A1A South

After treating patients for 15 years, Kathy Adams Morgan hung up her stethoscope to educate her daughter full time at their Point Loma home.Eight years later, Morgan has no regrets. It’s easy to see why.

At 13, Jenny scores high on standardized tests and balances academics with organized sports, Girl Scouts, dance – and the ever-important teenage social life.

But according to a recent state appellate court ruling, it is illegal for Morgan – and the thousands of California parents who home-school their children – to teach without credentials.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

The ruling has rattled home-school families in San Diego County and throughout California. It is the subject of much speculation on the blogs, Web sites and networks that link thousands of home-schoolers statewide.

However, many parents, educators and even lawyers are unsure exactly what the decision means. No one predicts an imminent change for home-schoolers.

“We all take our liberties for granted,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t imagine not being able to have the option of home schooling.”

It’s unclear how many children are home-schooled in California, but estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000. In San Diego County, educators and home-school networks surmise that as many as 4,000 students get their educations at home.

Many of them are enrolled in independent study programs through school districts, charter schools or private schools. For instance, Jenny Morgan takes some classes, including high school French, and exams at Mt. Everest Academy, a public school that supports home-schoolers in San Diego.

Other students are taught at home under the direction of a parent.

Home schooling in California has been permitted if parents exempt their child from from public school by filing a private school affidavit, which essentially establishes their home as a school; hires a credentialed tutor; or enrolls their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching at home.

Many parents like the flexibility of home schooling and fear that strict laws may come from the ruling.

“The law is vague, but that’s to our benefit. I would hate to see that change,” said Mary Beth Ring of National City, who home-schools her fifth-grade daughter and 12th-grade son. Her three older children were also home-schooled.

“You’ve got people who are going to do this no matter what,” Ring said. “If it becomes illegal, then it’s just going to become underground.”

The ruling came as a surprise to the home-schooling community because it was not part of an organized campaign targeting this nontraditional style of education. In fact, home schooling was the accidental target in a Los Angeles County social-service investigation.

After following up on a child’s claim that his father was abusive, social workers discovered that eight siblings were being home-schooled by their mother through the Sunland Christian School. An attorney representing the two youngest children asked a judge to order them to attend a traditional school, saying the home education was deficient.

The judge agreed the education was “lousy,” “meager” and “bad,” but he denied the request. He said families had a constitutional right to home-school their children.

The county appealed and the 2nd District court, based in Los Angeles, ordered the children to attend a school.

However, there do not appear to be plans for widespread enforcement or disruption to home-schoolers statewide.

Legal experts say the ruling is a long time coming, given that home schooling is virtually unregulated in California.

“What the court did say is that parents no longer have the right to home-school your kid any way you want, that it’s legal for the state to regulate how you home-school your kid,” said Shaun Martin, a law professor at the University of San Diego who has been following the case.

Martin said school districts and social workers have been reluctant to scrutinize suspect home schools for fear of lawsuits. The ruling, he expects, will make it easier for them to monitor parents who have neglected or under-educated children through home schooling.

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Education said staff lawyers are reviewing the case. Home-school advocates are rallying to protect their rights, and an appeal is already in the works.

“There are going to be a lot of parents forced to make some very difficult decisions if an appeal is not successful,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative legal organization preparing to fight the ruling on behalf of Sunland Christian School.

Dacus said he will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Once considered a practice of the ultra religious or nonconformists, home schooling has gained wider support in recent years. Along with charter schools and private schools, home schooling has become one of the standard alternatives to a traditional public education.

Many families keep their children at home to give them a custom-made education that is in sync with their morals or religious beliefs. Others do it in response to school violence. Some enroll their children in independent-study programs to accommodate intensive athletic training, acting or music careers.

“We don’t home-school to hide away from the world; we do it because it is best for our kids,” said Ring of National City. “It’s hard work and it’s not for everybody. But it works for a lot of us.”

Source:

I have mixed feelings on this.  I know many parents that couldn’t housebreak a dog, let alone “home school” a child. 

