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Was a very simple process. Thank you. I will be sending friends and family!
Audrey was welcoming and helpful from the beginning, she put us at ease and answered all our questions.
We were quite impressed with TSG. It was as smooth transaction. Heard great things about TSG from Audrey.
The service was great! Friendly, efficient and helpful. Thank you! :)
Great service! In and out with (2) vehicles quickly :) Great deals!!
Probably one of the best car buying experiences I've had (used or new) .... and I buy a car about every two years. Audrey is personable and an absolute pleasure to work with. I'm impressed all the way around.
Very helpful and non-pressuring. Very pleasant and helpful. I enjoyed that I didn't feel like a number but a person. Awesome car buying experience. Would recommend Audrey and TSG to everyone.
Great service! One of the best vehicle purchases I ever had!
Buying a car from TSG was the most amazing and painless experience. Audrey was amazing and helpful. The next time I need to buy I will be coming to Audrey again.
Our sales person was polite and knowledgeable! Very low pressure environment. Overall a good experience.
Easy, stress free interactions with the staff. I did not feel pushed or urged to make an decisions. I feel like I was given a good fair deal and was glad TSG was flexible and caring.
Audrey was a pleasure to work with.
We appreciate the friendly, low-pressure atmosphere. Doug has helped us buy 2 cars, taking as much time as we needed to find the right car and working with us to figure out the best terms for us. Thank you!
Doug was very good to work with. Made the process easy! Thanks Doug!
Great no pressure service. Friendly sales people with great attitudes.
Doug presented himself and represented TSG well and also did right by us. We will recommend him to our friends!
Wonderful services Audrey was very willing to work with me and John was also a very big help I will continue to use TSG for future needs.
I walked in and was greeted immediately by Audrey Teachout. She was quick and pleasant. She answered all my questions and concerns. Audrey made my experience easy, painless, and fun. I just want to thank you for your assistance with my car purchase. I will be recommending TSG and Audrey to friends and family.
Lincoln was incredible! I never felt pressured towards anything that was not what I wanted. We made sure that we saw several choices and made me feel confident in the decision that I made and I'm extremely grateful. Most of the time you hear that car salesmen aren't honest but I've never felt anything but honesty from him. Thank you so much!!!
Audrey was really helpful at assisting me with test driving and choose the right car. She's very personable and made my experience here at TSG amazing!
So---came in today- not planning to buy a vehicle, just wanted to test drive a certain model. We were so pleased with the offer we received on that vehicle - we bought it! Lincoln has a very good personality, sense of humor, is knowledgeable and we felt very confident purchasing from him. Very pleased with the entire staff who serviced us. We will be happy to recommend TSG Auto and Lincoln to our friends and family.
Great place to buy a car. Staff was very helpful, and went above and beyond to help!
Very knowledgeable and honest. Very helpful. Very happy with my service. Highly recommend Audrey.
I'm back. This will mark my third purchase from TSGAUTO. Great staff! Easy to work with. Doug was very helpful and respectful!
Doug did a fabulous job explaining the vehicle, options, history, and the transaction was fairly short!
Doug was very helpful and professional.
I talked with a nice man named Doug. He let us look and drive all the cars we wanted to see. The golf cart ride to the cars were fun!
Enjoyed the experience and would tell others about the experience. Thanks you! Thanks Doug!
It was a good experience!
Bob really helped us find a truck. He was informative and allowed us room to look and decide. We appreciate Bob's friendliness especially. We would go back to TSGAUTO and would ask for Bob by name. Thanks!
Ask for James! TSGAUTO has sold us two cars and always give us top service and great deal. We will be back, again and again. We trust them.
Great experience with Lincoln today!! He, and Kenny put extra effort in getting me into a monthly payment I was pleased with for the car that was perfect for me! Thank you guys!! I will be back!!
Respectful kind personnel, enthusiastically helping community.
It was really easy to buy a car.
Doug and Jeff worked together to get me the best deal possible. Both of them were accommodating and helpful, I will definitely be a returning customer with TSG Auto!
Great experience! Found the perfect car for my son.
Lincoln was very helpful and friendly we knew what we were looking for and he helped us find exactly that. Would definitely recommend buying from here.
Doug was very helpful, courteous, and professional. I greatly appreciate his helping me with my purchase of a Lexus 470! Trails, here I come!
We had a great experience at TSG Auto. Lincoln was very friendly and easy to work with. They made our car buying experience very easy and enjoyable. We left with a great car for a great deal.
Absolutely loved my experience. Lincoln is my favorite salesman I've dealt with. No haggle and nothing bad to say.
James did a great job for us. We were in 3 or 4 different times to find just what we are looking for. We will use him again!
Had a great experience with Lincoln. It was fast and easy. I would recommend TSG to anyone.
Lincoln was easy going and easy to work with. He did not give me the run around on price. And made a fair deal. I would recommend to a friend!!
I purchased a Ford Escape from TSG and was very happy with the overall experience. The experience was low pressure and Bob was great. The TSG experience is a nice change from other dealers!
James was very responsive on the phone and made the experience as painless as possible! Great customer service through the whole process.
Bob was great! No pressure and I got the truck I wanted!
This is the 2nd vehicle we have purchased from TSGAUTO. The sales and finance teams have been great to work with, and the service team (on the first vehicle) as well! This is the kind of dealer you can have a relationship with. P.S: Jay is the BOMB-DIGGIDY.
Very pleasant and helpful experience working to find a car through Kirk and James. There was no hassle or pressure and all information I needed seemed to be up front and questions I had they answered thoroughly.
James was very helpful and friendly. TSG is a great place to buy from!
Relatively painless experience w/ Lincoln at TSG. I had researched a couple different Tacoma's for sale in Denver, and TSG was my second -and final- step. The truck looked even better in person than online and the test drive went very well. If I have any complaint, its that one of their two workers in the financial dept. was home sick and that aspect took quite a while but it was understandable under the circumstances.
Bob was incredibly helpful with my first car purchase and was willing to spend as much time as we needed finding exactly what we needed. I will definitely recommend Bob and TSG to anyone looking for a great deal on a used car.
Lincoln did an amazing job of getting is exactly what we were looking for. He was quick but gave all the information we needed and didn't hold back on anything. Another thing I loved about Lincoln was he made us feel super comfortable through the whole day! I would so recommend Lincoln Pope. He also took us to lunch so, so, so nice!
Lincoln Pope made this entire process easy and enjoyable from the first inquiry to the signing of the papers. His expertise and experience put my mind to ease and TSG'S policy of upfront and transparent business practices is a breath of fresh air. Not only would I buy from Mr. Pope and TSG AUTO again, but I will also refer friends to this business as well.
My husband and I came in with a truck in mind and Bob led us right to it! We ended up test driving a couple more and Bob was great! He was very particular with our needs. He was a wonderful sales person and let us look around for quit a while. He was never pushy like most sales people are!
Bob was very helpful. He showed me 3 different cars. I found one that's a perfect fit for me! Very pleasant experience! Thanks Bob for all your help!
Nice service, quick and easy. The car that i purchased looks nice, clean. Lincoln was friendly and trustful, provided good customer service.
Great Dealership very understanding and helpful. Easy to talk to, James was great and easy to talk too, and I got what I was looking for.
Wonderful experience, quick processing, staff stayed late. We were not over sold and will definitely shop here again. Got a screaming deal! Thank you James
Smooth Process!! Thank you Bob for the professional transaction.
Bob was fantastic. He never made us feel pressured and wanted us to walk away happy. This was a great car buying experience.
James was great to work with. He is honest, direct and made the experience enjoyable.
Great buying experience, Lincoln was very quick to respond to all my inquiries, questions on line, over the phone and via text. He was very trust worthy and explained every thing well. I would recommend TSG Auto to friends and family.
Mr. James was completely cooperative and extremely helpful when asked to help me purchase a car. He took extreme measures to make sure that we were satisfied. Wonderful customers service and great attention to detail. I would recommend working with James and TSG Auto again. Give this man some recognition for the job he's done today.
Positive experience overall. Appreciate James accommodating our schedule and coming in on his day off. John in finance( Sales Manager) was very helpful, knowledgeable and took great care to ensure we understood the process. Thank you Marianne and Matt.
TSG has been great! Bob is a great guy with a big heart he truly cared for us. We feel all of our needs were exceeded at a great price. This is our second truck through this dealership, with both experiences have been wonderful. We are very happy with our new truck. I look forward to doing any future business. Thank you again.
James was very helpful in the whole process of the buying our vehicle.
The staff at TSG Auto was great. Lincoln was my sales guy, he was friendly and did not pressure me. In addition Jay was awesome in showing me my financing options. TSG is a reasonable dealer. I'd refer them to the public.
Lincoln is so great. I returned a year later to purchase a new car after the original sale was damaged with hail. He got me where I needed and was sensitive to my situation. Way to go Lincoln.
Fast, Friendly Service, No games. Bob showed vehicles with clear and honest intentions to sell a quality vehicle.
We were met right away by a very helpful salesman, Bob. My mother was looking at an Acura MDX. We test drove it and we were very happy with the service that we got. We decided to purchase it. Bob and the finance team worked well and very hard to get to where I needed to be. I would come back in a heart beat and refer any one I know.
