development of 3.17 acres at the St. Peter-St. Joseph Children’s Home in the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The Phase I survey consisted of the excavation of 18 shovel tests. A single previously unrecorded prehistoric archaeological site (41BX1570) was encountered atop a terrace along a probable remnant channel of the San Antonio River. Moderate to abundant amounts of burned limestone, burned chert, and lithic debitage, along with two lithic tools comprised the prehistoric artifact assemblage. Four mechanically chipped lithic flakes were encountered with the prehistoric deposits throughout the vertical column to the terminal excavation depth of 70 centimeters below surface. The presence of these modern artifacts in concert with evidence of significant historic subsurface disturbance has provided adequate data to determine this site is not eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places nor for listing as a State Archeological Landmark. It is therefore recommended that the proposed improvements proceed without further cultural resources investigations. All collected artifacts and records are curated at the Center for Archaeological Research permanent storage facility