title: Lumpy skin disease

text: Outbreaks of LSDV are associated with high temperature and high humidity It is usually more prevalent during the wet summer and autumn months, especially in low-lying areas or near bodies of water, however, outbreaks can also occur during the dry season. Blood-feeding insects such as mosquitos and flies act as mechanical vectors to spread the disease. A single species vector has not been identified. Instead, the virus has been isolated from "Stomoxys", "Biomyia fasciata", Tabanidae, "Glossina", and "Culicoides" species. The particular role of each of these insects in the transmission of LSDV continues to be evaluated. Outbreaks of lumpy skin disease tend to be sporadic since they are dependent upon animal movements, immune status and wind and rainfall patterns, which affect the vector populations.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: The virus can be transmitted through blood, nasal discharge, lacrimal secretions, semen and saliva. The disease can also be transmitted through infected milk to suckling calves. In experimentally infected cattle, LSDV was found in saliva 11 days after the development of fever, in semen after 22 days, and in skin nodules after 33 days. The virus is not found in urine or stool. Like other pox viruses, which are known to be highly resistant, LSDV can remain viable in infected tissue for more than 120 days.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: There have been two different approaches to immunization against LSDV. In South Africa, the Neethling strain of the virus was first attenuated by 20 passages on the chorio-allantoic membranes of hens' eggs. Now the vaccine virus is propagated in cell culture. In Kenya, the vaccine produced from sheep or goatpox viruses has been shown to provide immunity in cattle. However, the level of attenuation required for safe use in sheep and goats is not sufficient for cattle. For this reason the sheeppox and goatpox vaccines are restricted to countries where sheeppox or goatpox is already endemic since the live vaccines could provide a source of infection for the susceptible sheep and goat populations.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: In order to ensure adequate protection against LSDV, susceptible adult cattle should be vaccinated annually. Approximately, 50% of cattle develop swelling ( in diameter) at the site of inoculation. This swelling disappears within a few weeks. Upon inoculation, dairy cows may also exhibit a temporary decrease in milk production.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: Most cattle develop lifelong immunity after recovery from a natural infection. Additionally, calves of immune cows acquire maternal antibody and are resistant to clinical disease until about 6 months of age. To avoid interference with maternal antibodies, calves under 6 months of age whose dams were naturally infected or vaccinated should not vaccinated. On the other hand, calves born from susceptible cows are also susceptible and should be vaccinated.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: Lumpy skin disease was first seen as an epidemic in Zambia in 1929. Initially, it was thought to be the result of either poisoning or a hypersensitivity to insect bites. Additional cases occurred between 1943 and 1945 in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and the Republic of South Africa. Approximately, 8 million cattle were affected in a panzootic infection in South Africa in 1949, causing enormous economic losses. LSD spread throughout Africa between the 1950s and 1980s, affecting cattle in Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Somalia, and Cameroon.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: In 1989 there was an LSD outbreak in Israel. This outbreak was the first instance of LSD north of the Sahara desert and outside of the African continent. This particular outbreak was thought to be the result of infected "Stomoxys calcitrans" being carried on wind from Ismailiya in Egypt. During a period of 37 days between August and September 1989, fourteen of the seventeen dairy herds in Peduyim became infected with LSD. All of the cattle as well as small flocks of sheep and goats in the village were slaughtered.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: Throughout the past decade, LSD occurrences have been reported in Middle Eastern, European, and west Asian regions.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: LSD was first reported to the Bangladesh livestock department in July 2019. Eventually 500,000 head were estimated to have been infected in this outbreak. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recommended mass vaccination. As a result of the introduction of fall armyworm and this cattle plague within a few months of each other, the FAO, the World Food Programme, Bangladesh Government officials, and others agreed to begin improving Bangladesh's livestock disease surveillance and emergency response capabilities. Method of entry of the virus into Bangladesh remains unknown.


title: Lumpy skin disease

text: In 2022 a lumpy skin disease outbreak in Pakistan killed over 7000 cattle. In India between July-September 2022 the lumpy skin disease outbreak in India resulted in the death of over 80,000 cattle. The state of Rajasthan has seen a majority of the deaths. Inter-state and inter-district movement of cattle in a number of states has been restricted. Indian Council of Agricultural Research labs have undertaken creation of an indigenous vaccine. A goat pox vaccine is being used, 15 million doses had been administered by September 2022. There are at least three centres manufacturing the goat pox vaccine in India. Institutions with authority to test have been expanded.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a 1944 American war film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo is based on the 1943 book of the same name by Captain Ted W. Lawson. Lawson was a pilot on the historic Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan, four months after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid was planned, led by, and named after United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who was promoted two ranks, to Brigadier General, the day after the raid.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Sam Zimbalist was the film's producer and Mervyn LeRoy directed. The picture stars Van Johnson as Lawson; Phyllis Thaxter as his wife, Ellen; Robert Walker as Corporal David Thatcher; Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Bob Gray; and Spencer Tracy as Lieutenant Colonel—and soon General— Jimmy Doolittle.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Tracy's appearance in the film is more in the nature of a guest star; he receives special billing rather than his usual top billing and has considerably less screen time than star Van Johnson.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: In the book, Lawson gives an eyewitness account of the intensive training, the mission, and the aftermath as experienced by his crew and by others who flew the mission on April 18, 1942. Lawson piloted "The Ruptured Duck", the seventh of 16 B-25s to take off from the aircraft carrier USS "Hornet". The film depicted the raid accurately and used actual wartime footage of the bombers.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Not long after the Pearl Harbor attack, United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle orders 24 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers—with volunteer crews—to report to Eglin Field, Florida, for a secret three-month-long mission. They arrive on March 1. Among them is the craft piloted by Ted Lawson. His crew consists of Lt. Dean Davenport, co-pilot; Lt. Charles McClure, navigator, Lt. Bob Clever, bombardier, and Corporal David Thatcher, gunner-mechanic.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Doolittle warns them: This work is top-secret. He offers them the chance to opt out, particularly if they have wives and families. Lawson's wife, Ellen, drives to Eglin Field to join him. She is pregnant. They are very much in love, but giving up never occurs to them.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: The intensive training includes learning how to take off on a runway only 500 feet long as taught by an instructor Naval Aviator from nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station. They are not told why, and those who guess keep quiet. Lawson's plane acquires the nickname "Ruptured Duck" and nose art to match. One dark morning, Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle sends them off to fly cross-country at hedge-hopping height to Naval Air Station Alameda, California. The planes are immediately loaded aboard the aircraft carrier .


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: At last, Doolittle reveals the mission: Bomb Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya. The carrier will get them within 400 miles of mainland Japan. After dropping their payloads, they will continue to designated landing spots in parts of China controlled by Nationalist forces and regroup in Chungking.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: The next day, they learn about takeoff procedures: If a plane malfunctions, it will be pushed over the side. Lt. Jurika works with each crew on its own bombing run. At the penultimate briefing, Doolittle warns that any man who cannot cope with the unavoidable killing of civilians should drop out, without shame.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: The call to battle stations comes twice daily, at dawn and dusk, when the enemy "pig boats" (submarines) come up. When an enemy surface vessel does discover the convoy, the crews assemble to take off immediately—12 hours earlier than planned. It will be daylight over Japan and night when they reach China. Doolittle leads the raid, dropping incendiary bombs to mark key targets. The Ruptured Duck is the seventh flight. Flying low over the ocean and into Tokyo, through the smoke of burning targets, dropping their bombs as planned. Flak bursts around them, but fighters ignore them.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Lawson crashes in the surf while trying to land on a beach in darkness and heavy rain. Everyone but Thatcher is badly injured. Lawson's left leg is laid open to the bone, and McLure's shoulders are broken. Friendly Chinese help them, and the Americans face hardships and danger while being escorted through Japanese-held territory. In the absence of any medical supplies, the injured men endure terrible pain, and Lawson's leg becomes infected. He dreams of Ellen.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: There is a Red Cross banner in the village of XingMing. Doctor Chung arrives with good news and bad. He will take them to his father's hospital, some 19 miles farther. The bad news is that the Japanese have captured an American crew. Hurrying into the hills, they look back: XingMing is burning.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: There is no surgeon at the elder Dr. Chung's hospital, but Lt. Smith's crew is on its way with Lt. "Doc" White, who volunteered as gunner. The Japanese approach, and the able-bodied Americans leave, except for Doc. He takes Lawson's leg off well above the knee, using the single dose of spinal anesthesia in their possession. It wears off too soon. Lawson passes out and dreams of Ellen.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Cut to a chorus of Girl Scouts singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", in Mandarin, celebrating Lawson's first day out of bed. His forehead shows a tracery of scars. When Dr. Chung senior gives Lawson an heirloom bracelet for his wife, Lawson is puzzled. He does not remember talking about her. When he totters on his crutches, he becomes distraught at the idea of Ellen seeing him like this. They hurry to Ch'ang Chou to rendezvous with an American plane that takes them home.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: General Doolittle calls Ellen. Sobbing with joy, she tells her mother why Ted refuses to see her: "As if that would matter!" Doolittle visits Lawson in the hospital and tells him he has work for him to do. When Ellen comes in, Lawson, overjoyed, forgets his missing leg and stands. He falls and they embrace on the floor, all smiles. "When things were the worst...I could see your face, your beautiful face." he says. "I knew you were coming home, Ted", Ellen declares.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: There is an error in the onscreen credits, perpetuated in many sources, including the "Variety" review. They list Ted W. Lawson and Robert Considine as authors of both "the book" and a "story" in "Collier's" magazine. There was no such story. Lawson was the sole author of the book "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", and the word "Collier's" was crossed off in the credits of the copyright cutting continuity.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: The film is known for its accurate depiction of the raid and use of actual wartime footage of the bombing aircraft. The production crew worked closely with Captain Ted Lawson and other members of the raid to make the film as realistic as possible. Filming at Hurlburt Field and Peel Field near Mary Esther, Florida, and Eglin Field (the actual base where the Doolittle Raiders trained), and operational USAAF B-25C and B-25D bombers were used (closely resembling the B-25B Mitchells used in 1942). Auxiliary Field 4, Peel Field, was used for the short-distance take off practice scenes.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Dean Davenport was a technical adviser and stunt flyer for the film. He flew a B-25 bomber off a pier in Santa Monica, Calif., for a scene showing the takeoffs from the Hornet.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Although an aircraft carrier was not available, due to wartime needs (USS "Hornet" itself had been sunk in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 27, 1942 only six months after launching the raid), a mix of realistic studio sets and original newsreel footage recreated the USS "Hornet" scenes. Principal photography took place between February and June 1944.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: The film received favorable reviews. "Look" magazine praised it as one of the five best films of the year, and the National Board of Review ranked it as eighth-best film of the year. "The Hollywood Reporter" reviewer called it "one of the greatest war pictures ever made".