Bob was helpful and considerate of our concerns and needs. Took the time to be helpful and address our needs and comfort level buying a vehicle.
James was helpful, courteous and a "no pressure " salesman. We have bought several cars there and will again in the future.
My son and I worked with James and had a great experience. Everyone was very nice and accommodating through our buying experience.
Bob was very easy to work with. Very responsive and courteous starting at the time of inquiry. We appreciate Bob making this process hassle free.
James was my salesman, nice guy and will buy another vehicle here in the future. Also will strongly recommend to friends and family.
We had a great experience at TSG Auto. Lincoln was so helpful throughout the entire buying process. We would definitely purchase from tsgauto.com and work with Lincoln again.
Bob was very easy going and a pleasure to work with. I had a couple issues trying to come in to look at the car I wanted, and Bob made a great effort to coordinate a time that worked for us both. This was my first car purchase and Bob made the experience quick and painless. I was never pushed towards making the purchase immediately and let me decide when I felt ready.
Lincoln was easy to work with. Straight forward and I would recommend him and TSG Auto to friends and family.
Best car sales experience I've had. No complaints, no frustrations. Every thing was straight forward. I consider TSG Auto the standard of the Industry. James was a great guy to work with. Very friendly and very professional. I would request him again when I come in.
James was great!
Very friendly and straight forward sales people. Lincoln showed us exactly what we were looking for and he didn't try to over sell. Great experience, Thank you Lincoln!
James was a good Salesman allowing us to view the pick up without pressure. He explained the process very well, and helped close the deal.
As a first time buyer Bob and TSG Auto went above and beyond to reach my needs and got me out the door happy and feeling great. # live outdoors
Came in, looking for a specific vehicle we saw online. Spoke to Bob that came in on his day off to finish the deal, Bob was straight forward with every part of the process and we completed the whole deal just under two hours on a Wednesday night, This was the only night that we had free all week. If you want someone who will take care of you, the right way. See Bob
Lincoln Pope was very friendly and knowledgeable salesman. He treated me and my family with utmost respect and dignity. I am certainly bringing my oldest Son here next year for his first car. Thank You Lincoln!
Searched for what we wanted online and found all the specs on Carfax. Called and talked to Lincoln and made arrangements to meet us early to check the truck out. He was very knowledgeable and friendly, very accommodating staff all around. Everything worked out great,
This is our third time coming back to TSG, to work with Lincoln. We appreciate his low pressure, and laid back style of helping us find the vehicle that matches our needs., lifestyle, and budget. We will likely return in the future as the inventory and service are a match for our needs.
Bob was great to deal with, excellent value and price on the truck, I purchased. Thanks
It was a pleasure working with Bob. Made the process easy going and loved that he wasn't pushy. Would definitely come back and purchase another vehicle through TSG Auto.
Dean, Did an awesome job. Very Friendly
Sales-Lincoln Pope- took the time to call me and help with information of a truck. One of the only salesmen to listen to what I needed and follow through. Thank You, Lee
TSG Auto is awesome. Lincoln Pope answered all of questions and did research if he didn't immediately know, I received great service and really felt they wanted me to be happy with the vehicle of my choice. They have a earned a life long customer in me. Would recommend them to anyone looking to purchase a used vehicle. Truly, Jason D
Great car , good price, and friendly sales person, Lincoln Pope
Lincoln was extremely helpful and attentive. He helped me find the truck I was looking for. Nice clean facility and yummy food. Thanks again Lincoln for getting me into my F-150.
Bob Hestsko and TSG Auto were excellent to work with, without the high pressure and it was very enjoyable experience. High quality vehicles for a good price. Highly recommended
Slight inventory mix up, but all in all, good help, fast turn around time. Polite and smooth first experience with Bob and TSG Auto, would recommend!
Lincoln was a pleasure to work with. Smoothest car purchase I've ever done!
Bob was a wonderful salesman here at TSG Auto. I had been shopping around different dealers, for weeks, and Bob was the first salesman that didn't make me feel like I was getting played. I got a good deal on my car and walked away from the experience a happy camper. Thanks TSG Auto for all the help.
We had such a good experience from the start. We got a call back within minutes of filling out the online application, and Bob was extremely helpful from that point on. Even after we weren't approved through the banks at the dealership. Bob suggested we try at our credit union and it worked! We were approved and could tell that Bob was genuinely happy for us. We will definitely be telling our friends about TSG Auto.
Bob was cool, helped with all my questions and returned calls., texts, and emails promptly. Jeff was friendly as well. Would recommend TSG Auto to a friend.
Met Lincoln right away, he was Great! Took time to hear my concerns and wants. Found my truck , gave us a super deal! He is a knowledgeable man. Thank you Lincoln. Everyone was very nice
Came to TSG Auto based on a referral from Dennis McGrath and left with the purchasing of my first car!! Amazing experience and I have Lincoln to thank for all the great help.
Lincoln could not have been more helpful through our car buying process. He was a pleasure to work with and adapted to all of our concerns.
Bob was great to work with and helped us ensure we got the touring capacity we needed, our top priority. The whole process was quick and easy.
Our experience was excellent! Lincoln Pope was great. Very helpful and so personable, made the experience less painful. Really helped us get the best deal and find exactly what we were looking for. This is the second car we have purchased from TSG Auto and will definitely not be the last. Thanks for the superior customer service Lincoln.
Our first point of contact was Bob Hetsko. He was honest, patient and down to earth. He was not pushy at all and the entire experience was a pleasure! We will be back.
Bob was very friendly and helpful with helping us get our daughter's first car. Process and paperwork was painless and quick. Will recommend to others.
We are returned customers. Lincoln was very helpful and great to work with. We will definitely be returning for our next car purchase.
Excellent, fast, service. Salesman Bob is great! Easy to work with. Highly recommended, I will go to TSG Auto in Parker in the future.
Bob was very friendly and not pushy at all. He listened to all of our questions and provided answers immediately. Our shopping experience as very positive and we recommend TSG Auto to our friends and family.
Lincoln made buying my Xterra an awesome experience. He was friendly and very knowledgeable. I would definitely recommend TSG Auto to friends.
My experience at TSG Auto was amazing! Lincoln was patient with me and made sure we could find something that would work for me in every way. He was very attentive and never missed a beat. He was a pleasure and I will definitely recommend TSG Auto and Lincoln in the future.
Lincoln and Bob were both fantastic to work with. They made sure that all of my questions and concerns were addressed and that my experience was top notch! I will be back for sure.
Lincoln Pope was very helpful, knowledgeable and not pushy. Found the right vehicle for me in the short time frame I had to work with. Very happy with my experience. Thanks Lincoln!
Bob made my car buying process, no pressure and he was very sweet. We would recommend Bob and TSG Auto to our family and friends.
I contacted TSG Auto after seeing a truck that was listed on car Gurus. I was helped by Lincoln. Everything he said he followed through with, he was honest, understanding and respectful. I anticipated a more high "pressure" sales environment, but I was wrong, all the staff I dealt with was courteous, polite and there to help. Thanks for a great experience Lincoln, I will be back.
Lincoln was very easy to work with and did everything they could to sell me the car I wanted.
Bob met me right after I pulled up to TSG Auto. I told him what I was looking for and we went inside to view the inventory on a computer screen. We selected five vehicles to look at but I ended up falling in love with the For Escape. Bob took his time with me at every step of the way and it was a pleasure working with him.
I appreciate all the hard work put in by the TSG Auto team to get me the right car at a rate I can afford. Courteous, professional, and very helpful from start to finish. Bob was not pushy and very comfortable to work with. Thank you very much Bob Hetsko and the rest of the TSG Auto team.
Lincoln was a great help on helping me find the prefect car, even on a cold day.
Very smooth transition from test drive to closing the deal. Bob was funny and did not pressure. Definitely made my first car purchase more about the car, and less about the paper work.
Jared did a wonderful job helping us find a vehicle we loved.
Lincoln Pope was a great salesman. I also had great help from the Service Manager Bryan Thompson and the Lube Tech Alec Ford. I had a great experience here at TSG Auto and I will definitely purchase other vehicles from here in the future.
Lincoln was very helpful and knowledgeable. We were helped quickly and with out pressure. Our car is great and will be perfect for our family.
Lincoln was very friendly and informative. He made the whole process quick and easy. Great service!
Had an amazing experience buying my Audi. Never felt pressured by Kirk Settel which is great because I hate pushy sales people. Honestly would recommend him to friends and family.
Lincoln Pope was everything I would hope to see in a car salesman. He was very knowledgeable, offered great guidance, and did not put any pressure on me to make decisions. Lincoln was very honest, relatable, and conversational...which made searching for a new vehicle a relaxed and enjoyable experience! Not to mention he found a financial that fit my financial expectations AND lifestyle perfectly!
Thank you so Much TSG Auto
Great car buying experience! I found a vehicle of interest via TSGAuto.com and contacted Bob who was very helpful and a no pressure salesman!
Bob was a pleasure to work with! We will be back for future vehicles. Thank you!
TSG Auto sold us a great vehicle. Bob was honest and worked with us to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. It was a pleasant experience. They were not pushy and listened to what we were looking for.
Everyone in this establishment was very helpful and friendly. Lincoln Pope was helpful, honest, and up front with us. We NEVER felt pressured.
