Plane Ticket Research Articles

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing: more questions than benefits?

A plethora of genetic tests for susceptibility to common complex disorders have made their way onto the market. Groceries, clothing, hardware equipment, plane tickets and, now, even genetic tests can be ordered directly over the internet, from the comfort of your own home, without ever seeing a physician. Is this simply a natural progression, following in the footsteps of home pregnancy tests and blood-pressure monitors, which many people would admit do fulfill a certain niche and accomplish a lot of good for health-conscious consumers? After all, genetic testing is at the root of personalized medicine within the context of specific drug responses (pharmacogenetics). There are examples of genetic variants that do have a significant and clinically relevant effect on drug response; therefore, testing for them can lead to more efficient and cost–effective treatments [1]. However, there are many more examples with questionable validity and usefulness, so this begs the question: do direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic services, which allow consumers to completely bypass the traditional healthcare system, do more harm than good? Direct-to-consumer genetic testing can be understood as including two related aspects: first, the advertising of genetic tests directly to consumers; and second, the direct access or ordering of genetic tests without the intermediate of a healthcare professional [2]. Although both aspects are equally important and do raise important ethical issues, they differ sufficiently to warrant separate analyses. This editorial will focus solely on DTC access to genetic testing. Other publications have tackled the issue of advertising [3,4]. Over 1100 genetic tests are available clinically and several hundreds are available in research settings. Although most genetic tests are still only available through a healthcare provider, a growing number of tests

Thermoregulation: Channels that Are Cool to the Core

TRP channels are molecular sensors that endow animals with the ability to sense external temperatures. Recent studies have provided strong evidence that at least one TRP channel, TRPV1, is also essential for the maintenance of internal body temperature.

Normal Homes

Normal Homes

The need for sustainable conferences

The need for sustainable conferences

Go at Shaktoolik

Go at Shaktoolik Mattox Roesch Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. [End Page 120] Sometimes the smoke in the village was so thick, if you threw a rock you couldn't see it land. Other times there was just a haze. That week there had been forest fires twenty-five miles inland from Unalakleet. East winds had suffocated everything, putting some jobs on hold and even closing the school for a few days. And since all the planes were grounded—nothing was coming or leaving—Go-Boy told me another week of this and AC Store would run out of food. But he laughed, [End Page 121] and said, "We got fifteen bags of French fries in our freezer." I checked, and we did. Later that week, when the smoke had started to thin, Go-Boy left me a yellow note stuck to the on/off button of our TV: Meet me by the boat, two o'clock. We're spreading good news. There was a chance that Go would maybe give me the money I needed to move back home, so I didn't want to say no to anything. The short walk to the slough seemed a little farther with the haze. I could see the sun behind this gray fog, a scar in the middle of the sky. Houses that were two blocks down the gravel road looked blurred. But this was nothing like the smokiest day, when the world was reduced to twenty-foot sections, like islands of visibility—gliding in view of dimly lit homes and telephone poles, then vanishing—the smell of burning in every sweatshirt hood and jacket collar. That was when the streetlights clicked on at noon. The occasional Ford would try to shine through with high beams. Everyone in town stayed home and sealed their windows, and even the post office closed early. The entire village shut down. I knew why Go wanted to meet me at the slough. Just before the smoke came he'd told me about his idea to take a boat village to village around the Norton Sound, letting people know about the good news. When I asked him what good news, he reminded me that there was a conspiracy in the works. A good conspiracy. One that would eventually bring heaven on earth. That was why he had to cruise up the coast to a place he called Shak Town—Shaktoolik—a village smaller than ours. He said he needed to let them know about the good news. And that was why, he claimed, I needed to come with. Go said, "The good news is that everyone is saved. Everyone is invited to heaven on earth." He had been including me in all his conspiracy stuff, and I was starting to not mind. He told me after Shaktoolik we'd hit Koyuk and Elim and keep going right up the Sound to Nome. People would feed us and give us places to sleep in exchange for this good news. I said, "That's just begging." And he told me he only listened to his heart. "This is what I'm supposed to do. What we're supposed to do." Since he'd been including me in all his conspiracy plans, I had the confidence to ask Go-Boy to bum me some money. I told him [End Page 122] that I needed cash for a plane ticket so I could follow my heart and move back to LA. I wanted to play drums. And even though I had just started, I could take more lessons, and in a year or two I could do some studio drumming. Maybe go to music school. Go-Boy was worried that I'd get back into my old life if I moved home, that I'd be back running with gangs. But he said he'd think about it anyway. I'd wanted to return to California all summer, and my opportunity came when I found out from Go's sister that he had a big savings account. A week before the smoke came Kiana was at our house, snooping around Go's stuff one morning, trying...