On the other hand, I support the parental desire to provide an education more in keeping with their religious and moral values than what the public school system is permitted to do. 

In this case, it appears that the problem was that the schooling received by children in a particular family was deemed inadequate by a judge, but he ruled that the parents had a constitutional right to home school their children.  The appellate court disagreed. 

Instead of making the ruling that children had to be taught by a credentialed teaching professional, I believe that their ruling should have followed more along the lines of Florida’s homeschooling laws in which school work has to be kept on file, and the child has to pass yearly testing on standardized tests.    

There are failing public schools with problems so severe that there is no way that I would send my child there, law or no law, and these problems need to be addressed.  Schools that cannot promise that my child will be able to safely ride the school bus, schools that cannot promise that my child is safe in the halls between classes or even in the classroom is a school that I would not send my child/children to.  Schools that want to promote “alternative sexual lifestyles” are not schools that I would want my child to attend.  Schools that want to perform “indocrination” instead of “education” are schools that I would not want my children to attend.

Children do need an education, now more than ever.  If home schooling is simply a euphemism for “momma (or daddy) is too lazy to get out the bed in the morning and get us ready for school”, his or her sorry butt should be kicked all over the county.  If the parents are providing a better education than the local school, I say congratulations and keep up the good work.

Using pacemakers to electrically retune a heart damaged by long bouts of a wobbling heartbeat, where one heart muscle wall is beating sooner than the other, leads to fast improvements in the tissue levels of more than a dozen proteins key to the organ’s health, scientists at Johns Hopkins report in experiments in dogs.

The team’s findings, published online this week in the journal Circulation, are believed to be the first detailed chemical analysis of the pacemaker’s biological effects on the heart and could serve as the basis for more strategic use of combined device-plus-drug treatments for people with congestive heart failure.

“Our results really help explain how pacemakers act much like a drug, actually changing the biology of the heart, and also explain why people can feel so much better after just two to six months with the device,” says study senior study investigator and cardiologist David Kass, M.D., a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.

“We are learning that pacemaker therapy does profoundly more than just mechanically correct how the heart beats; in fact, it produces major chemical changes that benefit the muscle,” says lead investigator Khalid Chakir, Ph.D., a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Hopkins.

Each year, more than a half-million Americans are diagnosed with congestive heart failure, when the heart weakens and cannot pump enough blood to the rest of the body. One-quarter of those affected, typically men and women over age 50, will suffer from a pendulating, non-uniform contraction, requiring implantation of a pacemaker. The device electrically stimulates both sides of the heart at the same time, as part of so-called cardiac resynchronization therapy to restore unison to the heartbeat.

Current treatments with pacemakers, scientists say, can block the ill effects of an uneven heartbeat, extending people’s lives for months to years or helping them return to daily activities. But these benefits do not directly fix the cause for the delayed conduction; they merely circumvent it.

“Now that we have found that resynchronization is doing more fundamental things to the heart muscle, we should be able to better combine these devices with drugs to maximize long-term survival and outcomes,” says Kass.

Chakir says previous research has shown that a year after implantation, pacemaker resynchronization has been effective at reducing mortality in some heart failure patients by as much as 36 percent, but researchers have not until now really understood the biological effect of the devices beyond the physical mechanics of contraction.

In the current study, the Hopkins team determined the biological effects of pacemaker treatment on the hearts of 22 dogs with heart failure induced by making the heart beat faster. A key nervelike, electrical pathway that normally assures the muscle’s harmonious beat was also damaged, producing a wobbly, discoordinated contraction. The asymmetric heart-failure condition was allowed to take its natural progressive course in half the dogs; the others had cardiac resynchronization therapy with implantation of a pacemaker.

Results from tissue analysis in these two groups of dogs were then compared to a third group of six dogs with healthy hearts.

In the heart failure groups, the scientists report major ups and downs in production or activity levels in 17 out of more than two dozen proteins known to be involved with heart cell stress, survival and death.