Lincoln Pope was an absolute pleasure to work with. So personable and helpful- he made the process of buying a car a real treat. I especially appreciated his honest nature and willingness to listen to my request and questions. I am looking forward to driving my new Yukon XL and will definitely recommend my friends and family to him. Thank you Lincoln
We worked with Lincoln and Bob when we were buying a car for our Daughter and had a great experience. They were very accommodating, when it came to the final details and we left feeling very satisfied. Our Daughter is thrilled with her car.
Finding TSG Auto.com on Carfax was easy. Lincoln was great to work with. Both cars I looked at were in excellent condition. I ended up buying a 2014 Subaru Legacy 2.5I premium for a most fair price against the available cars in the front range. I will definitely consider TSG Auto.com again.
Lincoln was very nice, answered all my questions and showed me everything I questioned him about. If he didn't know the answer, he found out and let me know what the answer was. He also came in on his day off so I could get my car. I would refer your dealership to others.
I really enjoyed my buying experience, customer service that Bob and his team provided. NO frills, bells or whistles, but just customer service with integrity. I would highly recommend looking at buying a used car from TSG Auto.
Second time working with Lincoln. He's been awesome both times. Always patient and willing to adjust to all the changes I made. Thank You Lincoln.
Great Customer Service, @ friendly staff. Knowledgeable sales and willing to work with the customers to get them what they want! Bob-sales
GREAT HELP, GREAT PRICE,FRIENDLY STAFF, that wasn't pushy or overwhelming, managers , finance and sales worked as a good team together, to get us the best deal possible. Manager- John, Sales- Lincoln, and Finance-Jay.
Lincoln was amazing from the start, casual, laid back and not aggressive like a lot of car salesmen can be. Told him what I wanted and we only focused on that car - no attempt to sell me anything else. He was patient, experienced and knowledgeable. His patience is what I found most notable because when car shopping. Sales People are often impatient and want to close the sale ASAP. Lincoln was so very patient. I enjoyed this experience which I thank people rarely say about a used car. Lincoln was great. I would certainly come back again.
Lincoln always is very efficient, fast and friendly. I just purchased a vehicle from him and it's always a pleasure to work with him. He is very knowledgeable and helpful.
Lincoln was fantastic! Very professional and polite. I came in knowing what I wanted and knowing what I liked and let me lead. There was no pressure to make any decisions and I felt very comfortable choosing to purchase a vehicle through him.
This was my second purchase here at TSG, and again I enjoyed my buying experience. No hassle, great customer experience. The sales staff is awesome. Thank You Lincoln
-non pressuring salespeople, Ben And Lincoln, Honest , straight forward, answered all of our questions. Took the time to work the best financial deal and warranty situation to suit our needs.
Lincoln , Jim and Jay were a phenomenal help in achieving our truck purchase. We are grateful and extremely happy. We will definitely do business here again
Lincoln, Brian, and Stan provided excellent customer service. They stayed late and made me feel incredibly comfortable at every step along the way. TSG Auto will forever be my first stop when buying a new vehicle. I will always recommend TSG to friends and family!! Thank you
Bob has an exceptional way with customers. He is very accommodating with the indecisiveness of a 16 year old girl. Bob is very knowledgeable about the products we were looking at. We came back to see Bob because of his patience, helpfulness, and a great salesman all around.
Lincoln was extremely helpful. He went above and beyond what we were looking for. Not only did he work with us but he found us a better car still within our budget and that will work with our growing family. John was also crucial to getting the job done efficiently and quickly.
Simple, clean, and easy- Thanks!
Great experience. Bob was genuinely transparent and worked in the best interest of the buyers. All pre existing ideas of a car dealership were gone upon experiencing the friendliness and the transparency involved throughout the transaction.
Kirk was great to work with. He addressed all of my concerns, both big and small and found solutions to them. Would recommend Kirk for any purchases you are considering with TSG.
Fast friendly service!!! No high pressure sales! Will definitely recommend to family and friends.
Fast service, very nice!!!
I knew what I wanted. Jay had it waiting for me when I arrived. The negotiation was quick and fair. I purchased the vehicle and they followed up and completed all items that we agreed on. I have already recommended Jay to two of my friends. Very hastle-free car/truck buying experience.
Lincoln was extremely helpful. He went above and beyond what we were looking for. Not only did he work with us but he found us a better car still within our budget and that will work with our growing family. John was also crucial to getting the job done efficiently and quickly.
Hello Tim,
Just saw your videos on your website because I was coming by after work tomm to test drive a car my wife and I have been hunting for awhile. But I just want to say from the bottom of my heart that I feel your compassion and made me cry. I know I will be in a position one day to help people like you do.
I worked for Starbucks for 18years now and pretty much raised by them. Our company is obviously successful but our values is what I live by. How can a company be highly profitable but also have high morals and ethics. Our CEO, Howard Scultz said last year we are not doing rating reviews anymore and will lead each other with love, compassion, and understand. To except all partners as family. I believe you have the same ideas and "success leaves clues."
If you are around there at 5pm Tomm I would love to shake your hand and say thank you as a fellow human being that also goes through suffering and realizing that our heart and mind is all we need to make a difference in someone's life.
Om Mani Padme Hum.
Jason Chu
When buying my new (used) car, Bob was great to work with!! He is very knowledgeable and patient. I would definitely buy a car from Bob Hetsko again.
Not many Salesman will tell you like it is or agree with any concerns. However, that was not the case with Lincoln. He absolutely made sure that we were going to leave happy and with a car we loved. Exceptional and Highly recommended!!
Had a great experience purchasing my car with Lincoln. He was very knowledgeable and helpful. I ended up with a great car!!
Lincoln was super helpful and friendly from the time I called about looking at vehicles all the way through the buying process. I would gladly recommend TSG Auto to my friends and family.
Very Personable, easy going.
Bob Hetsko did an excellent job with us. He was friendly, professional, and able to give us a great deal on a truck! We would recommend TSG Auto to any of our family and friends needing to purchase a vehicle.
My name is Brian, and I'm from Killeen, Texas. I caught a flight out to Denver. My buddy, Lincoln Pope picked me up right on time as planned. Also helped me over the phone the whole week to get this deal done. Lincoln has great customer service. I have nothing bad to say about the dealership as a whole. Nice dealership, clean truck, great deal. Thanks again, Lincoln.
The experience was a lot better than most of the dealerships that I have been to. The whole team was very polite and more than willing to help out with questions. Dealers weren't pushy like most dealers are and they were very knowledgeable about their jobs.
We had a great experience purchasing our new vehicle for our daughter's first car. Our salesman, Lincoln, was very knowledgeable about the vehicle and that made our decision very easy! Brian, the finance guy, was awesome as well! We were introduced to the general manager, Stan, and he was very pleasant and down to Earth. I would highly recommend TSG Auto to anyone and everyone.
Lincoln was great. Good overall experience.
Great buying experience. No pressure, friendly service, and an easy purchasing experience! Lloyd allowed us to test drive multiple cars without buying pressure and walked us through the process, answering all of our questions. The financing department was quick and painless, less than 15 minutes with Jay.
Easiest, most professional car buying experience I have ever had. TSG was very accommodating with my request to put the truck on a lift to check out the undercarriage. Totally no pressure whatsoever.
Kirk was very easy to work with. Knowledgeable and friendly. Made the process easy. Why make it hard, right?
Jerryd was very easy to work with and very friendly. If he didn't know an answer he would find out and let me know. One of our best buying experiences.
I was shopping around for a Ram 2500 for $20,00.00. Every dealer said they could not do it, and that it was not possible. TSG Auto got me everything I wanted and more. Thank you to Bob Hetsko and the team. P.S. They treat military with the up most respect I have ever seen. I will be back.
We had a very pleasant experience at TSG Auto. Kirk is helpful and not pushy. I would recommend TSG Auto.
Lincoln made the process painless, humor helps!!!
Bob, amazing guy to buy from! So easy going and makes the car buying experience a breeze. Really helped us out and made spending money fun. Over all great experience, wouldn't go any where else! Thanks Bob!
I came in, knowing what I was looking for and Kirk helped me find it and worked with me to get it on a lift and have it checked out, as it was a new arrival. Great price on trade in and good deal out the door. Very pleased with my new-to-me 04 excursion power stroke.
Lincoln was very helpful and worked with us for hours to get the right vehicle for our family, at the right price. We're very happy with our new car and will be back to buy our son a car when he leaves for college. This place is worth the long drive. Thank You Lincoln.
I like the freedom we had to test drive the vehicles we were interested in. Kirk gave us all the time we needed to make a decision! He even drove the car over to a shop where we had a used car checked performed! We are happy with our "new" 4Runner!!
My experience at TSG Auto was very pleasant. I was surprised by how fast and painless purchasing a new vehicle would be.
For my first car, I can honestly say that I have had a great experience. Everyone is super nice and helpful and their cars are in good shape. I have to say, TSG Auto is one of the best dealerships I have ever been to. They are so amazing here.
Bob was very helpful and got through the process with ease. No pressures and good attitude. I'd buy from here again.
This is our third bought here and they are great at everything. Give them 5 stars. Great service.
Consider the hail damage on the vehicles! Price should reflect the cost of repairs instead of ripping us off. Otherwise, Kirk and Lloyd were great, but should be more flexible in pricing when selling cars with costly repairs like hail. This will be included in any online reviews we do as well.