Planning personal projects and organizing personal information

AbstractIn a given week, an active person may be working on, or at least thinking about, several different projects. Some are work‐related (“prepare annual report”); others are not (“plan family ski vacation”). Projects have duration (several days to several months) and a structure that includes basic tasks (“book plane tickets”) and subprojects (“decide on hotel”). This article describes exploratory research that looks at the kinds of projects people manage in their daily lives, the problems they encounter and the kinds of support people need to manage better. The personal project is advanced as a tractable unit of analysis for the study of personal information management (PIM). Over time, a personal project often involves several forms of information (paper and digital documents, email, web pages, handwritten notes, etc.) and several supporting applications. People face problems of information fragmentation that are more widely experienced in their practice of PIM. A Project Plannerprototype explores an exciting possibility that an effective, integrative organization of project‐related information can emerge as a natural by‐product of efforts to plan and structure the project.

Our Friend Max

Our friend Max is in love again at the age of 54 and this time I tell my husband that we should waste no time alerting him to the plain fact that he is heading for disaster. The current object of his affection is a Chinese woman he met over the Internet who couldn't speak a word of English but used some sort of clumsy computerized transla tion program to convey that she was stuck in a lonely God-forsaken Communist pit-stop of a town and would love to meet an American man who would marry and bring quickly to democracy. Also that she was pretty (especially skinny) and enjoyed very much both giving and receiving sexual pleasure. This was more than enough for our chivalrous friend Max. Although he soon discovered she'd employed some old-fashioned bait-and-switch techniques in advertisement?the photographs she'd attached happened to have been taken about twenty-five years ago, and she was actually 44 years old and had a 22 year old son from a previous marriage?he was not deterred. After three months of halting electronic corre spondence Max bought a plane ticket for Shanghai then traveled inland by train to some dim and unpronounceable interior province where the woman (whose name sounded something like Shi-Shi or Gi-Gi, we were never quite sure) introduced him to entire set of relatives. They had never met an American up close before and treated him as if he were the Last Emperor, stuffing him with dim sum and promising him lifelong allegiance. Shi-Shi or Gi-Gi lived in a cement block apartment across the street from a dubious structure guarded by a barbed wire fence, which Max surmised was a repository for nuclear waste or perhaps the last remaining stores of the smallpox virus. Shi-Shi's apartment had no hot water; she had to boil a pot on an iron stove for Max's bath?manually igniting a pilot light first?and the toilet was one of those pull-the-chain-and-hope-for-the-best affairs. Nevertheless, Max and Shi-Shi had a honeymoon of sorts. Shi-Shi was as pretty and skinny as promised. Sexual pleasure was duly given and received. Max boasted that Shi-Shi was surprised by certain of his moves. He was there for her in a way that no one had been

We're Number One (Again)