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" was recognized as an inspirational, patriotic film with great value as a morale builder for wartime audiences. "The New York Times" in 1944 summed the production, "our first sensational raid on Japan in April 1942 is told with magnificent integrity and dramatic eloquence." "Variety" focused on the human elements, "inspired casting ... the war becomes a highly personalized thing through the actions of these crew members...this pleasant little family."


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: Later reviewers have considered "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" the finest aviation film of the period. The film is now considered a "classic aviation and war film." The actual Raiders considered it a worthy tribute.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: According to MGM records, the film made $4,297,000 in the US and Canada and $1,950,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $1,382,000.


title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

text: In the 1945 Academy Awards, the "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" team of A. Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahraus and Warren Newcombe (photography) and Douglas Shearer (sound) won the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Robert Surtees, A.S.C. and Harold Rosson, A.S.C. were nominated in the category of Black and White Cinematography.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate (DMS) is a chemical compound with formula (CHO)SO. As the diester of methanol and sulfuric acid, its formula is often written as (CH)SO or MeSO, where CH or Me is methyl. MeSO is mainly used as a methylating agent in organic synthesis.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: MeSO is a colourless oily liquid with a slight onion-like odour (although smelling it would represent significant exposure). Like all strong alkylating agents, MeSO is extremely toxic. Its use as a laboratory reagent has been superseded to some extent by methyl triflate, CFSOCH, the methyl ester of trifluoromethanesulfonic acid.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate was discovered in the early 19th century in an impure form. J. P. Claesson later extensively studied its preparation.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: It was investigated as a candidate for possible use chemical warfare in World War I in 75% to 25% mixture with methyl chlorosulfonate (CHClOS) called "C-stoff" in Germany, or with chlorosulfonic acid called "Rationite" in France.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate can be synthesized in the laboratory by many different methods, the simplest being the esterification of sulfuric acid with methanol:


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: MeSO has been produced commercially since the 1920s. A common process is the continuous reaction of dimethyl ether with sulfur trioxide.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate is best known as a reagent for the methylation of phenols, amines, and thiols. One methyl group is transferred more quickly than the second. Methyl transfer is assumed to occur via an S2 reaction. Compared to other methylating agents, dimethyl sulfate is preferred by the industry because of its low cost and high reactivity.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Most commonly MeSO is employed to methylate phenols. Some simple alcohols are also suitably methylated, as illustrated by the conversion of "tert"-butanol to t-butyl methyl ether:


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Quaternized fatty ammonium compounds are used as a surfactant or fabric softeners. Methylation to create a tertiary amine is illustrated as:


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate (DMS) is used to determine the secondary structure of RNA. At neutral pH, DMS methylates unpaired adenine and cytosine residues at their canonical Watson-Crick faces, but it cannot methylate base-paired nucleotides. Using the method known as DMS-MaPseq, RNA is incubated with DMS to methylate unpaired bases. Then the RNA is reverse-transcribed; the reverse transcriptase frequently adds an incorrect DNA base when it encounters a methylated RNA base. These mutations can be detected via sequencing, and the RNA is inferred to be single-stranded at bases with above-background mutation rates.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate can effect the base-specific cleavage of DNA by attacking the imidazole rings present in guanine. Dimethyl sulfate also methylates adenine in single-stranded portions of DNA (e.g., those with proteins like RNA polymerase progressively melting and re-annealing the DNA). Upon re-annealing, these methyl groups interfere with adenine-guanine base-pairing. Nuclease S1 can then be used to cut the DNA in single-stranded regions (anywhere with a methylated adenine). This is an important technique for analyzing protein-DNA interactions.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Although dimethyl sulfate is highly effective and affordable, its toxicity has encouraged the use of other methylating reagents. Methyl iodide is a reagent used for O-methylation, like dimethyl sulfate, but is less hazardous and more expensive. Dimethyl carbonate, which is less reactive, has far lower toxicity compared to both dimethyl sulfate and methyl iodide. High pressure can be used to accelerate methylation by dimethyl carbonate. In general, the toxicity of methylating agents is correlated with their efficiency as methyl transfer reagents.


title: Dimethyl sulfate

text: Dimethyl sulfate is carcinogenic and mutagenic, highly poisonous, corrosive, and environmentally hazardous. It is absorbed through the skin, mucous membranes, and gastrointestinal tract, and can cause a fatal delayed respiratory tract reaction. An ocular reaction is also common. There is no strong odor or immediate irritation to warn of lethal concentration in the air. The LD50 (acute, oral) is 205 mg/kg (rat) and 140 mg/kg (mouse), and LC50 (acute) is 45 ppm / 4 hours (rat). The vapor pressure of 65 Pa is sufficiently large to produce a lethal concentration in air by evaporation at 20 °C. Delayed toxicity allows potentially fatal exposures to occur prior to development of any warning symptoms. Symptoms may be delayed 6–24 hours. Concentrated solutions of bases (ammonia, alkalis) can be used to hydrolyze minor spills and residues on contaminated equipment, but the reaction may become violent with larger amounts of dimethyl sulfate (see ICSC). Although the compound hydrolyses, treatment with water cannot be assumed to decontaminate it.


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: The North American FJ-4 Fury is a swept-wing carrier-capable fighter-bomber for the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The final development in a lineage that included the Air Force's F-86 Sabre, the FJ-4 shared its general layout and engine with the earlier FJ-3, but featured an entirely new wing design and was a vastly different design in its final embodiment.


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: Compared to that of the FJ-3, the FJ-4's new wing was much thinner, with a six percent thickness-to-chord ratio, and featured skin panels milled from solid alloy plates. It also had an increased area, and tapered more sharply towards the tips. Slight camber behind the leading edge improved low speed characteristics. The main landing gear design had to be considerably modified to fold wheel and strut within the contours of the new wing. The track of the main wheels was increased and because they were closer to the center of gravity, there was less weight on the nosewheel. Wing folding was limited to the outer wing panels.


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: The FJ-4 was intended as an all-weather interceptor, a role that required considerable range on internal fuel. The FJ-4 had 50% more fuel capacity than the FJ-3 and was lightened by omitting armor and reducing ammunition capacity. The new wing was "wet"; that is, it provided for integral fuel tankage. The fuselage was deepened to add more fuel, and had a distinctive "razorback" rear deck. A modified cockpit made the pilot more comfortable during the longer missions. The tail surfaces were also extensively modified and had a thinner profile. The overall changes resulted in an aircraft that had little in common with the earlier models, although a family resemblance was still present. The two prototypes had the same Wright J65-W-4 engine as the FJ-3, but production aircraft had the J65-W-16A of thrust.


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: Of the original order for 221, the last 71 were modified in the FJ-4B fighter-bomber version. This had a stronger wing with six instead of four underwing stations and stronger landing gear. Additional aerodynamic brakes under the aft fuselage made landing safer by allowing pilots to use higher thrust settings, and were also useful for dive attacks. External load was doubled. The most important characteristic of the FJ-4B, however, was that it was capable of carrying a nuclear weapon on the inboard port station. It was equipped with the LABS or Low-Altitude Bombing System for the delivery of nuclear weapons. The Navy was eager to maintain a nuclear role in its rivalry with the Air Force, and it equipped 10 squadrons with the FJ-4B. It was also flown by three Marine squadrons. In April 1956 the Navy ordered 151 more FJ-4Bs, for a total of 152 FJ-4s and 222 FJ-4Bs produced, and 1,115 FJ aircraft of all variants delivered to the Navy and Marine Corps.


