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Sunday, March 3, 2013
Angels' Trout takes high road on salary, position
TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) ? Los Angeles Angels slugger Mike Trout figures if he keeps producing like he did during his historic rookie season, he'll be in line for a handsome raise soon enough.
The Angels renewed the contract of the AL Rookie of the Year for $510,000 on Saturday, just $20,000 above the major league minimum, prompting an angry response from Trout's agent.
While Craig Landis said the renewal "falls well short of a 'fair' contract," Trout took the high road before a morning workout at the Angels' spring training complex on Sunday, repeatedly insisting that "I'm just happy to be in the lineup."
"I mean, my time will come," Trout said before a team meeting. "I just have to keep putting out numbers and concentrating on one thing, and that's getting to the postseason."
Trout had a base salary of $482,500 last year, when he hit .326 with 30 homers and 83 RBIs, and led the majors with 129 runs and 49 steals. Trout was the run-away choice as the AL's top rookie, earning a $10,000 bonus, and finished second to Detroit's Miguel Cabrera in MVP voting.
Trout has 1 year, 70 days of major league service, which the Angels historically have place more weight upon than performance in renewing contracts. Teams are allowed to renew the contracts of unsigned players on their 40-man rosters from March 2-11.
There were 22 players whose contracts were finalized by the Angels on Saturday. The highest salary of those players went to first baseman and outfielder Mark Trumbo, who will make $540,000.
Trout likely will be eligible for arbitration after the 2014 season.
"During the process, on behalf of Mike, I asked only that the Angels compensate Mike fairly for his historic 2012 season, given his service time," Landis said in a statement. "This contract falls well short of a 'fair' contract and I have voiced this to the Angels throughout the process. Nonetheless, the renewal of Mike's contract will put an end (to) this discussion."
Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year, will make $750,000 this season under terms of the five-year deal he signed through 2015.
Harper hit .270 with 22 homers, 59 RBIs and 18 stolen bases in 139 games last season.
Landis also made it seem that Trout was unhappy with a move to left field this season, which was designed to allow speedy Peter Bourjos to become the Angels' primary center fielder.
"As when he learned he would not be the team's primary center fielder for the upcoming season," Landis' statement said, "Mike will put the disappointment (of his salary) behind him and focus on helping the Angels reach their goal of winning the 2013 World Series."
Trout acknowledged Sunday that he prefers center field, the position he's played since the Angels selected him in the first round of the 2009 amateur draft. But he also said that he believes playing in left field will help him to become a more complete outfielder.
"I'm a center fielder, obviously," Trout said. "But you know, when you're an outfielder, you should be able to play all three. I think it's going to help me get reads off the bat. It's going to be a fun adjustment for me."
During batting practice this spring training, Trout has made a habit of spending two days in left field and two days in center, often rotating on a daily basis. He said the idea was to remain sharp in center field while adjusting to left, where he mostly played late in games last season.
"My main position is center field, obviously. It's definitely a different position than left field. But I just have to make an adjustment and go with the move," he said. "I feel fine out there. Just getting into games, getting some experience out there will definitely help me."
Angels manager Mike Scioscia said Trout still will play center field, and that his versatility ? his ability to play left ? is one of the reasons he is so valuable.
"Mike is going to be a center fielder, no doubt. We understand that's what's his position," Scioscia said. "But right now his versatility is something that's going to make us a better team, and he will play some center field this year. He's going to play left field, too."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/angels-trout-takes-high-road-salary-position-174042161--mlb.html
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Sequester showdown threatens Obama's agenda
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Just hours after across-the-board spending cuts officially took effect, President Barack Obama pressed Congress on Saturday to work with him on a compromise to halt a fiscal crisis that threatens the economy and his broader domestic policy agenda.
The failure by Obama and Republicans to agree to halt the $85 billion "sequester" cuts virtually guaranteed that fiscal issues would remain center stage in Washington for weeks, crowding out Obama's proposals to reform immigration, tighten gun laws and raise the minimum wage.
The economic effects of the spending cuts may take time to kick in, but political blowback has already begun and is hitting Obama as well as congressional Republicans.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showed neither Republicans nor Obama and his fellow Democrats escaping blame.
Obama's approval rating dropped to 47 percent in a Gallup poll on Friday, down from 51 percent in the previous three-day period measured.
While most polls show voters blame Republicans primarily for the fiscal mess, Obama could see himself associated with the worst effects of sequestration like the looming furloughs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers. He signed an order on Friday night that started putting the cuts into effect.
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Obama appealed for Republicans to work with Democrats on a deal, saying Americans were weary of seeing Washington "careen from one manufactured crisis to another."
