Oregon's Rural Technology Access and Employment Development Project...
    This program evolved from a model Community Public Broadcasting staff and engineers created for a direct mail marketing and outreach campaign. The success of any effort to expand our communication services and broadcast network to rural communities throughout Oregon would depend on CPB knowing everything about the communities we plan to serve and selecting areas based on long term realistic goals.
    Because of a lack of qualified manpower in our primary markets, we designed two Windows based systems that when matched with selected Sony Cameras, provides a complete turn key Internet based video production and broadcast system. This allows our support staff to deliver video conference, video production and broadcast services, remotely to any location in the state with access to a consumer level broadband Internet connection. We created a low bandwidth video communications network to provide the secure and stable com-link required by the high level of training and support we offer every client. All systems are built by ASI Partners with a 3 year parts and labor warrenty, serviced out of their Beaverton, Oregon facility.
    Our first systems had a cost of $5500 and $6500 plus any charges for installation. Today the basic system offered through the project has the same warrenty serviced by ASI Partners but upgraded to an AMD Quad Core computer with Windows 7 operating system. The new system lists for $1650 and can be installed and operated by local personel with the skill sets needed to hang a wall clock or operate a TV's remote control. 
   Through agreements with Video Conference & Communication Network service providers we have been able to integrate our remote operation and support features in virtually any network system which greatly expand the menue of services we offer.
    The Rural Technology Access and Employment Development Project now offers the qualified manpower and resources to provide the included list of services our clients can use to identify the Internet based technologies that can be introduced locally and used as a foundation to build long term economic and employment development strategies for the clients unique location and area. (The Rural Technology Access and Employment Development Project...            Visit the Project Website)
Features include the following:
I. Community Public Broadcasting's Internet Broadcast Service packages and basic rate card. For the production and Internet broadcast of local education, government and community programing along with our Video Streaming/Multi-Media Web Hosting Service that provides live and on demand Internet access to local government meetings, community programs and events. Content and video is archived and stored on the clients (on-site) dedicated storage server or the client can opt to rent space on the CPB's storage system/server network. As decided and outlined in the clients managed services agreement.
II. Introduction to the Video Conference/Communication Service with enhanced features for the delivery and management of CPB and Client based services for municipal, county, state and federal government bodies and agencies located in the client's service area. Packaged Services include complete training and support program with a project history, time frame and schedule designed to address all needs identified and outlined in the clients profile and to complete the integration of the system into the client's day to day business operations.
Operation and Support Services include the following:
1. A complete community/area needs assesment that includes a survey of all Internet infrastructure resources available locally.
2. Planning and support services required to organize local stake holders and complete the process with a master plan that identifies each phase of the project with starting points along with an accounting of all resources required to launch, manage and complete every phase of the project according to the assembly order outlined in the local strategies section.
3. Every client recieves a complete training, technical support and operations program created from each client's community profile and needs assesments conducted when the client signed on to participate in the project.
Initial services begin with the following:
4. Each client is assigned a dedicated support engineer who is responcible for providing an ongiong contact schedule to keep the CPB staff updated on the client's choice of projects along with regular progress reports. This keeps all parties up to date and prepared to take advantage any opportunities that may develop for new applications that will support and grow with the client's long term goals and master plan.
5. Funding resources and grant writing services. The Project monitors several grant and funding sources and offers consultation and grant writing support for customers needing assistance with these programs. State and local government and non-profit groups—from emergency services to health, agriculture to education—are eligible to apply for funding to implement voice, video, and data communications solutions.
Priority applications common to all rural service areas in Oregon:
I. The Rural Education Support Network:
    This Community Public Broadcasting program is in it's 5th year of development at Tillamook High School and was created to provide rural school districts with the resources, tools and support network needed to build a Media Arts and Science program or enhance existing Math, Science, language and Business programs with new Technologies. The data base is scheduled to be on-line before the start of the school in September of 2011.
    Lesson plans contributed by media and teaching professionals use a students interest in the Media Sciences to improve their comprhension, performance and GPA's in the subjucts of math, science, grammer and English. The program and support network offers options and solutions that can be adapted to the "Low or No" budget scenarios common to most rural school districts in the country and service areas that fall below federal poverty levels.
