Kitchen Stove Research Articles

Characterizing and predicting ultrafine particle counts in Canadian classrooms during the winter months: Model development and evaluation

School classrooms are potentially important micro-environments for childhood exposures owing to the large amount of time children spend in these locations. While a number of airborne contaminants may be present in schools, to date few studies have examined ultrafine particle (0.02–1 μm) (UFP) levels in classrooms. In this study, our objective was to characterize UFP counts (cm −3) in classrooms during the winter months and to develop a model to predict such exposures based on ambient weather conditions and outdoor UFPs, as well as classroom characteristics such as size, temperature, relative humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. In total, UFP count data were collected on 60 occasions in 37 occupied classrooms at one elementary school and one secondary school in Pembroke, Ontario. On average, outdoor UFP levels exceeded indoor measures by 8989 cm −3 (95% confidence interval (CI): 6382, 11 596), and classroom UFP counts were similar at both schools with a combined average of 5017 cm −3 (95% CI: 4300, 5734). Of the variables examined only wind speed and outdoor UFPs were important determinants of classrooms UFP levels. Specifically, each 10 km/h increase in wind speed corresponded to an 1873 cm −3 (95% CI: 825, 2920) decrease in classroom UFP counts, and each 10 000 cm −3 increase in outdoor UFPs corresponded to a 1550 cm −3 (95% CI: 930, 2171) increase in classroom UFP levels. However, high correlations between these two predictors meant that the independent effects of wind speed and outdoor UFPs could not be separated in multivariable models, and only outdoor UFP counts were included in the final predictive model. To evaluate model performance, classroom UFP counts were collected for 8 days at two new schools and compared to predicted values based on outdoor UFP measures. A moderate correlation was observed between measured and predicted classroom UFP counts ( r=0.63) for both schools combined, but this relationship was not valid on days in which a strong indoor UFP source (electric kitchen stove) was active in schools. In general, our findings suggest that reasonable estimates of classroom UFP counts may be obtained from outdoor UFP data but that the accuracy of such estimates are limited in the presence of indoor UFP sources.

The Elements of style: an encyclopedia of domestic architectural detail

More than 3,000 analytical drawings and historic engravings are included in this updated edition as well as 400 photographs in color and over 1,000 in black and white. These extraordinary images provide a systematic guide to the features appropriate for every part of a building, from the major components such as doors, windows, walls, floors, ceilings, and staircases to the small but important embellishments such as moldings and door hardware. At the heart of the book is a chronological treatment of the primary styles and periods of architectural design during the past 500 years. Each chapter begins with an illustrated essay, then looks in turn at individual features, from doors and windows to ironwork and woodwork. The usefulness of this book is further enriched by the inclusion of permanent or semipermanent fixtures such as lighting, kitchen stoves, and floor and wall coverings, as well as strictly architectural details. A useful system of quick reference, employing color-coded tabs keyed to each feature, enables the reader to trace how particular features evolved over time. And at the back of the book, separate chapters dealing with vernacular architecture are followed by a glossary and a fully updated directory of suppliers of authentic materials as well as period and reproduction features. For this new edition, a biographical directory of architects and architectural practices has been added.

A TEM study of soot, carbon nanotubes, and related fullerene nanopolyhedra in common fuel-gas combustion sources

Nanoparticle aggregates collected by thermophoretic precipitation from natural gas–air and propane–air kitchen stove top flame exhausts, natural gas–air water heater roof-top exhausts, and other common fuel-gas combustion sources were observed by transmission electron microscopy to consist of occasional aggregates of mostly turbostratic carbon spherules, aggregates of crystalline graphite nanoparticles mixed with other fullerene nanoforms; and aggregates of various sizes of multiwall carbon nanotubes and other multishell, fullerene polyhedra for optimal blue-flame combustion. The carbon nanotube structures and end cap variations as well as fullerene polyhedral structures were observed to be the same as those for arc-evaporation produced nanoaggregates. Nanoparticle aggregation or the occurrence of carbon nanoforms always occurred as aggregates with nominal sizes ranging from about 0.5 μm to 1.5 μm.