The alterations were especially notable in the group that did not have their hearts retuned. But tissue levels and activity of these proteins were restored toward normal in those with pacemakers that were tuned to reestablish an even, coordinated contraction, with both sides beating at the same time.

Among the stand-out proteins was one that prevents heart muscle cells from dying, an enzyme called phospho-BCL2 antagonist of cell death, or pBAD for short, which was found to be five times more active in the pacemaker-treated group than in the untreated group.

A second protein, p38 MAP kinase, known to stimulate fibrosis and cell death, was twice as active in late-contracting parts of failing hearts in untreated dogs, than in the same heart zone of dogs who underwent pacemaker resynchronization therapy.

Other proteins that lead to heart cell death and worsen contraction were overexpressed in dogs with untreated heart failure, but not in the pacemaker-treated group. These included calcium-calmodulin-dependent kinase (CaMKII), which is linked to arrhythmia, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF?), which is also tied to damaging inflammation and cell death.

The enzyme Akt, a promoter of cell survival when turned on, was markedly less active in the group whose hearts continued to beat out of sync.

Researchers next plan to look at how pacemakers stimulate biological changes in the heart, with the aim of developing treatments that bring the heart back to a normal, healthy state.

In cardiac resynchronization therapy, both major pumping chambers, known as the right and left ventricles, are stimulated at the same time with a biventricular pacemaker to optimize the muscle’s beat so that one side does not beat a short time before the other.

The American Heart Association estimates that more than 5 million Americans have some form of congestive heart failure, marked by symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Peter Belfer Laboratory Foundation.

Besides Kass and Chakir, other researchers involved in this study, conducted solely at Hopkins, were Samantapudi Daya, M.D.; Richard Tunin, B.S.; Robert Helm, M.D.; Melissa Byrne, Ph.D.; Veronica Dimaano, M.D.; Albert C. Lardo, Ph.D.; Theodore Abraham, M.D.; and Gordon Tomaselli, M.D. Kass is also the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Hopkins.

Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine

OCALA NATIONAL FOREST, Fla. - Motorists heading east on State Road 40 past Mill Dam might notice that the road begins to rise and fall in ridges. Soon there is no escaping the fact that some of the ridges are quite steep and continue rolling, almost all the way to Astor. Trees and shrubs are rather low-growing and scraggly looking.

President Teddy Roosevelt understood the value of the Ocala National Forest’s “Big Scrub.” A hundred years ago, on Nov. 24, 1908, he signed a bill formally establishing the forest. Nearly all the original 165,000 acres was sand pine scrub. Land purchases have enlarged the forest to 382,318 acres.

Up to that point, the land had never been bought or sold or homesteaded. Nobody wanted it. What passers-by may not realize is that the sand pine scrub today is the largest ecosystem of its type in the world.

“The scrub is 70 percent of the Ocala National Forest,” said Janet Hinchee of the U.S. Forest Service.

“What I love about the scrub - it’s amazing anything grows here at all because it’s so harsh. These plants are survivors,” said Hinchee, a specialist in caring for forest stands.

The sand pine scrub is only one of the ecosystems in the region. The others are longleaf pine, sand hills, pine flatwoods, wet prairies, live oak hammocks and swamps.

The scrub is by far the largest of those systems. It runs roughly 30 miles east from Mill Dam to Astor and stretches 35 miles from north to south.

Hinchee said there is a good reason people should care about the scrub.

“We don’t think about the oxygen those trees are producing or the water going down into the aquifer,” she said.

And then there is the mystery about how the rolling hills were created.

“The scrub is a pile of sand,” Hinchee said. “Wind tends to deposit the sand in dunes. What we don’t really know is whether it was deposited when it was an island or whether it was just a really dry area.” There is not a lot of variety in the scrub, Hinchee said. If you know 15 or so trees and shrubs, then you can identify roughly 90 percent of what is there. There is a lack of diversity because the sandy soil drains so quickly, and very few species can thrive in dry conditions.

