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Numbers weren’t available Sunday for previous drug take back events, but McPhail said this year’s haul may be smaller because the department recently installed a medication take-back bin in its Public Safety Center on Freeport Boulevard.
“What tends to happen is because (National Prescription Drug Take Back Day) is only held periodically, it’s not really accessible for the community,” McPhail said. Residents “get one shot every couple of months” to dispose of their medications.
With the new bin, people can drop off unused medications year round during business hours, he said.
Unused prescriptions lingering on medicine cabinet shelves can end up in the hands of children or addicts, McPhail said.
Sacramento police partnered with the California Product Stewardship Council’s Don’t Rush to Flush program to install the bin. Flushing prescription drugs or putting them in the trash leads to pollution of groundwater, McPhail said.
“Ultimately all of those chemicals percolate down into the groundwater system,” he said.
Studies have shown sewage systems cannot remove all of the medications people flush down the toilet and as a result, 80 percent of U.S. streams contain small amounts of human medicine, according to a fact sheet from the California State Board of Pharmacy. Fish and other aquatic animals can be adversely affected – one study from 2012 found that some fish with anti-anxiety medications in their systems were less concerned about predators.
This is the Deco Pizzeria at 1815 Fredericksburg Road. The pizzeria's owner, Jacob Valenzuela, says the building awaits City Council action on historic landmark designation. A former 1938 gas station, the bulding resembles a mini Spanish mission and has an enclosed dining area where gas pumps once stood.
Built in 1938 as a fueling station on Fredericksburg Road, the eye-catching, mint-green building features high-arched doorways and windows that used to be service entrances for vehicles.
Remnants of an old Texaco sign still be can seen on the facade.
The gas station eventually closed. The building was vacant for years until a new owner remodeled it into the first of several restaurants.
Its most recent tenant is Jacob Valenzuela, owner of Deco Pizzeria.
Published: Jan. 28, 2014 at 12:16 p.m.
Updated: Jan. 28, 2014 at 02:24 p.m.
NEWARK, N.J. -- What's the first image that pops to mind when you think of Peyton Manning?
For me, it's this. Manning, ankle being treated in a tub, helmet on so he can listen to play calls in practice, eyes intently studying the playbook on his iPad.
The iPad is ubiquitous. I talked to several of Manning's Denver Broncos teammates during Super Bowl Media Day, and the iPad kept coming up. Manning, 16 years deep into his career and now at Master Level status at his position, still works harder than anyone else.
"When Peyton joined our team, we had those little iPads with all our film on it and he never sets it down," tight end Julius Thomas said. "He's got it in the training room, he's got it in the lunch room. He never stops preparing.
"You hear Peyton all the time talking about enjoying the preparation part. He really does. He's in there taking notes like any rookie. He's in there taking notes, watching film, correcting things and that's what makes him special."
"I'll just say for as long as he's played, he never loses that fire," wide receiver Eric Decker said. "He prepares like no other every day throughout the season. I think that in itself is such a feat. It becomes a long season. You're tired physically, you're tired emotionally. He does not miss a beat."
Guard Louis Vasquez said Manning has no "off" switch at the Broncos' facility.
"He'll stop a lot of receivers midway through the locker room," Vasquez said. "It seems like he's going about his business and all of a sudden he'll stop and ask a question about a route or even with us, a question about protection. Usually when guys are in the locker room, you stop to take a break. But his mind is always going. It just shows how professional he is. It's always in his mind on how to win the next game."
And that photo of Manning studying by the tub? Just another day at the office.
"Nobody in our facility would find that strange," Thomas said. "That's the passion and the preparation he brings to every game every Sunday."
Jennifer Lopez's "All I Have" featuring LL Cool J withstood a charge from 50 Cent's "In Da Club" to remain on top of Billboard's Hot 100 for a third-straight week. However, "In Da Club" is already besting "All I Have" in urban markets, as it leads Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks for a second-straight week. "All I Have" is up 6-4 on that tally.
Thanks to the attention surrounding the release of 50 Cent's album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), which debuted yesterday at No. 1 on The Billboard 200, "In Da Club" saw a major boost in airplay and retail sales. The cut leads Billboard's Hot Rap Tracks chart, and is the most-played video on MTV. Meanwhile, 50 Cent's "Wanksta," from the Shady/Interscope soundtrack to "8 Mile," holds steady at No. 16 on the Hot 100.
Missy Elliott's "Gossip Folks" sneaks its way into the top-10 of the Hot 100, up 11-9 this week. The cut also moves 7-5 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks tally. Kid Rock's "Picture" featuring Sheryl Crow/Allison Moorer gains 15-11 on the Hot 100, but surrenders the lead on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Sales tally after four weeks. Mariah Carey's "Through the Rain" thunders onto that chart at No. 1, priced at a budget $1.99, and re-enters the Hot 100 at No. 84.