Repeated checking really does cause memory distrust

Memory phenomena associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have received increased attention in the recent literature. Some debate remains about whether OCD is characterized by deficits in memory per se, or by poor memory confidence. Following from a recent study that demonstrated memory distrust results from repeated checking of a virtual computerized stove, we asked 50 undergraduate students to repeatedly turn on, turn off and check either a real kitchen stove (relevant checking) or a real kitchen faucet (irrelevant checking) in a standardized, ritualized manner. All participants completed a final check of the stove following these 19 checking trials. Results indicated that following repeated relevant checking, participants reported significantly reduced memory confidence, vividness and detail. Repeated irrelevant checking did not produce these decreases. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural formulations of OCD and in terms of the effects of repetition on memory and metamemory.

In-field measurements of PCDD/F emissions from domestic heating appliances for solid fuels

Within this project the emissions into the atmosphere of polychlorinated dibenzo- p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/F) of 30 domestic heating appliances in Austrian households were tested. The appliances were single stoves (kitchen stove, continuous burning stove and tiled stove) and central heating boilers for solid fuels up to a nominal heat input of 50 kW. A main objective of this survey was to determine the PCDD/F emissions of domestic heating units under routine conditions. Therefore, the habitual combustion conditions used by the operators were not influenced. The original fuels and lightning supports were used and the operation of the units was carried out by the householders according to their usual practice. The data obtained were used to calculate in-field PCDD/F-emission factors. Most of the appliances have shown PCDD/F emissions within a concentration range of 0.01–0.3 ng TEQ/MJ. Modern fan-assisted wood heating boilers with afterburning and units for continuously burning of wood chips and wood pellets had the lowest emissions. High emissions were caused by unsuitable heating habits such as combustion of wastes and inappropriate operation of the appliances. There were only small differences between single stoves and central heating boilers or between wood and coal-fired appliances. The emission factors calculated are higher than those cited in literature, which are mainly derived from trials on test stands under laboratory conditions.

Funk & Wagnalls

Funk & Wagnalls

TEM comparison of chrysotile (asbestos) nanotubes and carbon nanotubes

Fibrous materials, both natural and synthetic, have been an important part of global technologies for decades. Many of these materials in their elemental forms are nanomaterials with unusual properties, especially crystalline whiskers and fibers used to make an array of composite materials systems. Around 1970, asbestos, especially chrysotile (Mg3Si2O5(OH)4), and crocidolite (Na2(Fe 2+ 3 , Fe 3+ 2 )Si8O22(OH,F)2) had been used to fabricate nearly 80 000 miles of asbestos–cement (AC) water pipe in the United States, alone, hundreds of millions of tons of asbestos insulation, brake-linings, AC sheet (commonly referred to as transite), and a host of other commercial products. But by the early 1970s, the health effects of asbestos mining, milling, and manufacturing began to emerge [1–3], and asbestos was observed in beverages and drinking water [4, 5]. This of course led to a moratorium on AC pipe and other asbestos products, including brake-linings, especially in the United States. Other studies of ingested mineral fibers, including asbestos, suggested that asbestos fibers longer than 20 μm but thinner than 3 μm were more carcinogenic than fibers of greater diameter, regardless of length, or those shorter than 20 μm, regardless of diameter. Of course, these were actually fiber bundles. It is now well known that the geometry and surface chemistry of particulates can play an important role in causing lung toxicity, especially chrysotile asbestos exposure [6]. Renwick et al. [7] have demonstrated that ultrafine particulates impair macrophage phagocytosis to a greater extent than fine particles (compared on a mass basis). Schwartz et al. [8] have shown that episodes involving high concentrations of coarse particles are not associated with increased mortality while Oberdorster et al. [9] correspondingly showed that ultrafine particles contribute to acute mortality. In addition, crystalline particulates in contrast to amorphous particulates in the same size range are more damaging to human lungs [10], and Momarca et al. [11] have shown that ultrafine crystalline particulates are major contributors to adverse health effects. There is mounting evidence that ultrafine airborne particulates with mean diameters <100 nm are far more toxic than expected and pose considerable health risks, including mortality, asthma complications, chronic bronchitis, respiratory tract infections, ischaemic heart diseases, and stroke. A recent joint industry, government, and private sector, multicity analysis found that a daily increase of 20 μg/m3 in inhalable particulate matter <10 μm increased the death rate by about 1% [12], while a 25 μg/m3 increase in average lifetime concentration of fine particles (<2.5 μm diameter) increased the overall total annual death rate by some 15% [13]. The start of the 21st century heralded the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative [14], following a decade of materials discovery and development, notably carbon nanotubes [15], which have demonstrated a wide range of remarkable properties [16]. This has led to predictions of annual production quantities of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in thousands of tons within the first decade of the 21st century [17]; however, large quantities of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are already in commercial use [18]. In a recent summary of American Chemical Society Symposium on Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Dagani [19] concluded that “early results suggest that some nanoparticles, such as carbon nanotubes, may pose health risks.” Correspondingly, Lam et al. [20] have recently shown that SWCNTs are more toxic than carbon black or silica (SiO2) particulates (on an equal weight basis) in mouse lungs, while Warheit et al. [21] have demonstrated that pulmonary exposures to SWCNTs in rats produced evidence of a foreign tissue body reaction. Recent exposure assessment studies conducted at workplace sites where carbon nanotubes are either manufactured or utilized reported low airborne particulate exposure levels of respirable SWCNTs, not exceeding 100 μg/m3 [22, 23]. Moreover, it has recently been observed that carbon nanotubes, particularly MWCNTs are ubiquitous in the atmosphere, both indoor and outdoor, and are produced by a wide range of fuel gas combustion sources, including natural gas and propane gas kitchen stove tops, gas furnaces and hot water heaters, electric power generation stations, etc. [24–26]. These airborne MWCNT particulates are actually complex aggregates often composed of hundreds or thousands of carbon nanotubes and related carbon nanocrystal particles. While specific quantitation has not been measured, estimates of carbon nanocrystal aggregate concentrations can exceed 100 μg/m3. While the technological and health-related issues involving carbon nanotubes have emphasized SWCNTs, it is apparent that the most prevalent occurrence of carbon nanotubes is MWCNTs and especially complex aggregates of MWCNTs and related carbon nanocrystal forms. Harris [27] has noted that chrysotile