IN ITS Global Competitiveness Report 2001-2002, Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked 75 nations on their global competitiveness. The U.S. finished second, behind only Finland. Well, maybe Nokia had an off year, but in 2002-03 report, 80 countries are ranked, and U.S. ranks number one in global competitiveness, growth competitiveness (the next five years), and microeconomic competitiveness (how well companies are run). The WEF observes that competitiveness remains a concept that is not well understood, despite widespread acceptance of its importance. The most intuitive definition of competitiveness is a country's share of world markets for its products. This makes competitiveness a zero-sum game because one country's gain comes at expense of others. But, WEF argues, world economy is not a zero-sum game. And acting as if it were actually works against a country's economic progress. Low wages, often cited as a reason for shipping American jobs abroad, hold down prosperity. Devaluation of a currency, another common means of increasing exports, means that country is actually taking a collective pay cut. True competitiveness comes from productivity. Productivity allows a nation to support high wages, a strong currency, and attractive returns to capital -- and with them a high standard of living. Of course, WEF reflects a particular world view. And that world view can be seen by looking at regional reports. For instance, in its first-ever separate report on Arab nations, WEF lists three deficits that must be removed to make Arab countries competitive. Removing them requires rebuilding Arab societies so that they are based on following: * full respect for human rights and human freedoms, * complete empowerment of Arab women, and * consolidation of knowledge acquisition and its effective utilization. Given multitude of variables WEF uses, including test scores from international studies, it is easy to see why those test scores don't have much bearing on a nation's competitiveness (See Research, June 2002). The report can be found at www.weforum.org. Ignorantia Affectata THERE were problems with New York Regents Mathematics A examination, and almost 70% of students flunked. New York Education Commissioner Richard Mills threw out results. This story would hold little interest outside New York if it were a rare event, but it is not. The title of a new monograph by Kathleen Rhoades and George Madaus of Boston College puts it clearly: Errors in Standardized Tests: A Systemic Problem. Rhoades and Madaus begin with examples of kinds of decisions -- promotion, graduation, etc. -- that turn on test scores. All of these decisions are based on quantification of performance -- on numbers -- and this bestows on them appearance of fairness, impartiality, authority, and precision. The heavy reliance of reformers on these numbers is a facet of what Thomas Aquinas called a cultivated ignorance, ignorantia affectata. A couple of years ago, Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger observed that many reformers and state officials do not understand strengths and weaknesses of instruments they use in their accountability programs. Rhoades and Madaus go further and call it a willed ignorance, an ignorance that one protects in order to keep using it. This ignorance is doubly dangerous because the testing industry is shrouded in secrecy. Rhoades and Madaus cite an earlier report: Today those who take and use many tests have less consumer protection than those who buy a toy, a toaster, or a plane ticket. Rarely is an important test or its use subject to formal, systematic, independent professional scrutiny or audit. Civil servants who contract to have a test built, or who purchase commercial tests in education, have only testing companies' assurances that their product is technically sound and appropriate for its stated purpose. …

The Global Sport Monopoly

ATHLETES MARCHED INTO RICE-ECCLES STADIUM at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in early February 2002, as they will two years later in Athens, Greece. Spectators around the world marvelled at the costumes, the carefully choreographed ceremonies, and the inspiring musical scores, even as they pined for a better look at the burning torch. Generally losing themselves in the proceedings, they tended to forget the brief, public outcry against the ruling administrative body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), when money, plane tickets, gifts, promises changed hands in the incestuous process of determining which city would host the Olympic Games. More significantly, they do not recognize any other major sporting event as more important than the Olympics, with the possible exception of the World Cup of soccer, because more than one hundred years of creative political exertion, as carefully contrived and methodically choreographed as the ceremonies themselves, has made it so. So far reaching is the influence of the so-called modern Olympic movement that we do not or cannot imagine any alternatives for sport. Such ideological pervasiveness endows a singular institution with the capital not just to organize events, but also to define, delineate, and sustain particular meanings about sport, competition, and how human bodies are to be trained, presented, and understood. For these reasons, the modern Olympic movement has a social trajectory, an essence however nebulous, that appeals to a significant range of citizens.In spite of nostalgic connections to the ancient world, the modern Olympics emerged from 19th century thought and practice. In a variety of forms, sport itself was a project of the 19th century, popularized during an era of nation-state building, wide-scaled military organization, and the beginnings of international exchange and competition. At the national level, sport was utilized to rejuvenate masculine identities and invigorate the youth of the nation after the ravages of both Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian wars. Countries like Germany, Denmark, and Sweden initiated uniquely styled gymnastics movements to train young men, perhaps future soldiers, to summon deeper feelings of national identity and culture, inextricably linked to military fitness on a large scale. Britain invoked and harnessed the passions of virile, sometimes violent, but value-laden masculinities through sports and games, seeking to build a nation of strong men and boys committed to the nation's imperial and colonial foreign policies. It was a time of competition between countries, symbolically played out through a few sporting exchanges and at the more formal and wondrous venues of world's fairs and expositions. State leaders became significantly interested in measuring cultural capital, in advertising their nations, through competitions that assessed the quality of manufactured goods, raw materials, wildlife exhibits, and scientific advancements. Sport, too, became an index of cultural, political, and economic progress.Moved and inspired by the defeat of his country at the hands of the Germans, in the Franco-Prussian wars, Baron Pierre de Coubertin sought to enhance the military and cultural status of France to counteract what he viewed as a 'softening' of men. In his travels far and wide to assess formalized programmes of physical training, he was most impressed by the British model of sports and games in the public schools.(1) A young boy indifferent to the perils of a football scrimmage, he thought, would be unlikely to retreat from the mouth of an enemy cannon.(2) Coubertin's pleas for the introduction of a more exuberant physical culture within the schools of France were immediately rebuffed, and he was forced to turn his creative energies elsewhere. He was acutely aware of the massive gymnastics competitions at the German Turnfests, the Scottish Highland Games, the English Olympick Games at Much Wenlock, and the Olympic games of 19th century Greece, among other sporting festivals. …

THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH: SOME REFLECTIONS*

WILLIAM G. RUSCH [**] The centre of our attention is a brief document of 61 pages of English text. Often documents do hot seem to be very important or interesting. When we think about constitutions of organizations, minutes of meetings, and tax codes in our various countries, most of us do not consider such texts of compelling interest. Nevertheless, documents are of critical importance and they are more relevant to life than we are inclined to admit at first glance. I arrived at this consultation because I had a passport, a plane ticket, and three train tickets. I possess a baptismal certificate, a diploma that testifies that I attained a certain level of education, and a document that declares on a specific date I was ordained into the Christian ministry. In short, these pieces of paper, even in an age of electronic tickets, at least in part define me and indicate who I am. I trust that I have made my point: documents may not be very exciting in themselves, and yet they protect, define, encourage, and allow for some of the most significant things in life. The document, which is our focus is different from some of the examples that I have been giving. Yet in some ways this text, The Nature and Purpose of the Church, has the potential to be extremely critical for the ecumenical movement. It could change the relationships between the churches, internationally, nationally, and locally. In fact, it could bring about a new step forward in the ecumenical movement. The context of the Faith and Order process The Nature and Purpose of the Church can only be understood in its complete sense and intention in the context of the ongoing work of the Commission on Faith and Order. I can only briefly indicate this setting here. Already in 1982 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM) disclosed the need for a broadly based study of ecclesiology. John Zizioulas, a leader in the work of Faith and Order, had declared on more than one occasion that ecclesiology is a subject omnipresent in ecumenical discussions. The responses of the churches to BEM by 1990 revealed that there were different presuppositions as well as convergences about the nature of the church. The following year, 1991, the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches in its text, The Unity of the Church as Koinonia: Gift and Calling, made an important contribution to this topic of ecciesiology, and encouraged a study process, which led to the central place of the concept of koinonia in ecumenical reflection about the church and visible unity. Thus, in 1993 at the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the Commission on Faith and Order was requested to undertake an ecclesiology study. A number of reasons were given for this decision. It was the right time after Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, as well as Church and World, another influential study of Faith and Order. There were resources from the bilaterals, and work of united and uniting churches. There were pressures for Christians and churches to state what it means to be the church in each place, and finally the demands of the world for a credible witness to unity in diversity. Therefore, in Santiago de Compostela, on the basis in part of thinking at the Commission's meeting in Budapest in 1989, Faith and Order was called to a major study in ecciesiology. It was felt that such a study needed to be in an ecumenical perspective and take into account the various ideas of the church which reflect the churches' different self-understandings and views of the church and its unity. The study should seek basic ecciesiological principles, which could provide common perspectives for the churches' different ecclesiologies and serve as a framework for their convergence. Clearly, what was envisioned was not a detailed treatise on ecclesiology or even an ecumenical ecclesiology, but rather a compilation of basic ecclesiological perspectives which have emerged in the ecumenical dialogues, and which could lead to a convergent vision of the nature, unity, and mission of the church. …

Academic health systems management: the rationale behind capitated contracts.

