221The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets and they take more risks as a result. Thus, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
222The following is a memo from the president of Cyberell Computer Company.
"All of our customer-service employees recently attended a two-day retreat during which they received retraining in effective customer service. Subsequently, Cyberell's employee-performance study showed that the retreat benefited new employees — those who have worked with Cyberell for less than two years — far more than it did experienced employees. According to the study, after the retreat new employees were able to handle an average of ten percent more calls per hour, and the total number of customer complaints about new employees decreased, but experienced employees showed little improvement in these areas. Therefore, Cyberell should send only new employees to future retreats and should use the resulting savings to double the length of the retreats so that the retreats will be more likely to yield optimum employee performance."
223The following appeared in the Pine City Gazette.
"Fifteen years ago, Pine City launched an electricity-conservation program that reimbursed residents some of the cost for replacing energy-wasteful motors, home office equipment, and home appliances with energy-efficient ones. For ten years, spending on this program increased annually, and annual total energy consumption declined. But spending on the program began to decline five years ago, and since then Pine City's total electricity consumption has increased sharply. If this increased usage continues, the city will have to build a costly new power plant. Obviously the best way to avoid this expense is to increase reimbursement to residents for replacing energy-wasteful equipment. This will reduce energy usage to the levels of five years ago."
224The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"Eating a heavy meal may increase the risk of heart attack. A recent survey of 2,000 people who had had a heart attack revealed that 158 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 24 hours before their heart attack, and 25 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 2 hours before their heart attack. Eating and digesting food releases hormones into the bloodstream and temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure slightly. Both of these things put stress on the heart. Therefore, people who are at risk of having a heart attack can lower that risk by not overeating."
225The following is a memo from the business manager of National Daily News.
"To expand the home delivery service of our national newspaper, we should concentrate on the state of Urba rather than on the state of Sylva. First, the population of Sylva is more widely dispersed, which would require us to spend more money to deliver our papers in that area, resulting in less profit per customer. Second, a long-term study of television viewing habits suggests that Sylvans prefer local to national news, since they spend twice as much time viewing local news programs as they do viewing national programs. Finally, because events in Urba receive more coverage in our newspaper than do events in Sylva, we can expect Urbans to be more interested in reading our newspaper."
226The following is a recommendation from the president of Appleby College.
"Whereas Appleby College holds class reunion s every five years, Edelston College holds annual reunion s for all classes, during which Edelston's alumni are treated to banquets, lectures, and student performances, enhancing their loyalty to the college and their willingness to donate money. Edelston College receives most of its alumni donations during or shortly after these reunion s. Therefore, the best way for Appleby to increase its alumni donations is to offer similar reunion activities and to have each graduating class hold annual reunion s."
227The following appeared in a health magazine.
"It has long been believed that getting at least eight hours of sleep a night is good for health. But a recent six-year study of adult sleeping habits found that people who reported sleeping eight or more hours a night had a higher rate of certain health problems than did those who reported sleeping seven hours a night. People who reported sleeping five hours a night also had an increased rate of the health problems, but this increase was slight compared to that for people who reported sleeping eight or more hours a night. Clearly, people should try to get seven hours of sleep, and they should worry more about getting too much sleep than too little."
228The vice president for human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president.
"In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations. Employees who use the Internet from their workstations need to be identified and punished if we are to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, such as shopping or playing games. By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, we can prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve our overall profits."
229The following appeared in an editorial in the Garden City Gazette.
"To address the parking problems in our downtown business district, it has been proposed that the city increase parking capacity by building a four-story parking garage. However, this project would cost more than it would to improve the downtown pedestrian plaza. Because the pedestrian plaza is an important attraction that draws people to the downtown area, improvements to it will increase business for downtown merchants. The merchants' higher profits will ultimately produce increased tax revenues for the city. Therefore, we should invest in the plaza improvements first and then use the revenues thus generated to pay for the construction of the parking garage."
230The following appeared in the Sherwood Times newspaper.
"A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an 'adopt-a-dog' program. The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease, which will help reduce medical costs by reducing the number of these patients needing ongoing treatment. In addition, the publicity about the program will encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter, which will reduce the risk of heart disease in the general population."
