Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized medical and nursing staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with a large number of beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' hospitals, hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received. A teaching hospital combines assistance to people with teaching to medical nurses; the medical facility smaller than a hospital is called a clinic.
Hospitals have a range of departments and specialist units such as cardiology. Some hospitals have outpatient departments and some have chronic treatment units. Common support units include a pharmacy and radiology. Hospitals are funded by the public sector, health organisations, health insurance companies, or charities, including direct charitable donations. Hospitals were founded and funded by religious orders, or by charitable individuals and leaders. Hospitals are staffed by professional physicians, surgeons and allied health practitioners, whereas in the past, this work was performed by the members of founding religious orders or by volunteers. However, there are various Catholic religious orders, such as the Alexians and the Bon Secours Sisters that still focus on hospital ministry in the late 1990s, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the Methodists and Lutherans, which run hospitals. In accordance with the original meaning of the word, hospitals were "places of hospitality", this meaning is still preserved in the names of some institutions such as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, established in 1681 as a retirement and nursing home for veteran soldiers.
During the Middle Ages, hospitals served different functions from modern institutions. Middle Ages hospitals were hostels for pilgrims, or hospital schools; the word "hospital" comes from the Latin hospes, signifying a foreigner, hence a guest. Another noun derived from this, hospitium came to signify hospitality, the relation between guest and shelterer, hospitality and hospitable reception. By metonymy the Latin word came to mean a guest-chamber, guest's lodging, an inn. Hospes is thus the root for the English words host hospitality, hospice and hotel; the latter modern word derives from Latin via the ancient French romance word hostel, which developed a silent s, which letter was removed from the word, the loss of, signified by a circumflex in the modern French word hôtel. The German word'Spital' shares similar roots; the grammar of the word differs depending on the dialect. In the United States, hospital requires an article; some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and leave without staying overnight.
Hospitals are distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients whilst the others, which are smaller, are described as clinics. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital known as an acute-care hospital; these facilities handle many kinds of disease and injury, have an emergency department or trauma center to deal with immediate and urgent threats to health. Larger cities may have several hospitals of facilities; some hospitals in the United States and Canada, have their own ambulance service. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with large numbers of beds for intensive care, critical care, long-term care. In California, "district hospital" refers to a class of healthcare facility created shortly after World War II to address a shortage of hospital beds in many local communities. Today, district hospitals are the sole public hospitals in 19 of California's counties, are the sole locally-accessible hospital within nine additional counties in which one or more other hospitals are present at substantial distance from a local community.
Twenty-eight of California's rural hospitals and 20 of its critical-access hospitals are district hospitals. They are formed by local municipalities, have boards that are individually elected by their local communities, exist to serve local needs, they are a important provider of healthcare to uninsured patients and patients with Medi-Cal. In 2012, district hospitals provided $54 million in uncompensated care in California. Types of specialised hospitals incl
Elevator
An elevator or lift is a type of vertical transportation device that moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel, or other structure. Elevators are powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems like a hoist, although some pump hydraulic fluid to raise a cylindrical piston like a jack. In agriculture and manufacturing, an elevator is any type of conveyor device used to lift materials in a continuous stream into bins or silos. Several types exist, such as the chain and bucket elevator, grain auger screw conveyor using the principle of Archimedes' screw, or the chain and paddles or forks of hay elevators. Languages other than English may lift; because of wheelchair access laws, elevators are a legal requirement in new multistory buildings where wheelchair ramps would be impractical. There are some elevators which can go sideways in addition to the usual up-and-down motion; the earliest known reference to an elevator is in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator in 236 BC.
Some sources from historical periods mention elevators as cabs on a hemp rope powered by hand or by animals. In 1000, the Book of Secrets by al-Muradi in Islamic Spain described the use of an elevator-like lifting device, in order to raise a large battering ram to destroy a fortress. In the 17th century the prototypes of elevators were located in the palace buildings of England and France. Louis XV of France had a so-called'flying chair' built for one of his mistresses at the Chateau de Versailles in 1743. Ancient and medieval elevators used drive systems based on windlasses; the invention of a system based on the screw drive was the most important step in elevator technology since ancient times, leading to the creation of modern passenger elevators. The first screw drive elevator was built by Ivan Kulibin and installed in the Winter Palace in 1793. Several years another of Kulibin's elevators was installed in the Arkhangelskoye near Moscow; the development of elevators was led by the need for movement of raw materials including coal and lumber from hillsides.