Carbon nanotubes and other fullerene-related nanocrystals in the environment: A TEM study

Carbon nanotubes and other fullerene-related nanocrystals are ubiquitous in the atmospheric environment—both indoor and outdoor. In fact, these nanostructures have been observed even in a 10,000 year-old ice core sample, indicating their natural existence in antiquity, probably as natural gas/methane combustion products. Similar carbon nanotubes and complex carbon nanocrystal aggregates are observed to be emitted from contemporary combustion sources such as kitchen stoves (natural gas and propane), water heater and furnace exhaust vents, natural gas-burning (electric) power plants, and industrial furnace operations, among others. These observations have been made by collecting nanoparticulates and nanocrystal aggregates on carbon/formvar and silicon monoxide/formvarcoated 3 mm grids that were examined with a transmission-electron microscope. This study begins to establish an environmental context for considering the potential impact of future nanostructured particles on human health.

Carbon Nanotubes, Nanocrystal Forms, and Complex Nanoparticle Aggregates in common fuel-gas combustion sources and the ambient air

Aggregated multiwall carbon nanotubes (with diameters ranging from ∼3 to 30nm) and related carbon nanocrystal forms ranging in size from 0.4 to 2 μm (average diameter) have been collected in the combustion streams for methane/air, natural gas/air, and propane gas/air flames using a thermal precipitator. Individual particle aggregates were collected on carbon/formvar-coated 3mm nickel grids and examined in a transmission electron microscope, utilizing bright-field imaging, selected-area electron diffraction analysis, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry techniques. The natural gas and propane gas sources were domestic (kitchen) stoves, and similar particle aggregates collected in the outdoor air were correspondingly identified as carbon nanocrystal aggregates and sometimes more complex aggregates of silica nanocrystals intermixed with the carbon nanotubes and other carbon nanocrystals. Finally, and in light of the potential for methane-series gas burning as major sources of carbon nanocrystal aggregates in both the indoor and outdoor air, data for natural gas consumption and corresponding asthma deaths and incidence are examined with a degree of speculation regarding any significance in the correlations.

