ARTICLES MANIAC ? Dog Training ? Classical Conditioning

Canine animals are the dearest pet any individual can have. They want extremely little but give tons of appreciate in return. But these canine animals will need to be qualified to co-exist with us their believe in is to be won. And the easiest way is to share for what they care. Teaching a canine is less complicated than instruction a child.

one. Food is great.

What does your pet dog like? Dogs have an appetite greater than ours. Fully grasp this and feed your puppy to sufficient quantities. Get them habituated to two-four kinds of meat. They eat three-4 moments a day. Your canine will be healthful within just his dietary budgets and he/she will love you to express his delight.

2. Cozy spot to dwell and participate in.

Canines are energetic activity-oriented animals. They like to rest in a fastened area. Engage in ball with them. It reveals you treatment for them. Go away a smaller location all around in your residence as your canines very own place. Retain this spot clean daily. It will come to rest there every single time.

3. Walk the talk.

Early early morning and late night walks will self-discipline your dog. To use your own time roam with it with a leash on your canine in just one hand and chat on your mobile with the other hand. But don?t disregard the pet dog completely. Give it unique attention in-involving as you wander with it. It understands that you treatment. This is also the time for it to discover wherever to do its day-to-day routines. Permit it go about its way. Operate a minor with him/her then leash it all over again when it comes back again. It will study to believe in you. These simple instruction will build your rapport with your dog. It inspires him, he/she impresses you by undertaking some wonderful tricks you never even taught it. It understands you have not tamed it but lovingly trained it. When you prepare it to find out a handful of tricks it will get the job done enthusiastically to study them quick. Go to a park and toss a Frisbee and it will know what to do. It will go catch it. At 1st, it may possibly think it?s some meals you playfully gave it to take in. But when you consider it out of its mouth and throw it all-around once more, it will know to provide it again to you. Its time for it to engage in.

Canines like dogs and cats have a potent sixth perception that will forewarn you when you are sleeping or you are active on the telephone.

Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov, discovered Classical, or in the terminology of habits analysis respondent conditioning, in 1920s. It looks that classical conditioning was identified by chance. Pavlov was investigating pet dog&acutes digestion when he discovered that the most experienced dogs that he had been screening started to salivate before the samples of foodstuff ended up offered to them. He started off to investigate this systematically. During Pavlov&acutes experiment, canines had been exposed to a broad variety of arbitrary stimuli (instance bell and gentle) introduced contiguously with foods. Pavlov has a exclusive laboratory produced in which the experimenter and a puppy were separated from each and every other in soundproof rooms. Discovery was that conditioned stimulus (bell) began to cause the very same reactioning (salivate) in canines that unconditioned stimulus (foods) did. The associative bond in between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US) is strengthened when the CS constantly takes place just before the illustration of the US and is weakened when the CS and US come about independently of every single other. So classical conditioning is unintentional and unconscious reaction to a specific stimuli.

It is important to understand how classical conditioning will work and ideally a couple of everyday examples will do that. Most puppies react quickly to audio of doorbell ringing and following many repetitions, in which the bell indicators the arrival of an individual at the door, the pet dog may well start off to instance bark. The canine has discovered to correlate a beforehand insignificant function (doorbell) with a substantial on (customer) and now when the doorbell rings the pet dances with pleasure anticipating the customer&acutes entry and greetings. But what starts off to come about if puppies operator isn?t going to open up the door when doorbell rings? After several periods of nonreinforced exposures to the bell, the pet will step by step inhibit its anticipatory reactions and ultimately overlook the audio altogether. We can say that the conditioned result has been extinguished.

Classical conditioning has also an critical role in the growth of nervousness and fears. For instance, puppies easily create fears connected with the veterinary clinic, particularly if they have gone through painful processes there. It could assistance to stop damaging associations to the veterinary clinic when we supply dogs or puppies treats and other pleasurable encounters though being examined. But what if puppy isn?t going to take in in that scenario? Its most likely way too stressed (or not hungry) and you have to start providing meals to the pet dog previously (example in the hospital parking good deal). Lifelong phobic reactions can also come about as the end result of a solitary traumatic event and canines put up with a broad spectrum of phobic fears, most of which are founded and reversed by way of classical conditioning.

