B December 8 - 14 11.pmd - San Gabriel Valley Examiner

B8
S.G.V. EXAMINER
To Reduce Your Carbon
Footprint, Ride The Bus
Riding the bus instead of driving can be one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
To put yourself on the road
to preserving the ecology and
your own economy, it may pay
to take the bus.
Public transit and school
buses replace a significant
number of cars on the road,
making them an environmentally
sound transportation option.
Using public transportation
saves the equivalent of 4.2
billion gallons of gasoline annually.
Research shows that
by using public transit, the typical
automobile driver can reduce
individual daily carbon
emissions by 20 pounds or
more than 4,800 pounds per
year. A single school bus can
eliminate approximately 36
cars. With more than 480,000
school buses on the road each
day, that's nearly 17.3 million
fewer vehicles on the streets,
saving an estimated 2.3 billion
gallons of fuel each year as
well as reducing congestion,
emissions and road wear and
tear.
"Today's buses are more en-
vironmentally friendly than
ever before, thanks to cleanerburning
engines, specialized
particulate filters and alternative
fuels," notes Gary
Catapano, senior vice president
for Safety at FirstGroup
America, the largest provider
of ground transportation services
in North America.
New fuel standards require
the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel,
which improves emissions
and runs significantly cleaner.
Emissions have been reduced
from more than 500 parts per
million to less than 15 with ultra-low
sulfur diesel.
Most of his company's
buses "use ultra-low sulfur diesel
and 750 run on compressed
natural gas, an even cleanerrunning
fuel than diesel," adds
Catapano.
Typical school bus engines
burn about half a gallon of fuel
per hour of idling. Cutting back
on idling not only reduces emissions;
it saves significantly on
fuel costs. The school bus division
strictly enforces an antiidling
policy, stating that no bus
will idle in excess of three minutes
while not in transit unless
certain exceptions exist.
Transportation companies
are taking other steps to reduce
their carbon footprint
through waste recycling programs.
For example,
Catapano's company's program
recycles more than
250,000 pounds of used oil filters
annually throughout North
America and will recycle
enough used oil to eliminate
5,000 metric tons of greenhouse
gases a year. The company
recycles 7 percent of all
waste including cardboard and
glass, which represents more
than 20,000 cubic yards per
year of material that's not going
into landfills.
You can learn more about
how green a bus can be online
at www.firstgroupamerica.com.
(NAPSA)
Conserve Water: Tips To Help
For homeowners-especially
those who live in drier regionssaving
water is an important issue.
Americans use an average
of 101 gallons of water every
day, five times as much water
as is needed to maintain basic
necessities. A considerable
amount of that water is spent
keeping lawns and gardens
green and lush.
Watering lawns and gardens
can account for up to half of
the 95,000 gallons of water
used by households yearly.
Smart watering habits-along
with weather-based irrigation
products-can save 30 to 70
percent of that water. Here
are some water-saving ideas:
1. Don't drown your lawn.
Instead of watering for one
long session, water a few times
for shorter periods and take 15minute
breaks in between each
session.
2. Watch the clock. Water
between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.when
the sun is low, winds are
calm and temperatures are
cool. Midday watering tends to
be less efficient due to evaporation,
while watering in the
evening can encourage the
growth of fungus.
3. Divide by zones. Different
plants need different
amounts of water. Both sprinkler
and drip irrigation can be
incorporated to achieve more
efficient use of water.
4. Water only things that
grow. If you have an underground
sprinkler system, make
sure the sprinkler heads are adjusted
properly to avoid watering
sidewalks and driveways.
A properly adjusted sprinkler
head should spray large droplets
of water instead of a fine
mist.
5. Consider dripping. When
it comes to watering individual
trees, flowerbeds, potted containers
or other nongrassy areas,
consider applying water
directly to the roots using lowvolume
drip irrigation.
6. Do routine inspections.
Periodically check your sprinklers
to make sure everything
is working properly. A clogged
head or a torn line can wreak
havoc on your landscape and
water bill.
7. Be rain smart. Use an irrigation
system with a
weather-based sensor. A
weather sensor works with a
smart controller to monitor
temperature and rainfall and
adjusts watering schedules accordingly.
The controller uses
a built-in database of weather
information for the
homeowner's specific geographic
area to adjust watering
needs all year long.