Bob was great, very entertaining for my 6 year old too. Enjoyed the test drive and even saw deer. Very smooth and quick process to get on the road with my dream car.
Great Experience.
One masshole to another... Met Lincoln and he was very professional and met my needs. No pressure. I knew my limit of what I could and couldn't do and he respected that.
Bob, Kirk, and Brian were wonderful to work with and made my car buying experience as comfortable as possible.
It was great working with Kirk on purchasing a vehicle. Very easy to work with, no high pressure sales technique. This is the second vehicle we've purchased at TSG, both experiences were very enjoyable.
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The following report on the Temporary Barriers Project is for your information and action, as appropriate. This report will be transmitted whenever changes occur to the operation of the barriers, and as a result of modeling and/or field monitoring of water levels in the south Delta.
STATUS AS OF: May 15, 2009
Head of Old River (HOR) Barrier:
The spring Head of Old River rock barrier was not installed this season. Instead a Non-Physical Barrier (NPB) or "bubble barrier" was installed. Installation began April 7 and was completed and tested in time for the first of seven VAMP experiment fish releases that began April 22. This experimental barrier—placed near the channel bottom and extending across the entrance to Old River—uses a combination of bubbles, lights, and sound to guide out-migrating Chinook salmon smolts away from Old River to continue their migration down the San Joaquin River. Underwater receivers have been installed to detect tagged smolts to study the effectiveness of this NPB. Preliminary results indicate the NPB significantly improves the number of smolts staying in the SJR over a no-NPB condition. The NPB will be removed beginning May 26 after the VAMP experiment ends.
Photos of the NPB are available on DWR's website at:
Agricultural Barriers (Old River near Tracy [ORT], Middle River [MR], Grant Line Canal [GLC]):
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency Biological Opinion for the installation and removal of the temporary barriers was received May 7 allowing DWR to begin installing the agricultural barriers. Installation will begin May 18 with work at the MR and ORT barrier followed by the GLC barrier as heavy equipment becomes available. Installation and cleanup of all work on the ag barriers will take 2-3 weeks.
Modeling will begin the week of May 25 as installation of the ag barriers advances enough to provide accurate modeling conditions.
These weekly updates are also available for your information on our website:
If you know of anyone else that should be receiving this update, please let me know by email, and I'll add them to the mailing list. Thanks!
Mark A. Holderman, P.E.
Chief, Temporary Barriers Project and Lower San Joaquin
Bay-Delta Office
California Department of Water Resources
1416 9th St., P.O. Box 942836
Sacramento, CA 94236-0001
Phone: (916) 653-7429 FAX: (916) 653-6077
Cell: (916) 601-6036 E-Mail: email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text: Hi again all. Once again coming back to Macrumors forums for bootcamp migration difficulties. The story this time is that my brand new retina MBP got wet and ended up with a fried logic board. Good news is repair folks were able to salvage all the data--both partitions, one mac and one bootcamp win7--onto an external drive and I got a replacement laptop for a modest fee. The challenge now is getting all the data off the external HD and back onto the new computer. Migrating the mac partition was easy but as expected migrating the win7 partition is considerably more difficult. In the past I had success with Winclone when I migrated the partition to the 2015 retina mbp in the first place from my old 2011 mbp, so I'm giving that a try again, but when I try to make an image Winclone gives me an error that the win7 partition is formatted as FAT32. Disk Utility and the diskutil command in terminal both confirm as much. But I know that's false. I'm pretty sure bootcamp only lets you format win7 as NTFS to begin with, but even if there were a choice I would certainly have chosen NTFS because I know FAT32 is terribly antiquated. Does anyone know what could possibly be causing my mac to recognize the win7 partition as FAT32? Alternatively, has there been any recent developments in bootcamp migration options that I should be considering in place of winclone altogether? Thanks much in advance.


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Students at Princeton University have named 24 April Newman s Day. Ever since La castagne (1977), I ve been swearing more. Finished second in the 1979 Le Mans 24-hour race in a Porsche 935. Longtime supporter of gun control, and a member of Handgun Control Inc. So he bet co-star Jackie Gleason $50 on a game of pool. Su consagración definitiva como estrella de Hollywood se da en 1966 con su participación en una superproducción de cine negro que hace historia: Harper (Harper, investigador privado), de Jack Smight.
Then, knowing that wasn t the career path he wanted to take, he moved Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended Yale University s School of Drama. In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (1968) was given good marks, and although the film and Joanne Woodward were nominated for Oscars, Newman was not nominated for Best Director. The animated comedy Cars - Quatre roues (2006), his last film, was the highest-grossing film of his career. A man with no enemies is a man with no character. On the distaff side, Bette Davis, who was nominated 10 times for an Academy Award, all of them Best Actress nods. (Foto: AP) El pasado mes de agosto Newman tomó la decisión de abandonar el hospital en el que se encontraba para pasar las últimas semanas de vida en su casa.
Stumped the United States for Eugene McCarthy during his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1968. [on Tom Cruise] He s got a lot of actor s courage. In 2007, he made some headlines when he said that he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting is pretty much a closed book for me who is paul newman.sex dating in wind ridge pennsylvania.. .Delphi updating tcomponent classes.Vmware snapshots not consolidating. Corbin bleu and monique coleman dating news.


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Magazine article American Banker
AT&T, Exodus Help Merrill on Discount Web Trading
Article excerpt
Merrill Lynch & Co. said it is working with AT&T Solutions and Exodus Communications Inc. to support its push into on-line trading.
Merrill announced its plans on Monday, as word of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's plan to offer on-line brokerage services began to appear in the press.
On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley confirmed its intentions to fold its Discover
Brokerage on-line trading subsidiary into its full-service operations.
Morgan Stanley intends to beat Merrill to the punch by making self-directed on-line trading available today.
"Starting tomorrow, every Morgan Stanley Dean Witter client will have the choice of self-directed investing on-line, a traditional full-service relationship through a financial adviser or some combination of both," said Philip J. Purcell, chairman and chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, in a press conference Wednesday.
Merrill, the largest brokerage house in the United States, with client assets exceeding $1.5 million, made waves in June when it said it would make discount on-line trading available by December.
Mr. Purcell said Morgan Stanley Dean Witter arrived at a strong consensus more than a year ago that it should get into on-line trading. It has been working on its on-line offering, called ichoice, for months.
Merrill has hired Exodus, of Santa Clara, Calif., to host, design, and manage the servers to support its on-line offerings. Merrill also expanded a contract with AT&T Solutions to integrate the host site with the financial firm's global communications network, which is already managed by the AT&T networking subsidiary. …


text:
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In the heart of the Plateau-Haiti, Mag-Horizon Radio (101.9 FM) is required. Located in Saut d'Eau, the happy city it makes the difference. Deoarece 19 Ianuarie 1996, the institution is serving the people of Central and neighboring regions Department. It should be noted that Horizon Mag is out any taditionnelle Media Design which aims to consider the audience as a mere object to be manipulated in this great gladly 'cultural enterprise of modernity'. Apart from being a Radio that: Formă, informs and entertains its listeners, it also wants to be a tool for social and cultural transformation. În prezent, the Directorate General of Radio working body and soul to bring you something new. Astfel, improved regional coverage, strengthening the administrative framework and the redesign of its programing is ongoing to better serve you.
Radio Mag Horizon official website address is radiomaghorizon.com
Popular Haiti Radio:
Caraibes FM
Radio FM Signal 90.5
Radio Kiskeya
Radio FM Caraibes
Radio Vision 2000
Am fost Radio


text:
Branch medical surgery in Law is due to close in June.
I was incredibly disappointed to learn that the Logan medical practice intends to close its branch surgery in the village of Law on the first of June, to concentrate its services at the Houldsworth Centre in Wishaw. While they seek to reassure patients that they will not need to change practice, it is a blow for villagers who will now need to travel to appointments to Wishaw.
Letters have gone out to households in Law informing them of the decision.
This will cause great concern to the patients, especially elderly patients and those without cars facing the journey to Wishaw.
I have been in direct contact with the practice, who I hope to meet ASAP, and NHS Lanarkshire. While this decision seems final, I am determined to explore what can be done to help my constituents maintain access to local health provision.
I am also contacting the local transport body to point out that the previous reduction in services between Law and Wishaw will become an even more pressing issue, and urge them to consider the social need for this route.
I am also working with my colleague Councillor David Shearer to ensure we can do what we can for the people in Law.


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Cache River Canoe and Cookout
Main Content
A professionally guided canoe tour through one of the nation's most ecologically diverse areas is on tap for Saturday, May 26 from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Veteran Adventures, a program area of Touch of Nature, will host a voyage through the Cache River Wetlands which will provide plenty of opportunity to see a plethora of plant and animal species found nowhere else in Illinois.
This trip will be free for all veterans, current service members and members of the National Guard, the Reserves and the Registered Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). Participants will need to bring a water bottle, sunscreen, hat/sunglasses and appropriate clothing for the weather. All canoes, paddles, personal floatation devices and lunch will be provided free of charge. Participants are welcome to bring their own canoe or kayak if they wish to transport it to the site themselves.