The technology developed by these industries and the introduction of steel beam construction worked together to provide the passenger and freight elevators in use today. Starting in the coal mines, by the mid-19th century elevators were operated with steam power and were used for moving goods in bulk in mines and factories; these steam driven devices were soon being applied to a diverse set of purposes—in 1823, two architects working in London and Hormer, built and operated a novel tourist attraction, which they called the "ascending room". It elevated paying customers to a considerable height in the center of London, allowing them a magnificent panoramic view of downtown. Early, crude steam-driven elevators were refined in the ensuing decade; the elevator used a counterweight for extra power. The hydraulic crane was invented by Sir William Armstrong in 1846 for use at the Tyneside docks for loading cargo; these supplanted the earlier steam driven elevators: exploiting Pascal's law, they provided a much greater force.
A water pump supplied a variable level of water pressure to a plunger encased inside a vertical cylinder, allowing the level of the platform to be raised and lowered. Counterweights and balances were used to increase the lifting power of the apparatus. Henry Waterman of New York is credited with inventing the "standing rope control" for an elevator in 1850. In 1845, the Neapolitan architect Gaetano Genovese installed in the Royal Palace of Caserta the "Flying Chair", an elevator ahead of its time, covered with chestnut wood outside and with maple wood inside, it included a light, two benches and a hand operated signal, could be activated from the outside, without any effort on the part of the occupants. Traction was controlled by a motor mechanic utilizing a system of toothed wheels. A safety system was designed to take effect, it consisted of a beam pushed outwards by a steel spring. In 1852, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, which prevented the fall of the cab if the cable broke, he demonstrated it at the New York exposition in the Crystal Palace in a dramatic, death-defying presentation in 1854, the first such passenger elevator was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City on 23 March 1857.
The first elevator shaft preceded the first elevator by four years. Construction for Peter Cooper's Cooper Union Foundation building in New York began in 1853. An elevator shaft was included in the design, because Cooper was confident that a safe passenger elevator would soon be invented; the shaft was cylindrical. Otis designed a special elevator for the building; the Equitable Life Building completed in 1870 in New York City was thought to be the first office building to have passenger elevators. However Peter Ellis, an English architect, installed the first elevators that could be described as paternoster elevators in Oriel Chambers in Liverpool in 1868; the first electric elevator was built by Werner von Siemens in 1880 in Germany. The inventor Anton Freissler developed the ideas of von Siemens and built up a successful enterprise in Austria-Hungary; the safety and speed of electric elevators were enhanced by Frank Sprague who added floor control, automatic elevators, acceleration control of cars, safeties.
His elevator ran faster and with larger loads than hyd
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America referred to as the Confederacy, was an unrecognized country in North America that existed from 1861 to 1865. The Confederacy was formed by seven secessionist slave-holding states—South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Texas—in the Lower South region of the United States, whose economy was dependent upon agriculture cotton, a plantation system that relied upon the labor of African-American slaves; each state declared its secession from the United States, which became known as the Union during the ensuing civil war, following the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U. S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Before Lincoln took office in March, a new Confederate government was established in February 1861, considered illegal by the government of the United States. States volunteered militia units and the new government hastened to form its own Confederate States Army from scratch overnight.
After the American Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina—also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The Confederacy accepted Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither declared secession nor were they largely controlled by Confederate forces; the government of the United States rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegally founded. The War began with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. No foreign government recognized the Confederacy as an independent country, although Great Britain and France granted it belligerent status, which allowed Confederate agents to contract with private concerns for arms and other supplies. In early 1865, after four years of heavy fighting which led to 620,000–850,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy vanished; the war lacked a formal end.
By 1865 Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the civil war, lamented that the Confederacy had "disappeared". On February 22, 1862, the Confederate Constitution of seven state signatories – Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Texas – replaced the Provisional Constitution of February 8, 1861, with one stating in its preamble a desire for a "permanent federal government". Four additional slave-holding states – Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina – declared their secession and joined the Confederacy following a call by U. S. President Abraham Lincoln for troops from each state to recapture Sumter and other seized federal properties in the South. Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions adopting the forms of state governments without control of substantial territory or population in either case; the antebellum state governments in both maintained their representation in the Union. Fighting for the Confederacy were two of the "Five Civilized Tribes" – the Choctaw and the Chickasaw – in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona.
Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of martial law. A Unionist government was formed in opposition to the secessionist state government in Richmond and administered the western parts of Virginia, occupied by Federal troops; the Restored Government recognized the new state of West Virginia, admitted to the Union during the war on June 20, 1863, re-located to Alexandria for the rest of the war. Confederate control over its claimed territory and population in congressional districts shrank from 73% to 34% during the course of the American Civil War due to the Union's successful overland campaigns, its control of the inland waterways into the South, its blockade of the southern coast. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal; as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers and laborers; the most notable advance was Sherman's "March to the Sea" in late 1864.
Much of the Confederacy's infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs and bridges. Plantations in the path of Sherman's forces were damaged. Internal movement became difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and limiting army mobility; these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Davis's administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, allegations of autocratic government. After four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. A few days General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant signalling the collapse of the Confederacy. President Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, jailed in preparation for a treason trial, never held; the initial Confederacy was established in the Montgomery Convention in February 1861 by seven states (South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana
Vernon Parish, Louisiana
Vernon Parish is a parish located in the U. S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 52,334; the parish seat is Leesville. Bordered on the west by the Sabine River, the parish was founded in 1871 during the Reconstruction era, it was long a center of the timber industry, which harvested pine in the hills and bottomland hardwoods. Construction of a railway to the area in 1897 stimulated marketing of lumber and businesses in the area. Since World War II, Fort Polk has been most important to the parish economy; the population of the Leesville area increased fivefold after the fort was opened. Vernon Parish is part of the Fort Polk South, LA Micropolitan Statistical Area, included in the DeRidder-Fort Polk South, LA Combined Statistical Area; the area comprising Vernon was a part of a tract of land whose control was disputed in the late 18th century between the United States and Spain. They called this land the "Neutral Strip" and refrained from posting police or military personnel there.
As a result, the area became a haven for outlaws. Prior to the United States acquisition of this territory through the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, the primary settlers who came to the area were ethnic French and Spanish. During this period, Dr. Timothy Burr, a Massachusetts native who had migrated to Louisiana from Mt. Vernon, established the community of Burr Ferry at his landing on the Sabine River; this community became known as the "Gateway to Louisiana" from the west. For decades this area was part of the Natchitoches and Sabine parishes, which were established soon after the US acquired this territory in the early nineteenth century; the timber industry was most important to the local economy, with both pines of the hills and bottomland hardwoods being harvested. Some landowners had their land cleared by slaves to establish plantations for cotton cultivation. During the American Civil War, an artillery site was constructed nearby. Now called the "Confederate Breast Works", it was manned by the Confederacy to guard against Union movements along the Nolan Trace.
On March 30, 1871, the Louisiana General Assembly passed an act to create Vernon Parish, by taking territory from the three parishes noted above, as population had increased in the area. There are four versions of. Leesville was designated as the parish seat of Vernon from the start, it was incorporated February 15, 1900. The city was founded by Dr. Edmund E. Smart, who donated land from his plantation for the development of the parish seat, it was named by his father, in honor of General Robert E. Lee; the Big House from the Smart plantation still stands. It is located at what today is the corner of First streets. Folklore accounts of the naming of the parish are: 1) that it was named after a race horse owned by Joe Moore, one of the members of the committee chosen to name the parish, who claimed that by naming the parish after his fast horse the committee would insure the growth of the parish: 2) that it was named after a popular teacher, an officer in the Royal Navy, only mentioned as "Mr. Vernon".
The decision was made to avoid disputes among the parish founders, each of whom wanted to name it after himself. 3) The final account tells that the committee had been arguing over the name while drinking in a store. Trying to preserve his precious whiskey and profits, the host suggested the committee stop a local man passing by on a mule-drawn cart and name the parish whatever the man said was the mule's name; the man responded, "I calls him Vernon,'cause he's the fastes' mule in de country." In the late 1890s the timber industry, the dominant industry in the parish from its creation, began to boom with the construction of the Kansas City Southern Railway in 1897. It increased access to markets; the railway continues to operate in the early 21st century. In the period after World War I, Vernon Parish became the site of two socialist-based communities; the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony developed as New Llano, established in 1917. The second was the Christian Commonwealth Colony; these colonies attempted to attract economists and sociologists to conduct an experiment in communal membership and the sharing of labor duties.