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: The Navy ordered six FJ-4s to be converted to FJ-4F to test rocket engines, but only two were completed. These featured the North American Rocketdyne AR-1 engine, installed in a fairing above the tail pipe of the jet engine. It ran on hydrogen peroxide and JP-4 jet fuel, and provided an additional of thrust for short periods. The FJ-4F reached speeds of Mach 1.41 and altitude of 71,000 ft (21,600 m).


title: North American FJ-4 Fury

text: With the 1962 adoption of the Tri-Service aircraft designation system, the FJ-4 became the F-1E and the FJ-4B the AF-1E. AF-1Es served with United States Naval Reserve units until the late 1960s.


title: Analytical skill

text: Analytical skill is the ability to deconstruct information into smaller categories in order to draw conclusions. Analytical skill consists of categories that include logical reasoning, critical thinking, communication, research, data analysis and creativity. Analytical skill is taught in contemporary education with the intention of fostering the appropriate practises for future professions. The professions that adopt analytical skill include educational institutions, public institutions, community organisations and industry.


title: Analytical skill

text: Richard J. Heuer Jr. explained that In the article by Freed, the need for programs within the educational system to help students develop these skills is demonstrated. Workers "will need more than elementary basic skills to maintain the standard of living of their parents. They will have to think for a living, analyse problems and solutions, and work cooperatively in teams".


title: Analytical skill

text: Logical reasoning is a process consisting of inferences, where premises and hypotheses are formulated to arrive at a probable conclusion. It is a broad term covering three sub-classifications in deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and abductive reasoning.


title: Analytical skill

text: "‘Deductive reasoning is a basic form of valid reasoning, commencing with a general statement or hypothesis, then examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion’". This scientific method utilises deductions, to test hypotheses and theories, to predict if possible observations were correct.


title: Analytical skill

text: A logical deductive reasoning sequence can be executed by establishing: an assumption, followed by another assumption and finally, conducting an inference. For example, ‘All men are mortal. Harold is a man. Therefore, Harold is mortal.’


title: Analytical skill

text: For deductive reasoning to be upheld, the hypothesis must be correct, therefore, reinforcing the notion that the conclusion is logical and true. It is possible for deductive reasoning conclusions to be inaccurate or incorrect entirely, but the reasoning and premise is logical. For example, ‘All bald men are grandfathers. Harold is bald. Therefore, Harold is a grandfather.’ is a valid and logical conclusion but it is not true as the original assumption is incorrect. Deductive reasoning is an analytical skill used in many professions such as management, as the management team delegates tasks for day-to-day business operations.


title: Analytical skill

text: Inductive reasoning compiles information and data to establish a general assumption that is suitable to the situation. Inductive reasoning commences with an assumption based on faithful data, leading to a generalised conclusion. For example, ‘All the swans I have seen are white. (Premise) Therefore all swans are white. (Conclusion)’. It is clear that the conclusion is incorrect, therefore, it is a weak argument. To strengthen the conclusion, it is made more probable, for example, ‘All the swans I have seen are white. (Premise) Therefore most swans are probably white (Conclusion)’. Inductive reasoning is an analytical skill common in many professions such as the corporate environment, where statistics and data are constantly analysed.


title: Analytical skill

text: Abductive reasoning commences with layered hypotheses, which may be insufficient with evidence, leading to a conclusion that is most likely explanatory for the problem. It is a form of reasoning where the conductor chooses a hypothesis that would best suit the given data. For example, when a patient is ill, the doctor gathers a hypothesis from the patient's symptoms, or other evidence, that they deem factual and appropriate. The doctor will then go through a list of possible illnesses and will attempt to assign the appropriate illness. Abductive reasoning is characterised by its lack of completeness, in evidence, explanation or both. This form of reasoning can be creative, intuitive and revolutionary due to its instinctive design.


title: Analytical skill

text: Critical thinking is a skill used to interpret and explain the data given. It is the ability to think cautiously and rationally to resolve problems. This thinking is achieved by supporting conclusions without biases, having reliable evidence and reasoning, and using appropriate data and information. Critical thinking is an imperative skill as it underpins contemporary living in areas such as education and professional careers, but it is not restricted to a specific area.


title: Analytical skill

text: Critical thinking is used to solve problems, calculate the likelihood, make decisions, and formulate inferences. Critical thinking requires examining information, reflective thinking, using appropriate skills, and confidence in the quality of the information given to come to a conclusion or plan. Critical thinking includes being willing to change if better information becomes available. As a critical thinker individuals do not accept assumptions without further questioning the reliability of it with further research and analysing the results found.


title: Analytical skill

text: Critical thinking can be developed through establishing personal beliefs and values. It is critical that individuals are able to query authoritative bodies: teachers, specialists, textbooks, books, newspapers, television etc. Querying these authorities allow critical thinking ability to be developed as the individual gains their own freedom and wisdom to think about reality and contemporary society, revering from autonomy.


title: Analytical skill

text: Critical thinking can be developed through probability models, where individuals adhere to a logical, conceptual understanding of mathematics and emphasise investigation, problem-solving, mathematical literacy and the use of mathematical discourse. The student actively constructs their knowledge and understanding, while teaching models function as a mediator by actively testing the student through querying, challenging and assigning investigation tasks, ultimately, allowing the student to think in deeper ways about various concepts, ideas and mathematical contexts.


title: Analytical skill

text: Communication is a process where individuals transfer information from one another. It is a complex system consisting of a listener interpreting the information, understanding it and then transferring it. Communication as an analytical skill includes communicating with confidence, clarity, and sticking with the point you are trying to communicate. It consists of verbal and non-verbal communication. Communication is an imperative component of analytical skill as it allows the individual to develop relationships, contribute to group decisions, organisational communication, and influence media and culture.


title: Analytical skill

text: Verbal communication is interaction through words in linguistic form. Verbal communication consists of oral communication, written communication and sign language. It is an effective form of communication as the individuals sending and receiving the information are physically present, allowing immediate responses. In this form of communication, the sender uses words, spoken or written, to express the message to the individuals receiving the information.


title: Analytical skill

text: Verbal communication is an essential analytical skill as it allows for the development of positive relationships among individuals. This positive relationship is attributed to the notion that verbal communication between individuals fosters a depth of understanding, empathy and versatility among them, providing each other with more attention. Verbal communication is a skill that is commonly used in professions such as the health sector, where healthcare workers are desired to possess strong interpersonal skills. Verbal communication has been linked to patient satisfaction. An effective strategy to improve verbal communication ability is through debating as is it fosters communication and critical thinking.


title: Analytical skill

text: Non-verbal communication is commonly known as unspoken dialogue between individuals. It is a significant analytical skill as it allows individuals to distinguish true feelings, opinions and behaviours, as individuals are more likely to believe nonverbal cues as opposed to verbal expressions. Non-verbal communication is able to transcend communicational barriers such as race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. This is a significant factor for international industries that require global communication or communication between other regions such as trade between China and The United States of America.


title: Analytical skill

text: Statistical measures showcase that the true meaning behind all messages is 93% non-verbal and 7% verbal. Non-verbal communication is a critical analytical skill as it allows individuals to delve deeper into the meaning of messages. It allows individuals to analyse another person's perceptions, expressions and social beliefs. Individuals who excel in communicating and understanding non-verbal communication are able to analyse the interconnectedness of mutualism, social beliefs and expectations.


title: Analytical skill

text: A communication theory is an abstract understanding of how information is transferred from individuals. Many communication theories have been developed to foster and build upon the ongoing dynamic nature of how people communicate. Early models of communication were simple, such as Aristotle's model of communication, consisting of a speaker communicating a speech to an audience, leading to an effect. This is a basic form of communication that addresses communication as a linear concept where information is not being relayed back.


title: Analytical skill

text: Modern theories for communication include Schramm's model where there are multiple individuals, each individual is encoding, interpreting and decoding the message, and messages are being transferred between one another. Schramm has included another factor in his model in experience i.e. expressing that each individual's experience influences their ability to interpret a message. Communication theories are constantly being developed to acclimatise to certain organisations or individuals. It is imperative for an individual to adopt a suitable communication theory for organisations to ensure that the organisation is able to function as desired. For example, traditional corporate hierarchy are commonly known to adopt a linear communicational model i.e. Aristotle's model of communication.


title: Analytical skill

text: Research is the construct of utilising tools and techniques to deconstruct and solve problems. While researching, it is important to distinguish what information is relevant to the data and avoiding excess, irrelevant data. Research involves the collection and analysis of information and data with the intention of founding new knowledge and/or deciphering a new understanding of existing data. Research ability is an analytical skill as it allows individuals to comprehend social implications. Research ability is valuable as it fosters transferable employment related skills. Research is primarily employed in academia and higher education, it is a profession pursued by many graduates, individuals intending to supervise or teach research students or those in pursuit of a PhD.


title: Analytical skill

text: In higher education, new research provides the most desired quality of evidence, if this is not available, then existing forms of evidence should be used. It is accepted that research provides the greatest form of knowledge, in the form of quantitative or qualitative data.


title: Analytical skill

text: Research students are highly desired by various industries due to their dynamic mental capacity. Research students are commonly sought after due to their analysis and problem-solving ability, interpersonal and leadership skills, project management and organisation, research and information management and written and oral communication.


title: Analytical skill

text: Data analysis is a systematic method of cleaning, transforming and modelling statistical or logical techniques to describe and evaluate data. Using data analysis as an analytical skill means being able to examine large volumes of data and then identifying trends within the data. It is critical to be able to look at the data and determine what information is important and should be kept and what information is irrelevant and can be discarded. Data analysis includes finding different patterns within the information which allows you to narrow your research and come to a better conclusion. It is a tool to discover and decipher useful information for business decision-making. It is imperative in inferring information from data and adhering to a conclusion or decision from that data. Data analysis can stem from past or future data. Data analysis is an analytical skill, commonly adopted in business, as it allows organisations to be come more efficient, internally and externally, solve complex problems and innovate.


