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We analyzed what happens to a nursing home chain when private equity takes over, with regard to strategy, financial performance, and resident well-being. We conducted a longitudinal (2000-2012) case study of a large nursing home chain that triangulated qualitative and quantitative data from 5 different data sources. Results show that private equity owners continued and reinforced several strategies that were already put in place before the takeover, including a focus on keeping staffing levels low; the new owners added restructuring, rebranding, and investment strategies such as establishing new companies, where the nursing home chain served as an essential "launch customer."

Central programming deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) were studied in two reaction time (RT) experiments. In Experiment 1, PD patients and controls performed sequences of hand postures that varied in length, the number of different postures (repetitive vs heterogeneous), and the delay interval before movement. Before movement, the PD group planned repetitive movements like controls whereas for heterogeneous sequences RT increased less with sequence length for the PD group, implying less preprogramming. The interresponse time (IRT) data from repetitive sequences showed that the PD group had difficulty controlling movement such that IRTs were faster when sequences were longer, thus allowing more time to schedule the termination of the sequence during the course of movement. For heterogeneous sequences, the PD group made more errors and were slower than controls when changing hand postures, suggesting a deficit in switching between different responses. While RT decreased with a longer delay similarly for both groups, IRT1 continued to improve only for the PD group but similarly for both types of sequences, suggesting a deficit specific to programming the first response. In Experiment 2, subjects made decisions about the number of different hand postures contained within a sequence. PD patients' decision times improved more with a longer delay only for heterogeneous sequences, suggesting a problem in identifying the number of different hand postures. The results have implications for levels of motor dysfunction in PD which emphasize the influence of sequence length and complexity.

How can we teach student employees to interact positively with patrons? At UC Berkeley, Access Services supervisors worked with Reference and Instruction librarians to create a training to better equip student employees to interact with the public and learn basic reference tools. The “Public Services and Effective Referrals Training" teaches student employees how to 1) Apply public service guidelines, 2) Deploy de-escalation techniques, 3) Make effective referrals, 4) Navigate key search tools, and 5) Identify methods for seeking research assistance. The program has been running since 2016, and we have trained over 200 student employees. We believe that all student employees should receive training on these basic tools to excel at their jobs and their studies.

Caltrans has traditionally focused on designing, building, and maintaining California’s large freeway network. Lately, a stronger focus is being placed on real time transportation network operation, which requires the use of real time data and decision support software tools. This transition represents a cultural shift for Caltrans, and its organizational structures and staffing processes are not yet in place to support the effort. This report explores major impediments to hiring data analysts and software engineers, including lack of understanding among current management personnel in regard to the need for data analysts and software engineers, barriers for Caltrans Operations to directly hire IT/software personnel, lack of interest among Caltrans engineering unions to include software engineers as members, a general belief that software engineers are not “real” engineers, and concern that the state will not be able to hire software engineers due to high salary demands. Opportunities for addressing barriers include developing appropriate recruitment strategies for software related positions, educating agency personnel on the need for data analysis and software skills, changing the requirements for positions in Caltrans traffic operations, and establishing a management team to coordinate and support these efforts.

Presented in this article are aggregate utilization and financial data from the four social health maintenance organization (S/HMO) demonstrations that were collected and analyzed as a part of the national evaluation of the S/HMO demonstration project conducted for the Health Care Financing Administration. The S/HMOs, in offering a $6,500 to $12,000 chronic care benefit in addition to the basic HMO benefit package, had higher start up costs and financial losses over the first 5 years than expected, and controlling costs continues to be a challenge to the sites and their sponsors.