“The world’s largest stand of sand pines is here in Ocala,” Hinchee said. “The trees are not that large. They are not majestic looking. They are crooked with a lot of branches.

“The oldest might be 80,” Hinchee said. “Most species in the scrub grow fast and die young.”

The sand pine does not have a tap root to anchor it, so strong winds and hurricanes easily topple it. Cutting the trees for timber also reduced the number of older trees, although they likely would have died anyway, Hinchee said. Today, timber is harvested to manage the resources.

There is little water and few fires in sand pine scrub. Today, the Forest Service burns areas to mimic the natural fire occurrences and to maintain the ecosystem.

Much of the work is done to help preserve the habitat for the threatened scrub jay. Some of the shrubs are also endangered or threatened.

U.S. Forest Service botanist William Carromero said scrub plants have adapted to the disturbances, whether hurricanes or catastrophic fires.

He points to the saw palmetto. “Instead of growing vertically, they grow horizontally,” Carromero said. “What will happen in a case of a fire: the leaves will burn, but the portion that produces leaves will be on the ground, so it will not be destroyed.”

And plants conserve water. “The leaf margin is curled downward,” Carromero said. “That will be to prevent water evaporation.”

Among the plants in the scrub are four species of oak, one pine, two palms, one blueberry, scrub bay, scrub holly, green briar, rosemary and scrub mint.

At the state level, scrub mint is an endangered species.

“Although it’s abundant in the Ocala National Forest, it’s not anywhere else,” Carromero said.

Lewton’s Polygala is one of the plants on the federal list of endangered species. Scrub buckwheat and Florida bonamia, commonly known as scrub morning glory, are considered threatened. The polygala and bonamia germinate when there are openings around them.

“These are species that depend on fire and open habitat,” Carromero said. “It will promote seed germination. It will promote growth and blooming.”

Fires create open space. So, rather than being covered in shade, they get the sunshine that helps them grow.

The threatened scrub jay, found only in Florida, needs that open space.

“They are a bird that likes young scrub,” Hinchee said. The low-growing scrub oaks provide habitat for the jay. The oaks also provide acorns, which the birds cache.

Because of the sand, there is not much grass in a scrub, so there is not a lot of fuel to feed a fire. In the scrub, a fire jumps to the trees’ crowns, where the needles are full of resin, which is like a torch.

Sand pine cones generally are closed, and they do not drop to the ground. But the high heat of a fire melts the wax that seals the cones. They then open up and spill an enormous amount of seeds on the ground.

And because of the harsh climate, the wildlife tends to be burrowing creatures, such as mice, push-up beetles and gopher tortoise. They burrow because it is easy to dig in sand and because the ground is protection from the cold and heat.

The longleaf pine sand hill ecosystem found in the Forest also has fast-draining sandy soil and is dependent on fire. But, unlike the scrub, fires are frequent and low to the ground.

Carrie Sekerak, U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist, said 98 percent of the longleaf pines that once covered the majority of the southeastern coastal plains were lost to logging.

“There’s just so little left, and there’s almost nothing left over 100 years old,” she said. “It’s gone.”

Much of what remains is not being managed correctly, Sekerak said.

“It requires very, very frequent fire,” she said, and that means about every two years. And that is a problem because the smoke drifts onto roadways, hampering motorists.

There is plenty of wiregrass in the longleaf pine ecosystem, and that grass provides the fuel for the fires. Lightning starts many of the fires.

When the Forest Service burns areas in the spring, the wildflowers will bloom in the fall.

“It’s beautiful,” Sekerak said. The goldenrod, blazing star and butterfly milkweeds fill the woods with colors: soft golds, purples and hot brick oranges.

The Forest’s other ecosystems are smaller. The wetter they are, the less fire there is.

The dry flatwoods are similar to the scrub and sand hill. The wet flatwoods are closer to the rivers. In the wet flatwoods there will be more palmetto, gallberry and less grass.

In the swampy areas, there will be hardwoods. Bay, cabbage palm, water oaks, swamp chestnut, hickory and red maples grow there.

