White Lab Coat Research Articles

How to Have a Visitor

How to Have a Visitor Toby Bochan He is flying in to see you for a long weekend. He works at a place where you get every possible holiday, a bank or a school or the government. You don't know exactly what he does. Something involving numbers. You have known each other since college, from college. You've seen him once or twice a year since graduation: same place, same time kind of things. But this is his first visit to see you, just to see you. He lives far enough away that driving isn't feasible. Especially because you hate to drive and he doesn't own a car. Thomas, always for you Thomas and never Tom, Thomas lives in Boston. He doesn't, he says, need a car. How nice for him! Your car, on the other hand, has been acting up: making rude noises, stalling. Mornings you pump the gas (three times three is the magic number) and hope that it will start. There is really no other way to get around where you live in Texas. Thomas takes the T, the mass transit in Boston, Massachusetts. You mix up the words, try to fit it into a limerick: There once was a young man named Thomaswho preferred to a car the train mass,And twice a day heis found riding the Tfrom his home to his work in Boston, Mass! Poetry is not your strong suit. It's not a red power suit. It's not even your conservative navy blue interview suit that got you your current crummy job, copy editing. Poetry is the bargain dress that looks like a suit, but really is only one piece, a faux suit with a jacket that can't be removed. [End Page 166] 100% Polyester, but you kind of like it anyway. You wear it occasionally. Play around with it. Limericks are your new puzzle. Instead of trying to figure out a five-letter word for fatigued (tired) over coffee at work, spend time thinking of words that rhyme with Thomas. Make a list: bass, brass, crass, class, gas, grass, lass, pass, sass. Your big fat ass, impossible to pass after Christmas. Alas! Start dieting. Start going to the gym every day, an hour and a half each time. You want to have nice, flat abs for him. Don't hope for a washboard stomach. Okay, hope for it all you want, but know it won't happen. You only have twelve days. Each morning, stand in front of the mirror, stretching your arms overhead. Check your thighs for cellulite. Whoop! There it is! Go to the mall and buy an expensive, ineffectual cellulite cream. It is 35 dollars. You don't have this kind of money to spend on a cream, so charge it. At the Clinique counter, a woman asks if you would like a free skincare analysis. She is wearing a white lab coat open over her dress. You guess this is supposed to make you feel like she's a scientist, like she has a degree in dermatology or at least has taken a night course in beauty school. The way she has applied her blush, two peach slashes, makes you doubt that she has. Still, what the hell! You want to look your best. Say: "Sure." The woman with bad blush sits you in front of a magnifying mirror. This is not pleasant. And you have good skin! Mrs. Blush 1986 looks at you and slides the answers to question on a little plastic chart. She slides a silver knob over so a yellow block that says, Fair, shows in the window labeled Skin Color. She looks directly into your eyes, squinting. Eye color: Hazel/Brown. "Is that your natural hair color?" she asks. Say: "Yes," but it is not—you think. You think this shade is a little redder than your natural color, but it's close enough for her. What color is this hair? The box said dark copper. You think of old pennies. Your hair is nothing like the color of any penny. Dark Brown, she slides in, looking at your roots. "Do you bum...

WHAT IF ELEPHANT SHREWS REALLY WERE RELATED TO ELEPHANTS?

Most of us have seen movies where, with the single beam of a gunlike device, a mad scientist in a white lab coat shrinks large-bodied animals to the size of an ant. Were elephants and elephant shrews victims of such a fantastic fate? From the time of their first description in 1800, elephant shrews (Macroscelidea) were considered related to shrews and other insectivores along with tenrecs (Tenrecidae) and golden moles (Chrysochloridae), whereas elephants (Proboscidea) were originally placed more or less close to ungulates such as hippos and rhinos (the now obsolete Pachydermata). Since then, paleontologists have unearthed numerous fossil relatives that have shed new light on the study of both taxa. Thanks to these fossil discoveries, and to the progress of comparative anatomy and phylogenetic methods, the relationships of both elephants and elephant shrews were eventually reconsidered (Fig. 1A). For instance, elephants were securely placed close to sirenians (dugongs and manatees) and hyracoids (dassies) in Paenungulata, whereas elephant shrews showed affinities with Glires (rabbits and rodents). These morphological analyses also recognized Cetacea (whales and dolphins) as the sister taxon of artiodactyls (cows, pigs, etc.) and that carnivorans shared a common ancestor with pangolins (Pholidota). On the verge of the new millennium, more than 250 years after Linnaeus's foundation of taxonomy, 18 living orders of placental mammals were recognized, but several of their proposed relationships were …