Told in the Mother's Voice: Jean Lorrain's Fairy Tales as Oral Narrative

Told in the Mother's Voice: Jean Lorrain's Fairy Tales as Oral Narrative Robert Ziegler Montana Tech Nothing evokes more powerfully the Bachelardian sense of topophilia than Jean Lorrain's image of the nestled child to whom his mother tells a fairy tale. Reverting in his memory to the status of a listener, the storyteller again becomes the boy before the hearth, the dreamer who is transfixed by the embers in the fireplace and whose reveries are incubated by the stove's maternal warmth. Imagining the homeless lashed along by biting winds and blown down hard, paved streets by gusts that snatch at flimsy rags, the writer regresses to the protected nest of childhood, from which he leaves on cozy journeys into the landscapes of old books: "combien il serait doux de pouvoir redescendre le passé, de pouvoir redevenir enfant et, . . . dans la tiédeur des chambres closes, ... de se reprendre au charme des vieux livres d'images, ... et de pouvoir croire encore aux contes!" (Préface, Princesses d'ivoire et d'ivresse 7). Published in 1902, Lorrain's Princesses d'ivoire et d'ivresse is unlike the author's earlier works that had conditioned their reception. The Fecamp native, who escaped the humid greenery of Normandy and electrified Paris with his flamboyant eccentricities, had used literature as an instrument of remunerative publicity, crafting personae to promote the sale of his strange and shocking books. Accomplished scandal-monger, "incarnation of le péril mauve" (McLendon, "Communities" 7), Lorrain belonged to the notorious segments of the society he maligned. In his depictions of the underworld of crime and prostitution (La Maison Philibert), theatre society , the demi-monde (Le Tréteau), the ruthless practices of publishers (Maison pour dames), Lorrain had shown the public its most unflattering public face. With their emphasis on sensationalism and contemporaneity, Lorrain's previous works engage attention as outrageous performances that model the disapproval they are intended to elicit. It is therefore surprising to find Lorrain thinking back to his own childhood, yearning for the days long past when he was the audience himself. In his fairy tales Lorrain's narratives relate the temporal vagueness of their frame to the timeless pleasure afforded listeners who are spellbound by a story. The older the stories he was told in winters past, the younger Lorrain is made to feel by his cherished 165 166Rocky Mountain Review recollections. As tales are aged when buried beneath the years of their retelling, the house in which one hears them recedes more deeply into history, where it is blanketed by snow, which is the frozen dust of time. Snow "met de l'âge dans les souvenirs. . . . Sous la neige la maison est vieille. Il semble que la maison vive en arrière dans les siècles lointains" (Bachelard 53). As the setting for the narrative grows disorienting and remote, the child eases comfortably into "le giron de la maison" (Bachelard 26). The more harrowing and dangerous is the tortured hero's quest, the more firmly anchored is the listener in "[le] pays de l'Enfance Immobile" (Bachelard 25). We are warmer in the house because it is cold outside, says Bachelard (52); Lorrain evokes the fortress of Neighilde, the snow palace within which sleep the winters of the future. Deepening the withdrawal into enclosure, heat and safety are the images that Lorrain gives of livid midnight suns, cold canopies of stars, infinite expanses ofblue ice floes, roaring Hyperborean gales that scour out vaulted, doorless halls, slashing storms of prisms that break in iridescent shards. In his fairy tales Lorrain describes the passage to adulthood as both a journey into emptiness, exposure, and aloneness and as a pretext for returning home where the narrator can pause, can start retelling and reexperiencing the stories dating from his childhood. As the origin ofthe tales that Lorrain first heard as a boy and the sanctuary to which his tired adventurers are drawn, the house as mother's body is the center of Lorrain's narrative, with its hearth that circulates the warmth that enfolds the drowsy listener and with the belly of the kitchen stove in which the uncooked story gestates . The preoccupation of the writer...

Time-resolved identification and measurement of indoor air pollutants by spectroscopic techniques: gaseous nitrous acid, methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid.

The results are reported of a quantitative study of HONO, NO{sub 2} and H{sub 2}CO levels in the mobile office/home using a new residential, gas-fired kitchen stove and kerosene- or propane-fueled space heaters. We also report results from the use of an FT-IR spectrometer which allowed us to search not only for nitric acid in the polluted indoor air containing HONO and NO{sub 2}, but also for organics. We report for the first time the unambiguous, simultaneous identification and measurement of indoor gaseous HCOOH and CH{sub 3}OH, apparently from the building materials which, like the HONO, are at levels exceeding those typically found in outdoor urban environments.