    This program uses the Video Conference & Communications Network Service to provides the remote support and access needed to get maximum use and student benefit from the distance learning features available with the system. This technology can also be used to accomodate the special needs of disabled students, teachers and their volunteer aids. This data base network also provides full time (24/7) on-line student and instructor support. This is a great asset when teaching subjects as diversified as "Electronic News Gathering For Broadcast Reporting" to Documentary Production Techniques for film, television and Internet. (This program has increased the percentage of students fast tracked for for university, community college or film school after graduation from 20% to over 50% in less than the 5 years this program has been offered.)
II. Telemedecine Applications for rural Oregon  communities:
    The Tech Project uses a low bandwidth Video Conference & Communication Network to provide the secure and stable support services required for the remote operation of all system features along with the delivery of a variety of health care service applications many of which are waiting to be tested and adapted for the field trials and provider certifications.
    The Video Conference Services used with CPB's system and networks provides the remote access required to connect the network support engineer with the patient and the appropriate care provider performing the procedures. Oregon  has several MDs working with   remotely operated robotic systems  in trials  to connect the trama and stroke specialists with emergency room patients sometime hundreds of miles  from the Doctors location.
    CPB has worked with companies like Microsoft, Polycom, Tanberg, and Sony evaluating systems, experimenting with new procedures and scenarios to develop more applications for this growing segment of the health care industry. that will provide dramatic savings in cost of service while improving access and overall quality of care for the patients.
III. Professional Technical Support And Operations Staff:
    CPB trained support Engineers asigned to a specific area and client base to work with local governments, school districts, elected officials, resident stakeholders and associated business communities to identify the cost benefits and economic opportunities unique to a community's Rural Location and their Economic Development goals. This information is used to customise the Client's resources and system to reduce costs and improve access to the Next Generation of Communication and Internet Based Technologies while adapting to this hi-tech 21st century.

Enabling the Integrated Digital Hospital:
    Healthcare providers are challenged every day to enhance quality of care, optimize workflows, and improve access to services. IT can play a significant role in reaching these goals, including empowering providers with real-time access to digitized information to improve clinical decision making.
    Digital technologies are proving to be essential tools for improving access to information-current orders, medical images, patient histories, prescriptions, physician orders, and other vital data across the healthcare system.
    But deploying electronic medical records and other digital health technologies requires much more than just hardware and software. Transitioning to an integrated digital hospital requires interoperable, standards-based digital technologies along with the comprehensive solutions, careful planning, and significant culture change.
    Intel works with healthcare providers worldwide to meet these challenges. Internet based communication technologies allow digital information to be shared securely across the healthcare ecosystem: hospitals and clinics, patients, payors, biopharma companies, and other members of the healthcare community. Collaborating with healthcare leaders and clinicians around the world, we listen to understand unmet IT needs, match information systems to business objectives, and customize solutions and platforms for healthcare's unique needs. What we've learned helps our healthcare customers more effectively link people, processes, and information to:
•Improve clinical decision-making and quality of care
•Increase patient safety
•Reduce costs
•Improve access to healthcare
•Enhance workflow, productivity, and operational efficiencies
Mobility:
    In busy hospitals and clinics, people, and equipment are constantly in motion. But the information needed for high-quality patient care does not move as easily. Too often, data is acquired manually, locked up in paper charts and legacy applications, and accessible only at centralized workstations. The consequences range from misplaced supplies to medical errors.
    Intel is working with healthcare leaders and clinicians around the world on innovative mobile point-of-care solutions that deliver critical data securely to the point of care or decision. From wireless infrastructure to mobilized applications, to mobile computing platforms designed for healthcare needs, we help hospitals and clinics free workflows from physical boundaries, enhancing quality of care, easing workloads, and improving workflow.
    Mobile solutions can automate and improve routine patient information collection and order lifecycle management, eliminating manual entry processes and reducing margin for errors. Clinicians can record medical information, order tests, and prescribe medication at the bedside or exam room. Data is posted into the electronic medical record and made available immediately and securely to the patient's healthcare team. Clinicians save steps and effort and avoid the risks of delays and misinterpretation from illegible handwriting.
    By enabling secure access to the latest medical and patient data, mobile point-of-care solutions can help clinicians deliver higher quality, more efficient care. Clinicians can collaborate efficiently and make fact-based decisions, supported by more accurate, timely, and comprehensive patient data and access to evidence-based treatment guidelines.