But does Pavlov have nearly anything actually very good information for us to use in dog training? You may have listened to about clicker education. When we take a look at clicker training by classical conditioning, clicker is conditioned stimulus (CS) and foods (or some else reinforcement) is unconditioned stimulus (US). Clicker is a mechanical unit that makes a short, unique ?click? sound which tells the animal specifically when they?re executing the right matter and its put together with optimistic reinforcement. You can also use anything else than clicker, case in point light, whistle or some other sound. Other essential facts of Pavlovian conditioning is counterconditioning. It plays avital purpose in the understanding and unlearning of psychological reactions. So in dog training, resolving fears and other difficulties (example phobias, separation stress and anxiety and aggressiviness), classical conditioning could be required. Classically conditioned responses are largely autonomous and impartial of central control, unlike instrumental behavior. Puppies dont select to really feel fearful or anxious. To be managed, an aversive emotion like rage or worry, ought to be countered by the elicitation of an ever before stronger and incompatible emotional reaction.

If you like to know about Clicker Dog Training

Source: http://articles-maniac.tk/dog-training-classical-conditioning/home-family/pets/

dobie gray bruce springsteen powerball grammy nominations lil boosie bobbi kristina brown new edition

ALPHABET SOUP | More Intelligent Life

Restaurant names are becoming more complicated and enigmatic. Christopher Hirst asks the experts what?s going on...

Food and drink are no longer enough. Increasingly, restaurants also provide customers with a puzzle?why do they have such baffling names? Recent London openings include Karpo, which sounds like an intriguing cross between Kafka and Harpo Marx, but is actually the ?Greek goddess of fruits of the earth?; 10 Cases, which might suggest a link with Sherlock Holmes but in fact refers to an idiosyncratic wine-buying policy; and the bar/bistro Soif, the French for thirst, but which some customers have taken to be a philosophical question??So if...??

At one time restaurants were almost always named after their founding proprietor?venerable survivors include Rules in London (1798), Keen?s in New York (1885) and Caf? Procope in Paris (1686)?but today the whole lexicon has been plundered. In those cities you can now dine in establishments named after an ancient dish of jellified pork (Brawn, in east London, serves food that is ?honest and simple with a respect for tradition?), the ship on which Darwin developed his ideas about evolution (Beagle, which stresses it ?is not named after the dog?, and aims for ?creative American cooking?) and a man best known for beating naughty children (Au P?re Fouettard, near Les Halles, where the manageress apparently ?runs a tight ship?).

?Every new opening I deal with wants to have a catchy name,? says Maureen Mills of the restaurant-PR specialists Network London. ?There are three rules: make sure it?s not rude, people can spell it, and it?s not in an obscure language.? After that anything goes, though customers might have to overcome an initial aversion at Skin & Bones in Portland, Oregon, or Virus in Ghent, where the food can be as bizarre as the name: I once ate muskrat there.

The word ?restaurant? was originally a term for restorative broth. In the years before the French revolution, its meaning extended to the premises where soup and other foods were sold. One of the first Parisian restaurants was called Boeuf ? la Mode, while today the hottest joint in town is Chateaubriand. (?Such a terrific name,? says Mills. ?I don?t know why it wasn?t used before.?) Some names get used more than once?purely by coincidence, both Kent and Paris have restaurants named after the Roman food-writer Apicius, while in either New York or Perth you can dine at a Balthazar?named after a massive champagne bottle, or perhaps one of the three Wise Men. (The other two magi had equally ringing monikers. There?s already a Le Melchior in Cahors, south-west France, but Caspar is still up for grabs.) There was a third Balthazar, in London, though that changed owing to ?trade-name infringement?. Its new name, Manson, has unfortunate connotations for anyone who was reading a newspaper in 1968.

But does it matter? ?The name alone is not make-or-break,? says Richard Chinn, a senior strategist at the brand consultancy Wolff Olins. ?But it can signpost a concept and make it easier for people to get some idea of the place.? Maureen Mills agrees. ?Names like Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, or Gordon Ramsay at Claridge?s, act as mini press-releases: they tell you the name of the chef, and where he is. More casual places, such as Pollan Street Social, give the street address and get across the concept.? Others, though, give a street address, but not necessarily the right street address: east London?s North Road Restaurant is on St John Street, while its near neighbour St John Bread and Wine is actually on Commercial Road. Perhaps ?Commercial Bread and Wine? wouldn?t have had the right ring.