For example, Rain Bird's
SST Smart Irrigation Control
System synthesizes a home's
landscape watering needs and
on-site weather conditions to
give lawns and gardens the
precise amount of water required.
For more information, visit
www.rainbird.com.
One smart way to conserve
water when irrigating your garden
is to install a shutoff device
that automatically detects
rain or moisture. (NAPSA)
Doctors Urge Action
Against Deadly Infections
(NAPSA)-America can avoid
a scary future-if we learn to
turn things around soon when
it comes to antibiotic drug resistance.
Government and medical experts
are growing increasingly
alarmed about the rapid spread
of deadly infections caused by
"superbugs," bacteria that have
outsmarted the antibiotics used
to treat them. Medical advances
made possible by antibioticssuch
as surgery, chemotherapy,
organ transplants and care of
premature babies-are in jeopardy.
The World Health Organization
has ranked antimicrobial
drug resistance among the
greatest threats to human health
on the planet. Drug resistance
costs the U.S. $21 billion to $34
billion every year.
Just one superbug, methicil-
lin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus, or "MRSA," kills 19,000
Americans each year. That is
more than emphysema, HIV/
AIDS, Parkinson's disease, and
homicide combined. MRSA has
learned how to defend itself
against antibiotics. This makes
it much harder for doctors to
protect people from serious infections.
MRSA is harming
healthy people and those who
are ill from other diseases. Other
bacterial infections are becoming
even harder to treat.
Many factors are to blame,
including overuse and misuse of
antibiotics. New antibiotics
aren't being developed fast
enough to protect everyday
Americans from these dangerous
superbugs. Experts say this
public health crisis is only going
to get worse. Soon we will
have no antibiotics left to treat
our children and grandchildrenunless
we ask Congress to pass
laws to protect us.
"The ways we have produced
and used antibiotics for
70 years are failing us. We must
act now, or we will end up back
in the dark ages of health care
and everybody will wonder why
nothing was done," said Jim
Hughes, M.D., president of the
Infectious Diseases Society of
America (IDSA), a national organization
of infectious diseases
physicians and scientific experts.
"The good news is we
have a rescue plan, but we need
help convincing leaders in Congress,
the federal government
and the health care industry."
IDSA's rescue plan, "Combating
Antimicrobial Resistance:
Policy Recommendations to
Save Lives," supports both economic
incentives to encourage
If you can remember the
Kennedy administration, the
Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan
Show," Sandy Koufax pitching
or the first moon landing,
chances are you're a baby
boomer.
Born between 1946 and
1964, baby boomers are some
80 million strong. The generation,
often referred to as the
hardest working, has played a
significant role in shaping the
cultural, social and consumerfocused
society of today.
Spending more than $2 trillion
on consumer goods each year,
this group knows what it wants
and where to get it.
Increasingly, boomers are
re-embracing the good old
days, searching out content
and products that remind them
of a better time: the television
shows they watched, the
breakfast cereal they ate, the
songs they listened to.
Major companies are taking
note and reintroducing classic
items. TV shows from "Hawaii
Five-O" to "Charlie's Angels"
are back in the mainstream
entertainment lineup
while "Mad Men" has capitalized
on the glory days of 1960s
advertising.
Nowhere is the popularity of
nostalgia as evident as on the
Internet. A wide array of
websites has surfaced to supply
boomers with classic content
ranging from vintage prom
attire to family photos.
In response to the nostalgic
bent of its 55 million members,
venerable social networking
site Classmates.com acquired
The San Gabriel Valley Examiner
December 8 - 14, 2011
Nostalgia Is Better Than Ever
In the board game "Jenga,"
players try to remove sections
of an assembled tower without
sending the structure
crashing to the floor. Those
who keep their towers standing
can win.
Isabelle Cherney, Ph.D., the
director of the new Interdisciplinary
Doctorate in Education
(Ed.D.) Program in Leadership
at Creighton University,
likens good leadership to this
board game: shaping and
adapting the organization in
ways to improve it-without
damaging and, even better,
while enhancing, the whole.
A top tier university,
Creighton's approach to education
creates a passion for
learning and a zeal for making
a difference, while its focus on
the development of ethical and
spiritual values produces
graduates who are highly motivated
to succeed and make a
lasting impact in their chosen
career field.