title: Analytical skill

text: Text analysis is the discovery and understanding of valuable information in unstructured or large data. It is a method to transform raw data into business information, allowing for strategic business decisions by offering a method to extract and examine data, derive patterns and finally interpret the data.


title: Analytical skill

text: Statistical analysis involves the collection, analyses and presentation of data to decipher trends and patterns. It is common in research, industry and government to enhance the scientific aspects of the decision that needs to be made. It consists of descriptive analysis and inferential analysis.


title: Analytical skill

text: Descriptive analysis provides information about a sample set that reflects the population by summarising relevant aspects of the dataset i.e. uncovering patterns. It displays the measures of central tendency and measures of spread, such as mean, deviation, proportion, frequency etc.


title: Analytical skill

text: Inferential analysis analyses a sample from complete data to compare the difference between treatment groups. Multiple conclusions are constructed by selecting different samples. Inferential analysis can provide evidence that, with a certain percentage of confidence, there is a relationship between two variables. It is adopted that the sample will be different to the population, thus, we further accept a degree of uncertainty.


title: Analytical skill

text: Diagnostic analysis showcases the origin of the problem by finding the cause from the insight found in statistical analysis. This form of analysis is useful to identify behavioural patterns of data.


title: Analytical skill

text: Predictive analysis is an advanced form of analytics that forecasts future activity, behaviour, trends and patterns from new and historical data. Its accuracy is based on how much faithful data is present and the degree of inference that can be exploited from it.


title: Analytical skill

text: Prescriptive analytics provide firms with optimal recommendations to solve complex decisions. It is used in many industries, such as aviation to optimise schedule selection for airline crew.


title: Analytical skill

text: Creativity is important when it comes to solving different problems when presented. Creative thinking works best for problems that can have multiple solutions to solve the problem. It is also used when there seems to be no correct answer that applies to every situation, and is instead based from situation to situation. It includes being able to put the pieces of a problem together, as well as figure out pieces that may be missing. Then it includes brainstorming with all the pieces and deciding what pieces are important and what pieces can be discarded. The next step would be now analysing the pieces found to be of worth and importance and using those to come to a logical conclusion on how to best solve the problem. There can be multiple answers you come across to solve this problem. Many times creative thinking is referred to as right brain thinking. Creativity is an analytical skill as it allows individuals to utilise innovative methods to solve problems. Individuals that adopt this analytical skill are able to perceive problems from varying perspectives. This analytical skill is highly transferable among professions.


title: 2021 national electoral calendar

text: This national electoral calendar for 2021 lists the national/federal elections held in 2021 in all sovereign states and their dependent territories. By-elections are excluded, though national referendums are included.


title: 2021 national electoral calendar

text: The following indirect elections of heads of state and the upper houses of bicameral legislatures are scheduled to take place through votes in elected lower houses, unicameral legislatures, or electoral colleges:


title: Plain of Jars

text: The Plain of Jars (Lao: ທົ່ງໄຫຫິນ "Thong Hai Hin", ) is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. It consists of thousands of stone jars scattered around the upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau. The jars are arranged in clusters ranging in number from one to several hundred.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The Xiangkhoang Plateau is at the northern end of the Annamese Cordillera, the principal mountain range of Indochina. French researcher Madeleine Colani concluded in 1930 that the jars were associated with burial practices. Excavation by Lao and Japanese archaeologists in the intervening years has supported this interpretation with the discovery of human remains, burial goods and ceramics around the jars. Researchers (using optically stimulated luminescence) determined that the jars were put in place as early as 1240 to 660 BC. The jars at Site 1 (using detrital zircon geochronology) were determined to have been transported to their current location from a presumed quarry eight kilometers away. The Plain of Jars is one of the most important prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia.


title: Plain of Jars

text: More than 90 jar sites have been identified in Xiangkhouang Province. Each site has from one to 400 stone jars. The jars vary in height and diameter between 1 m and 3 m and are all hewn from rock. Their shape is cylindrical with the bottom always wider than the top. The stone jars are undecorated, with the exception of a single jar at Site 1. This jar has a human "frogman" bas-relief carved on the exterior. Parallels between the "frogman" and the rock painting at Huashan in Guangxi, China have been drawn. The Chinese paintings, which depict large full-frontal images of humans with arms raised and knees bent, date to 500 BC–200 AD.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Since most of the jars have lip rims, it is thought that the jars originally supported lids, although few stone lids have been recorded; this suggests that the bulk of lids were fashioned from perishable materials. Stone lids with animal carvings have been found at a few sites such as Ban Phakeo (Site 52). The bas-relief carvings are thought to depict monkeys, tigers and frogs.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Stone discs have also been found. The discs, which differ from the lids, have at least one flat side and are grave markers which were placed on the surface to cover or mark a burial pit. These grave markers appear more rarely than jars, but are found in close proximity. Similarly, the stone grave markers are unworked, but have been intentionally placed to mark a grave. To the north of Xiangkhouang an extensive network of intentionally placed largely unworked stones marking elaborate burial pits and chambers are known as the "standing stones of Huaphanh". These have been date to the Bronze Age.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The jars lie in clusters on the lower foothills and ridges of the hills surrounding the central plateau and upland valleys. Several quarry sites have been recorded, usually close to the jar sites. Five rock types have been identified: sandstone, granite, conglomerate, limestone and breccia. The majority of the jars are sandstone. It is assumed that Plain of Jars people used iron chisels to manufacture the jars, although no conclusive evidence for this exists. Regional differences in jar shape have been noted. While the differences in most cases can be attributed to choice and manipulation of rock source, some differences in form (such as variations in the placement of jar apertures) appear to be unique to specific sites.


title: Plain of Jars

text: A cave at Site 1 is a natural limestone formation with an opening to the northwest and two man-made holes at the top. These holes are thought to have been chimneys for a crematorium. French geologist and amateur archaeologist Madeleine Colani excavated inside the cave in the early 1930s and found material to support a crematorium theory. Colani also recorded and excavated at twelve Plain of Jars sites and published two volumes with her findings in 1935. Colani concluded that the Plain of Jars was an Iron Age burial site. Inside the jars she found, embedded in black organic soil, coloured glass beads and burnt teeth and bone fragments, sometimes from more than one individual. Around the stone jars, she found human bones, pottery fragments, iron and bronze objects, glass and stone beads, ceramic weights and charcoal. The bone and teeth inside the jars show signs of cremation, while the burials surrounding the jars yield unburnt secondary burial bones.


title: Plain of Jars

text: No further archaeological research was conducted until November 1994, when Professor Eiji Nitta of Kagoshima University and Lao archaeologist Thongsa Sayavongkhamdy surveyed and mapped Site 1. Nitta claimed that the surrounding burial pits were contemporaneous to the jars, as they were cut into the surface on which the jars had been placed. Nitta believed the jars were symbolic monuments to mark the surrounding burials. He dated the Plain of Jars to the late second or early first millennium BC based on the burial urn and associated grave goods. Sayavongkhamdy undertook surveys and excavations between 1994 and 1996, supported by the Australian National University. Sayavongkhamdy and Peter Bellwood interpreted the stone jars as a central person's primary or secondary burial, surrounded by secondary burials of family members. Archaeological data collected during bomb clearance operations supervised by UNESCO archaeologist Julie Van Den Bergh in 2004–2005 and again in 2007 provided similar archaeological results. Like Nitta, Van Den Bergh concluded that the jars and surrounding burials were contemporaneous.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Variations in the practices of cremation inside jars and secondary burial outside jars, as noted by Colani, have proven difficult to explain. The cremated remains seem to mainly belong to adolescents. While the bomb clearance operations did not involve emptying the jars and thus no additional evidence could be gathered, Van Den Bergh suggested that the stone jars initially may have been used to distill the dead bodies and that the cremated remains within the jars represent the most recent phase in the Plain of Jars. The jars with smaller apertures may reflect the diminishing need to place an entire body inside.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The suggestion that the jars, as in traditional Southeast Asian royal mortuary practices, functioned as "distilling vessels", was put forward by R. Engelhardt and P. Rogers in 2001. In contemporary funerary practices followed by Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian royalty, the corpse of the deceased is placed into an urn during the early stages of the funeral rites, at which time the soul of deceased is believed to be undergoing gradual transformation from the earthly to the spiritual world. The ritual decomposition is later followed by cremation and secondary burial.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The royal burials are across watercourses from the habitation areas in a geographically high, prominent area. Among the Black Thai people who have been in the region at least since the 11th century, the upper classes are cremated in the belief that it will release their spirits to heaven, while commoners are buried, leaving their spirits to remain on Earth.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Colani connected the location of the jars sites to ancient trade routes, in particular with the salt trade. She assumed that salt was a commodity sought after by the Plain of Jars people, which brought traders to the Xiangkhouang Plateau. The Xiangkhouang area is rich in metallic minerals, mainly due to granite intrusions and associated hydrothermal activity.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Two principal iron ore deposits exist in Laos, both in Xiangkhouang. The presence and locations of the numerous jar sites in Xiangkhouang may relate to trading and mining activities. History has shown that Xiangkhouang, at the northern end of the Annamite Range, provides relative easy passage from the north and east to the south and west.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Within the geographic setting of Xiangkhouang, the jar sites may reflect a network of intercultural villages, whereby the locations of the jars are associated with long-distance overland routes which connect the Mekong basin and the Gulf of Tonkin System. The jar sites show superficial regional differences, such as jar form, material, and the number of jars per site, but all share common setting characteristics such as burial practices, elevated locations, and commanding views over the surrounding area.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The most investigated and visited Jar site is close to the town of Phonsavan, and is known as Site 1. Seven jar sites have now been cleared of unexploded bombs and are open to visitors. These are currently sites 1, 2 and 3, and Site 16 near the old capital Xieng Khouang; Site 23, near the big hot spring in Muang Kham; Site 25 in the largely unvisited Phou Kout District; and Site 52, the largest known jar site to date with 392 jars near a traditional Hmong village only accessible by foot.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Lao legends tell of a race of giants who inhabited the area and who were ruled by a king, named Khun Cheung, who fought a long and ultimately victorious battle against an enemy. He supposedly created the jars to brew and store huge amounts of "lau hai" ("lau" means 'alcohol', "hai" means 'jar'—So "lau hai" means 'rice beer' or 'rice wine' in the jars) to celebrate his victory. Another local story states that the jars were molded from natural materials including clay, sand, sugar, and animal products in a type of stone mix. This led the locals to believe the cave at Site 1 was actually a kiln, and that the jars were fired there and are not actually hewn from stone.