Names come in clearly discernible waves. Single-word, minimalist abstractions?Sketch, Texture, Maze, Public, Alias?were fashionable in Britain and America in the mid-2000s. When Gordon Ramsay opened Aubergine in 1993, a restaurant named after a vegetable seemed odd, but it was followed by a whole green-grocery of fruit and veg, including Medlar, Quince and Tamarind.

A two-syllable, two-vowel-sound trend started with Nobu in 1994, picked up steam with London?s Moro in 1997, then avalanched in the 2000s: Cracco in Milan, Needoo in London, Noma in Copenhagen. They?re snappy but heading towards baby talk.

The word ?kitchen? is much in vogue. Mills recalls that when Tom Aitkens opened the now-defunct Tom?s Kitchen in Chelsea six years ago, ?his board of directors was concerned that it was too tacky, too informal. But it was perfect. Bistro, brasserie and caf? have all become over-familiar.? Now, with a Kitchin (the spelling comes from the restaurateur Tom Kitchin) in Edinburgh, a Kitchen Restaurant in Inverness, and a Kitchen W8 in London, you could argue that ?kitchen? is edging towards over-familiarity.

Some kinds of names never go out fashion. Bad puns still have their grip?there?s Aunt Chiladas in Arizona, Thaitanic in London, Vin sur Vin in Paris (echoing the top mark of 20 out of 20, or vingt sur vingt), and a fish-and-chip shop in Goole, Yorkshire, called Frying Nemo. An equally timeless, but more bearable, approach is to raid the farmyard: The Spotted Pig in New York, The Potted Pig in Cardiff. And the king of all the animals is actually a bird: Heston Blumenthal?s The Fat Duck (1995). He is ?not 100% sure? where the name came from.

The most newsworthy new restaurant in Britain in the past 18 months was also Blumenthal?s. The name of his first venture in London, Dinner, was a reference to the historic gastronomy on the menu (?dinner? originally meant breakfast, before becoming lunch and then supper). But it?s one thing to be historical, another to feel natural. ?I think it?s odd,? Mills says. ?Having lunch at Dinner is weird.?

Which new openings have had winning names? Richard Chinn nominates three. ?Nopi sounds immediately friendly and colloquial,? he says. ?Polpo feels very friendly with an Italian element. Duck Soup instantly gives the place an edge.? He may have spotted a trend: all have names that are more memorable than meaningful. Nopi, an upmarket venture from the saladmeister Yotam Ottolenghi, takes its name from its location north of Piccadilly?though, unlike Tribeca in New York (which lent its name to Robert De Niro?s Tribeca Grill), it is doubtful whether any of the locals, except possibly an estate agent, use the term.

Russell Norman, the owner of Polpo, explains his thinking: ?We wanted a word that was short, memorable and impossible to mispronounce. Polpo means octopus, one of my favourite animals, but that was coincidental. The shape of the word is more important than the meaning.?

Duck Soup?s owner, Clare Lattin, says the name came about ?because we loved the daftness of it. When we realised we were next door to the Groucho Club, we nearly abandoned it. But in the end, we couldn?t think of anything else as good, so we stuck with it.?

Some names come out of the blue. While seeking inspiration for his new London venture in 1926, an Italian restaurateur called Pepino Leoni saw a poster for the 1925 film ?Quo Vadis?. The restaurant that bears its name can still be found in Soho. In 2002, about to open a place specialising in French food, the British chef Henry Harris was forced into creative thinking by his signmaker. ?He said if we didn?t come up with a name right then, we wouldn?t have a sign in time. So I put together a long list of French words, including a few writers as fillers: Beaumarchais, Moli?re, Racine?Going through them, we went, ?Crap, crap, crap? until we reached Racine and someone said, ?Racine, of course, French for root. Absolutely brilliant.? So there it is. Both interpretations are true.?

The restaurateur Will Smith explains the origin of Arbutus, in central London, thus: ?We discovered there used to be an arbutus, or strawberry tree, around the corner in Soho Square. The name felt good and sounded great. It was a bit like naming a child. At first, people went, ?Eh?? but soon said ?That?s interesting? and accepted it. Also, arbutus fruit have a culinary application in Portugal, where it is made into a spirit.? So does Arbutus sell arbutus spirit? ?No.?

Perhaps the ultimate in restaurant names is the latest venture from New York restaurateur Danny Meyer. Though outposts of his empire have solidly geographical names such as Union Square Caf?, Gramercy Tavern and The Modern at the Museum of Modern Art, this does not apply to the newcomer at 945 Madison Ave. It is called Untitled. This may sound unimaginative, pretentious even, but it is actually witty and apposite. Untitled is the restaurant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.?