War of the Words

Page 6 American Book Review about the limitations of the Freudian model. We are daring ourselves to envision a selfhood beyond conventional selfhood while contemplating the devices by which we tell, retell, and untell ourselves. We are remembering Czesław Miłosz’s sparkling observation : “The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.” Remembering Ludwig Wittgenstein’s: “One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I.’” Re-learning what Samuel Beckett, KathyAcker, Ben Marcus,Young-Hae Chang, Patrik Ourednîk, et al. have already taught us…but from within the text we are scripting instead of from without. Re-learning that every narratological move we make, every technique we employ, carries with it philosophical and political consequences, whether or not we can at first articulate them, whether or not at first we are even aware of them. Every time any of us speaks in a “creative” writing classroom, we also challenge us all to reflect upon the institutional framework in which our words sound—what a “workshop” is; what it might be; how it exists within the power fields of a given department; what economic purposes it serves, and what cultural; how the university expresses itself through it and us; how the larger culture does; how that might change; why we teach creative writing… Lance Olsen’s next novel, Head in Flames, will appear from Chiasmus this fall. He teaches innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah and serves as chair of the Board of Directors at FC2, associate editor at ABR, and fiction editor at Western Humanities Review. Act Truly Julie Shigekuni Years ago, a therapist friend jokingly defended her style of handling interventions: “I decide what’s true, and I act accordingly.” I’d wondered how she could bear to hear people’s problems all day long, and I’ve continued through the years to reflect on her insight revealed to me in jest. I offer it here as my response to the question, “Why teach creative writing?” I can think of different responses, such as Richard Hugo’s smart assertion that a good creative writing course saves the young writer time and effort by teaching the writer early on what not to do—or the stance taken by several writers to whom I’ve posed this question that goes something to the tune of how the well being of any culture can be measured by its production of literature. I find both positions edifying; it’s hard to sidestep the appeal of a solid, altruistic answer. But the question for me remains personal, and I find that my friend’s half-joke’s halftruth provides a better, if more selfish, answer. As a writer, I decide what’s true, and I act accordingly. Decisions I make on the page often send me spiraling into a conundrum. I teach creative writing because engaging with students is my way out. Students don’t tolerate self-deceit. They’re hungry for discourse that feels satisfying, and in interacting with them, I must change the way I think—often in surprising ways, always in ways that I had not imagined on my own—and thereby must change what I write. In the years since I began teaching, I’ve come back to the position that led me to teach creative writing in the first place. I write having tried other things and failed. I wish I could sing, or dance, or spend my days in a white lab coat. But since I don’t have the talent or the training, I write. I observe what other people do, and I document what I see in a way that makes sense to me.And when I emerge from this difficult task of attempting to set myself straight, I enjoy the company of other writers who have been similarly preoccupied. Writers need writers, and writing programs offer writers a venue. This clustering of writers who are necessarily solitary creatures leads to other questions that concern me: such as what does it mean when a good poem written by a woman of color becomes...

Let's Start Talking Science: the Importance of Science Outreach

If you ask a seven year old to draw a scientist, he will draw a man in a lab coat holding a frothing beaker with white hair standing on end. This hairstyle is otherwise known as the ‘stick your finger in the light socket look’ and my grade 10 biology teacher sported it. He also wore a long white lab coat and wandered the halls muttering to himself. Every graduate student has had at least one teacher like this. While these so-called mad scientists were memorable in terms of their behaviour, very few graduate students remember loving science as it was taught in the elementary and high school curriculum. For many graduate students, their love of science either came naturally at an early age when they were fascinated with living (and non-living) things or they simply excelled in high school science and found something in university that lured them into graduate school.