title: Plain of Jars

text: Between May 1964 and the summer of 1969, the Plain of Jars was heavily bombed by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) (see Secret War) operating against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao communist forces. This included 262 million anti-personnel cluster bombs. An estimated 80 million of these did not explode and remain a deadly threat to the population.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The large quantity of unexploded bombs in the area, especially cluster munitions, limits free movement. Evidence of the bombing raids can be seen in the form of broken or displaced jars and bomb craters. Sightseeing on the Plain of Jars can only be done safely on cleared and marked pathways.


title: Plain of Jars

text: The Mines Advisory Group, a non-governmental organization, in collaboration with UNESCO and funded by the New Zealand government (NZAID), cleared unexploded bombs from the three most visited sites from July 2004 to July 2005. A second phase of bomb clearance at the sites also funded by NZAID was undertaken in 2007; four more jar sites were made safe.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: The northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965, affecting parts of Ontario in Canada and Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km) were left without electricity for up to 13 hours.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: The cause of the failure was the setting of a protective relay on one of the transmission lines from the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. The safety relay was set to trip if other protective equipment deeper within the Ontario Hydro system failed to operate properly.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: On a particularly cold November evening, power demands for heating, lighting, and cooking were pushing the electrical system to near its peak capacity. Transmission lines heading into southern Ontario were heavily loaded. The safety relay had been misprogrammed, and it did what it had been asked to do: to disconnect under the loads it perceived. As a result, at 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time, a small variation of power originating from the Robert Moses generating plant in Lewiston, New York caused the relay to trip, disabling a main power line heading into Southern Ontario. Instantly, the power that was flowing on the tripped line transferred to the other lines, causing them to become overloaded. Their own protective relays, which are also designed to protect the lines from overload, tripped, isolating Beck Station from all of southern Ontario.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: With nowhere else to go, the excess power from Beck Station then flowed east, over the interconnected lines into New York state, overloading them as well, and isolating the power generated in the Niagara region from the rest of the interconnected grid. The Beck generators, with no outlet for their power, were automatically shut down to prevent damage. The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant continued to generate power, which supplied Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation customers in the metropolitan areas of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. These areas ended up being isolated from the rest of the Northeast power grid and remained powered up. The Niagara Mohawk Western NY Huntley (Buffalo) and Dunkirk steam plants were knocked offline. Within five minutes, the power distribution system in the Northeast was in chaos as the effects of overloads and the subsequent loss of generating capacity cascaded through the network, breaking the grid into "islands". Station after station experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Upstate New York, and New England. With only limited electrical connection southwards, power to the southern states was not affected. The only part of the Ontario Hydro System not affected was the Fort Erie area next to Buffalo, which was still powered by older 25 Hz generators. Residents in Fort Erie were able to pick up a TV broadcast from New York, where a local backup generator was being used for transmission purposes.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: An aircheck of New York City radio station WABC from November 9, 1965 reveals disc jockey Dan Ingram doing a segment of his afternoon drive time show, during which he noted that a record he was playing (Jonathan King's "Everyone's Gone to the Moon") sounded slow, as did the subsequent jingles played during a commercial break. Ingram quipped that the King record "was in the key of R." The station's music playback equipment used synchronous motors whose speed was dependent on the frequency of the powerline, normally 60 Hz. Comparisons of segments of the hit songs played at the time of the broadcast, minutes before the blackout happened, in this aircheck, as compared to the same song recordings played at normal speed reveal that approximately six minutes before blackout the line frequency was 56 Hz, and just two minutes before the blackout that frequency dropped to 51 Hz. As Si Zentner's recording of "(Up a) Lazy River" played in the background – again at a slower-than-normal tempo – Ingram mentioned that the lights in the studio were dimming, then suggested that the electricity itself was slowing down, adding, "I didn't know that could happen". When the station's "Action Central News" report came on at 5:25 pm ET, the staff remained oblivious to the ongoing blackout. The lead story was still Roger Allen LaPorte's self-immolation at United Nations Headquarters earlier that day in protest of American military involvement in the Vietnam War; a taped sound bite with the attending physician played noticeably slower and lower than usual. The newscast gradually fizzled out as power was lost by the time newscaster Bill Rice started delivering the second story about New Jersey Senator Clifford P. Case's comments on his home state's recent gubernatorial election.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Some areas within the affected region were not blacked out. Municipal utilities in Hartford, Connecticut; Braintree, Hudson, Holyoke, and Taunton, Massachusetts; and Fairport, Greenport, and Walden, New York had their own power plants, which operators disconnected from the grid and which were able to sustain local loads, though some areas lost power for at least a few hours. In New York City, Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn were spared when Con Edison disconnected its Arthur Kill Generating Station from the grid. Rochdale, Queens was also unaffected as it had its own power plant.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: From the first failure at 5:17 p.m. near the Niagara-Canada border, the blackout moved eastward across the state, and "at 5:27 p.m., the lights began sputtering in New York City, and within seconds... blacked out in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and most of Brooklyn." The blackout was not universal in the city; some neighborhoods never lost power, notably Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. Also, some suburban areas, including Bergen County, New Jersey - served by PSE&G - did not lose power.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Fortunately, a bright full moon lit up the cloudless sky over the entire blackout area, providing some aid for the millions who were suddenly plunged into darkness.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Most telephones remained operational, the telephone exchanges powered by emergency generators. However, not all emergency generators functioned as desired. The generator at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse failed to start, creating a serious crisis and forcing surgeons to complete operations in progress by flashlight.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Power restoration was uneven. Most generators had no auxiliary power to use for startup. Parts of Brooklyn were repowered by 11:00p.m., the rest of the borough by midnight. However, the entire city was not returned to normal power supply until nearly 7:00 a.m. the next day, November 10.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Power in western New York was restored in a few hours, thanks to the Genesee River-powered generating plant in Rochester, which stayed online throughout the blackout. Like starting a car, starting or restarting a generator requires power for a starter motor (see black start). The availability of this hydroelectric power was crucial; it was used to restart dead generators, which then could provide power to restart other generators, in a cascading process which required much switching by engineers at the various plants.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center saw the first full-scale activation of the facility during the blackout.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: "The New York Times" was able to produce a ten-page edition for November 10, using the printing presses of a nearby paper that was not affected, the "Newark Evening News". The front page showed a photograph of the city skyline with its lights all out.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: The task force that investigated the blackout found that a lack of voltage and current monitoring was a contributing factor to the blackout, and recommended improvements.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: The Electric Power Research Institute helped the electric power industry develop new metering and monitoring equipment and systems, which have become the modern SCADA systems in use today.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: In contrast to the wave of looting and other incidents that took place during the 1977 New York City blackout, only five reports of looting were made in New York City after the 1965 blackout. It was said to be the lowest amount of crime on any night in the city's history since records were first kept. However more than 800,000 riders were trapped in the subway.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Reports about an alleged baby boom that followed the blackout nine months later are considered unsubstantiated.


title: Northeast blackout of 1965

text: Immediately following the outage, R&B group The Ad Libs released a single about the incident, titled "New York In the Dark", on the AGP Records label. It included lines such as "The people they were frantic, although they didn't panic, they kept on singing songs, until the lights came on again" and "And the moon was shinin' through that 'ole silver silver linin'".