Llano del Rio was the larger community, with more than 10,000 people, was the longest-surviving. Both colonies failed in the 1930s during the economic stress of the Great Depression. In 1941, the United States Army opened Camp Polk, shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe, with the German invasion of Poland and other actions. Camp Polk surpassed the timber industry as the dominant force in the parish's economy. After the camp opened, the population of the parish seat of Leesville climbed from 3,500 to 18,000. Named after Leonidas Polk, the first Episcopal Bishop in Louisiana and known as the "Fighting Bishop of the Confederacy", it served as one of the major Army training camps during World War II. In the 21st century, Fort Polk is the 5th-largest military installation in the nation; the facility covers 200,000 acres. It has stimulated the development of associated businesses in related populations. With the regular reassignment of soldiers, accompanied by dependents, to and from the fort, Vernon Parish has a more varied culture than might be expected from its location.
Its residents come from all over the country. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the parish has a total area of 1,341 square miles, of which 1,328 square miles is land and 14 square miles is water, it is the largest parish in L
Time in the United States
Time in the United States, by law, is divided into nine standard time zones covering the states and its possessions, with most of the United States observing daylight saving time for the spring and fall months. The time zone boundaries and DST observance are regulated by the Department of Transportation. Official and precise timekeeping services are provided by two federal agencies: the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the clocks run by these services are kept synchronized with each other as well as with those of other international timekeeping organizations. It is the combination of the time zone and daylight saving rules, along with the timekeeping services, which determines the legal civil time for any U. S. location at any moment. Before the adoption of four standard time zones for the continental United States, many towns and cities set their clocks to noon when the sun passed their local meridian, pre-corrected for the equation of time on the date of observation, to form local mean solar time.
Noon occurred at different times but time differences between distant locations were noticeable prior to the 19th century because of long travel times and the lack of long-distance instant communications prior to the development of the telegraph. The use of local solar time became awkward as railways and telecommunications improved. American railroads maintained many different time zones during the late 1800s; each train station set its own clock making it difficult to coordinate train schedules and confusing passengers. Time calculation became a serious problem for people traveling by train, according to the Library of Congress; every city in the United States used a different time standard so there were more than 300 local sun times to choose from. Time zones were therefore a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to be approximate with mean solar time. Railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.
Weather service chief Cleveland Abbe had needed to introduce four standard time zones for his weather stations, an idea which he offered to the railroads. Operators of the new railroad lines needed a new time plan that would offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. Four standard time zones for the continental United States were introduced at noon on November 18, 1883, when the telegraph lines transmitted time signals to all major cities. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference at Washington DC adopted a proposal which stated that the prime meridian for longitude and timekeeping should be one that passes through the centre of the transit instrument at the Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom; the conference therefore established the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time as the world's time standard. The US time-zone system grew from this, in which all zones referred back to GMT on the prime meridian. In 1960, the International Radio Consultative Committee formalized the concept of Coordinated Universal Time, which became the new international civil time standard.
UTC is, within about 1 second, mean solar time at 0°. UTC does not observe daylight saving time. For most purposes, UTC is considered interchangeable with GMT, but GMT is no longer defined by the scientific community. UTC is one of several related successors to GMT. Standard time zones in the United States are defined at the federal level by law 15 USC §260; the federal law establishes the transition dates and times at which daylight saving time occurs, if observed. It is the authority of the Secretary of Transportation, in coordination with the states, to determine which regions will observe which of the standard time zones and if they will observe daylight saving time; as of August 9, 2007, the standard time zones are defined in terms of hourly offsets from UTC. Prior to this they were based upon the mean solar time at several meridians 15° apart west of Greenwich. Only the full-time zone names listed below are official. View the standard time zone boundaries here; the United States uses nine standard time zones.
As defined by US law they are: From east to west, the four time zones of the contiguous United States are: Eastern Time Zone, which comprises the states on the Atlantic coast and the eastern two thirds of the Ohio Valley. Central Time Zone, which comprises the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Valley, most of the Great Plains. Mountain Time Zone, which comprises the states and portions of states that include the Rocky Mountains and the western quarter of the Great Plains. Pacific Time Zone, which comprises the states on the Pacific coast, plus Nevada and the Idaho panhandle. Alaska Time Zone, which comprises most of the state of Alaska. Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone, which includes Hawaii and most of the length of the Aleutian Islands chain. Samoa Time Zone, which comprises American Samoa. Chamorro Time Zone, which comprises Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Atlantic Time Zone, which comprises Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; some United States Minor Outlying Islands are outside the time zones defined by 15 U.
