The nice thing about professional or academic specialization is that true expertise is nurtured, meaning that even esoteric subjects can be well measured, well characterized, and well understood. Take, for example, this report on “Juvenile Salmonid Monitoring on the Mainstem Trinity River at Willow Creek, California, 2001 – 2005.” It describes the methods used to Read More
Platform Scales Monitor Health of White-Tailed Deer
Depending upon your perspective, deer are poetic embodiments of the beauty of nature, a source of sport and sustenance, a pestilence for gardens, or some combination of all three. No matter what your perspective, understanding the factors that influence the health of individual deer and their herds is an important endeavor. That’s exactly the endeavor Read More
 Richard Gaughan May 31st, 2012
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Finally, a Good Use for All Your Knowledge About the Cold Chain
If you’ve done any work at all with immunizations, you know something about the cold chain. You know that vaccines lose their potency if they’re kept at temperatures too low or too high. You know that different vaccines have different acceptable temperature ranges. You know that vaccine temperature should be constantly monitored. You know all Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 31st, 2012
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Monitoring Toxin Exposure Through Physiological Markers
It’s tough to monitor environmental exposure to potentially toxic compounds. Sure, you can often measure some level at which the compound is present, but how much of that is somehow absorbed into the body? And what percentage of that actually has some effect? In a 2010 report, researchers from the Wake Forest University School of Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 31st, 2012
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Converging Disciplines Enable Better Medical Prosthetic Implants
Many academic and professional disciplines are being modified as technology advances—specifically, disciplines are converging in many ways. Here’s a kind of mundane—although important—example: dental implants. A 2009 paper from researchers at the Seoul National University & Dental Research Institute illustrates the convergence I’m talking about. The researchers describe different physical and chemical surface treatments designed Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 31st, 2012
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Travels of a Unit of Donated Blood
This video is part of the Florida Blood Center’s outreach program to donors. In the belief that a well-informed populace will be more likely to donate, the video describes the processing that’s each unit of blood undergoes after donation. First centrifugation to isolate the components—red blood cells, plasma, and platelets—then expression, where the components are Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 31st, 2012
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How Dental Materials React to Solvents
Reconstructive dentistry is an interesting field. It’s part architecture, part biology, part polymer chemistry, and part structural engineering—plus other “parts” that I have never heard from, I’m sure. To effectively make, install, and modify dental implants, the materials used need to be fully understood. As an example of what needs to be done, take a Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 30th, 2012
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Weights and Measures—Do It Right or Don’t Do It in Minnesota
As my program management mentor used to say, “that which is rewarded gets done.” One easy way to reward yourself is to sell 15 ounces of wheat, let’s say, but claim that it’s actually a full pound. If you rig your scales, you can do that. As the recent financial crisis has told us, when Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 30th, 2012
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Energy Sustainability Only Half the Issue—Economics Are Important, Too
It seems a perfect fit: Isolated areas need electrical power, and renewable energy distributed generation can provide power without sophisticated infrastructure. Matching the two seems simple, but, according to a 2007 University of Michigan thesis, although the energy may be sustainable, the economics of the situation is not. They embarked on a project to supply Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 30th, 2012
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Swimming With the Sharks: Preferable to Swimming With PCBs
Polychlorinated biphenyls are toxicologically significant environmental contaminants: they’re poisons. So you’d like to know if they’re floating around in your lakes. You can learn from the experience of researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Columbia Environmental Research Center and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. They were analyzing the waters of Lake Anna in Virginia. Read More
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Richard Gaughan May 30th, 2012
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