But he offered no new ideas to resolve the recurring fiscal fights, and there was no immediate sign of any negotiations.
"There's a caucus of common sense (in Congress)," Obama said in his address. "And I'm going to keep reaching out to them to fix this for good."
At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal showdowns is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.
The president wants to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts and tax hikes, what he calls a "balanced approach." But Republicans do not want to concede again on taxes after doing so in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" at the end of last year.
The president offered a litany of hardships in his radio address he said would flow from the forced spending cuts.
"Beginning this week, businesses that work with the military will have to lay folks off. Communities near military bases will take a serious blow. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who serve their country - Border Patrol agents, FBI agents, civilians who work for the Defense Department - will see their wages cut and their hours reduced," he said.
'IT'S CALLED LEADERSHIP'
At Yellowstone National Park, a massive and costly annual operation to clear the roads of snow that was scheduled to start on Monday will be postponed due to the cuts,
Park managers have to trim $1.75 million from Yellowstone's $35 million annual budget, which will delay the opening of most entrances to America's first national park by two weeks.
It could mean millions of dollars in lost tourism and tax revenues for small, rural towns in Montana and Wyoming.
"I think it's counter-productive, and I expect a lot of people to be raising hell," said Mike Darby, whose family owns the Irma Hotel in Cody, Wyoming, at the east gate of the park.
Critics said Obama should have held meaningful talks with congressional leaders long before Friday's last-minute meeting at the White House, which failed to prevent the automatic cuts written into law during a previous budget crisis in 2011.
"The president should call the senior representatives of the parties together to Camp David - or any place with a table, chairs and no TV cameras - for serious negotiations on replacing the sequester with firm, enforceable beginnings of a comprehensive long-term debt stabilization agreement," former Republican Senator Pete Domenici and fiscal expert Alice Rivlin said in a statement released on Friday.
The budget veterans, who lead the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, called on Obama and congressional Republican leaders to "be willing to tell those on the polar extremes of their parties that a central majority consensus will govern. It's called leadership."
After months of silence on political issues, Obama's Republican opponent in last November's election resurfaced to take a swipe at the Democrat's handling of the sequestration mess. "No one can think that that's been a success for the president," Mitt Romney said in an interview to air on "Fox News Sunday."
The former Massachusetts governor accused Obama of "flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing," instead of striking a budget deal.
Twenty-eight percent of Americans blame Republicans for the lack of a deal to halt sequestration, while 22 percent hold either Obama or the Democrats in Congress responsible, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Thirty-seven percent blame them all.
The budget standstill has overshadowed Obama's aggressive set of policy goals ranging from boosting pre-school education to fighting climate change and reforming America's immigration system. But Obama vowed on Friday the fiscal troubles would not prevent him from advocating for those proposals.
"I think there are other areas where we can make progress even with the sequester unresolved. I will continue to push for those initiatives," he told a news conference.
(Editing by Alistair Bell and Todd Eastham)
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Saturday, March 2, 2013
Google Muscles Into Paid Discovery Of Apps With New Click-To-Download Mobile Ads
The app stores are overrun, and there's little way to get noticed until you break into the charts. So Google has just announced a new AdWords unit called "Click-To-Download" mobile ads that lead directly to iTunes and Google Play. With a similar design to Facebook's app ads, Google is reaching out its hand for a cut of the paid discovery market emerging as every company in the world goes mobile.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7T9m1zooTTA/
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Facebook 'Likes' a good indicator of quality hospital care
Feb. 28, 2013 ? While those active on social media aren't shy about expressing opinions on their Facebook pages, how much do their "Likes" really reflect the quality of an organization? American Journal of Medical Quality (a SAGE journal) recently published a study that found that Facebook "Likes" were indeed an indicator of hospital quality and patient satisfaction.
"Findings suggest that Facebook offers an additional resource, beyond surveys, to gauge the attitudes of patient populations," wrote study authors Alex Timian et.al.
Researchers compared the 30-day mortality rates and hospital patron recommendations to the number of "Likes" on the hospitals' Facebook pages from 40 hospitals near New York, NY. They found that Facebook "Likes" were positively associated with patient recommendations and that a one percentage point decrease in the 30-day mortality rate corresponded with almost 93 more Facebook "Likes."
In addition to these findings, the researchers also found that teaching hospitals had a lower number of Facebook "Likes" than traditional hospitals, despite the fact that the staff at teaching hospitals is younger and predicted to be more active on Facebook. The researchers noted that this negative association of "Likes" and teaching hospitals may be a reflection of quality issues at those hospitals.