The prairies, with their grasses and water, play a special role.

“They serve as an oasis in our scrub desert,” Sekerak said. “They serve as a refuge (for wildlife) during the burns.

“It serves as temporary housing,” Sekerak said. “It’s kind of like your FEMA trailer.”

But the creatures would not object to the scrub fires, even if they could.

“They are happy their homes are being burned,” Sekerak said. “That means their groceries are coming.”

And that is why it is horrible when a prairie is disturbed, she said.

“It’s a place to hunt. It’s a place to nest. It’s the social center, the feeding center, a water source,” Sekerak said. “It’s super important for everything.”

Source: Jacksonville.com

Indeed.  I live in a low area with (after a rain) soggy soil.  I do appreciate the sandy, well-drained soils on days like today when a flock of wild Canadian geese were swimming in one of my pastures.  Eeeeesh.

During droughts, the sandy soil’s lack of ability to hold moisture turns the ground into a sere landscape with limited food for wildlife or livestock. 

I may be prejudiced in favor of the area because it is near me, but I like it.  If you want to see it up close and personal, there are hiking trails, “mountain” biking, camping, canoeing, boating….well, read the rest of the amenities here.

MIAMI - The Coast Guard is searching for a 39-year-old woman who may have jumped from a cruise ship off the Florida Keys.

The woman had been traveling on the Costa Mediterranea with her boyfriend, who told officials she had become angry and agitated and then unexpectedly jumped overboard.

A news release from the Coast Guard says the ship was about 20 miles southeast of Key Largo when the woman went overboard early Sunday.

Source:

Sure hope they find her.  

An 18-year-old man was killed late Saturday night after riding in a shopping cart while holding onto a moving SUV, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

At about 11:28 p.m., Cameron Bieberle was sitting in a shopping cart in the parking lot of the University Walk Apartments near University Boulevard and Forsyth Road while hanging on to a Cadillac Escalade being driven by his friend, Michael Smith, 23, of Orlando.

The car and the shopping cart went over a speed bump and the cart overturned, ejecting Bieberle onto the ground. Bieberle was pronounced dead at the scene. Smith and a passenger in the car, Shaun Kirylczuk, 17, of Orlando, were not injured

Charges are pending against Smith, the FHP said.

Source:

I don’t see where the driver is any more culpable than the person riding in the cart who was hanging onto the SUV. I suppose there is a lesson there somewhere about wearing a helmet when engaging in activities when one’s head may interact with the pavement.

LAKELAND, Fla. — A central Florida man once rescued from an alligator has been taken into protective custody after he was found standing naked in a pond. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said deputies found 46-year-old Adrian Apgar early Thursday at Saddle Creek Park in Lakeland.He told deputies he had been bitten by a snake while looking for an alligator.

Apgar was taken to a hospital, but a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said it was not immediately known if he was bitten.

Apgar is being held under Florida’s Baker Act, which allows authorities to commit people for psychological evaluations if they appear to be a danger to themselves or others.

Apgar was rescued in 2006 from the jaws of a 12-foot alligator while naked and high on crack cocaine.

Source:

Sure, let’s let all the crazy people wander about freely.  They won’t be a danger to themselves or others.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A statewide inspection of outpatient surgery centers like the one believed to have spread hepatitis C to its patients has uncovered dangerous practices at four other clinics, a health official said Friday.

The state swore to quickly inspect all 50 Nevada outpatient surgery centers after it was discovered the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada spread the blood-borne virus to at least six patients by reusing syringes and sharing vials of medication.

Of the 18 clinics inspected by Friday, three in northern Nevada and one in Las Vegas will be cited and fined for improper disease prevention techniques, state health division chief Mike Willden said.

Willden said there was no evidence that the clinics were responsible for any outbreaks of disease.

The Gastrointestinal Diagnostic Center in Las Vegas will be cited for repeatedly reusing syringes, he said. Willden could not say whether the center also reused medication vials. Clark County pulled the center’s business license, shutting it down shortly after the announcement.