Illustration Pete Gamlen

Christopher Hirst is the author of "Love Bites" and used to be the Weasel in the Independent

Lifestyle??Christopher Hirst??food??March/April 2012?? Subscribe to Intelligent Life and get powerful writing, provocative opinions and memorable photography delivered to your door every two months

Source: http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/lifestyle/christopher-hirst/alphabet-soup

utah jazz mike rowe ron artest deion sanders shld 2012 sec football schedule medifast

How Internet Marketing Can Help Your Business Make Money

[unable to retrieve full-text content]If you run an online business, internet marketing is necessary in order to properly promote the business. You should start ... Use the basics of internet marketing outlined below to begin building the strategies for your own online business.Site wide ... Comments. /groups/anonym/search/index.rss?tag=hotlist/groups/anonym/search/?tag=hotWhat's HotHotListHot!?tag=hot2332/groups/anonym/sidebar/HotListwiki2012-03-12T14:46:50+00:00groups/anonym/wiki/welcomeFalseCompro oro ...

Source: http://www.vh-ulm.de/groups/anonym/weblog/3a010/

separation of church and state dale earnhardt brett ratner oscars oscar predictions the lion king nba all star game 2012

????? ?? Home Improvement Swimming Pools Sp ? asics news

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Builders of swimming pools instantly and then have always been devoted to offering unmatched quality production and superior buyer service,????? ???,whereupon it namely never surprising to see why several ...

Source: http://asics.lateststyle.org/2012/03/11/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%B7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B9-%E3%82%B2%E3%83%AB-home-improvement-swimming-pools-sp/

easter island dallas weather the killing fields the killing fields texas killing fields burzynski pete seeger

Asbestos mining towns in Canada seek new future

It is an unlikely match, but a green chemistry institute is thriving in the old headquarters of a Canadian mine in a sign that the former world capital of asbestos is diversifying.

?We started with just two friends and two desks in an office, with no computer,? said David Berthiaume, who runs Oleotek, a research center that develops industrial products from vegetable oils and animals fats, rather than oil byproducts.

The oleochemistry center, which now has a team of 11 a decade after its launch, has since migrated to spacious premises next to the former asbestos mine in Thetford Mines.

The city, along with the nearby town of Asbestos, benefited in the 1960s from the extraction of huge mineral deposits of the material.

A carcinogenic product, asbestos was long used in construction, where it was favored for its resistance to heat and fire.

However, during the past 25 years, the asbestos industry has collapsed, forcing Thetford Mines, a city of 25,700 inhabitants about 240km east of Montreal, to adapt its economic model to the changing times.

?We gave this some thought around here. We said to ourselves: ?Apart from asbestos, what else could we produce here??? Berthiaume, 36, said.

His center has since launched its first startup, Innoltek, which produces non-toxic concrete form release oil for the construction and precast concrete markets.

Once a mono-industrial city riddled with craters and slag heaps of snow-capped mining debris, Thetford Mines has since made huge strides in opening up its economy to new industries, from manufacturing and transportation, to tourism, wind energy and research.

?In 20 years, 1,000 more jobs were created than were lost, but the salaries are not the same,? Thetford Mines Mayor Luc Berthold said.

The average salary in Thetford Mines was among the highest in Canada during the 1970s because of the extra compensation paid for working in risky mining jobs.

?People who worked in the mining sector had special training, whether in tinsmithing, mechanics, welding, etc. It was a good place to foster new businesses because there was specialized labor,? said Luc Remillard, president of the local economic development agency.

There is no public data on the unemployment rate in the city, but the Chaudieres-Appalaches region that includes Thetford Mines has 5.7 percent unemployment, according to the Quebec Institute of Statistics. Remillard estimated Thetford Mines is on equal par with the regional figures.

For the first time in 130 years, Canada no longer produces asbestos. The Jeffrey Mine located in Asbestos ? until recently the world?s biggest asbestos mine ? is now shuttered.

However, it could soon receive a C$58 million (US$58.5 million) loan guarantee from the Quebec government to resume activities in the spring, despite protests from a local coalition asking authorities to halt further investments in the asbestos industry.

After a cave-in, LAB Chrysotile Inc closed its Lake Asbestos Mine, near Thetford Mines, in October last year. After going into bankruptcy, it is now seeking a new investor to start its operations back up again.