"Any hospital can start a Facebook page, but those with higher levels of quality and patient satisfaction are more likely to attract "Likes" to their page" wrote the authors. "Public health researchers and hospitals can use facebook "Likes" as a proxy for hospital quality and patient satisfaction."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by SAGE Publications, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- A. Timian, S. Rupcic, S. Kachnowski, P. Luisi. Do Patients "Like" Good Care?: Measuring Hospital Quality via Facebook. American Journal of Medical Quality, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/1062860612474839
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/GxOY_kYQ0l4/130301123312.htm
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Economist's View: 'Scientists Call for Legal Trade in Rhino Horn'
Traveling -- a quick one from the road: Is this the answer?:
Scientists call for legal trade in rhino horn: Four leading environmental scientists today urged the international community to install a legal trade in rhino horn ? in a last ditch effort to save the imperiled animals from extinction. ...
"Current strategies have clearly failed to conserve these magnificent animals and the time has come for a highly regulated legal trade in horn", says lead author Dr Duan Biggs of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) and University of Queensland.
"As committed environmentalists we don't like the idea of a legal trade any more than does the average member of the concerned public. But we can see that we need to do something radically different to conserve Africa's rhino."
The researchers said the Western Black Rhino was declared extinct in 2011. There are only 5000 Black Rhinos and 20,000 White Rhinos left, the vast majority of which are in South Africa and Namibia.
"Poaching in South Africa has, on average, more than doubled each year over the past 5 years. Skyrocketing poaching levels are driven by tremendous growth in the retail price of rhino horn...
World trade in rhino horn is banned under the CITES Treaty - and this ban, by restricting supplies of horn, has only succeeded in generating huge rewards for an illegal high-tech poaching industry, equipped with helicopters and stun-darts, which is slaughtering rhinos at alarming rates.
Attempts to educate Chinese medicine consumers to stop using rhino horn have failed to reduce the growth in demand, they said.
The scientists argue that the entire world demand for horn could be met legally by humanely shaving the horns of live rhinos, and from animals which die of natural causes. Rhinos grow about 0.9kg of horn each year, and the risks to the animal from today's best-practice horn harvesting techniques are minimal. The legal trade in farmed crocodile skins is an example of an industry where legalization has saved the species from being hunted to extinction. ... A legal trade in rhino horn was first proposed 20 years ago, but rejected as 'premature'.
However, the time has now come for a legal trade in horn, says Dr Biggs. ... "Legitimizing the market for horn may be morally repugnant to some, but it is probably the only sensible way to prevent extinction of Africa's remaining rhinos," the scientists conclude.
###
Their paper Legal Trade of Africa's Rhino Horns by Duan Biggs, Franck Courchamp, Rowan Martin and Hugh Possingham, appears in the latest edition of the journal?Science?(March 1).
Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 04:47 PM in Economics?| Permalink? Comments?(13)
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Friday, March 1, 2013
New ice boat helps Adventure Recreation offer more winter activities ...
(Photo: Doug Carty)
by Joseph Bevilacqua
edited by Joe Sousa
Over winter break the Adventure Recreation department added a new toy to their arsenal of offerings with the acquisition of an ice boat.
?I?ve been looking for an ice boat for the better part of three years? said Doug Carty, Director of Adventure Recreation on campus. Carty traded some of the departments old kayaks, which were in the process of being replaced, to expand their winter activites.
?I?ve noticed the snow is hit or miss, but the ice is always there? said Carty. ?I wanted another Adventure Recreation opportunity on campus that could replace lost opportunities from a lack of snow.?
Carty found the boat on Craigslist, listed by its owner, located in Winchendon, Massachusetts.
?The boat has about a foot wide compartment that you sit in with a mast, boom and one sheet.? said Brad Arena, a junior and Trip Leader for Adventure Recreation.
The boat is mounted on top of three large ice skates, one for steering, and the outer two for stabalization. There is also a handbrake to slow down the boat if needed, but the primary way to stop is to head into the wind.
?You can also use the boat in up to three inches of snow. Any more is too much resistance,? said Arena.
Since the boat is only a single seater, it is difficult for Carty and his team to give lessons. ?It certainly requires some training before it can be used,? said Carty. A knowledge of basic sailing techniques is extremely helpful, however, and makes it much less intimidating for first time users of the ice boat. However, any student is more than welcome to give the boat a try, should they desire to do so.
For now, Carty only plans on using the boat on Pearly Pond, but may explore making trips with it in the future, since it also came with a trailer.
Anyone with questions about the ice boat can contact Doug Carty at cartyd@franklinpierce.edu.
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