Taking Shock Seriously

Taking Shock Seriously

When the body shuts down because of injury, immediate care is critical

Shock is the body's way of trying to deal with a bad situation. When a body experiences trauma from a serious injury, it often finds itself unable to maintain proper blood flow to all its organs. Shock is the mechanism that allows the body to ration blood flow so that the most important organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, and kidneys, get the blood they need, even when that means that less vital parts, such as arms, legs, and skin have to make do with less. This natural triage cannot be sustained for very long, however, without causing potentially life-threatening damage to the brain and heart.

Shock, says the red cross, ”can't be managed effectively by first aid alone. A victim of shock requires advanced medical care as soon as possible.”

The early signs of shock include:

• 
  
•     Restlessness or irritability.
•     Altered or confused consciousness.
•     Pale, cool, moist skin.
•     Rapid breathing.
•     Rapid pulse.

Taking Shock Seriously. Photo by Elena

The proper response to shock is to do the following:

•     Stretch the victim out on his or her back.
•     Treat any open bleeding.
•     Help the injured restore normal body temperature, covering him or her if there is chilling.
•     Talk to the victim reassuringly.
•     Prop the legs up about a foot unless there are possible head, neck, or back injuries, or broken bones in the hips or legs.
•     Don't offer food or drink, even though the victim probably feels thirsty,=.
•     Call the rescue service immediately.

Blood in the AIDS Era

Some precautions from the American Red Cross

When the emergency that requires your assistance involves heavy bleeding, it's important that you take precautions to protect yourself against the risk of infection. That's especially true if you have a cut, scrape, or sore that could allow a bleeding person's blood to mix directly with yours. One of the easiest ways for an infectious disease such as the AIDS virus or hepatitis B to be transmitted is through direct blood-to-blood exchange. To minimize risk, the American Red Cross advises the following:

•     Avoid blood splashes.
•     Keep and use disposable latex gloves in emergencies involving bleeding.
•     If gloves are unavailable, cover the wound with a dressing or other available barrier such as plastic wrap.
•     Avoid any contact in which the victim's blood touches any cuts, scrapes, or skin irritations you may have.
•     Always wash your hands as soon as possible, whether or not you wore gloves.

Control Bleeding from a Major Open Wound

Pressure is the key to stopping blood loss from a serious injury. Bearing down on arterial pressure points may be necessary.

If a person is bleeding

1. Step 1. Do not waste time washing wound. Cover it with sterile dressing or clean cloth and press firmly against the wound with hand.
2. Step 2. Elevate the wound, if possible, above the level of the heart.
3. Step 3. Apply a roller bandage snugly over the dressing to keep pressure on the wound, If bleeding doesn't stop...
4. Step 4. Apply additional dressings. Find a pressure point where you can squeeze the artery against the bone. If bleeding is from the leg, press with the heel of your hand where the leg bends at the hip.

A Roller Bandage Used to Control Bleeding

To apply a pressure bandage, start by securing the bandage over the dressing. Use overlapping turns to cover the dressing completely.

Tie of tape the bandage in place. If blood soaks through, put on more dressings and bandages. Do not remove bloodsoaked ones.

Check fingers or toes for warmth, color and felling. If they are pale and cold, bandage is too tight. Loosen it.

Dubious Reported Earnings

The Creation of Dubious Reported Earnings through “Creative” Accounting Procedures

A firm's income statement may be linked to a bikini – what it reveals is interesting but what it conceals is vital. National Student Marketing, one of the concept stocks, led the beauty parade in this regard. Andrew Tobias described it all in the Funny Money Game.

In its fiscal 1969 report, National Student Marketing made generous use of terms such as “deferred new product development and start-up costs.” These were moneys actually spent during 1969 but not charged against earnings in that year. “Unamortized costs of prepared sales programs” carried the ploy even further. These were advertising expenses that were not charged against earnings on the flimsy excuse that they would produce sales in the future. Subsidiary losses were easily handled: The companies were simply sold, removing their unfavorable results from the consolidated accounting statement. Actually it wasn't quite that simple, because the sales were consummated after the close of the fiscal year – but the accountants had no difficulty in arranging for the sale retroactively.

Since expenses were uncounted, why not count unearnings? N sooner said than done. These were duly noted in the sales column as unbilled receivables, on the justification that the actual billing of the sales could be expected to materialize in the future. Finally came “the $3,754,103 footnote.” Almost 44 million was added to net income in the form of earnings from companies whose acquisitions were “agreed to in principle and closed subsequent” to the end of fiscal 1969.

Dubios reported earnings. Photo by Elena

It turned out that even accepting the rest of the creative accounting, if you didn't count the earnings of companies that were not legally part of the National Student Marketing in 1969, the company barely broke even. Of course, the imprimatur of a prestigious accounting firm was affixed to the bottom of a statement assuring the public that the accounts were prepared in accordance with “generally accepted accounting principles.” (In 1972 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged National Student Marketing Corp., its auditors, two law firms, and fifteen individuals with violations of federal securities laws. Included in the SEC suit was a charge that the company had issues “materially false and misleading” financial statements. Cortess Randell,, the company's chief executive officer, served a prison sentence. A partner of the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., was convicted of having made false and misleading statements.

Similarly, Barry Minkow's late 1980s carpet-cleaning empire ZZZZ Best, was built on a mosaic of phony credit card holdings and fictitious contracts. These two are admittedly extreme examples, but the general problem is not uncommon. Seeming miracles can be accomplished with depreciation; the peculiarities of conglomerate accounting; the franchise accounting game; and the special features of the reports of land-sales companies, computer-leasing companies, and insurance companies. It is small wander that security analysts have trouble estimating reported future earnings.

