遲來的賞識。威廉•迪爾(William R. Dill)任職紐約大學企管研究院院長時，大約在1972年，他邀請我一起進行一項研究，調查畢業5年以上的學生目前在做什麼？並詢問他們成功的要件是什麼？其中有一個問題是︰ 您的人生是否受到本校老師的影響？ 如果是，請說出他們的名字。 其中有6位老師的名字，為每一位上過他們的課程的學生都列出來。而且每一位學生都記得他們的名字。除了這6位外，幾乎沒有其他老師被提到。 不幸的是，這種賞識來得太遲了。學校當局並沒有採取特別措施來留住這6位教授——他們是那種會使學校成名的老師——而他們當中也沒有一位受到學生團體頒贈「本年的偉大老師」獎。
更詳細的資料，如報告名稱和那6位老師的大名，請參考：《紐約大學Stern商學院的百年史》，在網路上讀了相關的重要的一頁： New York University's Stern School of Business: A Centennial Retrospective By Abraham L Gitlow, NYU Press, 1995 (Link：Deming博士在： New York University's Stern School of B...＿)
New York University's Stern School of Business: A Centennial Retrospective
By Abraham L Gitlow, NYU Press, 1995
非正式創校百年......大學部50~60年代動亂: 70年代之後再展雄風....
p.131
GBA 在60年代前大師雲集，財務領域：Marcus Nadler and Jules Bogen. Peter Drucker 的管理學著作為全世界產業主管所殷切期盼的讀物。Deming 的統計品管為日本戰後產業復興之主要助力。經濟學家: Lewis Haney； Ludwig van Mises 著名的維也納學派；Herman Kross 經濟史；行銷學：Darrel Lucas and Arnold Corbin, Slomon Fabricant 全國收入分析名家。會計：Arnold W. Johnson and Michael Schriff.
喬伊斯˙奧爾西尼 (Joyce Orsini)
〈在混亂狀態下抑減產品的總檢驗和矯正成本的簡單規則〉（Simple rule to reduce total cost of
inspection and correction of product in state of chaos），1982年美國紐約大學企研所博士論文。可由密西根微縮影片大學（University of Microfilm,
Ann Arbor, 48106）處購得。
喬伊斯•奧爾西尼Joyce
Orsini, “ Simple rule to reduce cost of inspection and correlation of product
in state of chaos,” Ph. D. dissertation, Graduate School of Business
Administration, New York University, 1982.，《簡單的規則，以減少混亂的狀態檢查和產品相關的成本》，博士論文，工商總局，紐約大學，1982年研究生院。
Eitan Zemel, W. Edwards Deming Professor of Quality and
Productivity, NYU Stern
Eitan Zemel
– W. Edwards Deming Professorship in Quality and Productivity
– Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategy and Dean of Business, NYU Shanghai
– Vice Dean of Global and Executive Education, NYU Stern
"By bringing together design students and medical students during their formative educational experiences, our goal is to break down traditional silos in education in order to unlock innovative capacity and create a new approach to best understand and respond to complex problems involving health."
The human element has always been as important to medicine as the scientific side. Design takes this human factor into account by analyzing how healthcare is provided and used and how the behavior of doctors,...
Hospitals nationwide are competing, in part, to promote the idea of patient-centered care, a concept that includes everything from safer and timelier care to patient satisfaction with the level of attention and amenities. The new survey, the researchers say, was designed to uncover how high-performing hospitals get that way.
In a summary of its survey findings, published in the August issue of the journal Medical Care, the Johns Hopkins team concluded that medical staff members and leaders at hospitals that already ranked high on patient experiences of care shared a devotion to consistency, personal and focused interactions with patients, and a culture that demands involvement of all levels of caregivers and services.
"It's not just about getting the physicians involved, or the nurses," says lead study author Hanan Aboumatar, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. "Everyone involved at the hospital, all the way up to top leadership, has to place a high priority on the needs of patients and their families."
For the survey, Aboumatar and her colleagues first identified 169 U.S. hospitals with a "top ranking" or a "most improved" designation based on their scores on the December 2012 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey. The assessment is a national survey designed to measure patient experiences and satisfaction.