Despite the success of its economic diversification and the risks associated with asbestos, Thetford Mines officials are adamant about relaunching the Lake Asbestos Mine, which once employed 350 workers.

?Replacing 350 jobs with small businesses takes time. The easiest way for us to keep an active economy is to safeguard our mining operations,? Berthold said. ?I don?t have a miracle solution. We?ve been looking for five years for a big business to create 350-400 jobs here, but they don?t come a dime a dozen.?

Source: http://libertytimes.feedsportal.com/c/33098/f/535603/s/1d562f2e/l/0L0Staipeitimes0N0CNews0Cbiz0Carchives0C20A120C0A30C120C20A0A3527555/story01.htm

anthony shadid gary carter this means war bobby brown suzanne somers colbert colbert report

Official: US troop opened fire on Afghan civilians

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A U.S. service member walked out of his base in southern Afghanistan before dawn Sunday and started shooting Afghan civilians, Afghan and NATO officials said. There were widely varying reports of casualties.

People were killed in the shooting spree in Kandahar province, Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said, though he did not provide numbers.

"The incident happened. There are some people killed, some wounded. But I don't have the details," Wesa said in a phone interview.

Helicopters were circling overhead at Alkozai village in Panjwai district as a delegation from the governor's office arrived to determine exactly what happened, but details were still sketchy.

A resident of Alkozai, where the shootings took place, told an Associated Press reporter that 16 people were killed as the U.S. service member went into three different houses and started shooting. The villager, Abdul Baqi, said he had not seen the bodies himself, but had talked to the family members of the dead.

"When it was happening in the middle of the night we were inside our houses. I heard gunshots and then silence and then gunshots again," Baqi said.

NATO spokesman Justin Brockhoff said a U.S. service member had been detained as the alleged shooter and that the coalition had reports of "multiple wounded" but none killed. The wounded were evacuated to NATO medical facilities, he said.

The service member was being held at a NATO base and U.S. forces are investigating the shooting in cooperation with Afghan authorities, Brockhoff said. He said it was not clear if the alleged shooter knew the victims.

"This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved," NATO said in a statement.

There were reports of protests in Panjwai following the shooting and the U.S. embassy warned travelers in Kandahar province to "exercise caution."

The shooting comes after weeks of tense relations between U.S. forces and their Afghan hosts following the burning of Qurans and other religious materials at an American base. Though U.S. officials apologized and said the burning was an accident, the incident sparked violent protests and attacks that killed some 30 people. Six U.S. troops have been killed in attacks by their Afghan colleagues since the Quran burnings came to light.

In the capital, meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the government still expects to sign a strategic partnership agreement with the United States by the time a NATO summit convenes in Chicago in May. The agreement would formalize the U.S.-Afghan relationship and the role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after NATO's scheduled transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan government at the end of 2014.

But Karzai stressed the importance of foreign forces leaving Afghanistan to preserve the country's national sovereignty. Any international forces that remain after 2014 would have to operate under strict guidelines governing their responsibilities and when they could leave their bases, he said.

"We have a strong army and police, so it is to our benefit to have good relations with the international community, not have international troops in our country," Karzai said at a public event in Kabul.

The president has demanded that international forces stop night raids on the homes of suspected militants as a condition to signing the strategic partnership agreement. The raids have caused widespread anger among Afghans.

Also Sunday, a prominent Afghan women's rights activist said gunmen attacked her office in a western province in an apparent assassination attempt.

Malalai Joya, a former Afghan lawmaker and vocal critic of both the Taliban and of criminality in the Afghan government, said the attack on her office in Farah province was the sixth attempt on her life to date.

Armed men tried to storm the compound before dawn on Saturday, she said. The attackers did not get into the building but two of her guards were seriously injured and are currently in the hospital.

Joya said she was in Kabul at the time but had planned a trip to Farah soon and news of that may have leaked out. She said she believes the attackers thought she was in the building.

___

Khan reported from Kandahar. Associated Press writers Sebastian Abbot and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report in Kabul.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-03-11-AS-Afghanistan/id-7ad0e4d4197444ae94d31ec919ce06ff

lake malawi warren jeffs phaedra parks oklahoma earthquake earthquake today earthquake today droid razr

$100 or $1,000? Wide price range for birth control

Graphic shows the annual cost of the most effect birth control methods

Graphic shows the annual cost of the most effect birth control methods

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Birth control that you must take every single day? A more goof-proof option that costs a lot upfront but then works for several years? Or something in between?