Pulling together faculty and
an array of national standouts
from the fields of arts and sciences,
business, pharmacy and
health professions, medicine
and law, the school now offers
a new doctorate, designed to
be strongly interdisciplinary in
its teaching of leadership.
Cherney believes a strength
of the program is its interdisciplinary
nature, which encourages
a broadened, socially
aware perspective across the
curriculum. In a globalized society
facing financial, environmental,
and social hardships,
farsighted and ethical leaders
devise strategies for growth
Iconic magazines such as SPORT can now be found online.
a huge assortment of vintage
content to transform itself into
Memory Lane.com. The new
website features the largest
archive of nostalgic content on
the Internet, letting boomers
relive six decades of Americana
from the 1940s through
the 1990s with over 100 million
pieces of content.
The site now offers vintage
magazines such as SPORT
and The Saturday Evening
Post, historic Universal newsreels
and clips to the music that
provided the sound track to so
many boomers' lives. Boomers
can also explore over 70,000
digitized high school yearbooks
covering over 30 million people
who graduated from a U.S.
high school before 1989.
A visit to MemoryLane.com
has been compared to stepping
into an Internet time machine
where visitors can explore, discover
and connect with the
iconic moments that formed
America's history-and their
own. Boomers can relive the
events that helped shape their
lives through the tremendous
amount of images, videos, music,
magazines and other content
preserved at
www.MemoryLane.com with
a simple click of a mouse.
(NAPSA)
Building Leaders For The Greater Good
new antibiotics and programs to
ensure that the drugs we have
are used wisely. IDSA is aiming
for 10 new antibiotics approved
by 2020.
You can learn more about
IDSA's plan and how to contact
your representatives in Congress
at www.capwiz.com/
idsociety/ issues/alert/
?alertid=7478136.
and change that merge with
goals for the common good.
Graduates of the new doctoral
program have open to
them many possibilities across
the broad fields of education,
business and health care,
Cherney points out.
"The Interdisciplinary Ed.D.
Program in Leadership was
specifically developed as a diverse,
generalist degree that
can be applied to any occupation.
The possibilities are endless,"
Cherney says.
In education, for instance,
opportunities include, but are
not limited to, careers as school
principals or superintendents,
deans or vice presidents; in
business, directors of human
resources, or program managers;
in health care, directors of
clinical education or clinical
residency.
Cherney believes the new
doctorate not only will break
new ground in the field of leadership
training. Probably the
program's greatest strength
and, indeed, its distinctiveness,
Cherney says, is its tie to the
Jesuit mission: Preparing
graduates to lead wisely for
the greater good.
Covering 60 credit hours, the
program is reaching out to an
array of people who are "learning
from each other," Cherney
adds.
Almost exclusively online
(students will come to campus
to meet in the summer and
again at the close of the program),
the new doctorate lets
students solve problems not
only within their own organizations,
but outside of their areas
of expertise.
Cherney explains, "We
want the students to reach out
of their comfort zones and
their backgrounds to work on
something that needs changing"
for the better.
The leadership program is
divided into eight-week modules
online. The first seven
modules are in sequence, followed
by a more open schedule.
From the beginning, students
are in touch with each other
online but they've also scrutinized
themselves.
The first course, Cherney
explains, involves finding one's
own strengths. Leaders must
know themselves before leading
others, she believes. Only
then do you learn how others
work best.
Because the degree is
online, students will be working
while they're taking the
courses. This means their dayto-day
experience is also a
laboratory to put into practice
what they're learning at
Creighton.
Today, a successful leader,
Cherney asserts, must understand
the different social backgrounds
that come together in
a given organization. She also
believes that good leaders today
must work with limited financial
resources and be able
to prioritize the lists of needs
within strained budgets. They
must also make good employment
decisions and understand
how new technology can
change social relationships at
work.
Legal issues and new regulations
from government, including
those in health care,
also are affecting the workplace
today, says Cherney, and
shaping the decisions leaders
make.
For more information on the
new Interdisciplinary Doctorate
in Education (Ed.D.) Program
in Leadership, visit
www.creighton-online.com or
call (866) 717-6365 to speak
with an admissions representative.
(NAPSA)
Kyle A. Cline
626-335-0815
Insurance Lic. #: OD16727