Substance Users Get Creative to Fool Drug Tests

Substance Users Get Creative to Fool Drug Tests

A life decoded: My genome — my life

A life decoded: My genome — my life

Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South (review)

Reviewed by Christian Warren New York Academy of Medicine Pete Daniel. Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South. The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, in association with Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2005. xii + 209 pp. Ill. $26.95 (0-8071-3098-2). At the heart of this compact book are the stories of Americans sickened and killed on the front lines of America's war on insects: the agricultural worker who lapsed into a coma hours after spilling concentrated parathion into his shoes; the crop dusters poisoned outright by massive exposure, or killed when they became impaired by the chemicals they were spraying and lost control of their planes; and the men, women, and children poisoned by pesticides marketed for home use. Pete Daniel employs these compelling and tragic stories to drive home his angry analysis [End Page 898] of how "chemical companies and their political and bureaucratic allies [gave] a higher priority to the death of insects than to the health of humans" (p. 170). Recent studies from medical and environmental historians have examined many of the toxicants drifting through the environment, whether from products intentionally toxic or from the manufacture and use of products deemed "harmless." These studies tend to focus on the misconduct of industry and its manipulation of science in various settings. But while Daniel gives industry its fair share of condemnation, his chief target—and that is the correct noun for this genre—is the federal agency charged with being the people's front line of defense against harm from insecticides, the Agricultural Research Service. No mere milquetoast bureaucracy overwhelmed by economic interests, the ARS, in Daniel's indictment, was "simply the handmaiden of the chemical companies" (p. 83), willing to "falsify data, intimidate opponents, and disregard scientific evidence" (p. 57). ARS scientists "hid behind white lab coats and white lies" (p. 59), with the result that its "malfeasance and perfidy allowed . . . chemical compounds to gain access to and remain on the market mislabeled, not fully tested, and dangerous" (p. 130). After a brief introduction, Daniel presents a dramatic case of collateral damage: a Mississippi cotton-gin manager named Lawler, poisoned by malathion, endrin, and xylene when a crop duster overshot the cotton field he was spraying for boll weevils. After two years of debilitation, Lawler sued his employers and the crop-dusting company. The transcript of the trial presents many of the competing voices involved in pesticide regulation in the predawn years of the age of Silent Spring. The next several chapters deal with the first of two misguided fire-ant control programs; the reception of Rachel Carson's research; apportioning blame for fish-kills from pesticide run-off; and the deeply flawed processes of registering and labeling new pesticides. Again and again, as Daniel demonstrates, the ARS and other regulatory bodies failed to act in the public interest. A final short chapter on the second misguided fire-ant control program—this time with mirex instead of heptachlor and chlordane—drives home how Sisyphean is the environmentalist's lot. Toxic Drift is a natural extension of Pete Daniel's long interest in southern agriculture and the environment; his previous books include Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (1985), and Deep'n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood (1977). Pesticides have played a critical role in the history of agriculture in the South—and in other regions of the country as well, raising the question of Daniel's subtitle: "Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South." True, more than half of his case studies deal with southerners, but a substantial number do not. More significantly, the importance of regional geography is never made explicit: there is no argument for intranational colonialism, no carpetbagging chemical industries taking particular advantage of southern agriculturalists...

Dress code

Dress code

Scientists on screen

Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema by Christopher Frayling Reaktion Books, London, UK 256 pp, $35/£20 ISBN 1861892551 ![][1] Young school‐children, when asked to draw a picture of a scientist, typically produce an image of a man in a white lab coat with wild eyes, dishevelled hair, and a test tube in his hand. This image comes, Christopher Frayling argues, from movies and television programmes, where it has been steadily refined—but little changed—over the course of decades. Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema , which begins and ends with children's images of scientists, is Frayling's exploration of the changing image of scientists in feature films: the first attempt to do for movies what Roslynn Haynes' From Faust to Strangelove did for literature. It is commendable in intent but deeply flawed in execution. The subtitle and preface to Mad, Bad and Dangerous? promise a comprehensive, wide‐ranging view of the subject, which the book utterly fails to deliver. Virtually its entire treatment of … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Mixed-up realities

No abstract available.