Children and family are welcome and encouraged to join! There is no paddling experience required to join in on the fun; there will be a certified American Canoe Association guide assisting participants and providing valuable paddling knowledge.
Sunday, May 26
Participants will meet at the Lower Cache River Access in Ullin Illinois, 62992 (location can be found on Google Maps) or catch a shuttle leaving from Touch of Nature (1206 Touch of Nature Rd, Makanda, IL 62958) which departs at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, May 26 and will return back to Touch of Nature around 5 p.m. the same day.
Lunch will be served 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. where bburgers, hot dogs, vegetarian options will be served hot and fresh along with some sides & drinks. The canoe tour will take 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and will be aapproximately 3 miles long on calm, flat water.
Contact Greg Nejmanowski at 618/453-1121 with any questions regarding the event.
Individuals with disabilities are welcomed. Call 618/453-5378 to request accommodations.


text:
1. Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers , known professionally as Brie Larson, è un'attrice statunitense, Direttore, e cantante.
2. Born in Sacramento, California, Larson was home-schooled before she studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater.
3. She began her acting career in television, appearing as a regular on the 2001 sitcom Raising Dad, for which she was nominated for a Young Artist Award.
4. Come un adolescente, Larson had brief roles in the 2004 film 13 Proseguendo 30 e pigiama party.
5. Da 2009 A 2011, Larson featured as a rebellious teenager in the television series United States of Tara.
6. Larson was born in Sacramento, California, the first daughter of Heather and Sylvain Desaulniers. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and her sister.
7. She studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
8. She stated on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that she took her stage name from Kirsten Larson, an American Girl doll she received as a child.
9. The show was selected for the 2001–02 fall season, and was renamed Raising Dad.
10. Larson was also cast in the pilot for the ABC sitcom Hope & Fede, but she and some other cast members were dropped after the unaired pilot.


text:
No rentals found near Doss, TX
We're sorry. Right now there are no available rentals that match your search criteria. Try this instead: ✓ Save your search and be the first to receive new listings straight to your inbox ✓ For more listings, expand your apartment search or clear your advanced search filters
Doss, TX Demographics
- Total Population312
Female 147Male 165
- Median Age60.1
Doss, TX Households
- Total Number of Households137
Family 115Non-family 22
Children 9No Children 128
- Average People Per Household2.28
- Median Household Income$80,703
- Median Housing Costs Per Month$838
Doss, TX Education Statistics
- No High School3%
- Some High School49%
- Some College28%
- Associate Degree2%
- Bachelor Degree12%
- Graduate Degree6%


text:
Copy this bookmark:
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New <video> Policies for iOS | WebKit
january 2018 by beep
safari video webkit ios mobile gifs html
But with the goal of returning more control over media playback to web developers, we relaxed this restriction in iOS 8: Safari began honoring the preload="metadata" attribute, allowing <video> and <audio> elements to load enough media data to determine that media's size, duration, and available tracks. For Safari in iOS 10, we are further relaxing this user gesture requirement for silent <video> elements.
january 2018 by beep


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Bower Hall Mother & Toddler Playgroup
Contact details
- Location
- Wellingtonia Avenue, Havering-atte- bower , Romford RM4 1QP
- Contact
- Jacky & Allison
- Telephone
- 01708 749272 (Jacky)
- email@example.com
Small friendly group who welcome all pre-school children and their parents/carers.
The Hall is divided into areas which include MESSY PLAY - painting, play-dough, crafts. FINE MOTOR SKILLS - Jigsaws, small construction, colouring/drawing. PHYSICAL PLAY- slide, climbing & balance area, FLOOR PLAY - Lego, cars, baby corner etc....
At approximately 11.00am we tidy away and have juice and song time.
After song time, balls, hoops or parachute come into play, then for the last 15 minutes we bring out the bikes, scooters & ride on's,
Sessions run on Wednesday and Friday mornings from approx 9.15am until 11.45am (during term time)
Cost:: free for under 1 year & £3.00 for over.
Please come in for a chat & coffee anytime during a session or for more information please call Jacky on 01708 749272
- Wednesday
- 9:15am to 11:45am
- Friday
- 9:15am to 11:45am
We advise that you check these details are up to date before planning a visit.


text:
163. Theodosia8 Mccausland (Conolly7, Conolly6, Robert5, Andrew4, Alexander3, Andrew2, John1) birth date unknown. Theodosia died 1825.(596)
She married Charles Tyndall in London, London, England, about 1825.(597) Charles(598) is the son of Thomas Tyndall.
Theodosia Mccausland and Charles Tyndall had the following children:
250 i. Charles Mahon9 Tyndall was born in London, London, England about 1826.(599)
251 ii. Theodosia Tyndall was born in London, London, England about 1828.(600)
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Around the World
- 1 - Mount Elizabeth, Antarctica
- No Survivors in Antarctic Plane Crash
- 2 - Washington, D.C.
- Sandy Relief for Hurricane Hunters
- 3 - Cairo
- Polio Virus Spreads From Pakistan to Egypt
- 4 - Taipei
- 'Richer-Than-Nobel' Science Prize Comes With a Twist
- 5 - Whillans Ice Stream, Antarctica
- U.S. Mission to Whillans Ice Stream a Success
Mount Elizabeth, Antarctica
No Survivors in Antarctic Plane Crash
The wreckage of a Twin Otter aircraft that went missing in the Antarctic was found near the summit of a mountain in the Queen Alexandra mountain range, about 700 kilometers from both the South Pole and the United States' McMurdo Station. The plane, which was to be used as part of Italy's polar research program, crashed on 23 January, but bad weather prevented rescuers from reaching it for several days. The three Canadian crew members that were aboard the plane are all presumed to have died in the crash. Why the plane crashed was still unclear when Science went to press. Citing poor weather conditions, on 28 January officials with the United States Antarctic Program and Antarctica New Zealand jointly chose to recall search-and-rescue teams from the site and delay efforts to recover any remains until the next Antarctic research season.
Washington, D.C.
Sandy Relief for Hurricane Hunters
Hurricane researchers are about to get some new wings. The U.S. Senate on 28 January approved a $50.5 billion bill designed to help people recover from last year's superstorm Sandy. It includes more than $250 million to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) replace and repair buoys, radars, and other research assets damaged by the storm, as well as to strengthen weather and coastal science programs designed to track future storms. The total includes $111 million to cover an expected data gap when several weather satellites die over the next few years, $50 million for the agency's cooperative research programs in northeastern states, and $44.5 million to put new wings on two of NOAA's aging Orion "hurricane hunter" aircraft.
Polio Virus Spreads From Pakistan to Egypt
Egyptian and international health officials are on high alert after poliovirus from Pakistan was discovered in sewage water collected during routine sampling in Cairo in December. Genetic sleuths linked the Cairo poliovirus to one last seen in Sindh Province in Pakistan in September 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported last week. How the virus got to Cairo is unclear—people can carry the virus asymptomatically when they travel—but the analysis, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that it made the leap in the past few months. Egypt has not had a case of polio since 2004.
So far, no polio cases have been detected in Cairo, and there is no evidence that the virus is circulating widely. But the risk that this imported virus could spark an outbreak there is real, says Bruce Aylward, who runs the global polio eradication effort from WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. Emergency vaccination campaigns are slated for Cairo and the rest of the country in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Pakistan, one of just three countries where polio is still entrenched, is under even more pressure to stamp out the virus within its borders. http://scim.ag/polioEgypt
'Richer-Than-Nobel' Science Prize Comes With a Twist
A Taiwanese tycoon has established a new science prize that will not only pay out more than the Nobel Prize but will support research as well. Individuals or institutions that have demonstrated the most creative and influential research in four fields will receive about $1.36 million, while an additional $341,000 will support a plan proposed by recipients to support research and develop talent in a related area over 5 years. (The Nobel Prize amount for 2012 was about $1.2 million.)
The Tang Prizes, named after China's Tang Dynasty, will be awarded biennially for work in sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology (excluding literary works), and rule of law. Samuel Yin, who made a fortune in diversified real estate, financial, and retail investments, is endowing the prize. Academia Sinica, which oversees Taiwan's premier research labs, will be responsible for the nomination and selection process. The first prize announcement is set for July 2014.
Whillans Ice Stream, Antarctica
U.S. Mission to Whillans Ice Stream a Success
A U.S.-based team announced on 28 January that it had successfully retrieved its first samples of sediment and water from the Whillans Ice Stream, a body of water sealed nearly a kilometer below the Antarctic ice. The interdisciplinary project is looking for subglacial microbial life, and also studying the continent's climate history and ice sheet dynamics. The samples of sediment and basal ice from beneath the water are expected to help scientists understand whether subglacial lakes act to stabilize or destabilize the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The team is the second of three research groups this season to achieve its goal of retrieving samples from some of the continent's mysterious buried waters. In December, a British Antarctic Survey team seeking to penetrate subglacial Lake Ellsworth was forced to pull the plug on its mission due to technical problems. Last month, a Russian team nabbed its first sample from subglacial Lake Vostok.
Three Q's
Biotechnologist Hayat Sindi received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University before returning to Saudi Arabia in 2011 to create an institute to promote science and entrepreneurship. She's one of the first 30 women to be appointed to the country's 150-member Shura Council, which advises the government on science and technology.