S. C. § exist in waters defined by Nautical time. In practice, military crews may
History of the Houston Oilers
The professional American football team now known as the Tennessee Titans played in Houston, Texas as the Houston Oilers from 1960 to 1996. The Oilers began play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League; the team won two AFL championships before joining the NFL as part of the AFL–NFL merger in the late 1960s. The Oilers competed in the East Division of the AFL before the merger, after which they joined the newly formed AFC Central; the Oilers throughout their existence were owned by Bud Adams and played their home games at the Astrodome for the majority of their time in Houston. The Oilers were the first champions of the American Football League, winning the 1960 and 1961 contests, but never again won another championship; the Oilers appeared in the 1962 AFL Championship, losing in double overtime to their in-state rivals, the Dallas Texans. From 1978 to 1980, the Oilers, led by Bum Phillips and in the midst of the Luv Ya Blue campaign, appeared in the 1978 and 1979 AFC Championship Games.
The Oilers were a consistent playoff team from 1987 to 1993, an era that included both of the Oilers' only division titles, as well as the dubious distinction of being on the losing end of the largest comeback in NFL history. For the rest of the Oilers' time in Houston, they compiled losing seasons in every year outside the aforementioned high points; the Oilers' main colors were Columbia blue and white, with scarlet trim, while their logo was a simple derrick. Oilers jerseys were always Columbia white for away; the helmet color was Columbia blue with a white derrick from 1960 through 1965, silver with a Columbia blue derrick from 1966 through 1971, Columbia blue with a white and scarlet derrick from 1972 through 1974, before changing to a white helmet with a Columbia blue derrick beginning in 1975 and lasting the remainder of the team's time in Houston. Owner Bud Adams, who had threatened to move the team since the late 1980s, relocated the Oilers to Tennessee after the 1996 season, where they were known as the Tennessee Oilers for the 1997 and 1998 seasons.
The Oilers played the 1997 season in Memphis before moving to Nashville in 1998. In 1999, to coincide with the opening of their new stadium, Adams changed the team name to the Tennessee Titans and the color scheme from Columbia Blue and White to Titans Blue, Navy and Silver with scarlet accents; the new Titans franchise retained the Oilers' team history and records, while the team name was retired by then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, thus preventing a future Houston NFL team from using the name. The NFL would return to Houston in 2002 with the Houston Texans; the Houston Oilers began in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League. They were owned by Bud Adams, a Houston oilman, who had made several previous unsuccessful bids for an NFL expansion team in Houston. Adams was an influential member of the eight original AFL owners, since he, Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt and Buffalo Bills founder Ralph Wilson were more financially stable than the other five.
The Oilers appeared in the first three AFL championships. They scored an important victory over the NFL when they signed LSU's Heisman Trophy winner, All-America running back Billy Cannon. Cannon joined other Oiler offensive stars such as quarterback George Blanda, flanker Charlie Hennigan, running back Charlie Tolar, guard Bob Talamini. After winning the first-ever AFL championship over the Los Angeles Chargers in 1960, they repeated over the same team in 1961, they lost to the Dallas Texans in the classic 1962 double-overtime AFL championship game, at the time the longest professional football championship game played. In 1962, the Oilers were the first AFL team to sign an active NFL player away from the other league, when wide receiver Willard Dewveall left the Bears to join the champion Oilers. Dewveall that year caught the longest pass reception for a touchdown in professional American football history, 99 yards, from Jacky Lee, against the San Diego Chargers; the Oilers won the AFL Eastern Division title again in 1967 became the first professional football team to play in a domed stadium, when they moved into Houston's Astrodome home of MLB's Houston Astros for the 1968 season.
The Oilers had played at Jeppesen Stadium at the University of Houston from 1960 to 1964, Rice University's stadium from 1965 to 1967. Adams had intended the team play at Rice from the first, but Rice's board of regents rejected the move. After the Astrodome opened for business, Adams attempted to move there, but could not negotiate an acceptable lease with the Houston Sports Association from whom he would sublease the Dome; the 1969 season, the last as an AFL team, tumble afterwards. They qualified for the playoffs, but were defeated by the Raiders 56–7, to finish the year with a record of 6–7–2; the years after the AFL-NFL Merger were not as kind to the Oilers, who sank to the bottom of the AFC Central division. After going 3–10–1 in 1970, they went 4–9–1 in 1971, suffered back-to-back 1–13 seasons in 1972–73, but by
Allen Parish, Louisiana