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: The Florida Atlantic Owls football program represents Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in the sport of American football. The Owls compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the East Division of Conference USA (CUSA). The Owls' head coach from 2019 to 2022 was Willie Taggart. Florida Atlantic has produced a Sun Belt Conference co-championship team in 2007, two Conference USA championships in 2017 and 2019, along with 4 postseason bowl appearances and one appearance in the 2003 I-AA Playoffs. The Owls play their home games at FAU Stadium which has a seating capacity of 29,419.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: Florida Atlantic University football began play in 2001 with legendary coach Howard Schnellenberger serving as head coach until 2011. Schnellenberger was a former offensive coordinator with the NFLs Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins who, as a head coach, turned around a moribund Miami football program and won a national championship in his fifth season in 1983 after back to back nine win seasons in 1980 and 1981. Schnellenberger also turned around a downtrodden Louisville football program, winning the Fiesta Bowl in 1990.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: After competing their first four years as an NCAA Division I-AA independent, the Owls moved to Division I-A and the Sun Belt Conference. Starting with the 2013–14 school year, FAU athletics have competed in Conference USA.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: In 1998, Florida Atlantic University announced it was pursuing the creation of an NCAA football program and that Howard Schnellenberger was going to lead the charge, as director of football operations and head coach. After his success in rebuilding programs at Miami and Louisville, Coach Schnellenberger now undertook the role of building a program from scratch. Much like his time at Miami and Louisville, Coach Schnellenberger did not shy from placing lofty expectations and high goals on his newly created program. Even before FAU would play an intercollegiate game, Coach Schnellenberger explained the goal of FAU football would be to play the best teams it can schedule, in order for the program to aim for a national championship in Division I-A football. These extreme goals were not unusual from a man like Coach Schnellenberger. At Louisville, facing threats from the administration that the football team would be terminated, Schnellenberger made the bold (and now famous) prediction, "[We are] on a collision course with the national championship. The only variable is time.”


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On August 29, 2000, the first practice was held at the Boca Raton campus of FAU, and 164 students showed up to try out for the team. During the August 29, 2000, first practice, dubbed the inaugural scrimmage game, FAU continued the tradition of Homecoming King, this time including the crowning ceremony of the King as part of the halftime festivities. The Homecoming King crown was bestowed upon Wayne Burns, having been voted in by the majority of student population from across all the campuses at the time, which totaled five, then running a Q&A gauntlet alongside the top three candidates, conducted by a committee of students and faculty, who then voted to determine if Mr. Burns would move to the winners circle or if the next candidate would get the crown. Mr. Burns was driven around the scrimmage game field in a convertible Rolls Royce to wave to the 164 students in the stands, many of whom voted for him. Wayne Burns was and is the oldest Homecoming King to ever receive the honor at FAU. Florida Atlantic joined NCAA Division I-AA, now known as Division I FCS, as an independent team for the 2001 season. Its first-ever intercollegiate competition was against Slippery Rock University, which the Owls lost 40–7 in front of 25,632 fans at Joe Robbie Stadium, now known as Hard Rock Stadium.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: The team finished its inaugural season at 4–6 and followed the next season at 2–9. Major accomplishments in its first two seasons include the program's first win, which came in its second game, against Bethune–Cookman, 31–28, and won in the first meeting with newly created South Florida rival, Florida International University, 31–21.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On September 15, 2007, FAU defeated its first Big Ten opponent with a 42–39 victory over Minnesota. Led by Rusty Smith, FAU beat Troy in the final game of the 2007 season to become Sun Belt Conference champions and received an invitation to the 2007 New Orleans Bowl, its first ever bowl bid. As a result, in just the seventh year of the football program's history, and the third year playing in Division I, Florida Atlantic set an NCAA mark by becoming the second-youngest program ever to receive an invitation to a bowl game. They were surpassed only by the undefeated 1958 Air Force Falcons, who had played just one year of Division 1 football before being invited to the Cotton Bowl, where they played to a scoreless tie against the TCU Horned Frogs on January 1, 1959.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On August 11, 2011, Howard Schnellenberger announced he would retire at the end of the season. The Owls ended the 2011 season 1–11, with the only victory coming from a 38–35 home win over UAB.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On December 1, 2011, FAU hired Carl Pelini, the Nebraska Cornhuskers defensive coordinator to become their new head coach, to succeed Schnellenberger.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On October 30, 2013, Pelini resigned from his position after another coach alleged to school officials that he was using illegal drugs, charges that Pelini denied. He, along with defensive coordinator Pete Rekstis, officially stepped down from their positions only three days before the school's homecoming game, which they won 34–17 under interim head coach Brian Wright. Under Pelini, the Owls compiled a 5–14 record.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: Wright finished the 2012–13 season as the interim head coach, winning the team's last four games and led the Owls to its first bowl-eligible season since 2008–09. The Owls finished 6–6 for the season but were not invited to a bowl game.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On December 16, 2013, FAU announced it had hired Charlie Partridge as head coach. Prior to accepting the job at FAU, Partridge was the defensive line coach at Arkansas. On November 27, 2016, FAU fired Partridge after 3 consecutive 3–9 seasons.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On December 12, 2016, it was announced that former USC and Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin would become the Owls' next head coach. Kiffin resigned from FAU on December 7, 2019, after a 49–6 blowout win against the university of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and before FAU's Boca Raton Bowl appearance against SMU Mustangs to become the head coach at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). Kiffin left FAU with a record of 26–13 with two first-place finishes in Conference USA. In December 2019, FAU tight end Harrison Bryant won the John Mackey Award, becoming the first FAU player to win a major collegiate postseaon award, as well as becoming FAU's first consensus, and later unanimous, All-American. FAU's first year defensive coordinator, Glenn Spencer, was named the interim head coach to lead the Owls at the Boca Raton Bowl.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On December 11, 2019, FAU announced the hiring of Willie Taggart as the next head coach. During a shortened season due to the COVID-19 pandemic with no prior spring practice, Taggart led the FAU Owls to a 5–4 record, which includes a loss to the Memphis Tigers in the first and only Montgomery Bowl. He was fired on November 26, 2022, finishing with a 15–18 record. Defensive coordinator Todd Orlando served as interim head coach during the transition period to find a new head coach.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: On December 1, 2022, FAU announced the hiring of former Houston and Texas head coach Tom Herman as the next head coach.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: As a member of Conference USA since 2013, Florida Atlantic competes in the East Division. The Owls have won two division titles.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: The Shula Bowl is the rivalry game with Florida International. It was first played in 2002 and has been played every year since then. The winner receives the Don Shula Award. The game and trophy are named after former Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula. The game is typically either in Boca Raton or Miami, though there have been meetings in other locations in the Miami metropolitan area.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: In total the two squads have met 17 times with Florida Atlantic holding a 13–4 lead as of the 2019 season conclusion. The 2005 game does not count with FIU having to vacate their victory due to NCAA violations and penalties.


title: Florida Atlantic Owls football

text: 10 Florida Atlantic players have been awarded as All-Americans, with one Florida Atlantic player being awarded as a consensus All-American, later becoming a unanimous All-American.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: St. Paul and The Broken Bones is an American eight-piece soul band based in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, that formed in 2012. The band is composed of Paul Janeway (vocals), Browan Lollar (guitar), Jesse Phillips (bass), Kevin Leon (drums), Al Gamble (keys), Allen Branstetter (trumpet), Amari Ansari (saxophone), and Chad Fisher (trombone). They have released four albums and two EPs while touring internationally.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: Vocalist Paul Janeway and bassist Jesse Phillips met in the mid-2000s while playing in Birmingham as part of the alternative soul outfit The Secret Dangers. In 2012, Jesse and Paul met back in Ol' Elegante Studios in Birmingham to start a new project. Janeway says of the project with Phillips, "It was going to be our last hurrah" before focusing on other careers, "but then something just clicked and we walked out of there with something." As the two began working around Janeway's voice, they realized they were forming a soul outfit. As the project progressed, the pair brought in Browan Lollar, formerly of The 400 Unit, Andrew Lee, Ben Griner, and Allen Branstetter. Here, they recorded their first EP, "Greetings from St. Paul and The Broken Bones" before ever playing a live show.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: After releasing "Greetings from St. Paul and The Broken Bones", the band gained attention from managers and labels alike. In January 2013, they began recording their first full-length album, "Half the City", at the Nutthouse Recording Studios Sheffield, Alabama and Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. While recording the album, the band brought in Al Gamble to play keys. Gamble continued to play with St. Paul and The Broken Bones and has been a full-time member since January 2014. "Half the City" was produced by Ben Tanner of the Alabama Shakes.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: In February 2013, St. Paul and The Broken Bones gained the attention of Traci Thomas of Thirty Tigers, who signed on as their manager. Shortly thereafter, they began weekend touring on their "Greetings from St. Paul and The Broken Bones" EP, waiting for the horn players to graduate college before embarking on more extensive touring.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: On February 18, 2014, the LP was released under Single Lock Records, a Florence, Alabama-based record label owned by Ben Tanner, Will Trapp, and John Paul White of The Civil Wars. Immediately, "Half the City" received critical acclaim from many national journalistic outlets including "Paste" magazine, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, "Rolling Stone", and NPR. In its first week of sales, "Half the City" reached #62 on the Billboard 200 charts. After major stories by NPR Morning Edition and a national television debut on "CBS This Morning: Saturday", St. Paul and The Broken Bones' debut album reached #56 on the Billboard 200. St. Paul and the Broken Bones has also made television appearances on "Late Night with David Letterman", "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", "Jimmy Kimmel Live", "Conan", "Later... with Jools Holland", "Late Night with Seth Meyers", "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", "Austin City Limits", and "Bluegrass Underground". In addition to their own tour, the band opened for The Rolling Stones' Zip Code Tour in Atlanta, Georgia on June 9, 2015, and in Buffalo, New York on July 11, 2015. The group also made appearances at marquee festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, Lockn' Festival, Outside Lands, North Sea Jazz, Rock En Seine, Pinkpop, Hurricane festival, Roskilde, Osheaga, Hyde Park London, and tons more. On top of that, they performed "All I Ever Wonder" live on BBC2 from the Glastonbury Festival on June 25, 2016. Some of the groups more notable events played are Elton John's AIDS Foundation Oscar viewing party in Los Angeles, Philip Glass' Tibet House Benefit in New York, The Equal Justice Initiative's 30th Anniversary celebration, and a Carnegie Hall series curated by Rosanne Cash.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: St. Paul and the Broken Bones songs have also featured in movie and TV spots such as "", "Grey's Anatomy", "Big Little Lies", "Suits", "Black Lightning", ESPN, "Fifty Shades of Grey", "Life of the Party", "The Gambler", "Mob Wives", "Stitchers", and "Switched at Birth",