To determine why hospitals enter into "capitated" contracts, which often generate accounting losses. The authors' hypothesis is that hospitals coordinate contracts to keep beds full and that in principal, capitated contracts reflect sound capacity management. In high-overhead industries, different consumers pay different prices for similar services (e.g., full-fare vs. advanced-purchase plane tickets, full tuition vs. financial aid). Some consumers gain access by paying less than total cost. Hospitals, like other high-overhead business enterprises, must optimize the use of their capacity, amortizing overhead over as many patients as possible. This necessity for enhanced throughput forces hospitals and health systems to discount empty beds, sometimes to the point where they incur accounting losses serving some payors. The authors analyzed the cost accounting system at their university teaching hospital to compare hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) lengths of stay (LOS), variable direct costs (VDC), overhead of capitated patients, and reimbursement versus other payors for all hospital discharges (n = 29,036) in fiscal year 1998. The data were analyzed by diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), length of stay (LOS), insurance carrier, proximity to hospital, and discharge disposition. Patients were then distinguished across payor categories based on their resource utilization, proximity to the hospital, DRG, LOS, and discharge status. The mean cost for capitated patients was $4,887, less than half of the mean cost of $10,394 for the entire hospitalized population. The mean capitated reimbursement was $928/day, exceeding the mean daily VDC of $616 but not the total cost of $1,445/day. Moreover, the mean total cost per patient day of treating a capitated patient was $400 less than the mean total cost per day for noncapitated patients. The hospital's capitated health maintenance organization (HMO) patients made up 16. 0% of the total admissions but only 9.4% of the total patient days. Both the mean LOS of 3.4 days and the mean ICU LOS of 0.3 days were significantly different from the overall values of 5.8 days and 1 day, respectively, for the noncapitated population. For patients classified with a DRG with complication who traveled from more than 60 miles away, the mean LOS was 10.7 days and the mean total cost was $21,658. This is in contrast to all patients who traveled greater than 60 miles, who had an LOS of 7.2 days and a mean total cost of $12,569. The capitated payor directed the bulk of its subscribers to one hospital (other payors transferred their sicker patients). This was reflected in the capitated group's lower costs and LOS. This stable stream of relatively low-acuity patients enhanced capacity utilization. For capitated patients, the hospital still benefits by recovering the incremental cost (VDC) of treating these patients, and only a portion of the assigned overhead. Thus, in the short run, capitated patients provide a positive economic benefit. Other payors' higher-acuity patients arrive more randomly, place greater strains on capacity, and generate higher overhead costs. This results in differential reimbursement to cover this incremental overhead. Having a portfolio of contracts allows the hospital to optimize capacity both in terms of patient flows and acuity. One risk of operating near capacity is that capitated patients could displace other higher-paying patients.

When Baseball Careers End

When Baseball Careers End George Gmelch (bio) Parker Brown had just arrived in the clubhouse when Joe Zacek, the Greenville Braves trainer, gently tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Don't dress, Brownie, the skipper wants to see you." Parker felt himself blanch. Fixing his eyes on the floor, he walked past the lockers where his teammates were dressing, down the corridor, past the shower, and into the cramped low-ceiling office of his manager, Ed Henley. The expression on Ed's face said it all. "Parker, this is the most difficult thing a manager has to do in life." The rest was a blur. By the time Parker had returned to the locker room it was empty. His teammates-now former teammates-were on the field. Fighting back tears, he mindlessly stuffed his gear into his canvas travel bag with the Atlanta Brave emblazoned on each side. Then he went to the front office, where the paperwork for his release and a plane ticket home were waiting. Meanwhile, the clubhouse attendant removed the nameplate-Brown-from the front of his locker and tossed it into a wastebasket. His gear and ticket in hand, Parker ascended to the top row of the grandstands, hoping no one would see him, to take a last look around. He stayed for only two innings. It was too painful and humiliating.1 This essay describes how baseball careers end, the athletes' adjustment to life outside of the game, and how the athletes fare in their new careers. The data come from over 100 taped interviews conducted with ballplayers, coaches, and managers over the past eight seasons. The research also involved living and traveling with two Minor League teams, the Birmingham Barons and the Jamestown Expos. Although this paper is about contemporary players, it is also informed by my own experiences as a Minor League player in the 1960s. Although every professional ballplayer knows that one day he, like Parker Brown, will be let go, very few are prepared for it. With most jobs, an employee plans for retirement years in advance and may even decide the exact date he will leave work. In baseball only a handful of players, mostly veteran big leaguers, are able to retire in this way-gracefully, choosing when and how they leave. Most players are fired or, in baseball talk, "released." They are let go to make [End Page 1] room for young and talented players whom the organization believes have more potential. Veterans are let go as their skills decline with age. The attrition of skill occurs at a much earlier age in sports than in almost any other profession, and it occurs in public. For big leaguers the decline is chronicled and monitored by millions of fans who study the unsparing statistics that are the measure of accomplishment in pro ball.2 For many Minor Leaguers, the end comes when the front office-the player development folks-have seen enough to conclude that the player is unlikely to ever perform at a level that would help the Major League team win. With five Minor League teams, each organization has room for only about a hundred players on its rosters. Any addition means someone else must go. Thus, the signing of thirty or more new players from the annual June draft results in some veteran players being released. When the big club acquires an extra player through a trade or free agency, the affect is felt down the ladder as rosters are adjusted to make room for the new acquisition. Injuries also end careers and do so without warning. "The saddest thing in baseball," said Hall of Famer Al Kaline, "are the guys who are cut-down in mid-career by freak accidents and injuries."3 Being released not only means the end of a player's career but the end of boyhood dreams and ambition. There is also the loss of identity. We Americans, compared to people from other cultures, , tend to derive much of our identity from our work. For example, when we meet new acquaintances, one of the first things we are asked is, "What do you do?" Ballplayers have a particularly strong identification...