Burton G. Malkiel. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, including a life-cycle guide to personal investing. First edition, 1973, by W.W. Norton and company, Inc.

Treating Skin That’s Singed

Treating Skin That’s Singed

Bring temperature down, but don’t use ice unless the injury is slight

Burns are classified as first, second, or third degree by how deeply the skin is damaged. It’s not always easy to tell how serious a burn is at first inspection. Electrical burns frequently look small, for instance, but they may be much deeper than suspected. You can’t always tell how bad a burn is from the pain, either, because really serious burns may destroy tissue nerve endings, leaving a victim with no feeling in the burn area. And burns whose severity is underestimated may end up needlessly infected. Here are the rules of the road when it comes to burns, from the American Red Cross:

First-Degree burn: A first-degree burn is on the skin’s surface. It turns the skin red and dry, may cause a swell, and can be quite painful. The damage should heal with a week without leaving permanent scars.

Second-degree burn: A second-degree burn affects several top layers of skin, and not only reddens the skin, but leaves blisters that may pop and leak clear fluid, making the skin look wet. Pain swelling are common with such burns, and the burned skin sometimes appears blotchy. Healing usually takes three to four weeks.

Third-degree burn: A third-degree burn not only destroys every skin layer but goes deep enough to destroy other underlying tissue such as fat, muscles, nerves, and even bones sometimes. The pain can range from very intense to relatively minor if nerve endings are destroyed. Unless quickly treated the risk of infection not only soars. But fluid loss can destroy the body’s thermostat and impair a victim’s breathing, making the situation potentially life-threatening.

Treating skin. Photo by Elena

Do’s and Don’ts for burns

To help you make the right first aid decisions when dealing with burns, the American Red Cross recommends the following:

Do’s

    Do cool a burn by flushing it with water.

    Do cover the burn with a dry, clean covering, such as a sterile dressing.

    Do keep the victim comfortable and keep him or her from getting chilled or overheated.

Don’ts

    Don’t apply ice directly to any burn unless it is very minor.

    Don’t touch a burn with anything except a clean covering.

    Don’t remove pieces of cloth that stick to the burned area.

    Don’t try to clean a severe burn.

    Don’t break blisters.

    Don’t use ointment on a severe burn. Although an antibiotic ointment can be used on a minor burn, ointments may exacerbate more severe burns by sealing in heat without providing pain relief

Flowers and More Flowers

The Wonders and Mysteries of Nature

From historians to witchcraft adepts, nature has fascinated mankind since times immemorial. According to evolutionary psychologists, humans evolved to adapt to their environments, and coping with natural forces was a prerequisite to reproductive fitness and long term survival.

Today’s fears and anxieties over global warming and environmental and climate change remain a chilling topic. The importance of recycling and going green can only be understated. In hopes of a greener future, the following images were compiled based on their common theme: plants or flora. Other thematic gallery groupings can be found on the art index page.

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears (John Locke)

It is never too late to be what you might have been (George Eliot)

It is always the simple that produces the marvellous (Amelia Barr)

As knowledge increases, wonder deepens (Charles Morgan)

I love those who yearn for the impossible (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

A brunette woman with black irises, in a science fiction world where she looks like a blue flower. (Megan Jorgensen)

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil (Victor Hugo)

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves (William Arthur Ward)

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start (Unknown)

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit (Bernard Williams)

I’m not made for perilous quests. Stephen Baxter, Evolution

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” said THE porter. “Get out of my way1” said Huth. (J.R. Tolkiien)

The Firm

The Firm

In business, the firm is defined as an organization, a partnership. For some reason the name calls to mind like-named film with Tom Cruise or the British rock band. Almost as if the human psyche is predisposed to associate with glamour more freely, appeal is often used to promote sales in business. To sum up, an old truth: ‘sex sells’. However, a marketing scholar would note that a product can be ‘sexy’ not in the Megan Fox sense, but in the way that a BlackBerry is stylish while practical.

Financial literacy is essential in this day and age. Ramifications touch everyone, not just finance professionals. Political turmoil overseas may lead to an investor losing money, as when the Nokia stock (NOK) plummeted in early 2011 due to unrest in Egypt.

Economic theory predicts that firms that save and invest have a better chance of becoming and remaining successful. Aside from start-up capital and business loans, capital can also be in the form of soft skills or knowledge. In this information-driven era, human capital in the form of skilled workers is ever more precious.

The theory of the firm rests on existence and production. Production explanations can take two paths, the Classical rationale asserts that costs determine prices, while the Austrian perspective maintains the reverse holds true. Views of the nature of the firm:

•     Neoclassical – firm as production function
•     Nexus-of-Contract – firm as legal fiction
•     Knowledge based – firm as stock of knowledge
•     Coasian – firm as ownership of assets

The divisions may be slightly superfluous; a combination of these definitions looks more appropriate. By the same token, the Austrian theory of imputation may also stand to benefit by acknowledging that both variants may be simultaneously valid.

A very old firm. Photo by Elena

Almeida & Carneiro (2008) examine the return on investment in human capital of a Portuguese sample of firms between 1995 and 1999.

The investment is defined as on the job training, a commonplace practice in many of today’s organizations, such as seminars designed to improve workforce performance. Training and internships are often paid. The estimated returns were 8.6% for those firms that were in the training supplied group. The findings prompted the researchers to conclude that the investment was a good one for these companies, in the same range as investments in material capital or schooling. A potential imitation of the study is that certain variables were absent from the analysis (e.g. who covers training costs, the employee or the firm?).

Reference:

    Almeida, R. & Carneiro, P. (2009). The return to firm investments in human capital. Labour Economics, 16 (1): 97-106.