Improving Care, Optimizing Workflow:
    Mobile solutions for vital tasks such as medication management and order lifecycle management can help optimize workflow. When physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers have instant access to the latest information, and in a legible format, orders can be processed more quickly. Updated information can be available instantly and securely to everyone who can use it to improve care. This can increase clinician productivity, reduce wasted efforts, and enable faster time to treatment.
    Mobile technologies such as location-aware, resource-tracking systems can dramatically improve the use of scarce healthcare resources—everything from specialized personnel, to beds, operating theaters, and medical equipment. Equipment can be tracked as it moves around the hospital for more accurate scheduling, inventory control, and faster patient throughput. Work flows more smoothly, with fewer delays, less stress, and greater efficiency, which ultimately can enable providers to deliver better care to more people.
Healthcare in Leadership:
    Healthcare executives have unique responsibilities. More than perhaps any industry today, they have unprecedented opportunities to use digital technologies to create meaningful change—to increase human health and well-being, improve the productivity and job satisfaction of highly-skilled professionals, and enhance the functioning of highly complex organizational systems.

Oregon embraces Intel, but in New Mexico environmental doubts persist...
    Intel's manufacturing campus near Hillsboro Stadium is so enormous that, on frosty mornings, water vapor from its cooling towers dusts something like snow on roads and rooftops for a mile around. The factories swallow 3.7 million of gallons of water a day and then spit most of it back into the city's water-treatment system, which ultimately feeds into the Tualatin River.
    Because Intel makes its chips inside clean rooms, where sophisticated filters eliminate even microscopic contamination, it might appear the semiconductor industry is equally pristine. In fact, computer chips are made with potentially hazardous metals and toxic chemicals. But despite Intel's scale and those possible perils, Oregon seems at peace with the tech giant as the company prepares a multibillion-dollar expansion of its Ronler Acres campus.
    Not so in New Mexico, where suspicion and accusations have dogged Intel for more than two decades. Residents near Intel's factory outside Albuquerque, a facility identical in many ways to its Oregon operations, complain that Intel emissions poison their air. They blame Fab 11X for everything from bad smells to fatal lung diseases, and their concerns are attracting scrutiny from federal regulators.
    Intel concedes it has been ineffective in addressing fears in New Mexico. But though it acknowledges that it may have contributed to an atmosphere of mistrust, Intel is emphatic that it has done nothing to make the atmosphere unsafe. And few complaints have surfaced in Oregon. "We are extremely proud of our EHS -- environmental, health and safety -- results," said Todd Brady, Intel's global environmental manager. Tremendous volumes of water wash each layer clean. Other steps implant new properties and insulating materials.
    The process employs a rogues' gallery of metals, acids, flammable gases and, in regulatory terms, other "acute health hazards." Acids must be neutralized before they return to the water system. Atmospheric emissions pass through "scrubbers" designed to absorb airborne chemicals in water. Solid waste is taken away for recycling or disposal.
    Intel's new Hillsboro factory, dubbed D1X, will prepare the company for classes of technology still on the drawing board that employ new tools, production techniques and designs. It almost certainly will be the largest capital project in Oregon's history, with a price tag that could reach $4 billion. Intel will summon thousands of workers to build the factory, called a fab in industry parlance. Construction will run five, six or seven days a week, starting early in the morning and sometimes running late into the night.

Solar power panels  for Ms. Ruto's hut in Kiptusuri, Kenya, improves the quality of life for her entire  village...
Submitted By Joel Gallob.
    Solar power for Ms. Ruto's hut in Kiptusuri, Kenya, means her toddlers no longer risk burns from a smoky kerosene lamp. Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far fromKenya's electric grid. Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.
    That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches. "My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things," Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.
    As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role. Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers' grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs - and the $20 she used to spend on travel. In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems. "You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines," said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. "Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets."
    The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal. There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations. But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group's private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. "It's a phenomenon that's sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed," Mr. Younger said.
    With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. "You're seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts," Mr. Younger said. In Africa, nascent markets for the systems have sprung up in Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana as well as in Kenya, said Francis Hillman, an energy entrepreneur who recently shifted his Eritrea-based business, Phaesun Asmara, from large solar projects financed by nongovernmental organizations to a greater emphasis on tiny rooftop systems. In addition to these small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and "mini" hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village.
    Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread. "The big problem for us now is there is no business model yet," said John Maina, executive coordinator of Sustainable Community Development Services, or Scode, a nongovernmental organization based in Nakuru, Kenya, that is devoted to bringing power to rural areas. Just a few years ago, Mr. Maina said, "solar lights" were merely basic lanterns, dim and unreliable. "Finally, these products exist, people are asking for them and are willing to pay," he said. "But we can't get supply." He said small African organizations like his do not have the purchasing power or connections to place bulk orders themselves from distant manufacturers, forcing them to scramble for items each time a shipment happens to come into the country.

Is Technology leaving it's mark on society and forever changing the way we practice medicine in America today...
By Jeffrey Stevens
    Technology has allways left it's mark and forever changed the world and society that created it. But in the computer driven Internet world of the 21st century it is hi-tech greed we need to guard against if we're to avoid the insanity that almost destroyed the nation's major private, government and financial institutions. Our day to day world is constantly evolving with new ways to live driven by technologies we create. No where is technology showing it's growing impact more than America's Health Care system and the practice of medicine as we know it in the industrial world today.
    Weather the Internet age improves access and quality of health care service remians to be seen. But it will make little difference if we are not educated about the potential to be gained from advances in technology and prepared to protect these benefits from special interests that only see progress as new profit center to exploit.
    The Oregon Nation in association with The Boomer Nation.Org website and Community Public Broadcasting began this series of reports to accompany the launch of our flagship Internet Television channel, "The Boomer Nation", located at this web address at, http://www.livestream.com/theboomernation and it's sister website at, http://www.theboomernation.org. These video streaming/multi-media web sites provide a great format that uses both text and video to address these hot button subjects and issues for our target audiance the boomer seniors. It also gives viewers a timeline and brief history of the issues covered and the sources used.
    Community Public Broadcasting operates several multi-media websites and an Internet Television Network, all created to serve the news, information and interactive programming needs of our country's next generation of senior citizens. This enables us to provide ongoing interactive web cast reports with expert guests and viewer participation on "The Boomer Nation Live" weekly Internet TV program. This joint venture will let us address the issues of technology, health care, long term care, the new supportive community residential service models, social security, the Insurance industry, the big banks, etc. Readers can see this list of major issues that are approaching critical mass and share two very major points in common.
    First, these issues negatively impact all Boomer seniors, and second, we have to act now to implement solutions, as the time is past for temporary fixes. Because of the complexity of of the issues and the huge profit this represents for business special interest we instituted an open "Viewer access/Viewer responce" policy that will let audiance members set us straight if we publish or broadcast a feature report without the facts to support the story. We also wanted viewers to know none of the CPB staff and volunteers have any agendas or incentives beyond providing our viewers with honest news and information based on the facts as we find them.
    We report on complex subjects like technology and health care because we can present it in laymen's terms, leaving our viewers more knowlegeble and better able to make decisions on a subject or issue. The featured reports and reference materials that appear in the Oregon Nation will also provide a timeline that helps track a featured report or story. This can also help protect the public's interest in what are generally hi impact and far reaching decisions often dealing with public resources once created, funded and operated for the public's bennefit but now live under the control of invisible shareholders who's only goals are to generate every penny of profit possible regardless of the social impact of their actions.
    I accepted this ongoing assignment because (as several of my board members pointed out) I was uniquely qualified for this job, starting with my childhood where the 2 most influential family members in my life during these developing years had serious disabilities but through example taught me how to find strength in this challenge through education and the ability to adapt to one's circumstance. After an accident in 1989 left me totally and perminently disabled I decided I wasn't going to just sit and veg my life away and began looking for ways to restart my media career and give something back to the society that has taken care of me for almost 22 years now. For the last 20 years I have been an active advocate for senior and disabled issues and rights. Over 10 years of that service has been in an official capacity as a member of the Oregon's Disability Advisory Council.
    I was asked by the staff at my local state Disability Services office in 1992 and served for 5 1/2 years as a member of the Cascades West COG Disability Advisory Council representing the disabled residents of Lincoln County. For the last 3 1/2 years I have served as a member of the Northwest Disability Advisory Council representing the disabled residents of Tillamook County. This expirience along with my professional background (Founder & CEO of Community Public Broadcasting)has given me a unique insite into the complex challeges seniors face today. It has also given me one heck of a time trying to make sence out of a system of government designed to self destruct before implementing the most obvious and simple of cost saving ideas and solutions.