Sink or Swim: Training to Be an Obstetrician

June 14,1928, my first obstetric delivery! In my just-completed second year at Harvard Medical School, the training had included only 12 lectures in obstetrics from Chubby Newell and an intense study of a mimeographed syllabus that might have been titled How to Deliver a Baby. I had reported to the Boston Lying-In Hospital's headquarters along with two classmates whose ignorance equaled mine, each of us armed with his self-prepared bag of instruments, gloves, cotton, and pans for sterilization by boiling water on the kitchen stove. For medication we each had an ounce of fluid extract of ergot that was replaced daily from the hospital with a freshly prepared supply. The patients had all been screened by the lordly interns who conducted the hospital's prenatal clinics, and the women, mostly multiparas, lived all over the eastern suburbs. When a telephone call came into the district headquarters, one of us would

Predictors of occult carbon monoxide poisoning in patients with headache and dizziness.

Headache and dizziness occur at carboxyhemoglobin levels of greater than 10%. We studied 89 patients with headache or dizziness for evidence of carbon monoxide exposure. The mean carboxyhemoglobin level was 2.87%. Number of cigarettes smoked per day (r = 0.471; p less than 0.00002), use of gas kitchen stoves for heating purposes (r = 0.252, p less than 0.02), problems with the home heating system (r = 0.278, p less than 0.01), and cohabitants with concurrent headache or dizziness (r = 0.427, p less than 0.01) correlated with carboxyhemoglobin levels. Multiple regression analysis identified number of cigarettes smoked daily, use of stoves for heat, and concurrently symptomatic cohabitants as significant predictors of carboxyhemoglobin level (F = 13.939 [3, 85]; p less than 0.01). Obtaining carboxyhemoglobin levels from patients who used stoves for heat or had similarly affected cohabitants identified 4 of 4 patients with levels greater than 10% (sensitivity, 100%) and excluded 47 of 85 patients with lower levels (specificity, 55.3%). The 4 patients with carboxyhemoglobin levels in excess of 10% may represent occult carbon monoxide poisoning in this population.

Occult carbon monoxide poisoning: A cause of winter headache

Headache is an early symptom of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, occurring at carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels of greater than 10%. We investigated 37 patients presenting to an emergency department during the winter-heating season with a complaint of headache for evidence of CO exposure. Seven of the 37 patients (18.9%) had COHb levels in excess of 10%, with a mean of 14.0%. Three of these seven patients (42.9%) used gas space heaters or kitchen stoves to heat their homes, and three (42.9%) had cohabitants at home with headache. Of the 30 patients with COHb levels of less than 10% (mean level, 3.2%), only four (13.3%) used gas space heaters and kitchen stoves for heat ( P = NS), and none (0%) had cohabitants with headache ( P = .0045). In six of the seven patients with elevated COHb levels (85.7%), gas company Investigation or historical information obtained retrospectively revealed a definite or probable toxic CO exposure. In none of these patients had the diagnosis of CO poisoning been suspected by the emergency department physician or the patient prior to obtaining the result of the COHb level. Occult CO poisoning may be an important cause of winter headache.

The Ghost in the Kitchen: Household Technology at the Brattleboro Museum, Vermont

Any home's kitchen is an exceedingly complex social artifact. Historically speaking, it is a relatively recently specialized room for food preparation within a family's dwelling and a descendant of the space around the cave dwellers' hearth and the medieval fireplace. The kitchen stove itself has gradually lost the task of household heating, which, in modern homes, is banished to the furnace room (belying the admonition, If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen). But the kitchen remains a node of powerful cultural associations with emotional warmth and nurture. After all, it is where Mom still produces apple pie for the family, whether she deploys apples, flour, and shortening to do so, or merely shifts Sara Lee's product from freezer to microwave oven.