Q:What issues are you hoping to address as a council member?
H.S.:I'm [geared] toward entrepreneurship and how we can encourage our youth to be innovative. Also, I'm interested in women's issues. So I'm going to concentrate on innovation, scientific research, youth, and women.
Q:How do you see the role of science in the Middle East and around the world?
H.S.:Science was born to solve problems, to look at how to improve quality of life. What I'm trying to figure out is how can I make science affordable and accessible to everybody?
Q:What does having women on the Shura Council mean for women in Saudi Arabia?
H.S.:This is the best thing to happen [for Saudi women] since women were permitted to study. Women look at different problems with different angles, in terms of economics or science or health or social studies. We cannot ignore [their] contribution.
Deep-Sea, Semiconductor Research Net Japan Prizes
Research at the bottom of the sea and wizardry in semiconductor clean rooms have netted this year's Japan Prizes, among the world's top science and technology awards. Each category carries a 50 million yen ($550,000) award, which laureates will receive along with medals at a ceremony in Tokyo in April.
Marine ecologist J. Frederick Grassle of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, won for his studies of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems and organisms. He also helped launch the Census of Marine Life, intended to catalog the diversity of marine life, and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, which is used in marine conservation efforts.
Chemists Grant Willson, now of the University of Texas, Austin, and Jean Fréchet, of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, won for developing chemically amplified resists: photosensitive materials that allow semiconductor makers to shrink integrated circuits for microprocessors and memory chips, such as those in personal computers and mobile phones.
NIH Loses a Senate Champion
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will lose one of its longtime champions with the upcoming retirement of Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA). Last week, Harkin announced he would not seek a sixth term, ending a 40-year congressional career.
Harkin is currently chair of the Senate panel that sets funding levels for NIH, and he also chairs the committee that oversees federal policies in health, education, and labor. He teamed up with his then-Republican counterpart, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, to win a doubling of the NIH budget from 1998 to 2003. He and Specter also led an effort to include $10.4 billion for NIH in the 2009 stimulus package.
With Specter, Harkin also sponsored legislation in the 2000s that would have expanded federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells. But Harkin didn't always please scientists: In the 1990s, he pushed to create NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which critics claim wastes money testing fringe treatments. http://scim.ag/Harkinret
Random Sample
Astrophysics Over Antarctica: Balloon Breaks Flight Record
Now on its third orbit around the South Pole, a NASA scientific balloon has broken the record for the longest-flying balloon of its size. As it soars at an altitude of 39,000 meters—about the same stratospheric height from which daredevil Felix Baumgartner completed his record-breaking space dive last October—the balloon wields an instrument called the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (more pithily known as Super-TIGER), which measures heavy elements in the flux of high-energy galactic rays that bombard Earth. Super-TIGER, which launched on 8 December 2012 from a site near McMurdo Station, had stayed aloft for 46 days when Science went to press, shattering the previous record of 41 days for a long-duration scientific balloon, set in 2005. The team plans to continue flying it for another week or so to bring it closer to McMurdo before ending its flight.
Independents Follow Where the Wind Blows
U.S. voters who straddle the political fence—self-identifying as independents who lean neither left nor right—are most susceptible to short-term temperature fluctuations when it comes to whether they believe humans are causing climate change, according to a new study.
Sociologist Lawrence Hamilton of the University of New Hampshire (UNH), Durham, used data from some 5000 random telephone interviews of New Hampshire voters conducted over a 2.5-year span. The interviewers asked voters about their political affiliations and views on climate change—whether it's happening and, if so, whether it is "caused mainly by human activities." The poll also asked the voters to rate their political affiliation (on a scale of one to seven, with four representing independents).
Then, Hamilton and UNH geographer Mary Stampone compared the answers to temperature and precipitation data collected across the state. They found no pattern associated with precipitation. Temperature was another story. Whereas Democrats and Republicans tended to stick to their beliefs regardless of how hot or cold it was, independents were strongly influenced by temperature (see graph). When interviewed on unseasonably warm days, independents tended to agree that humans are causing climate change. On unseasonably cool days, they tended to think the opposite, the team reported last month in Weather, Climate, and Society.
It's a striking graph, Hamilton notes. "If ever a logia regression plot could go viral, that might be the one." But the pattern is not totally unexpected, he says. Past studies have shown that "minor experiential things," such as room temperature, can alter how subjects answer a question.
Join us on Thursday, 7 February, at 3 p.m. EST for a live chat with experts about a hot topic in science. http://scim.ag/science-live
A Worm Vaccine, Coming at a Snail's Pace
- Kai Kupferschmidt
The long struggle to develop a schistosomiasis vaccine badly needs new money.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL—Miriam Tendler has not moved her lab in more than 20 years. Her office is cramped and filled with stacks of paper, and the hallways are lined with big filing cabinets. Yet Tendler has stayed in this old, low building on the campus of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, she explains, because she is afraid of doing anything that could disturb the life cycle of the microscopic worm that she has carefully nurtured in her lab all these years. Tendler has devoted her career to developing a vaccine against this worm, a pernicious parasite that is a scourge of people in eastern Brazil: Schistosoma mansoni.
Her target is one of at least six flatworms that cause a debilitating human disease called schistosomiasis. The worms can live for decades in blood vessels, shedding eggs that cause pain, severe blood loss, and malnutrition and that can damage the liver, kidneys, and spleen. Half of their unusual life cycle takes place in freshwater snails, which is why one room in Tendler's lab houses dozens of aquariums.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, is the second most devastating parasitic disease in the world, after malaria. Some 200 million people are estimated to be infected, most of them children, and another 600 million are at risk. Mortality estimates vary widely, but Lester Chitsulo, who heads WHO's Schistosomiasis Control Programme in Geneva, Switzerland, says that there are probably almost 300,000 deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
Vaccines could be powerful weapons against schistosomiasis, but a lack of interest and money, combined with the fact that a cheap, effective drug is available, has hampered research. "We have limped along with small amounts of money," says Alex Loukas of James Cook University, Cairns, in Australia. That could change if, as researchers hope, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joins the fight. Next month, the foundation will bring experts to Seattle for a 2-day meeting to discuss schistosomiasis vaccines. If it decides to fund the research, everything could change, Loukas says.
There has been some progress; two vaccines are now in clinical trials. But there are questions about both. Bilhvax, developed at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, targets S. haematobium, a species that causes urogenital schistosomiasis and is common in Africa and the Middle East. But despite extensive trials, very little has been published so far, leading other scientists to wonder what's going on.
The other is Tendler's candidate against S. mansoni, backed by the Brazilian government through a public-private partnership. The vaccine, the only one from a country where Schistosoma is endemic, may enter phase II trials this year. (It's based on a protein called Sm14, which a worm uses to ferry a host's fatty acids into its own cells.) But some groups have been unable to replicate the high level of protection that Tendler has shown in mouse studies.
What's more, vaccines are needed for other Schistosoma species as well, as there is no one-size-fits-all vaccine. "We need to develop a pipeline," says Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston, Texas. Hotez is working on a vaccine candidate named Sm-TSP-2 that has yet to reach the clinic; another candidate, Sm-p80, is also being developed in the United States.
Into the groove
Different Schistosoma species cause different patterns of symptoms, but the parasites essentially follow the same lifecycle. They reproduce in freshwater snails that release large numbers of free-swimming larvae, called cercariae, into the water. When these find a human, for instance a child playing in the water, they burrow through that person's skin with their head. The larvae then lose their tail and migrate through the blood vessels and the lung into the liver, where they mature into adult worms and mate. The larger male worm forms a groove, which the thinner female slips into.
Together, the couple moves into veins in different parts of the body, depending on the species: S. mansoni and S. japonicum reside in the bowel and rectum, for instance, whereas S. haematobium migrates to the bladder. The females start producing hundreds of eggs daily, sometimes for many years. Most of them are shed in urine and feces, and they can infect new snails if they end up in lakes or rivers. But some get trapped in the liver or other organs, causing an immune response that leads to the typical symptoms and sometimes death.
Public health officials tried for decades to get rid of schistosomiasis by targeting the snails. Despite sporadic successes, that strategy has proved too daunting in rivers like the Nile and the big lakes in Africa. Since the 1980s, a drug called praziquantel, which kills the worms in a person's body, has been the weapon of choice. In many endemic areas, all schoolchildren get the drug annually; Merck has provided praziquantel to WHO for free since 2007 and recently pledged to increase its annual donation to 250 million tablets.
But scientists worry that such widespread use will fuel resistance against praziquantel, the only drug available. Moreover, people in endemic areas usually get reinfected within months of treatment, so there is little long-term progress. "I think people are finally realizing that drugs alone are unlikely to control schistosomiasis," Loukas says.
Vaccines would probably not prevent human infections, but they could reduce the number of eggs that female worms produce, which in turn would reduce symptoms and slow transmission, says Maria Yazdanbakhsh of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, who heads a European project to find a vaccine against S. mansoni. "If the worms produce fewer eggs, the water will be less infested, and that will slowly reduce transmission." Studies suggest this is possible. Adults in endemic areas have been found to be partially immune to reinfection, and in animals, vaccines were shown to reduce the number of eggs by about half.