Elsewhere on the Hot 100, Field Mob's "Sick of Being Lonely" jumps 37-25, and Jay-Z's "Excuse Me Miss" bolts 53-35. The Jay-Z tune scoots 17-10 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, where "Sick of Being Lonely" earns a 16-11 burst.
The top debut on the Hot 100 is Ginuwine's "Hell Yeah" featuring Baby, arriving at No. 64. Ginuwine's forthcoming Sony album "Senior" is due March 25, and the cut has already made it to No. 37 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart.
Other notable entries on the Hot 100 include Kenny Chesney's "Big Star" at No. 65, Nivea's "Laundromat" at No. 71, and Sean Paul's "Get Busy" at No. 82.
After entering The Billboard 200 at No. 8 with "The Dreamer" (Warner Bros.), Blake Shelton's latest single, "The Baby," takes over the reigns on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks roundup. Mark Willis' "19 Somethin'," which had spent six weeks at No. 1, is down to No. 3.
Over on Billboard's rock airplay charts, Queens Of The Stone Age and 3 Doors Down still rule. Queens' "No One Knows" maintains its grip on the Modern Rock Tracks tally for the third-straight week, and the cut reaches a new peak position of No. 52 on the Hot 100. On the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, 3 Doors Down's "When I'm Gone" holds the No. 1 position for the 13th-straight week. The song is up one notch to No. 17 on the Hot 100.
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — For a third straight game, Michigan State was outscored in the fourth quarter.
If that worries coach Mark Dantonio, he did a pretty good job hiding it.
Dantonio was generally unruffled after the Spartans beat Central Michigan 31-20 on Saturday. It was a reasonably routine win for Michigan State, but the ending left a lot to be desired. The Spartans were outscored 17-0 in the final period.
Michigan State faltered at the end in a loss at Arizona State and nearly did so again when it played at Indiana, but after beating CMU, Dantonio wasn't going to panic over his team's late-game issues.
"I wasn't concerned about focus, I was concerned about Central, personally," Dantonio said.
Still, his team appeared to be dozing when CMU recovered an onside kick with the score 31-10 in the fourth. The Chippewas added 10 more points and started putting some pressure on the Spartans. To its credit, Michigan State moved the ball well enough to use up the final 6:44 after CMU pulled within 11.
Against Arizona State, however, the Spartans were up 13-3 going into the fourth and lost 16-13 . They gave up the first 14 points of the fourth against Indiana before holding on for a 35-21 victory .
"I like to say we play with grit, that we somehow find a way," Dantonio said. "We've won a lot of close games here, and we'll come and we'll play. But, we have to play better in certain areas, there's no question about that. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work."
Michigan State moved up a spot to No. 20 in Sunday's Top 25. The Spartans host Northwestern next weekend. With a 31-3 lead over CMU after three quarters, Michigan State could afford to take its foot of the gas, but the Spartans might not be so fortunate if that happens against a Big Ten opponent.
"I think we just have to finish," safety David Dowell said. "That's a mentality."
Up 31-13 with 12:08 to play, the Spartans put backup quarterback Rocky Lombardi in, a move that symbolized the nonchalance with which Michigan State handled the final quarter. After going three-and-out and allowing a touchdown, the Spartans put starter Brian Lewerke back in, and they didn't give the ball up again.
Style points (or lack thereof) in September will probably be forgotten in the weeks to come, and Michigan State does have a habit of struggling with lesser opponents early, even in seasons in which the Spartans have contended for the conference title. In 2013, when Michigan State went to the Rose Bowl, the Spartans let the likes of Western Michigan and South Florida hang around during nonconference matchups.
But Michigan State's failure to finish strong already cost the Spartans one game, and the toughest matchups of the season aren't far off. After the Northwestern game, Michigan State plays Penn State and Michigan in consecutive weeks, and it will probably take a more complete performance to beat either of those rivals.
"Every football team is always a work in progress," Dantonio said. "We'll come and we'll compete, and that's all I can ever ask our guys. We need to eliminate the mistakes and when we have opportunities we need to take advantage of them."
There’s an interesting snippet in the FT today which reports that Apple is in the midst of a hiring spree as it seeks to put together a team to build the company’s much vaunted iWatch.
It is reading between the lines but that does suggest that the iWatch is no way imminent and probably won’t arrive until next year.
It also means that the company is clearly taking the iWatch very seriously indeed, with FT believing that there are now 100 staff in Cupertino working on the project.