A woman's choice may come down to her wallet: The price of birth control varies dramatically.

Just the pill has a huge range, from $9 a month for generics to $90 a month for some of the newest brands, plus a yearly doctor's visit for the prescription.

Want a once-a-month option? The patch or ring could run you $55 monthly.

Even more reliable are so-called long-acting types, those IUDs or implants that can last years but can cost $600 to nearly $1,000 for the doctor to insert.

That's if you don't have insurance that covers at least some of the tab ? although many women do. And if those prices are too much, crowded public clinics offer free or reduced-price options. But it might take a while to get an appointment.

Questions about cost and access to birth control have been swirling for weeks now, intensifying after a Georgetown University law school student testified before congressional Democrats in support of a new federal policy to pay for contraception that she said can add up to $1,000 a year, not covered by the Jesuit college's health plan. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on her comments became the latest skirmish in the birth control wars.

Soon, the new policy will make contraceptives available free of charge as preventive care, just like mammograms, for women with most employer-provided health insurance. Churches are exempt. But for other religious-affiliated organizations, such as colleges or hospitals, their insurance companies would have to pay for the coverage, something that has triggered bitter political debate.

A major study of nearly 10,000 women that's under way in St. Louis provides a tantalizing clue about what might happen when that policy takes effect.

Consider: Nearly half of the nation's 6 million-plus pregnancies each year are unintended. Rates of unplanned pregnancies are far higher among low-income women than their wealthier counterparts. Among the reasons is that condoms can fail. So can birth control pills, if the woman forgets to take them every day or can't afford a refill.

Only about 5 percent of U.S. women use the most effective contraceptives ? a matchstick-sized implant named Implanon or intrauterine devices known as IUDs. Once inserted, they prevent pregnancy for three, five or 10 years. But Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis says many women turn them down because of a higher upfront cost that insurance hasn't always covered ? even though years of pills can cost as much.

"How can we cover Viagra and not IUDs?" wonders Peipert, who is leading the new study.

Called the Contraceptive CHOICE Project, the study is providing those options and a range of others for free. Participants also can choose from birth control pills, a monthly patch, a monthly vaginal ring and a once-every-three-months shot. They're told the pros and cons of each but that the long-lasting options have a lower failure rate.

About 75 percent of women in the ongoing study are choosing the IUD or the implant, Peipert says. After the first year, more than 80 percent of the women who chose the long-acting contraceptives are sticking with them ,compared with about half the pill users, he says.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the average woman who has two children will spend parts of three decades trying to avoid an unintended pregnancy. The Institute of Medicine says that's one reason that women tend to incur higher out-of-pocket costs for preventive care than men.

Yes, there already are some options for more affordable contraception, such as public clinics or Planned Parenthood.

About 55 percent of local health departments offer some family planning services, according to the National Association of County & City Health Officials. Many of those receive federal Title X funding, which means they can offer contraception on a sliding fee scale. The poorest women may get it free, while others may pay full price or somewhere in between.

There are cheaper generic pills. Peipert says there's little difference between them and pricey new brand-name versions like Yaz.

But some women go through a number of brands before finding one that doesn't cause uncomfortable side effects, says Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Her organization operates a website, http://www.bedsider.org , that details options along with the price range.

"Not every woman can use generic pills, by any means," Brown says. "Do we say to people, 'Just go get generic cardiac medicines. Hope that works out for you?'"

Peipert notes that contraception is cheaper than what insurers or taxpayer-funded Medicaid pay for prenatal care and delivery. He says economic studies have found that every $1 spent on family planning can save nearly $4 in expenditures on unintended pregnancy.

Do women ask about the price?

"Oh, my gosh, absolutely," exclaims obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Monica Dragoman of New York's Montefiore Medical Center.

Just last week, she saw a woman whose heart condition could make another pregnancy life-threatening but who couldn't afford the IUD that Dragoman wanted to prescribe, and chose a cheaper option.

If a family's struggling financially, "sometimes contraception is one of the first things to fall off," Dragoman says.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2012-03-09-HealthBeat-Birth%20Control/id-059b584576fb41a49f05c276a84cd8e2

sticks and stones top chef powerball winner powerball winner narwhals narwhals gmail app