Hotez thinks support for a vaccine is now growing, in part because of schistosomiasis's role in the HIV epidemic: Female genital schistosomiasis increases the risk of contracting HIV three- or fourfold. If the Gates Foundation steps in, it would raise the disease's profile, Yazdanbakhsh says, and that could encourage national governments to donate as well. So far, the foundation has made no commitment, and it would not comment to Science.
Painful rashes
Even if more money becomes available, there are obstacles to a successful vaccine. One of them emerged in 2007 during a trial of a vaccine against a different group of parasites called hookworms. Healthy U.S. volunteers tolerated the shots well, but a study conducted in an area of Brazil where hookworm infection is common had to be suspended when three of the first seven volunteers developed painful rashes on their head, neck, and shoulders. The rash was caused by a class of antibodies called IgE, which the volunteers had developed during prior hookworm infections, says Loukas, who was involved in the trial.
To prevent such nasty surprises with Schistosoma, Loukas says, any new vaccine candidate needs to be screened to see whether people in endemic areas might have IgE in their blood that reacts with it. "If they do, we immediately throw the candidate out," he says. For some of the candidates already in development—including the two in clinical trials—such data have yet to be presented.
Another difficulty is that the results of several promising studies in mice—including Tendler's Sm14 vaccine—have not been replicated by researchers in other labs, for reasons that aren't clear. "This is a problem that has plagued the schistosomiasis field for many years and it has done the field an enormous amount of harm," Loukas says. How well results in mice translate to humans is also unclear. Although S. mansoni infects mice readily, the rodent is not a natural host; in terms of sheer size, one pair of worms in a mouse is equivalent to a very heavy infection in humans. Some researchers have switched to other animal models, such as baboons, which require special facilities and are more expensive.
The French vaccine, meanwhile, is a bit of a dark horse. A phase I trial, done in 1998 and 1999 in France, was not published until July 2012; phase II and phase III studies, both completed, have yet to appear. The team's original strategy was to go through all the phases before publishing anything, Gilles Riveau of the Pasteur Institute writes in an e-mail to Science. "I think today that we were wrong," he adds, saying that results on phase II may be out soon.
Others are betting on new targets, and the genomes of S. mansoni and S. haematobium, both now sequenced, have given them a wealth of choices. Yazdanbakhsh and colleagues are aiming at the earliest form of the worm that the immune system encounters: the larvae passing through the skin. Scientists in the consortium have identified genes that are turned on only in this stage; by targeting these proteins, they hope to catch the worm before it has its defenses up. Such a vaccine, they hope, might prevent infection altogether.
Loukas's group, meanwhile, has developed an array of Schistosoma's surface proteins, which they have screened against the blood of resistant individuals to see which antigens are recognized by their immune system. A new vaccine candidate will be published soon, he says.
With so much new technology available, developing a vaccine is now primarily a question of political will, Tendler argues. "This is not a bet, this is not a game, this is not magic. It is just work."
- Space
Tight Budgets Squeeze European Earth Observation
- Daniel Clery
The Europe-wide financial crisis and uncertainty over the European Union's future funding are casting shadows over Earth monitoring and science missions.
On the face of it, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Earth-observation program came out of last November's budget-setting council meeting pretty well: With €1.9 billion over the next 5 years (20% of ESA's total budget), it is the agency's biggest program. But to make room in the budget for new launchers and the International Space Station, member states have put the squeeze on Earth-observing science missions (Science, 30 November 2012, p. 1135). And, with the funding of the European Union still in doubt, questions hang over the future of a groundbreaking environmental monitoring system, an ESA-E.U. collaboration called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES, recently renamed Copernicus by the European Union). "This is far too important for Europe not to get its act together," says Alan O'Neill, director of the United Kingdom's National Centre for Earth Observation.
GMES is an unprecedented attempt to create an operational environmental monitoring system akin to the meteorological systems that have been in place for decades. GMES involves a whole fleet of spacecraft with different sensors—built and paid for by ESA—along with duplicate backup craft and operations and user facilities provided by the European Union. The aim is to provide steady, reliable data of use to European governments, industry, emergency services, and citizens. "There is no program like GMES. It's an Earth management system," O'Neill says.
European researchers got a taste for long-term, high quality data from Envisat, ESA's bus-sized satellite that operated for 10 years until ended by an unidentified failure in April 2012. The idea of GMES "emerged out of the Envisat decade. People could see what you can do with long-term data," says John Remedios, head of Earth observation science at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Envisat carried nine instruments that gathered data about land, water, ice, and the atmosphere. Most will be replicated or upgraded in GMES.
ESA is close to completing the first three GMES spacecraft, known as Sentinels, which are due to launch this year. But the European Union's funding beyond the end of this year is not yet secure as the European Commission (the European Union's executive arm), the 27 member states, and the European Parliament debate the union's budget for the next 7 years (Science, 16 November 2012, p. 872).
The next round of the E.U. budget negotiations will take place on 7 to 8 February. Because of the faltering economies across Europe, the commission is under enormous pressure to curb its ambitions; some states even want to cut E.U. funding below current levels. In 2011, the commission proposed €5.8 billion for GMES over 7 years. The member states countered with a suggestion of €3.8 billion, a figure that alarmed ESA, researchers, and other potential users.
At that level of funding, "there will be cuts," says ESA's head of Earth observation, Volker Liebig. "If they can't finance the recurrent [duplicate] satellites, there is a danger that we might have data gaps," he says. If the European Union has not confirmed the budget for the operations infrastructure by the time of the Sentinel-1 launch in August, Liebig says, the ESA member states could decide it is too risky to launch the satellite. "We have delivered; I hope the commission can also deliver," Liebig says.
Because of the continuing uncertainty over the E.U. contribution to GMES, at the ESA council meeting in November some ESA member states were reluctant to commit the full amount for the next round of GMES satellite building. ESA secured only 80% of the required funds at the meeting.
Much of ESA's Earth observation budget goes toward meteorological satellites. But another area also came up short on funding: a series of science missions known as Earth Explorers, which seek to observe Earth and its atmosphere in new ways using innovative technology. Three have been launched so far—looking at soil moisture and ocean salinity, ice cover, and ocean circulation—and another three are under construction. A further three proposals are vying to start construction as Earth Explorer 7. A choice will be made sometime in the next few months.
The future of Earth Explorer 8, however, looks less certain after November's council meeting awarded the program only 80% of its expected €1.25 billion budget. "A variety of solutions are now being considered," says O'Neill, who is the chair of ESA's Earth Science Advisory Committee. Heinrich Bovensmann of the University of Bremen in Germany, who heads one of the teams competing to build Earth Explorer 8, says he expects ESA to adopt "the classical way space agencies deal with budget problems: delay things."
If selected, Bovensmann's CarbonSat will use absorption spectroscopy to image sources of carbon dioxide and methane—the main greenhouse gases—in high resolution. "It's the first time we'll be able to make a distinction between natural and anthropogenic sources," he says. The other contender for the mission, the Fluorescence Explorer or FLEX, aims to measure the carbon balance of plant life by detecting chlorophyll fluorescence, a sensitive marker for photosynthetic efficiency. "The signal is very small, and this is the first time it will be measured from space," says José Moreno of the University of Valencia in Spain.
There is now no guarantee that either mission will get off the ground any time soon. Moreno says: "The situation is rather difficult at the moment, and no one knows how well it will evolve in the future."
- China
World's Biggest Health Care System Goes Under the Knife
- Mara Hvistendahl
Ambitious reforms of the Chinese medical system aim to expand infrastructure, cover the poor, and combat chronic diseases.
SHENZHEN, CHINA—In most Chinese hospitals, teeming waiting rooms and forlorn patients wheeling intravenous drips through dingy, ill-lit halls are troubling but typical sights. University of Hong Kong (HKU)-Shenzhen Hospital, however, is anything but typical. Its gleaming wards and labs, opened to outpatients last July, are at the vanguard of China's health care reforms.
The hospital here in Shenzhen, the crucible of China's economic rebirth, is the brainchild of China's health ministry, which convinced the local government to put up $56.2 million for the 350,000-square-meter complex across the border from Hong Kong. HKU's stewardship is meant to separate the venture from the rest of the pack for more than its looks. "They don't need us to teach them how to stitch up wounds," says Sum-ping Lee, dean of HKU's medical school. The health ministry envisions the institution as "an important model in the process of reforming public hospitals," says a spokesperson. One prong of that strategy is to boost medical research: HKU professors will apply their expertise to a planned research arm of the hospital that will focus on oncology, orthopedics, liver disease, and infectious diseases.
HKU-Shenzhen Hospital is part of a Chinese spending spree on health care, with total outlays predicted to triple from $357 billion in 2011 to $1 trillion in 2020, when the government hopes to have implemented universal coverage. (Only 15% of the population was insured in 2000, according to the health ministry.) The investment is largely directed at improving basic health care. In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked China 144th out of 191 national health systems. Al though some scholars dispute WHO's methodology, which is no longer used, few deny that China's health care system is ailing. Gaps in hospital capacity and quality of care have fueled rising discontent, culminating in a recent spate of murders of doctors and nurses. According to China Daily, Chinese hospitals reported more than 17,000 violent incidents in 2010—mostly involving disgruntled patients.