Managing paradox: fuelling the vehicle for synergy in transport electronics

Unless several of Europe's manufacturing industries can find a way to collaborate and co-operate effectively, the cost of your car, your plane ticket and your satellite programmes is liable to increase alarmingly in the next millennium. Designed to promote trans-industry co-operation in Europe, SURGE-Transport aims to bring together users and suppliers of embedded electronic technology and applications in automotive, aerospace, rail, and transport industries. Some of the issues and opportunities are discussed.

The Price of Sushi

As an American postdoc at the end of a 27-month research (24 months) and “tourist” (3 months) visit to a Japanese government laboratory, I tire of seeing the high cost of living in Japan cited in Science as a valid reason for foreign scientists shunning Japan (Random Samples, 3 May, p. 655; Science in Japan, 18 Nov. 1994, p. 1181). Living costs should have little influence on scientists' decision-making about Japan (in contrast to those of potential exchange students) because generous salaries, free housing for most foreign researchers, employer-purchased plane tickets, and favorable tax settings more than compensate for the costs. (These circumstances explain why almost all foreign researchers I have met here are happy.) In my case, I am returning home with a net worth of about $50,000 more than when I arrived. My 1995 taxable income, in Japan and the United States combined, was zero. The language barrier and the lack of technicians are real considerations that prospective visitors must weigh, along with appropriate employment for a spouse and schools for children. But the price of sushi is not a concern. Worrywarts can always order the cheap omelete variety in fast-food restaurants where dishes arrive on a conveyor belt.

Technology Tips: A Global Electronic Community

The whole world is going digital! As a teacher, I have used my home computer to prepare materials, to keep track of grades, and to type final reports. But my computer holds so much more potential. As an active member of what I like to call “the on-line culture,” I have planned entire vacations from my desk, including purchasing plane tickets and requesting vegetarian meals, making hotel reservations, and budgeting the cost; I have used electronic mail to keep in touch with my family and friends; and I have learned how to clean the bearings and rotate the wheels of my in-line skates thanks to Usenet newsgroups. These newsgroups are like worldwide electronic bulletin boards. People use their computers to post questions, answers, opinions, ideas, and tirades to be read by anyone anywhere. Groups exist for every professional and personal interest imaginable.

Collective Punishment: Criminological Assessment: A Reply to Lipnowski's “A Partial Rehabilitation of the Principle of Collective Punishment”

One of the former members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission was an economist who proposed the following reasoning during a conference on sentencing held in Ottawa in 1988. Since there was no doubt that doubling all fares for air travel would result, at least momentarily, in fewer customers using air transportation, it was presumed to follow at least as clearly that noticeably increasing the punishment for crime would result in fewer persons willing to engage in crime. What the economist had overlooked was that the probability that you would have to pay for your plane ticket at the increased rate is very high; actually, you cannot fly unless you have bought a ticket. In contrast, the probability that a criminal will be caught and suffer the consequences of his or her behavior is perceived to be rather low in the case of most criminals, and with regard to certain crimes, such as break and enter, is actually quite low. Hence, increasing criminal punishments will not deter criminals as automatically as raising the cost of air travel will deter potential customers.

Doctors, Drug Companies, and Gifts

To the Editor.— I disagree with the contention of Chren et al 1 that drug companies' educational gifts are less corrupting than direct gifts to physicians. I view sponsorship of physicians' education by drug companies as having the potential for more subtle influences on our behavior and therefore as being a much more insidious form of influence than direct gifts. Drug companies ostensibly spend money to provide unbiased, scientifically based information to prescribers of drugs, but they are not going to present such information unless it is favorable to their products. In my remote area, outside speakers from university medical centers often are flown up here with drug companies' money. A professor whose plane ticket has been paid for by a pharmaceutical manufacturer is unlikely to trash that company's products. It is hard to believe that the editors of the many throwaway medical journals we receive are unaware of

A Note on Airline Commuting

The problem of how to buy and use plane tickets in order to minimize the costs of a given series of flights between two cities can be expressed as an assignment problem.