The Johns Hopkins team then sent letters to the CEOs of these hospitals, requesting participation in the study, and later anonymous questionnaires to key informants—including medical, nursing, and administrative leaders—at the 53 hospitals that agreed to participate. The team received responses from 138 key informants from 52 of the 53 hospitals.
The participating institutions—in terms of size, teaching status, and geographic location—were a fair representation of the national hospital landscape, in terms of size, focus, and location, Aboumatar says.
At the organizational level, the results of the survey showed 77 percent reported that a commitment to the patient and family was a part of their culture and a key reason for their high performance.
"It may seem a simple thing," Aboumatar notes. "But if leaders and staff members don't prioritize this commitment and link it to the greater mission, it becomes easier to lose sight of it in the hectic pace of hospital care."
At the operations level, responsiveness was a key element, Aboumatar says. A particularly common approach was the practice of proactive nurse rounds, reported in 83 percent of the surveyed hospitals. Proactive rounds have nurses visit patients individually at periodic intervals and ask a set of specific questions related to patients' care. Similarly, leader rounds—during which hospital leaders, including executives, visit patients and staff members to check on concerns or issues—were also common in the top hospitals, with 62 percent of hospitals reporting using such a practice.
Hospitals that were rated highly by their patients also promoted specific activities or behaviors, such as always making eye contact with patients or sitting at patients' bedsides, rather than standing or hovering over them.
"Importantly, we found that similar practices were occurring across the spectrum of the hospitals in our study," Aboumatar says. "It did not matter how many beds they had or whether they were an academic hospital. Also, these didn't need any high-tech resources. All that is required is commitment and a set of principles that any hospital can apply."
In addition to Aboumatar, other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in this study were Bickey Chang, Jad Al Danaf, Mohammad Shaear, Ruth Namuyinga, Sathyanarayanan Elumalai, Jill Marsteller, and Peter Pronovost. The study was funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Introducing 'treeconomics': how street trees can save our cities
As a fight over 11 lime trees in Sheffield escalates, activists in cities all over the world are making the case for urban trees – to cut pollution, increase land value and even make you feel younger
Plane trees in London. In the last seven years, the city has planted 20,000 trees. Photograph: Alamy
Rustlings Road is aptly named. The street in Sheffield is lined with mature lime trees. Their whispering leaves are brilliant green in spring, then cast cool, dappled shade in summer and turn bright yellow in the autumn. But Sheffield city council wants to prune the street, and a dispute about 11 lime trees has turned into a citywide campaign, with more than 10,000 people urging the council to halt its roadside felling. I has also sparked a broader debate about what 36,000 street trees bring to a place that claims to be the most wooded industrial city in western Europe.
This tussle shows how urban trees are both treasured and in jeopardy like never before – beset by disease and spurious insurance claims, and too readily felled by cash-strapped local authorities which only see their potential cost rather than their contribution to climate, public health and even the wealth of a city. Ever since Roger Ulrich discovered in 1984 that hospital patients appear to recover more quickly from surgery in rooms with green views, a growing body of scientific evidence has demonstrated the health – and wealth – benefits of trees in cities.
In Toronto, researchers recently found that people living on tree-lined streetsreported health benefits equivalent to being seven years younger or receiving a $10,000 salary rise. As well as studies revealing benefits from everything from improved mental health to reduced asthma, US scientists have even identified a correlation between an increase in tree-canopy cover and fewer low-weight births. And economic studies show what any estate agent swears by: leafy streets sell houses. Street trees in Portland, Oregon, yielded an increase in house prices of $1.35bn, potentially increasing annual property tax revenues by $15.3m.
Lime tree roots forcing up tarmac. The proposal to fell 11 of them on Rustling Road has sparked a major dispute. Photograph: Alamy
Despite compelling scientific support for urban greenery, the trees on British streets are imperilled by the lack of any government department or national body to look after them (unlike government-owned woodlands, which are managed by the Forestry Commission). Urban trees stand at the mercy of cash-strapped local councils and a hotchpotch of agencies, from housing associations to highway authorities, who may overlook their true value. But as Sheffield residents mount a desperate defence of their mature street trees, some councils and planners seem to have grasped the value of their urban forest.