Creating an Image of Science: Persuasion and Iconography in A. Cressy Morrison’s Man in a Chemical World

The image of modern science and the modern scientist was the result of complex interactions among scientists, media sources, and the public. In 1937 chemists were the largest and most powerful group of scientists in the United States, but they had a poor public image because of chemical warfare. Morrison’s book was part of a larger effort to improve and Americanize the image of chemists. The article explores the place of Morrison’s book in the context of the period and examines the images, replete with religious overtones, that helped to create the icon of the scientist as the “man in the white lab coat.”

The Waiting Room

A man gave me a story to write, but, first, you have to wait. I am very impatient. But I am expert at waiting. I wait in order not to confront my impatience. Plots are about withholding, making impatient people wait. If you are no longer waiting, you do not love a plot. Time makes impatient people wise, however. They do not wait for what will not happen. I am time-wise. I will never be a lingerie model. I will never be a rock star. I do not wait for those futures to happen. Woody Allen wrote that "Most of life is just showing up." That's pretty good. But I think that most of life is waiting. I note, for example, that I spend an inordinate amount of time in waiting rooms. If I did not show up, if I did not wait, these ob-gyns and car mechanics and orthodontists would bill me by the hour. They have signs announcing this. While they blast their talk shows at me, bliss me out with their lude music, seduce my prurient side with their celebrity magazines, they apparently do not think that I should be billing them for my waiting time. I am prompt. Punctiliously prompt to a peccadillo of a quarter hour early. They are running an hour late. There I sit. Do I rant? Do I rave? Do I charge by the billable minute? No. Why? Because beyond the waiting room is the non-waiting room. The dentist: In Alexandria the dentist has his chalky, stubby, rubbery latex fingers in your mouth. He says, "Dentistry is a sexual metaphor." His chubby, stubbled cheek is a coarse inch, half-inch from your mouth. You can smell his lunch on his breath; it isn't pleasant. "Ung," you gurgle with a mouthful of fingers. "Think about it," he says. "You insert this into that. The mouth, the fingers as metaphor. It's very intimate. An invasion. Think about it." When one has a mouthful of someone's sausage-stuffed condom fingers, [End Page 18] when one has someone drilling and filling, when one can't swallow or breathe and is paying a zillion dollars for the privilege, sexual metaphors are decidedly what one does not want to think about. Sexual metaphors are, in fact, the furthest thing from one's mind. When one is trying to keep a gazillion appliances in one's mouth and divert one's nostrils away from old salami breath, one does not feel sexy at all. Under the best of circumstances, one does not find rape metaphors sexy, and these are not the best of circumstances. One is instead trying to suppress chilling memories of Marathon Man. One is not thinking sexily about Nazi dentists with delusions about their patients' digit envy. One is, rather, waiting, waiting for the rinse and spit and bolt from the chair, flash of the checkbook, and mad dash through the waiting room out onto the street again, safe and longing to breathe free. The podiatrist: The podiatrist is wearing a scary, white lab coat and is brandishing surgically sharp tools around your feet, cutting and trimming corns, dead flesh while you neurally cringe, waiting for the slash. He is chatty. Chatty men with sharp instruments make you nervous. "What do you do for a living?" he asks. "I am a writer." "Oh boy, do I have a story for you." You know with a dead certainty that a man who trims bunions for a living does not have a story for you. But what can you do? One is not rude to a man who is armed to the teeth with blades, who wears a white coat, and has a tray table arsenal beside him. So you do not sigh. You glaze your eyes while he tells an interminable story about a trick toe. And it isn't even that tricky a toe; Mr. Ed could at least talk. You long for the...