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: In May 2015, trombonist Ben Griner left the group to work on personal projects. Their second album "Sea of Noise" was released in September 2016.


title: St. Paul and The Broken Bones

text: The band released a single, "Apollo", in June 2018, and announced an album, "Young Sick Camellia", released in September.


title: Esker

text: An esker, eskar, eschar, or os, sometimes called an "asar", "osar", or "serpent kame", is a long, winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel, examples of which occur in glaciated and formerly glaciated regions of Europe and North America. Eskers are frequently several kilometres long and, because of their uniform shape, look like railway embankments.


title: Esker

text: The term "esker" is derived from the Irish word "eiscir" (Old Irish: "escir"), which means "ridge or elevation, especially one separating two plains or depressed surfaces". The Irish word was and is used particularly to describe long sinuous ridges, which are now known to be deposits of fluvio-glacial material. The best-known example of such an "eiscir" is the "Eiscir Riada", which runs nearly the whole width of Ireland from Dublin to Galway, a distance of , and is still closely followed by the main Dublin-Galway road


title: Esker

text: Most eskers are argued to have formed within ice-walled tunnels by streams that flowed within and under glaciers. They tended to form around the time of the glacial maximum, when the glacier was slow and sluggish. After the retaining ice walls melted away, stream deposits remained as long winding ridges.


title: Esker

text: Eskers may also form above glaciers by accumulation of sediment in supraglacial channels, in crevasses, in linear zones between stagnant blocks, or in narrow embayments at glacier margins. Eskers form near the terminal zone of glaciers, where the ice is not moving as fast and is relatively thin.


title: Esker

text: Plastic flow and melting of the basal ice determines the size and shape of the subglacial tunnel. This in turn determines the shape, composition and structure of an esker. Eskers may exist as a single channel, or may be part of a branching system with tributary eskers. They are not often found as continuous ridges, but have gaps that separate the winding segments. The ridge crests of eskers are not usually level for very long, and are generally knobby. Eskers may be broad-crested or sharp-crested with steep sides. They can reach hundreds of kilometers in length and are generally in height.


title: Esker

text: The path of an esker is governed by its water pressure in relation to the overlying ice. Generally, the pressure of the ice was at such a point that it would allow eskers to run in the direction of glacial flow, but force them into the lowest possible points such as valleys or river beds, which may deviate from the direct path of the glacier. This process is what produces the wide eskers upon which roads and highways can be built. Less pressure, occurring in areas closer to the glacial maximum, can cause ice to melt over the stream flow and create steep-walled, sharply-arched tunnels.


title: Esker

text: The concentration of rock debris in the ice and the rate at which sediment is delivered to the tunnel by melting and from upstream transport determines the amount of sediment in an esker. The sediment generally consists of coarse-grained, water-laid sand and gravel, although gravelly loam may be found where the rock debris is rich in clay. This sediment is stratified and sorted, and usually consists of pebble/cobble-sized material with occasional boulders. Bedding may be irregular but is almost always present, and cross-bedding is common.


title: Esker

text: There are various cases where inland dunes have developed next to eskers after deglaciation. These dunes are often found in the leeward side of eskers, if the esker is not oriented parallel to prevailing winds. Examples of dunes developed on eskers can be found in both Swedish and Finnish Lapland.


title: Esker

text: Lakes may form within depressions in eskers. These lakes can lack surface outflows and inflows and have drastic fluctuations over time.


title: Esker

text: Eskers are critical to the ecology of Northern Canada. Several plants that grow on eskers, including bear root and cranberries, are important food for bears and migrating waterfowl; animals from grizzly bears to tundra wolves to ground squirrels can burrow into the eskers to survive the long winters.


title: Esker

text: In Sweden Uppsalaåsen stretches for and passes through Uppsala city. The Badelundaåsen esker runs for over from Nyköping to lake Siljan. Pispala's Pyynikki Esker in Tampere, Finland is on an esker between two lakes carved by glaciers. A similar site is Punkaharju in Finnish Lakeland.


title: Esker

text: The village of Kemnay in Aberdeenshire, Scotland has a esker locally called the Kemb Hills. In Berwickshire in southeast Scotland is Bedshiel Kaims, a example which is up to high and is a legacy of an ice-stream within the Tweed Valley.


title: Esker

text: Great Esker Park runs along the Back River in Weymouth, Massachusetts and is home to the highest esker in North America ().


title: Esker

text: There are over 1,000 eskers in the state of Michigan, primarily in the south-central Lower Peninsula. The longest esker in Michigan is the "Mason Esker", which stretches south-southeast from DeWitt through Lansing and Holt, before ending near Mason.


title: Esker

text: Thelon Esker is almost long, straddling the boundary between the territories of Nunavut and Northwest Territories in Canada.


title: Esker

text: Roads are sometimes built along eskers to save expense. Examples include the Denali Highway in Alaska, the Trans-Taiga Road in Quebec, and the "Airline" segment of Maine State Route 9 between Bangor and Calais. There are numerous long eskers in the Adirondack State Park in upstate New York.


title: Managed care

text: The term managed care or managed healthcare is used in the United States to describe a group of activities intended to reduce the cost of providing health care and providing American health insurance while improving the quality of that care ("managed care techniques"). It has become the predominant system of delivering and receiving American health care since its implementation in the early 1980s, and has been largely unaffected by the Affordable Care Act of 2010.


title: Managed care

text: ...intended to reduce unnecessary health care costs through a variety of mechanisms, including: economic incentives for physicians and patients to select less costly forms of care; programs for reviewing the medical necessity of specific services; increased beneficiary cost sharing; controls on inpatient admissions and lengths of stay; the establishment of cost-sharing incentives for outpatient surgery; selective contracting with health care providers; and the intensive management of high-cost health care cases. The programs may be provided in a variety of settings, such as Health Maintenance Organizations and Preferred Provider Organizations.


title: Managed care

text: The growth of managed care in the U.S. was spurred by the enactment of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. While managed care techniques were pioneered by health maintenance organizations, they are now used by a variety of private health benefit programs. Managed care is now nearly ubiquitous in the U.S, but has attracted controversy because it has had mixed results in its overall goal of controlling medical costs. Proponents and critics are also sharply divided on managed care's overall impact on U.S. health care delivery, which ranks among the best in terms of quality but among the worst with regard to access, efficiency, and equity in the developed world.


title: Managed care

text: Dr. Paul Starr suggests in his analysis of the American healthcare system (i.e., "The Social Transformation of American Medicine") that Richard Nixon, advised by the "father of Health Maintenance Organizations", Dr. Paul M. Ellwood Jr., was the first mainstream political leader to take deliberate steps to change American health care from its longstanding not-for-profit business principles into a for-profit model that would be driven by the insurance industry. In 1973, Congress passed the Health Maintenance Organization Act, which encouraged rapid growth of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), the first form of managed care.


title: Managed care

text: Before healthcare plans emerged, patients would simply pay for services out of pocket. In the period between 1910 and 1940, early healthcare plans formed into two models: a capitated plan (essentially an HMO), and a plan which paid service providers, such as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans. One of the earliest examples is a 1910 "prepaid group plan" in Tacoma, Washington for lumber mills. Blue Cross (hospital care) and Blue Shield (professional service) plans began in 1929 with a prepaid plan with Baylor Hospital, spreading to other hospitals over the next several decades; these plans were largely independent of each other and controlled by statewide hospitals and physicians until the 1970s, when they became nonprofits before being converted into for-profit corporations such as Anthem.


title: Managed care

text: Managed care plans are widely credited with subduing medical cost inflation in the late 1980s by reducing unnecessary hospitalizations, forcing providers to discount their rates, and causing the health care industry to become more efficient and competitive. Managed care plans and strategies proliferated and quickly became nearly ubiquitous in the U.S. However, this rapid growth led to a consumer backlash. Because many managed care health plans are provided by for-profit companies, their cost-control efforts are driven by the need to generate profits and not providing health care. In a 2004 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a majority of those polled said they believed that managed care decreased the time doctors spend with patients, made it harder for people who are sick to see specialists, and had failed to produce significant health care savings. These public perceptions have been fairly consistent in polling since 1997. In response, close to 900 state laws were passed regulating managed care in the 1990s.


title: Managed care

text: The backlash featured vocal critics, including disgruntled patients and consumer-advocacy groups, who argued that managed care plans were controlling costs by denying medically necessary services to patients, even in life-threatening situations, or by providing low-quality care. The volume of criticism led many states to pass laws mandating managed-care standards. Meanwhile, insurers responded to public demands and political pressure by beginning to offer other plan options with more comprehensive care networks—according to one analysis, between the years 1970 and 2005, the share of personal health expenditures paid directly out-of-pocket by U.S. consumers fell from about 40 percent to 15 percent. So, although consumers faced rising health insurance premiums over the period, lower out-of-pocket costs likely encouraged consumers to use more health care. Data indicating whether this increase in use was due to voluntary or optional service purchases or the sudden access lower-income citizens had to basic healthcare is not available here at this time.