The iWatch is clearly crucial to the future of Apple and if it takes time to get it right then that makes a lot of sense.
Leave it out Thom Yorke! Why musicians need to stop bashing Spotify!
Posted on November 30, 2015 at 1:48 pm.
The number of higher education jobs declined 1.31 percent in Q3 2015, the fourth consecutive quarterly decline for the industry and the largest quarterly decline since at least 2007, according to a recent report from HigherEdJobs, the leading job and career site for higher education professionals.
According to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by HigherEdJobs, colleges and universities lost about 21,200 jobs during the third quarter compared to the same period last year.
Broken out further, one-third of the positions, or 7,100 jobs, were at community colleges, despite making up only 4 percent of all higher education jobs.
While the number of jobs in higher education was down, the report found that ads for open positions in academia were up 23.4 percent. And, for the second quarter in a row, full-time job postings grew at a faster rate than part-time postings.
The report analyzes the most current data from BLS and HigherEdJobs’ posting trends from colleges and universities that have continuously subscribed to the company’s unlimited posting plan for four years, a group of roughly 890 schools that have no financial deterrent not to post any openings. The full report can be viewed at http://www.higheredjobs.com/career/quarterly-report.cfm.
HigherEdJobs provides jobs and career information in academia. During 2014, more than 5,300 colleges and universities posted more than 159,000 faculty, administrative, and executive job postings to the company’s website, which receives more than 1,000,000 unique visitors a month.
Posted on November 30, 2015 at 1:47 pm.
Higher education institutions of all kinds — state, private and community — are increasingly being asked for assessments that offer more evidence of student learning.
Many are looking for ways to demonstrate their students’ general education skill levels and use information derived from student learning outcomes (SLO) assessments to enhance the learning experience on their campuses.
“Our intercampus faculty group was looking for an assessment that would help us incorporate competencies relevant to their programs,” said Michelle Soler, Director for Competency-based Education and Assessment for all 17 University of North Carolina campuses.
Earlier this year, a variety of institutions participated in a pilot program for the new HEIghten™ Outcomes Assessment Suite from Educational Testing Service (ETS). The suite consists of six modules measuring general education skills identified by educators as most important for students to have. The HEIghten suite is designed to enable colleges and universities to obtain valid data about their students’ skills, benchmark and track student performance, and identify areas for potential curriculum enhancement.
SLO assessments created internally are aligned to the specific education goals of the institution, while third-party assessments, like the HEIghten suite, offer standardization so that colleges and universities can benchmark their performance against similar institutions throughout the nation.
“We had been doing our own in-house assessments, but it worried me that we were not able to see how well our students are doing nationally,” said Julie Lessiter, Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Services at Louisiana State University Shreveport.
ETS worked with higher-ed institutions to develop a tool that provides actionable data without burdening their already limited resources. The goal is to help schools maintain their autonomy in an environment of ever-growing pressure for more accountability measures.
HEIghten is designed for educators. “Faculty can administer the assessment during one class period, see how their students performed, and go back to make any changes necessary to improve learning,” said Nancy Williams Parks, Associate Professor and Director of Advising, Assessment and Testing at Pierpont Community & Technical College.
Three HEIghten modules are currently available: Critical Thinking, Written Communication and Quantitative Literacy. Three additional modules will be available in 2016.
To learn more about HEIghten, visit www.ets.org/heighten.
Posted on November 30, 2015 at 1:44 pm.
College and university leadership say the factors that lead to student graduation are as diverse as a student body; and more about common sense than technology.
From new college rankings to government funding initiatives, higher education is under increasing pressure to prove student outcomes success with graduation rates as an indicator. But at what stage of a student’s postsecondary experience does retention become a concern, and what can an institution do to keep its students on track?
Though technology tools like an integrated LMS that can process student engagement analytics can be a helpful part of an institution’s toolkit, experts in the industry and higher-ed leadership say not only should a college or university be concerned with retention starting at admissions, but sometimes the best way to ensure students graduate is to employ common sense thinking about a student’s overall postsecondary experience.
I would argue that there are three primary factors that influence a student’s potential to stay on track for graduation: cost, convenience, and outcomes-based programs measured against self-evaluation and peer review methods.
Cost is perhaps the most prohibitive factor, as students who do not qualify for financial assistance or who can no longer afford to pay their way through a program are often forced to temporarily pause their progress, or withdraw altogether. As tuition prices outpace expected salaries, the risk of students falling into one or both of these categories increases.
Convenience is also a heavily-weighted factor. Coursework that’s adoptive of modern technology and flexible for the demanding schedules of today’s students–who often work and raise a family while in school–is imperative to eliminating challenges that prevent students from attending required courses. American College of Education’s online-only, 24/7 access eliminates restrictive traditional models that require students to attend either in-person or online on a specific day and/or time, in order to make degree progress.