A white paper released by China's State Council last December outlines the basic tenets of the reforms, which include expanding insurance coverage, reconfiguring drug pricing, and promoting primary care. The reform drive also includes money for research into traditional Chinese medicines and an overhaul of the drug pricing system—a move that could affect pharmaceutical research. The health ministry, meanwhile, is pushing the training of more medical professionals, updating China's mental health infrastructure (see sidebar, p. 506), and backing the development of hospitals like HKU-Shenzhen.
Health care in China today bears little resemblance to the system in place during its socialist heyday. In the 1970s, agricultural communes featured rural health care centers staffed by about 1.8 million "barefoot doctors": health workers with basic training who provided primary care. Among them was Chen Zhu, China's current health minister. As the Chinese government began instituting market reforms in the 1980s, it pulled funding from hospitals and clinics. The barefoot doctor system disintegrated. By the 1990s, the government was contributing less than 20% of total health care costs—the low end of developing countries, says Gordon Liu, an economist at Peking University in Beijing who served on a health care reform taskforce under China's State Council.
To recoup lost funds, hospitals charged a 15% markup on prescription drugs. Doctors began prescribing antibiotics indiscriminately, sparking an uptick in drug-resistant bacterial strains (Science, 18 May 2012, p. 795). As China's health infrastructure frayed, diseases like syphilis, once on the ropes, reemerged with a vengeance (Science, 27 January 2012, p. 390). Then came the debilitating SARS outbreak in late 2002: "It was a wake-up call for the Chinese government," says Yanzhong Huang, a global health fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.
A more enduring problem is that economic development and an aging population have driven a shift in the disease burden from infectious to chronic diseases, which today account for roughly 85% of deaths in China, up from 53% in the 1970s. "That pushed the demand for health care a lot," Liu says. As the transition took hold, the health care system remained woefully unprepared to handle the surge of patients, with too few doctors and medical facilities. Inadequate insurance, meanwhile, meant that many Chinese could not afford care in catastrophic cases. "Families are suffering from a huge economic burden," said Yao Hong, director of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's health insurance department, at a conference in Beijing in July.
To address these issues, in 2009 China unveiled a blueprint for providing basic insurance for 90% of Chinese by 2011, implementing more standardized training for doctors, constructing thousands of new county hospitals, and putting a clinic in every village. The plan also emphasized chronic diseases, which the health ministry says accounted for 69% of costs associated with China's disease burden in 2009. Community health centers must now provide free check-ups for hypertension and diabetes patients four times a year, says Wu Yangfeng, director of The George Institute, China, and a cardiovascular specialist at Peking University Clinical Research Institute in Beijing. The health care reforms are "not just of political significance," he says. "The basic health services will really help to cover a broad range of the population affected by chronic disease." A new requirement to check every patient's blood pressure will help catch the estimated 70% of Chinese with hypertension who are not aware they have it, Wu says. The increased focus on chronic diseases may benefit research. "Our whole conceptualization of noncommunicable diseases is based on data from what is a minority of the global population today," says Gabriel Leung, a public health researcher at HKU. "None of it came from China." Researchers may now start to identify population-specific risk factors in China and other developing countries, he says.
One potential downside is the effect of reforms on drug development. Until recently, up to 50% of China's total health care spending went toward drugs, Liu says—a sum that "might be the highest drug-to-total-health-care-expenditure ratio in the world." (In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the ratio averaged 18% in 2003.) China aims to bring expenditures down, Liu says, by restricting hospitals to lists of government-approved drugs and by outlawing profiteering on prescriptions. The selection process for the lists has set off bidding wars, with companies rushing to underbid each other. The drop in revenue will shave profit margins—a change that could squeeze research. "Drug companies are of course nervous about the future source of income for their R&D," Liu says. But, he adds, because total health care spending in China is increasing by more than 15% each year, the country will continue to be a profitable market: Even as drug companies' share of the pie decreases, Liu says, "The total pie will increase." The health ministry contends that strong government support of pharmaceutical research will help compensate for any losses.
A larger economic challenge will be containing costs for patients. Today, 95% of Chinese have basic insurance covering some medical costs, according to the health ministry, which has gradually deepened the coverage to include some catastrophic medical expenses and outpatient treatment as well as routine checkups and tests. But broader coverage has not stemmed soaring costs. A preliminary study from the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, shows that Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance, which was launched in 2007, has increased hospital visits without reducing out-of-pocket expenses. "If health expenditure growth is not controlled, then the financial protections on the population are still going to be limited," says Winnie Yip, a health policy expert at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Huang points out that China's roughly 200 million internal migrants—a "bridging" group that spreads HIV and other infectious diseases from high-risk groups like urban sex workers to low-risk groups like rural heterosexual women—are largely insured in their home towns, meaning far less than 95% of the population takes advantage of the new national program.
The central government has tried to better cover migrant workers by allowing them to enroll in insurance at their urban workplaces. But combating chronic diseases will ultimately require much more than free checkups and treatments. "The most effective control is really prevention," Yip says. At the top of the list, Huang says, should be enforcing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—a tough task in a country with an entrenched tobacco lobby (Science, 13 January 2012, p. 153). "We haven't seen any government leaders publicly speak out against smoking," he says.
"Clearly there is still a long way to go," Wu says. But the emphasis on chronic disease is an important first step, he says: "That is the right direction for China."
A New Dawn for Mental Health
- Mara Hvistendahl
After long neglecting the field of mental health, China has included it in sweeping heath care reforms.
SHANGHAI, CHINA—Graduates of Chinese medical schools once steered clear of mental health work. In the 1980s, recalls Michael Phillips, a psychiatrist at Shanghai Mental Health Center and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, "they would do anything to get out of it." The field then was reeling from decades of suppression. After the 1949 revolution, it had been branded a bourgeois science, with drug treatment in many psychiatric hospitals replaced by readings of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. Today, psychiatry has gained legitimacy, but psychiatrists still complain of a poor mental health infrastructure and measly salaries. Thus, many cheered when China's health ministry announced in 2009 that it was making mental health a key focus area of its sweeping health care reforms (see p. 505).
That newfound attention culminated last October in the adoption of a mental health law that had been under discussion for 27 years. The law is "a major event for Chinese psychiatry," Phillips says. It emphasizes the expansion of community mental health services, delineates professional duties in psychiatry and psychology, and introduces a more humane protocol for commitment to psychiatric hospitals. (An English translation of the law has been posted to the Web site of the Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry.)
China has an estimated 173 million people with mental disorders of whom the vast majority—some 158 million—have never received treatment. Psychiatrists have been trying for decades to change that. In 1985, Liu Xiehe, a psychiatrist at Sichuan University's West China Hospital in Chengdu, wrote the first draft of China's mental health law. But bureaucratic intransigence, concerns about the cost of mental health services, and resistance from some psychiatrists stalled the process. By 2005, the draft had been revised 15 times to no avail.
In the end, studies on the heavy socioeconomic toll of mental illness prodded Chinese officials to act. In 1996, the Global Burden of Disease Study found that mental illness, neuropsychological conditions, and suicide together accounted for 20% of China's illness burden, using a metric called disability-adjusted life years (Science, 1 November 1996, p. 740). The figure remained relatively stable until 2004, the last year for which data is available, Phillips says. In 2010, China committed to remodeling and expanding 550 psychiatric hospitals and wards within 2 years. Another area to benefit was community-based mental health, which has received more than $35.3 million from the central government since 2004. Health care reforms and the new law should bump up funding even further.
The law divides China's mental health professionals into psychiatrists, psychological counselors, and psychotherapy practitioners, or what observers understand as clinical psychologists. The distinctions are intended to strengthen professionalism. Of China's estimated 20,000 psychiatrists, only about 20% hold a degree in the field, according to a study published in Asia-Pacific Psychiatry in October 2009. Clinical psychology and counseling is even more of a mixed bag. "Some people have psychology degrees, some have education degrees, and some have a background that has nothing to do with psychology," says Xiang Yutao, a psychiatrist at Beijing Anding Hospital and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A key provision of the new law, designed to limit the reach of unqualified practitioners, states that psychological counselors cannot diagnose or treat mental disorders.
Patients stand to gain leverage: Under the new law, they can no longer be hospitalized against their will, unless deemed a danger to themselves or others. Previously China had a looser policy for committing patients to institutions involuntarily—a loophole exploited in the past to lock up unruly relatives after domestic disputes and, allegedly, political dissidents. "The most important aspect of the law is that it emphasizes the protection of patients' rights," Xiang says. Not all psychiatrists are keen on the voluntary commitment clause, fearing that it will complicate their work and reduce demand for psychiatric beds. Indeed, patients deemed a danger to others now have the right to request a reevaluation by two additional psychiatrists.
The mental health community has its work cut out for it. A national epidemiological survey on mental health now under way—China's first in 20 years—should help elucidate what services are needed and where. But as needs in rural areas are clarified, convincing psychiatrists to leave cities will be difficult. "The idea is you're going to get all these psychiatrists out in the community. I don't see it," Phillips says. Another stumbling block may be convincing Chinese to seek help. Psychological counseling remains unaffordable for many, and medical insurance in China only partially covers mental health care, says Zhang Jianxin, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Psychology in Beijing. But, he adds, the law sets an important precedent. "We have a saying in China: It's better to have something than not to have it."


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