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Big Pine Key Florida Real Estate
Chemistry beyond the classroom: JSU prof, students prosper
Jerzy Leszczynski shows off staffers as if he were a real estate agent looking to collect a hefty commission. Inside Jackson State University's John A. Peoples Science Building is a research center for molecular structure and interactions. It is staffed by a group that looks like a United Nations delegation - Africans, Asians, Indians and Russians - who stop their work to greet Leszczynski as if he were royalty. This ritual of mutual admiration and appreciation is replicated at a U.S. Army research lab in the basement and inside a suite at the old faculty apartments that are now the Center for Research Excellence in Science and Technology. All are research facilities that Leszczynski, who has secured more than $10 million in grants and contracts to JSU during his tenure, helped develop and nurture.
'Playing' patient' is real life for doctors
An entire career track is budding for people willing to get poked and prodded and answer personal questions, as more medical schools train students with stand-ins posing as family members or patients. Medical schools are willing to pay up to $40 an hour for the work. In cities where demand is high, it can be a full-time job. Fake patients are in demand as hospitals and doctors' offices look for ways to avoid using real patients as guinea pigs for aspiring doctors. Also behind the trend is health care's increasing focus on bedside manners as medicine becomes more consumer-driven. A recent survey by the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic found that patients are more likely to judge a physician by behavior than technical skills. Patients want doctors who are confident, respectful, straightforward, empathetic, compassionate and interested in them as individuals, according to the survey.
Staples Makes It Look Easy
Staples (Nasdaq: SPLS), the office-superstore giant, has had a relatively easy time of it recently. Sure, it faces competition in the form of OfficeMax (NYSE: OMX) and Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), not to mention the much-feared Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT). But even so, Staples has been executing darn near perfectly on its mission to provide shoppers with red staplers and other office needs. Case in point: Its third-quarter results were surprisingly strong, as consumers once again shrugged off a sluggish housing market to stock up on paperclips and computer paper. Revenues increased 12% to $4.8 billion, and net income was up 29% year over year to $290 million, which included a $35 million tax benefit. Same-store sales increased 4% in North America and 5% internationally.
An American Home Should Be Your Castle
This Thursday, tens of millions of families will gather in private homes across America to celebrate Thanksgiving. The home is the largest financial asset for many Americans. Housing is one of the largest sectors of the economy. Despite its importance to the economy, the home where we gather this Thanksgiving is legally less secure than it was two years ago. Consider the Thanksgiving gatherings in Riviera Beach, Fla. There the local city government has in recent years been threatening to condemn many middle-class homes to make way for a multibillion-dollar private development. Where one family celebrates Thanksgiving in 2006, a different family might celebrate Thanksgiving a few years hence, not as the result of a mutually beneficial financial transaction but as the result of government coercion.
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