The All-White Elephant (Running in Place, Part 2)

We deplore or laugh at those who try to arm themselves against the apocalypse, but we arm ourselves emotionally against the onslaught of everyday life. —Lasch, The Minimal Self Not long ago I was (yes, absentmindedly) standing at the checkout counter of the Yale University Coop in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. As I waited my turn to pay, I noticed that the person in front of me in line was seriously handicapped. She made her purchase, and, with some difficulty, started for the door. About to take my merchandize, the clerk (a young, black businessman in this whiter-than-white place) noticed her need, suddenly dropped his task, and ran to the door to hold it for her. A few moments later he returned, trying as best he could to regain his composure and resume his routine without drawing attention to his momentary absence. But I couldn't resist. Being who I am, I had to tell him that I thought his politeness commendable. I said something unimaginative like, "that was very kind of you...." However, before I could regain my distance, he raised his head, looked right at me and said, "You see, my younger brother was murdered by a [End Page 95] gunman in this town, and I feel I have to do something, because I know that he is forever gone." In fact, the conversation continued well after these words, for he was noticeably taken aback by my being as ruled by my own compulsions as he clearly was by his. I have other memories of our brief encounter, but I mention what I have because the incident brought into high relief the emotive disjunction between the relatively mannered lives of all of those seriously well-educated folks in white lab coats at the nearby medical school, and this guy who, in light of his misery, had to work hard just to look good behind his counter. The incident also brought forward another disjunction—this being between an institutionalized system of shared value, on the one hand, and a personalized domain of private, homemade meaning that this local response to tragedy represented. So, am I rendering his experience exotically? You bet I am. Because no matter how much I may "feel" for him, he remains behind his counter, while I end up writing this very opinionated essay. In fact, he is moved by his experience to a domain of meaning that I would in no way wish to relive. To say that such experiences—even several of them—have brought me "closer" to New Haven street life would be hypocritical in the extreme. And to offer them up in literary form as "stories" from my "fieldwork" among the socially disenfranchised would be singularly elitist. I want no part of what he experienced, but I am moved by his optimism nonetheless. I'm not, in other words, soliciting your sympathies here any more than he did mine. I'm only asking you to acknowledge the idea that reality—the experience of the present—changes in sudden ways that can make an obsession about either the "lived worlds" of those nearby university people, or all of the theories that justify the complacency of institutional life, seem...um...trivial. This is not to denigrate directly any individual's institutional loyalty, or to belittle the human passion for routine, but merely to note that the glamorization of the everyday (disguised as it so often seems to be in a cloak of false humility) induces both an inflated sense of self-importance, and that concomitant disinterest in real difference that is myopia's favored bedfellow. To extend the argument, one might say that it is easy within a bureaucracy to feign a respect for the diversities of the everyday when the obedience of drones sustains a prevailing hierarchy within which one is richly rewarded. Such complacency, after all, accounts for the fact that most academic departments more represent priesthoods than...

Concrete design and construction from the inside out

The excitement of concrete design and construction is based in no small part on the broad range of options available for the color, shape, texture, architectural style, and structural systems available through use of this material concrete. But the excitement (and often the anxiety) that accompanies concrete construction is due to the rapid changes associated with concrete’s transition from a fluid-like, workable material that is similar to a saturated soil to its ultimate status as a brittle, artificial rock. The engines behind this transition are the hydration of the portland cement and reactions with other cementitious materials. While cement hydration is often considered to be of interest only to those in white lab coats, these chemical changes at microscopic level are played out in the “real world” in terms of the effects of mixing time, rate of slump loss, form pressures, time to start and end surface finishing, and the rate of increase of both strength and stiffness.

The Value of Research And Development (R&D)