Memoir of an Avocational Archaeologist

Among my earliest memories is the shoe box of “Indian rocks” that my father kept on a shelf behind the kitchen stove. These he had found and brought in to keep as curiosities. Although he knew some of the local collectors and at least one buyer for E. W. Payne of Springfield, Illinois, he never thought of selling any of his finds, so when I came along there was a small collection waiting for me.

Cleaner Cooking with Gas

Many chefs prefer cooking with gas, a fuel long promoted as clean burning. But growing concern over indoor air pollution threatens to dirty the gas range's formerly pristine image. So today appliance designers are at work to develop less-polluting burners. Already there are at least two promising candidates on the horizon, both due to be field tested this year. The kitchen stove is unique among modern gas appliances in that its combustion products are emitted directly into the home. Gas is used for cooking in about 45 percent of U.S. homes, and studies show most of these homes don't vent outdoors the pollutants their stoves emit. Those pollutants include carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and aldehydes such as formaldehyde. There is some controversy about what health risks, if any, those emissions pose (see sidebar). But not waiting for definitive findings that exonerate or convict gasrange emissions of affecting health, the Gas Research Institute (GRI) in Chicago has begun sponsoring development of low nitrous-oxide (NOx for NO and NO2) range burners. A new flame insert developed for GRI at the American Gas Association (AGA) Laboratories in Cleveland indeed makes gas ranges cleaner. A burner fitted with one of these inserts and turned on high will cut its NOx emissions more than 40 percent. At low burner settings the insert reduces NOx even better. Designed to fit onto the head of existing range burners, it consists of a pair of stainless-steel rings roughly three inches in diameter and mounted an eighth of an inch apart, one atop the other. Placed over a conventional burner, the rings sit about a quarter inch out from the portals through which flames exit the burner. When the burner is on, its flames are forced to pass between the rings, transferring some of their heat. This cools the flame's peak temperatures by distributing heat more uniformly. when you cool the flame you reduce the NOR, explains Douglas DeWerth, who with Bill Sterbik has designed the model under test. The rate of the chemical reaction that forms nitrogen oxides is tied to temperature: the hotter the flame, the more oxygen and nitrogen react. However, a cooler flame also tends to increase CO levels. CO is a natural combustion product, but if the flame is hot enough for long enough, DeWerth says that CO will burn over to CO2. When a flame's temperature is reduced, however, the chemical reaction that drives the conversion of CO to CO2 slows up faster than the rate of CO formation. And that causes levels of CO to build up. In some early tests, NO, reduction was accompanied by significant CO production 6,000 parts per million (ppm) or more for an increase of more than 10-fold over normal burner-emission levels and a factor of 7 higher than that recommended by the American National Standards Institute. Before the insert was added, burners used in the AGA Laboratories test produced about 560 ppm CO (measured at the burner, not in room air). With the insert, CO increased to 650 ppm. However, NO2 production at the burner fell 28 percent and total NO, dropped 42 percent (from 103.3 ppm). Magic Chef, Inc., a range manufacturer, is supplying ranges to AGA Labs for burner modification and advice on design adaptations to encourage consumer acceptance. One suggestion that has been incorporated is use of a four-inch semi-opaque cap to hide the ring system (considered too ugly to display prominently). While the disk, made from Vycor, an impact-resistant high-silica glass, does not affect emissions, it has reduced the efficiency of modified burners four or five percent, DeWerth says. It's also the insert's most expensive component. We're just about finished with our [laboratory] evaluations of a prototype range the manufacturer sent us-where all four top burners have been modified, DeWerth told SCIENCE NEWS. Within a few months he hopes to see Magic Chef place four to six modified ranges in homes to field test them under real-life conditions -such as spills and impact with heavy cast-iron pots. If all goes smoothly, the inserts might be ready to market by the end of the year. However, don't expect to see commercial models any time soon. As DeWerth put it, what incentive does a manufacturer have to develop ranges whose burners cost more, offer lower efficiency and are potentially less attractive than those of its competitors particularly when there is still a question of whether existing emission levels harm health? In fact, the very presence of the inserts could serve to escalate debate over gas-range safety, something manufacturers are understandably loath to do. Then why were these inserts developed? We're worried about the future because we see what the Consumer Product

Theobald Smith (1859-1934), pioneer American microbiologist.