title: Managed care

text: By the late 1990s, U.S. per capita healthcare spending began to increase again, peaking around 2002. Despite managed care's mandate to control costs, U.S. healthcare expenditures have continued to outstrip the overall national income, rising about 2.4 percentage points faster than the annual GDP since 1970.


title: Managed care

text: Nevertheless, according to the trade association America's Health Insurance Plans, 90 percent of insured Americans are now enrolled in plans with some form of managed care. "The National Directory of Managed Care Organizations, Sixth Edition" profiles more than 5,000 plans, including new consumer-driven health plans and health savings accounts. In addition, 26 states have contracts with MCOs to deliver long-term care for the elderly and individuals with disabilities. The states pay a monthly capitated rate per member to the MCOs that provide comprehensive care and accept the risk of managing total costs.


title: Managed care

text: One of the most characteristic forms of managed care is the use of a panel or network of healthcare providers to provide care to enrollees. Such integrated delivery systems typically include one or more of the following:


title: Managed care

text: The techniques can be applied to both network-based benefit programs and benefit programs that are not based on a provider network. The use of managed care techniques without a provider network is sometimes described as "managed indemnity".


title: Managed care

text: High-deductible health plans are used by insurers to keep costs down by incentivizing consumers to select cheaper providers and possibly utilize less healthcare.


title: Managed care

text: Reference price schemes are another method to share costs, where a health insurer will only pay a certain amount and anything above that must be paid out of pocket.


title: Managed care

text: Insurance plan companies, such as UnitedHealth Group, negotiates with providers in periodic contract negotiations; contracts may be discontinued from time to time. High-profile contract disputes can span provider networks across the nation, as in the case of a 2018 dispute between UnitedHealth Group and a major emergency room doctor group Envision Healthcare.


title: Managed care

text: Maintaining up-to-date provider directories is necessary as CMS can fine insurers with outdated directories. As a condition of participation, UnitedHealthcare requires that providers notify them of changes, but also has a Professional Verification Outreach program to proactively request information from providers. However, providers are burdened by having to maintain their information with multiple networks (e.g., competitors to UnitedHealthcare). The total cost of maintaining these directories is estimated at $2.1b annually, and a blockchain initiative began in 2018 to share the directory.


title: Managed care

text: When patients receive care from doctors who are out of network, they can be subject to balance billing; this is particularly common in emergency or hospital care, where the patient may not be notified that a provider is out of network.


title: Managed care

text: Utilization management (UM) or utilization review is the use of managed care techniques such as prior authorization that allow payers to manage the cost of health care benefits by assessing its appropriateness before it is provided using evidence-based criteria or guidelines. UM criteria are medical guidelines which may be developed in house, acquired from a vendor, or acquired and adapted to suit local conditions. Two commonly used UM criteria frameworks are the McKesson InterQual criteria and MCG (previously known as the Milliman Care Guidelines).


title: Managed care

text: In the 21st century, commercial payers were increasingly using litigation against providers to combat alleged fraud or abuse. Examples included litigation between Aetna and a group of surgical centers over an out-of-network overbilling scheme and kickbacks for referrals, where Aetna was ultimately awarded $37 million. While Aetna has led the initiative, other health insurance companies have engaged in similar efforts.


title: Managed care

text: There is a continuum of organizations that provide managed care, each operating with slightly different business models. Some organizations are made of physicians, and others are combinations of physicians, hospitals, and other providers. Here is a list of common organizations:


title: Managed care

text: As of 2017, the largest commercial plans were Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Health Care Service Corp, UnitedHealthcare, and Centene Corporation. As of 2017, there were 907 health insurance companies in the United States, although the top 10 account for about 53% of revenue and the top 100 account for 95% of revenue.


title: Managed care

text: Provider-sponsored health plans can form integrated delivery systems; the largest of these as of 2015 was Kaiser Permanente.


title: Managed care

text: Kaiser Permanente was the highest-ranked commercial plan by consumer satisfaction in 2018 with a different survey finding it tied with Humana.


title: Managed care

text: As of 2017, Medicaid and Medicare have become an increasingly large part of the private health insurance industry, particularly with the rise of Medicare Advantage programs. As of 2018, two-thirds of Medicaid enrollees are in plans administered by private companies for a set fee. These may involve some sort of value-based system; in addition, the contracted companies may be evaluated on population health statistics, as in the case of California's Medi-Cal which tasked its companies with improving the health of its members.


title: Managed care

text: There are several types of network-based managed care programs. They range from more restrictive to less restrictive:


title: Managed care

text: Proposed in the 1960s by Dr. Paul Elwood in the "Health Maintenance Strategy", the HMO concept was promoted by the Nixon administration as a fix to rising health care costs and set in law as the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. As defined in the act, a federally-qualified HMO would, in exchange for a subscriber fee (premium), allow members access to a panel of employed physicians or a network of doctors and facilities including hospitals. In return, the HMO received mandated market access and could receive federal development funds.


title: Managed care

text: They are licensed at the state level, under a license that is known as a certificate of authority (COA), rather than under an insurance license. In 1972, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners adopted the HMO Model Act, which was intended to provide a model regulatory structure for states to use in authorizing the establishment of HMOs and in monitoring their operations. In practice, an HMO is a coordinated delivery system that combines both the financing and the delivery of health care for enrollees. In the design of the plan, each member is assigned a "gatekeeper", a primary care physician (PCP) responsible for the overall care of members assigned. Specialty services require a specific referral from the PCP to the specialist. Non-emergency hospital admissions also require specific pre-authorization by the PCP. Typically, services are not covered if performed by a provider not an employee of or specifically approved by the HMO unless it defines the situation to be an emergency.


title: Managed care

text: Financial sanctions for use of emergency facilities in non-emergency situations were once an issue, but prudent layperson language now applies to all emergency-service utilization, and penalties are rare.


title: Managed care

text: Since the 1980s, under the ERISA Act passed in Congress in 1974 and its preemptive effect on state common law tort lawsuits that "relate to" Employee Benefit Plans, HMOs administering benefits through private employer health plans have been protected by federal law from malpractice litigation, on the grounds that the decisions regarding patient care are administrative rather than medical in nature. See "Cigna v. Calad", 2004.


title: Managed care

text: An Independent Practice Association is a legal entity that contracts with a group of physicians to provide service to the HMO's members. Most often, the physicians are paid on a basis of capitation, which in this context means a set amount for each enrolled person assigned to that physician or group of physicians, whether or not that person seeks care. The contract is not usually exclusive so individual doctors or the group may sign contracts with multiple HMOs. Physicians who participate in IPAs usually also serve fee-for-service patients not associated with managed care.


title: Managed care

text: Rather than contract with the various insurers and third party administrators, providers may contract with preferred provider organizations. A membership allows a substantial discount below their regularly charged rates from the designated professionals partnered with the organization. Preferred provider organizations themselves earn money by charging an access fee to the insurance company for the use of their network (unlike the usual insurance with premiums and corresponding payments paid fully or partially by the insurance provider to the medical doctor).


title: Managed care

text: In terms of using such a plan, unlike an HMO plan, which has a copayment cost share feature (a nominal payment generally paid at the time of service), a PPO generally does not have a copayment but offers a deductible and a coinsurance feature. The deductible must be paid in full before any benefits are provided. After the deductible is met, the coinsurance benefits apply. If the PPO plan is an 80% coinsurance plan with a $1,000 deductible, the patient pays 100% of the allowed provider fee up to $1,000. The insurer will pay 80% of the other fees, and the patient will pay the remaining 20%. Charges above the allowed amount are not payable by the patient or insurer but written off as a discount by the physician.


title: Managed care

text: Because the patient is picking up a substantial portion of the "first dollars" of coverage, PPO are the least expensive types of coverage.


title: Managed care

text: A POS plan uses some of the features of each of the above plans. Members of a POS plan do not make a choice about which system to use until the service is being used.


title: Managed care

text: In terms of using such a plan, a POS plan has levels of progressively higher patient financial participation, as the patient moves away from the more managed features of the plan. For example, if patients stay in a network of providers and seeks a referral to use a specialist, they may have a copayment only. However, if they use an out of network provider but do not seek a referral, they will pay more.


title: Managed care

text: POS plans are becoming more popular because they offer more flexibility and freedom of choice than standard HMOs.


title: Managed care

text: There are basically two types of health insurance: fee-for-service (indemnity) and managed care. Policies may vary from low cost to all-inclusive to meet different demands of customers, depending on needs, preferences, and budget. Fee-for-service is a traditional kind of health care policy: insurance companies pay medical staff fees for each service provided to an insured patient. Such plans offer a wide choice of doctors and hospitals.


title: Managed care

text: Fee-for-service coverage falls into Basic and Major Medical Protection categories. Basic protection deals with costs of a hospital room, hospital services, care and supplies, cost of surgery in or out of hospital, and doctor visits. Major Medical Protection covers costs of serious illnesses and injuries, which usually require long-term treatment and rehabilitation period. Basic and Major Medical Insurance coverage combined are called a Comprehensive Health Care Plan. Policies do not cover some services.


title: Managed care

text: Many "traditional" or "indemnity" health insurance plans now incorporate some managed care features, such as precertification for non-emergency hospital admissions and utilization reviews. They are sometimes described as "managed indemnity" plans.