Introduction Because of restructuring and cost cutting during the past few years, most of the national and international petroleum sector companies have closed their research centers. The objective of this article is to show that there is still money to be made by performing R&D studies to reduce the cost of producing oil and gas. For the past 24 years, Hycal Energy Research Laboratories Ltd. has been involved in contract research for companies around the world. From this research, a number of papers have been published in recognized technical journals. Because of client requests, other research has not been published, indicating the value of R&D. This research has given them a competitive advantage over other companies. There are two main types of research: one is "ivory tower," and the other is missionoriented. Ivory tower researchers are often pictured as "mad scientists" in white lab coats pouring chemicals with rising smoke and arcing electricity. They create arcane equations, theories, and laws, which no one but the researchers can understand. It is, however, these equations, theories, and laws which mission-oriented or applied researchers use to develop products, services, and techniques to increase the efficiency and profit of small, medium, and large corporations. This article will discuss research in Canada and upstream research for the petroleum sector. The article will also give examples of how research has increased the productivity of oil and gas wells. Equation(available in full paper) Research in Canada Canada, as a nation, is not known for the amount of money spent on R&D. This problem has been recognized for a number of years by the federal government and programs have been instituted to motivate industry to perform more R&D. Unfortunately, these programs have not resulted in increased levels of money being spent. Figure 1 shows the percentage of gross domestic research and development costs (GERD) compared to the gross national product (GNP). The figure indicates that, of the G7 countries, only Italy is lower than Canada in the amount spent on R&D. Sweden and Israel have been added to the plot because of their high percentage spent on R&D. Equation(available in full paper) A UN development report endeavored to show the social and economic aspects of R&D. Figure 2 shows the number of scientists per million population for several countries. The U.S., Japan, and Sweden have the highest numbers; Canada is about average. Equation(available in full paper) Figure 3 presents the number of patents per million population for several countries. Japan has the highest number of patents issued, while Canada and Italy are extraordinarily low. Figure 4 shows the income realized from licenses and patents in U.S. dollars per million population for a number of countries. While Canada is low, it has performed better than France, Germany, and Italy. Figure 5 shows a correlation between the percentage of GERD to GNP and the parameters plotted in Figures 2 to 4. The data show a positive correlation up until about 3% of GERD to GNP is reached for all the parameters.

Lipstick and pearls

Surgery 2002;131:663-4.

Using Diversity Among Biomedical Scientists As A Teaching Tool: A Positive Effect of Role Modeling on Minority Students

O ) f scientists doing research in the biomedical sciences, it is a known fact that minorities and women are underrepresented. One study showed that of Ph.D.s employed in the life sciences, 87.3% were White, 8.7% were Asian, 1.9% African American, 1.8% Native American, and less than 1% were Hispanic (NSF 1996). Women represent 26% of the Ph.D.s employed in the life sciences. There are a number of factors that contribute to the high attrition rate among females and underrepresented minorities in science. These factors, which often include perceptions of women, workplace environment, and work-family issues, are based upon differences in sociological, educational and cultural aspects of each minority group (NSF 1994). Students from these groups are often deterred from considering a career in the biomedical sciences because of preconceived notions about scientists. Students view scientists as white men wearing glasses and a white lab coat (Gardner et al. 1989). This is the image most often portrayed by the media and society. These images give students narrow and negative messages about scientists as individuals. With limited access to real women and minority scientists, students get the impression that a career in science is difficult to achieve if one is a female or minority.

From "Der Fall Arbogast (The Arbogast Case)"