Willden said the Digestive Health Center in Reno had problems with sterilization of equipment, but he did not elaborate.

The center did not immediately return a call for comment.

Dr. Dennis Yamamoto, a partner at the Digestive Health Center, said the infractions found at his clinic were “not even close” to those discovered at the Endoscopy Center.

“We have every confidence that we didn’t do anything wrong in the sense of putting any patient’s health at risk,” he said, adding that the practice in question had been stopped. “They said don’t do it, so we don’t do it.”

At St. Mary’s Surgery Center at Galena, inspectors found problems “with the lack of high-level disinfection or sterilization of instruments used between patients,” Willden said.

“There have been no known cases of infection from any of our patients, but we encourage anyone who is concerned about their treatment to contact their doctor for appropriate follow-up care or treatment,” St. Mary’s Center said in a statement.

A staff member at the Sierra Center for Foot Surgery in Carson City reported reuse of syringes. The clinic did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The FBI is investigating possible Medicare fraud at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, Rep. Jon Porter’s spokesman, Matt Leffingwell, said.

The FBI does not comment on open investigations. The Southern Nevada Health District said it would not confirm the conversation between the congressman and its chief, Dr. Lawrence Sands, for the same reason.

At issue is whether the surgical center may have billed the federal Medicare program for 30-minute appointments that did not last that long, Leffingwell said.

A spokeswoman for Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said the state is also investigating whether the practices may have resulted in insurance or state Medicaid fraud.

“We’re looking at whether they billed for two vials and only used one,” spokeswoman Nicole Moon said.

Six cases of acute hepatitis, a potentially deadly virus that attacks the liver, have been traced to the Endoscopy Center. Nearly 40,000 patients have been notified that they are at risk and should be tested for hepatitis B and C and HIV.

The clinic has been temporarily closed and fined $3,000.

Health officials believe the virus was spread when clinic nurses used the same syringe twice to administer anesthesia, contaminating the vial. The staff also was found treating multiple patients with vials of medication intended for a single patient only.

Five of the six people infected received treatment at the clinic on the same day.

The owner of the clinic, prominent gastroenterologist Dipak Desai, has refused to answer questions about the outbreak.

Unlike some nurses at the clinic, Desai has not surrendered his medical license. He agreed to “voluntarily cease the practice of medicine” until the state Board of Medical Examiners completes its investigation, the board said Friday.

The state regulatory agency in charge of inspections at outpatient clinics has been criticized for falling behind on its inspection schedule. The Endoscopy Center had not received a full inspection since December 2001, despite a bureau policy of inspecting ambulatory surgical centers every three years.

Source:  Associated Press

These infractions are things that even nonmedical people know are wrong.  Any literate fool that walks in off the street can read the directions on the syringe packaging.  The syringes that I purchased for use for the livestock say “Discard after single use.  Sterile.”  Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Reusing a dirty syringe in a (formerly sterile) medication vial is something that should never, EVER be done, and is especially heinous now that anybody can be incubating life-threatening blood-borne diseases.  Reusing a dirty syringe in medication intended for  single-use only is not an error, but a deliberate attempt to cut costs at the expense of the health of the patient.

The general public cannot observe medical procedures being practiced to make sure that good sterile technique is being maintained, so they have to depend on the professionalism of the staff to be sure that everything is being done correctly, as well as state inspectors making surprise inspections (which are rarely a surprise) to keep everybody honest.  

The fact that state inspectors haven’t given a full inspection to the site implicated in passing hepatitis B to patients since 2001 is an outrage.  If the state is not going to make the necessary inspections, then they should inform patients that they may be undergoing invasive procedures at a place that may or may not observe sterile procedures; the state has no way of knowing.  Caveat emptor.  Otherwise, patients will have a false sense of confidence that their outpatient surgical center is regulated by the state. 

I’ve always previously felt secure in the outpatient clinics I have gone to for things like a biopsy.  Now I’m not sure if that confidence was misplaced.