In Brighton, tree experts from across Europe gathered last month and called for World Heritage Status to be given to one of the city’s less feted attractions – its unique population of mature elm trees, which survived the Dutch elm disease that destroyed most of the species in the 1970s. London mayor Boris Johnson has planted 20,000 street trees in seven years, but this achievement – praised by tree experts – is dwarfed by Toronto’s mayor John Tory, who has planted 40,000 trees since his election victory last December and has promised 3.8m over the next decade.
City trees are now being mapped with new accuracy, showing the abundance of different species that line avenues everywhere from New York and Washington to the London borough of Southwark.
The location of street trees on public land managed by Southwark council. Photograph: OpenStreetMap
In London, an innovative survey will reveal the economic value of the capital’s“urban forest” – its estimated 8m trees. A suite of open-source software developed in the US called i-Tree maps city trees and calculates the financial value of the “ecosystem services” they provide. While street trees are a visible green stamp on a city, 70% of the “urban forest” is found in private gardens and places such as railway embankments, cemeteries and golf courses. i-Tree measures them all and, crucially, calculates tree canopy cover. It’s all then given a hard-headed financial value based on the carbon they store, the air pollution they remove, the rainwater they hold (allowing it to be re-evaporated by the sun rather than disappearing into drains and sewers) and how they ameliorate extreme temperatures. Trees that are close to buildings reduce air conditioning in summer, and even heating bills in winter – small effects that become extremely valuable in a big city.
The software has been deployed in European cities including Edinburgh, Barcelona and Strasbourg. Torbay in Devon was the first British council to trial it: the English Riviera resort famed for its palms discovered that its trees (mostly ash) stored 98,000 tonnes of carbon and removed 50 tonnes of air pollution each year - the equivalent of taking 52,000 family cars off the road. i-Tree showed that Torbay trees’ carbon storage was worth £1.5m, their pollution removal £1.3m, and the cost to replace them would be £280m. These facts helped the council’s tree officer win more funding for planting and maintaining its trees.
Jake Tibbetts, a committee member of the London Tree Officers’ Association, has led i-Tree surveys across London, using volunteers to reduce costs (a survey typically costs £30,000–£50,000 according toTreeconomics, the social enterprise that brought i-Tree to Britain). “One of the good things about trees is that people are passionate about them. If we were surveying street lamps and bollards it would be a lot harder to find volunteers,” says Tibbetts. He was surprised by what the surveys revealed: one of the commonest trees in central London is actually the apple tree, hidden in gardens.
Tibbets says: “i-Tree is a real opportunity to finally put a valuation on London’s tree resource and financial value is something that everybody can understand.” The survey isn’t truly comprehensive – it doesn’t calculate mental or physical health benefits, for instance, or the cultural value of trees – but Tibbetts is hopeful it will raise awareness of the “significant threat” to London’s urban forest. “Insurance claims [for roots causing building subsidence or uneven pavements that lead to accidents] are a large financial risk for local authorities, but for urban forests the main threat is development and complacency,” he says. “We believe we come from a green and pleasant land with lots of trees – when developers remove two trees, we think there are lots more.”
Street trees planted by Washington DC’s District Urban Forest Administation.
London’s i-Tree results will be published this autumn, and will prove that the capital’s trees are a multimillion-pound piece of infrastructure, but they will also show that the city has a problem – its dependance on London plane trees. These majestic giants give great pleasure to visitors to Westminster and the City and perform a vital practical role, too. Tibbetts recorded the temperature on London streets during the recent heatwave, and found that temperatures were 10C lower under the shade of grand planes than in the open street. “That’s going to be really important when temperatures increase with climate change,” says Tibbetts. “Trees are a low-cost way to make the city a comfortable place to live and work.”
According to Kenton Rogers of Treeconomics, no more than 10% of trees on one street should be of the same species. A Treeconomics survey found that 30% of all trees in London Victoria’s business improvement district were London planes, and because they are so big, they perform 60% of the ecosystem services in Victoria. “With climate change and the globalisation of pests and diseases,London is a bit more vulnerable than somewhere with a more diverse treescape,” says Rogers.
Disease is perhaps the most terrifying threat to London planes. A wilt disease has struck thousands of mature trees in France, and has now spread as far north as Lille. If it crosses the Channel, it would change the capital perhaps as dramatically as the blitz. But if it doesn’t, ageing plane trees will still have to be replaced. Rogers’ study of Victoria found that most were being substituted with species that won’t grow as large, and will never perform the valuable services that big planes do.