Chapter 34 Klein took in the room in a glance: high ceilings, green linoleum that had been laid over the parquet floor, roll-front cabinets flanking the door to the office. There was a sink with a mirror and a towel and, in one corner, a Zeiss microscope with its cover. Katja Lavans rose, shook his hand, pulled a chair up to her side of the desk and invited him to take a seat. Cigarette? He declined and placed the file on the chair. She was wearing a white lab coat, and from its left breast pocket protruded a pair of forceps and a scalpel. She looked younger than she had on television. He liked her short hair, and watched her closely as she picked up an ashtray and pack of cigarettes, tapped one free, and lit it. Katja Lavans came straight to the point. Your partner, Mr. Sarrazin, has already told me a little about the I informed him on the telephone that in principle willing to serve as an expert witness. She avoided blowing smoke in his face, and he had to think about what to say next-a thing that never happened to him. Yes, we were very pleased to hear that. certain we'll be able to work out the details. There's a great deal riding on this for uswe've been working on behalf of Hans Arbogast for years now, that's to say, above all on behalf of a man who has the courage to face down the phalanx of your West German colleagues. When we heard your remarks on television, we realized at once that we had to contact you. You hold a position in forensic medicine at Humboldt University, in addition to your work here? Yes, I've just been appointed. Congratulations. I'm also divorced. He wondered for a moment, expressionless, how old she might be, then ventured: So am I. Katja Lavans ground out her cigarette. She pushed the ashtray away as she exhaled the last bit of smoke. Did you know that the oldest extant work on forensic medicine, the book Hsi Yuan Lu or Washing Away of Wrongs, dates from the year 1248? A Chinese friend who was visiting told me it was still in use in China into the nineteenth century. Hsi Yuan Lu consists of five books: the first covers trauma and abortion; the second distinguishes the injuries caused by various tools and methods and whether they were sustained pre- or postmortem; the third book covers death by strangulation and drowning; and the remaining two deal extensively with poisons and toxicology. Ancient Chinese secrets, eh? She smiled wanly and looked straight at him. If you like. At any rate, the part on strangulation seems to be of great interest with regard to your case. Klein nodded. So when did forensic medicine begin here in Europe? The beginning of the seventeenth century. first text on the subject is a work by Paolo Zacchia, personal physician to the pope. Incidentally, this building was once the premiere morgue of Berlin. back of the building faces the Dorotheenstadt cemetery, where Johannes R. Becher is buried. And Bert Brecht, right? Yes, that's right. You must have seen the Charite Hospital's out-- patient clinic-it's pretty much directly across from us-and then further up is the Natural History Museum. Ansgar Klein nodded. And you're going to tell me that I absolutely must visit it? She smiled. Well, you really ought to see the dinosaurs. Maybe next time. Back then, this place, which was Germany's first institute of forensic medicine, was a completely up-to-date modern facility. By the way, do you know what the original function of the morgue was? No. Unidentified bodies-and at the end of the last century, there were nearly seven hundred of them a year here in Berlin-were laid out in long rows to facilitate what they called identification. Klein nodded. pathologist bent forward and flicked at a pencil on her desk blotter with her left index finger, all the while gazing directly at Klein. …

New York pharmacy school students travel to state capital en masse

made me feel like was making a difference. This statement from a pharmacy student crystallized the recent Pharmacists' Society of the State of New York (PSSNY) 2001 Pharmacy Day and provides further evidence of the strong interest students have in grassroots activity. Hundreds of students from the Albany College of Pharmacy, the State University of New York-Buffalo School of Pharmacy, the St. John's University College of Pharmacy and Allied Professions, and the Long Island University (LIU) Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences joined practicing pharmacists at the state capital in Albany recently to lobby state legislators for passage of bills of interest to pharmacy. Some schools of pharmacy gave students the day off from classes to allow them to attend. PSSNY's local affiliate chapters, along with the schools, provided bus transportation to Albany from across the state. The experience was an eye-opener for many students who had never seen lobbying up close. It was quite a sight to see so many students in their white lab coats in a single senator's office. This year, many bills were introduced in the two houses that could significantly impact pharmacy practice in New York. A packet outlining PSSNY's position on each bill was presented to each legislator. Students focused on allowing pharmacists to administer influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. They also discussed designating pharmacists as specialists, which would allow them to order tests, administer vaccines, and adjust medication doses. Students and pharmacists educated legislators about the positive impact that pharmacists could make on patients' health if allowed to provide immunizations, explaining that the safest and most practical method to increase immunization rates among senior citizens and minorities-who currently have low immunization rates in the state-is to enable pharmacists to immunize. Students also informed legislators about the extent and level of their pharmacy education. Currently, Buffalo is the only school of pharmacy in New York State that includes immunization certification as part of its curriculum. Secondprofessional-year students from the school shared the knowledge they gained from taking the APhA immunization certification course and explained to the legislators that if a bill is passed, they will have the necessary training and certification to administer adult immunizations. Most students had never visited their representatives before taking part in PSSNY's Pharmacy Day. Many found it to be a valuable and rewarding experience. one firstprofessional-year student said, was cool for all of us to be in Assemblyman Tokasz's office and to tell him why he should vote for [these bills]. will definitely go again next Some students were surprised by legislators' lack of knowledge regarding pharmacy issues. One student who was lobbying for the first time remarked, I cannot believe how little they know about our bills. It is amazing. is why it is so important that we go, another student responded. According to Bishoy Luka, president of pharmacy student government at LIU, students take great pride in participating in Pharmacy Day. As student leaders, we must encourage our fellow pharmacy students to join this battle. In terms of our profession, it is a very significant day . We get to speak about professional issues concerning our field, which not only broaden our scope of practice but more importantly, enhance patient care, Luka said. As for the many pharmacists who are on the frontline fighting for [pharmacy bills], we look at them with great admiration and salute them for their support and encouragement. It is this support that we must elicit from the next generation of pharmacists. A lot of pharmacy students think that to lobby, you have to like politics. That is just not true. We love pharmacy, that is why we lobby each year. We know what a difference pharmacists can make if they are given a chance, and we all want to make sure we have a say in how the profession is practiced.