    In the next 6 issues of the Oregon Nation.Org and The Boomer Nation.Org multi-media web sites (and in future programs of "The Boomer Nation Live" the CPB produced Interactive Internet Television Show) our staff will take an indepth look at the future of the technologies that will most impact medicine and health care in the nation. Will also get a look at our future as seen through eyes of industry visionaries such as Google, Microsoft and Intel to name just a few. The future of health care has arrived and it's sitting in store rooms waiting for Intel and other companies to decide where the money is in this very political issue.
    We'll look at the inovative hardware and software that could be out in the field testing new applications and procedures. When certified these new hi-tech advances could cut the patient cost for delivered services by at least 40% to as much as 85%. All depending on our country's political will to truely reform the nations health care system and the insurance industry that has controlled it into ruin for the last 40 years. Over the next decade hi-tech inovations will be used to deliver dozens of health care services and procedures while creating hundreds of thousands new jobs and careers in health care and it's related industries.
    Over the next year we will be exploring the many different areas of our day to day lives lives technology will impact, affecting the quality of life todays senior citizens must enjoy during their twilight or "golden years" as that very small segment of our society (3%) like to refer to this time in life. Those very lucky 3%er's who acidentally made fortunes from all the retiment accounts their accomplises from the Wall Street Investment banks stole from our country's newest gneration of seniors, the Boomer Nation. We'll be talking with a number of amazing Boomers, who inspite of having a lifetime of retirement savings reduced to just their Social Security (which was supposed to be the sole purpose and function of the IRA their broker sold them) as their protection from living the rest of their lives with a fixed poverty level retirement income of Social Security, plus some Foodstamps, if lucky. But the Boomers are amazing people with incredibly positive attitudes and very little thought for themselves.
    14 months ago Oregon Nation and CPB staff interviewed over 60 Boomer Nation seniors, all had lost their IRA's etc. Only one of our interviewee's complained about their personal situation, (no world cruises, had to sell all realestate except the Florida beach front home, boo hoo hoo.) The rest just wanted to leave more for the younger generations we will leave behind to inherit the fruits of our labors.
    It must be living through the 60's and our hippie expiriences that lets about 45% of us Boomers navigate this economic "depression" with no personal pain inspite of the incredible financial burden the 3%er's greed created for the rest of us endure. By our calculation the biggest worries over 90% of the Boomers interviewed shared was about the legacy we're leaving behind. Will our grandchildren enjoy the same opportunities as our children had. Access to an education and employment that will let them prosper.
     Will we leave the planet a better place than we found it when we arrived? Only time will tell, but I'm optimistic. But be sure to check our broadcast schedule for the Boomer Nation Live and special webcast events that address these and related issues of concern to Boomers. We'll visit with viewers and experts to find out what makes this generation tic and what they want out of life in these end times. Or as an artist/musician friend of mine put it. We're all going to finish our last scene in this brilliant movie, a classic masterpiece that featured a cast of over 500 million of the most educated, talented, gifted and often most stoned generations to walk the planet. Be sure to join us for what should be a fun ride.

Intel Expands Access To Health Care Guide...

         Intel's History Of Toxic Chemical Release In Corrales... Raises Doubt About Oregon Opperations...
    Since 1982, when Intel began operations in a small, modern-looking building on the mesa overlooking the Rio Grande between Corrales and Rio Rancho until 1992, few residents of either community paid much attention. The Intel name was known, of course, so there was some pride in the fact that the advanced, high-tech firm had located here. In those early days, the only vague concern was for potential contamination of domestic wells that served each home in the still largely agricultural Corrales Valley below Intel. The microchip manufacturer was, after all, responsible for at least one "Super Fund" clean-up site in Silicon Valley.
    In the late 1980s, Intel began to expand its Rio Rancho operations using industrial revenue bonds sponsored by county government. In 1993 residents began to wonder if there was a connection between their illnesses and disorders and possible air pollution from Intel. A small ad in the local newspaper in the summer of 1993 urged anyone who was tired of exposure to Intel's fumes to come to a Village Council meeting. The resulting turnout was startling; names and phone numbers were exchanged and Corrales Residents for Clean Air was formed. Two months later, its scope and name were expanded to Corrales Residents for Clean Air and Water (CRCAW).
    In August 1993, the following mission statement was adopted: "Our mission is to educate the community on 'Right to Know' issues, to encourage Intel to be a good corporate neighbor by releasing information to the public and by adopting first-class, state-of-the-art emissions controls in the short run and reduction and/or substitution of toxic chemicals in the long run."