THEOBALD SMITH (1859-1934), PIONEER AMERICAN MICROBIOLOGIST CLAUDE E. DOLMAN* Philip and Theresia Schmitt, newly married, arrived at Albany, New York, from a troubled Germany about 130 years ago, after an 8 weeks' crossing from Antwerp. They each had a sister living in Albany, but otherwise knew nobody, nor any word of English, and possessed only common skills—he as journeyman tailor, she as housekeeper. Albany had already too many tailors to meet the periodic demands of assemblymen and their wives for frock coats and new gowns, while Theresia's housekeeping talents were dedicated to her husband, the two children who arrived soon enough, and several boarders who helped to pay off the mortgage. The first child, Bertha, married a carpenter and died at 34 from an ectopic gestation, leaving three small Murphys to an uncertain future. The second child was christened in the Catholic faith— his father being Protestant. The given name, Theobald, alone sets this Smith apart. Jacob Theobald was a fellow immigrant and family benefactor . The boy temporarily adopted the name Jacob, so that he appeared in early school lists as T. J. Schmitt. His high school essays were signed Theobald J. Smith. At university he jettisoned the/ and also the Catholic faith, after being denounced from the pulpit by his parish priest for not going to confession. The Formative Years (1874-1883) The youth's academic record at Albany High School—then a remarkably progressive yet demanding institution—was impressive. Never Address presented September 17, 1980, at ajoint annual meeting of the Canadian and Australian Medical Associations, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The author is indebted to Philip H. Smith, son and executor of Dr. Theobald Smith, for access to various family papers, and to the Hannah Foundation for the History of Medicine for their sponsorship and a grant-in-aid toward a full-length biography of Theobald Smith. *Professor emeritus of microbiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1W5.© 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1 -5982/82/2503-0258$0 1 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 25, 3 · Spring 1982 | 417 late or absent in 4 years, he always headed his class, and in 1 876—when Robert Koch published his classic report on The Aetiology of Anthrax— Theobald Smith was named valedictorian. As secretary and president of the Philologians, the school's debating society, he learned the techniques of argument, the appraisal of evidence, the value of vocabulary, and the diversity of topics that the human mind can contemplate and sometimes comprehend. With special friends he tramped the countryside, often picking berries, occasionally filching apples, always admiring nature, whether as wild flower, distant hills, or glowing summer sun; boating and fishing on the Hudson River and its tributary, the Normans Kill; and playing the grand piano at home or the organ in whatever church allowed it. He earned pocket money and helped liquidate the debt on the piano by giving music lessons and keeping the books for a retail tailor. He also looked after the garden and was the household handyman. Spare time was devoted to study—at weekends in the state library; at night, around the kitchen stove or in his bedroom, by candlelight. Albany's harsh climate generated Theobald Smith's daily weather observations , so that he became an expert amateur meteorologist. Similarly, his lifelong frugalities can be traced to the family's early penury. His thriftiness in adulthood has been made legendary by persons as ignorant of the young boy's chapped hands and mud-caked feet and his agonized two-day search for a mislaid quarter as of his charitable contributions— for the victims of the Johnstown flood, for the purchase of his primary school teacher's gravestone, or the forgetting of a substantial loan to his laboratory assistant [I]. At Cornell University, then recently founded and full of pioneering excitements, such as academic utilitarianism and coeducation, Smith maintained his excellent record. He gained a free-tuition scholarship and resolved not to specialize. "My ideas of an education," he noted as a sophomore, "are broad, liberal, of the widest kind." Accordingly, he enrolled in courses ranging from economic geology to Faust, from the...

Relationship of Indoor N02Concentrations to Use of Unvented Gas Appliances

Measurements were made on NO/sub 2/ concentrations in dwellings in the vicinity of the University of Florida at Gainesville and compared with results from previously reported studies on dwellings in suburban London and suburban and rural New York. Measurements in dwellings with no unvented gas appliances were quite low, averaging 3ppB. When the only unvented gas appliance was the kitchen stove, the kitchen concentrations averaged 55ppB. In two residences a heater was the only unvented gas appliance; NO/sub 2/ concentrations in the room containing the heater was 112ppB, while the kitchen showed the same concentration and the unheated space about half this value. (JGB)

Kitchen Stove or Potager?

Kitchen Stove or Potager?