Plane trees might be London’s most famous tree, but the city’s most common species is the apple tree, mainly hidden in gardens. Photograph: Robert Hardi/REX Shutterstock/Robert Hardi/REX Shutterstock
Keith Sacre of Barcham Trees, the largest container tree nursery in Europe, supplying more than 60,000 each year, says the standard street trees they sell to London boroughs are 3.5m high with a 14cm girth. He calculates that to replicate the leaf area of just one mature plane tree on the Embankment, 60 new trees would have to be planted. “One-for-one replacement is mad,” he says. “Planting has got to be slow, steady, planned and resourced. There has to be a long-term commitment to recognising trees as the asset that they are.”
Unfortunately, the replacement of mature trees with dainty ornamental species is a trend across many cities, creating “lollipop landscapes” according to Mark Johnston, author of Trees in Towns and Cities. “Local authorities are cutting back on their spending on tree maintenance and management so tree officers are reluctant to put in large trees. They’ll put in little lollipop trees that don’t contribute much to the landscape or deliver much in terms of ecosystem services.”
This, say residents of Sheffield, is exactly what is happening in their city. Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam, says the removal of street trees is the consequence of nearly a decade of austerity. “Big metropolitan districts have been seriously disadvantaged by the coalition and the current government reducing the amount of money they get per capita. The solution to really severe cuts has been public-private partnerships,” he argues. In Sheffield, the council signed a 25-year PFI contract with Amey in 2012 to manage and improve its roads, including greenery. Rotherham and other campaigners argue that Amey’s removal of mature urban trees is because it’s the cheapest option, minimising expensive pruning costs and damage to pavements. But requests for information about the costs of tree removal have been frustrated by “commercial confidentiality” cited by the council and its contractors. “Without any public consultation or awareness, we’ve somehow got locked into this situation where there’s a 25-year agreement about our green infrastructure in which local people have no say,” says Rotherham.
‘It’s a myth that removing mature trees is the cheapest option’ ... trees in the London borough of Barnet. Photograph: Karen Robinson
Terry Fox, cabinet member for the environment and transport at Sheffield city council, says it is a “myth” that removing mature trees is the cheapest option. The council says cannot reveal the comparative cost of removal and maintenance because it simply pays an annual charge for all services delivered under the contract, of which tree maintenance is one. “Sheffield is the greenest city in the UK, with more than two million trees – four for every person. This is something we are all very proud of. To help preserve our green status we have also, this year alone, planted 50,000 trees, creating 17 new woodlands,” says Fox in a statement. “The removal of any tree is always a last resort and we look at all viable options before removal is considered.”
In 2007, a survey suggested that 75% of Sheffield’s roadside trees were approaching the end of their natural life. The council’s tree-management policy is to remove and replace roadside trees that are dangerous, dead, dying, diseasedand damaging to the road or pavement, or cause “discrimination”. By this, the council means where roots damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled or partially sighted residents. On Rustlings Road, however, campaigners filmed two mobility scooters travelling side-by-side, safely passing along the pavement below the “discriminatory” trees earmarked for destruction. “We’ve got a couple of “Ds” as well”, says local resident Louise Wilcockson. “We think the council’s response is disproportionate and they can use some professional discretion over the ‘dangerous’ trees.”
Sheffield city council has now established a “tree forum” for experts and residents to discuss plans for a city tree strategy next March. “We’re delighted, but how many trees will be cut down before then?” says Wilcockson, who is sceptical about the forum. As Fox puts it in his statement, it is “to enable the public to better understand our approach to managing the city’s street trees”. He confirms that the council is still planning to remove the 11 limes on Rustlings Road, and will replace these and plant nine additional trees on the street.
“This is not a parochial issue, it’s a huge issue about privatising local authority services,” says Rotherham, who has been contacted by residents in Birmingham, Southampton and Leicester also concerned about councils removing mature trees. “In Sheffield, the cost is [to] the tree resource, the value of Sheffield PLC, and the local people who are really, really upset. We shouldn’t belittle that - we know that trees make people happier and healthier.”
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The “quality control group” that tests food storage containers in West Yellowstone, Mont., doesn’t get much reimbursement for its work.
Eight grizzly bears at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center play a role in testing food storage and garbage containers destined for outdoor use in bear country.