Having Anne

HAVING ????/Laura Yeager IHAVE STOPPED taking Lithium so that I can have a child. It's that or heart birth defects. My psychiatrist says that I may not get high if I stay on the drug, but we're not taking any chances. We've hired a "sitter," someone to stay with me for nine months during the day. Her name is Penelope, and she wants to be an actress, but she fully understands that she must stay here with me from 9:00 to 5:30, until Richard gets home. I've informed her that until I start having symptoms, she can take an occasional audition if it is all that important. And if she gets a show, we'll just have to find someone else. This baby-sitting idea is Richard's. He's seen how I speak in halfsentences , how I can't sleep for days, how I have direct communications with God. I'm not sure he would have married me if I'd had manic depression when we met. I was twenty-four, a perfect innocent who designed children's activities for the art museum. Once he wandered into my finger-painting exercise, looking for the John. People often did that. The bathrooms were next to the Children's Room in the basement. "It's the next door on your right," I said, my fingers smeared with yellow, blue and red. I was teaching the joys of color combinations. I pointed. He stood there in a beige raincoat that was a little wet and said, "Thank you." That was the first time I saw him. I remember he walked directly over to the table and looked at the children's paintings. Over one child's purples and greens, he said, "Beautiful." "We're learning how to mix color." He was neither tall, nor short, nor fat, nor thin, nor blond, nor brown. What stood out about him was his face, which seemed to burst into the world. "Color," he said. He had a paper under his arm, and the museum booklet for the visiting exhibit upstairs. I remember he looked at me, and I know I must have looked small to him, in a turtleneck and—oh, God—I think a tartan skirt—my hair in a ponytail, my face covered by the huge, round black glasses I was wearing in those days. Over my clothes, I had on a white lab coat, which was covered in paint smudges. The Missouri Review · 9 "What do blue and yellow make?" he asked one child. At the time, he was thirty-two—eight years older than I. "Do they make green?" he said when the child refused to answer. The child ignored him. Another kid, a boy, spoke up. "Yes, green. They make green." "What is this?" he asked, looking around. "This is the Children's Room." I began to wonder when he was going to go to the bathroom. He was making me nervous. I admired Stacey's ability to not speak to the handsome stranger. She, at four, knew how to behave around men. As he walked away, I thought of my grandmother's fear at meeting my grandfather. They'd met under an awning in a rainstorm in Akron, Ohio. He had offered her a ride in a taxi. She didn't speak to him, simply followed, petrified. As the color ran off our fingers into the tiny sinks on the far wall of the room, I wondered who he was, and if I'd see him again. Five years ago, I was perfect. I had a small apartment near the museum , with white furniture and sheets on the windows bunched up into knots to let the sun in. I drank the right teas with honey, served scones on the right-textured dishes, watered my plants, fed my cat. I listened to the right classical station and had friends in. Oh yes, I bought fresh flowers and set them inblood-red vases on my glass coffee table. I dated occasionally. One guy, Rex, was a part-time museum guard, full-time graduate student in American history. We saw movies at the museum, visited my...