On Getting Dressed

I lean against the chalkboard and wait for the young woman to speak. I feel especially put together because I am wearing an outfit; I bought all three pieces at the same time, indicating my financial stability and dedication to appearance. It is a Friday, and this introductory physics student is casual in her sorority letter jersey, jeans and sneakers. Her hair is long, her skin porcelain; these traits do not distinguish her from her sorority sisters. She is exceptional, however, in her habit of obsessively leaning forward in her front-row desk, as if preparing to dive over the top. Perhaps she is an equestrian, so accustomed to having only her legs and hands in contact with her horse that she does the position whenever she is eager. She grips the desktop, her feet swept back, athletic, energized, in the two-point position of an event jumper. “Professor Stephenson, you must need to do laundry.” I laugh a little at my own expense, inspect my skirt for chalk. “You wore that same outfit last class.” I am relieved. This sorority woman, this possible equestrian, is only commenting on my absent-mindedness. She keeps leaning forward, waiting for my response. Her ponytail fans down the back of her soft cotton jersey. I smile at her. She is so very pretty. I also register the surprised faces of the other students and how they pause; I see with full clarity the sorority girl’s strong white fingers, her confident hands, that same confidence in her voice as she addresses a professor as if we were peers. Still smiling, I turn towards the ever-forgiving slate board. I pick up the chalk and write Ohm’s Law on the cool, flat, forgiving gray surface. Class begins. [excerpt

Doe Dose

A plastic fawn, palm-sized, lives on my office desk. He gazes at my open office door. His right front hoof is raised, poised for haste. The deer of my Mississippi childhood were the Virginia whitetail, Odocoileus virginianus virginianus. As a child ten years or so, fresh from reading Felix Salten’s Bambi, I rested my forehead against backseat car windows and took in miles and miles of Mississippi forest. Commutes between school and our isolated house were long. I imagined myself a whitetailed doe, keeping up with the car through those woods, a blur of velvet hide and muscle. I now walk to campus in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The odocoileus virginianus virginianus, the Virginia whitetail, emerge from the battlefields, animal grace among memorials and hardwoods. My round-eyed dog and I greet all deer with silence when we exercise in the morning light. [excerpt

On Marie Curie and Me

When people discover I am a nuclear physicist, they often say, Oh, like Marie Curie! And yes, I am like Marie in that I have woman parts, I study nuclei, I have two children and a physicist husband. But had I lived in her time, I would not have been that rare female admitted to the Sorbonne. I could not have quietly made the top scores on the math and physics examinations. I am impulsive and thin-skinned, my occasional cleverness passing for deeper talent. I would probably have been a cleaning girl, pregnant at 15, unable to speak any language but my native one, whatever mine might have been back in 1891. [excerpt

Eduard, Sasha, and I Go to the Black Sea

During the coffee break I tell Eduard that one of the bigwigs from his lab creeps me out. To him this is no surprise. He asks if I have gone swimming in the Black Sea. No. Not yet. I plan to go this afternoon, when most of the conference participants are on an excursion to a botanical garden. He decides I need an escort. Eduard is older than my mother, born in 1935. I have known him for over twenty years. Yesterday my children chided me for not including Eduard in our skype session. Today he and I sit outside the conference center, on the floor of a stone balcony, where the wireless is decent. On my little netbook each of our faces, Eduard’s and mine, are cut in half. The kids streak around in the other screen of my netbook, leaving contrails. [excerpt

Approach

This short nonfiction piece is about my interaction with a woman on the streets of Kiev

N-SAP and G-SAP neutron and gamma ray albedo model scatter shield analysis program

Computer program calculates neutron or gamma ray first order scattering from a plane or cylindrical surface to a detector point. The SAP Codes, G-SAP and N-SAP, constitute a multiple scatter albedo model shield analysis

Shuttle passenger couch

Conceptual design and fabrication of a full scale shuttle passenger couch engineering model are reported. The model was utilized to verify anthropometric dimensions, reach dimensions, ingress/egress, couch operation, storage space, restraint locations, and crew acceptability. These data were then incorported in the design of the passenger couch verification model that underwent performance tests

Readmission Rates and Their Impact on Hospital Financial Performance: A Study of Washington Hospitals

This longitudinal study examines whether readmission rates, made transparent through Hospital Compare, affect hospital financial performance by examining 98 hospitals in the State of Washington from 2012 to 2014. Readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), pneumonia (PN), and heart failure (HF) were examined against operating revenues per patient, operating expenses per patient, and operating margin. Using hospital-level fixed effects regression on 276 hospital year observations, the analysis indicated that a reduction in AMI readmission rates is related with increased operating revenues as expenses associated with costly treatments related with unnecessary readmissions are avoided. Additionally, reducing readmission rates is related with an increase in operating expenses. As a net effect, increased PN readmission rates may show marginal increase in operating margin because of the higher operating revenues due to readmissions. However, as readmissions continue to happen, a gradual increase in expenses due to greater use of resources may lead to decreased profitability

Neutral buoyancy testing of a shuttle orbiter crew compartment

For abstract, se