Finally, outcomes-based programs measured through self-evaluation and peer review methods assure that students are retaining the necessary information, eliminating the likelihood that a student needs to re-take coursework, or graduates unprepared for his or her field. A 2014 study of ACE students showed that self-evaluation and peer reviews provided documentation that goals and standards set by the College were met from both an evaluator’s perspective and the students’ perception of the program. This is not the case for many other institutions.
Minding these three tenets, American College of Education has improved graduation rates and shortened time to graduation. ACE graduates 73 percent of its students compared to the national average between 50-64 percent, with 76 percent of master’s program students finishing their degrees within 18-months and without the burden of additional student loan debt. American College of Education is regionally accredited and provides affordable, advanced degree programs for educators.
Dr. Shawntel Landry, provost and interim president, American College of Education.
Posted on November 30, 2015 at 5:00 am.
A look at new tools and new opportunities to create an instructional experience that is not only different, but better, taking online learning in mainstream higher ed to the next level.
Let’s face it: Online education has always been the unhappy stepchild to traditional classroom teaching. It’s generally been seen as a make-do solution to serve students who—whether for reasons of geography or scheduling—were unable to attend class in person. And, more recently, its great claim to fame has been as a cost saver, a scalable way to enroll large numbers of students with minimal financial outlay. Well, the ugly duckling may be about to turn into a swan.
The idea that online learning could actually be better than face-to-face instruction has gained credence in recent years as new technology solutions promise to make the educational experience more personalized and engaging. Has that time finally arrived? Here, eCampus News looks at seven trends that have the potential to remake the world of online learning.
Texas Tech Chemistry students using Cengage Learning’s MindTap digital learning solution received significantly better outcomes than those using comparable products, according to results from a study of nearly 1,800 chemistry students.
The study, conducted by Professor Gregory Gellene, compared the course grades and the success rates of students using MindTap General Chemistry with those using alternative e-learning platforms.
The percentage of participating students using MindTap General Chemistry who received a course grade of A or B more than doubled from 32 percent to 66 percent. The percentage of participating students earning less than a C was reduced almost threefold, from 39 percent to 14 percent. This resulted in a course success rate of 87 percent, an increase of 26 percentage points over those using a leading competitor’s product.
MindTap integrates reading, homework, quizzing and multimedia assets into a learning experience for students. The outcome-driven learning path offers instructors the ability to customize courses, with personalized options for students.
“The positioning of focused interactive simulations and tutorials between relatively short segments of text draws the student into reading the text before attempting the assignments rather than using the text as a last resort,” Gellene said.
To read the full case study, click here. For more information about MindTap, visit: www.cengage.com/MindTap.
Posted on November 27, 2015 at 5:00 am.
Each Friday, I’ll be bringing you a recap of some of the most interesting and thought-provoking news developments that occurred over the week.
I can’t fit all of our news stories here, though, so feel free to visit eCampusNews.com and read up on other news you may have missed.
From buzzwords to phrases higher-ed speakers and leaders love to use, it seems there’s a whole new vocabulary—that some call “edubabble”—developed every couple of years. What’s interesting to note in these higher education buzzwords and phrases of 2015 is that many are either directly technology-related or are based on new technology functionalities.
In the wake of online learning, competency-based education, and a host of other alternative pathways and programs, accreditation has been in the reformation spotlight this year. And now the government is jumping in.
Science develops an algorithm for college selection—but does it work?
A new algorithm is using data and predictive analytics to determine, with noteworthy accuracy (90 percent), which institution is the best match for students.
Virtual reality (VR) is emerging as a powerful technology, projected to grow into a $30 billion industry in the next 5 years. But when it comes to higher education, has VR’s dramatic rise impacted colleges and universities?
Student meetings, course requests and more can be streamlined with online tools to reduce time wastes for faculty and admin.
Thanksgiving has just ended and faculty and academic staff will soon dive into a full spring course load post holiday season. Professionals in the education industry know that meetings, paperwork, and other administrative tasks can be just as important to ensure a successful school year. However, they can often take up too much of an educator’s time. A study conducted at Boise St University in 2014 estimated these administrative tasks are taking up 30 percent of an education professional’s weekly workload, taking away from their abilities to properly serve their students.
While it is not practical to eliminate these tasks, there are some great ways that professionals within the education sector can reduce the time it takes to complete them. From large universities such as Texas A&M University or Morehouse College, to smaller institutions, by utilizing simple online tools, education professionals can eliminate the burdens of time-consuming administrative tasks.