Annual Report

In honor of (US) Labor Day, Celeste Monforton and I have started what we intend to be a new Labor Day tradition: publication of a report that highlights some of the important research and activities in occupational health in the US over the past year.   The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2011 - Summer 2012 is now available online. We want it to be a resource for activists, regulators, researchers, and anyone else who values safe and healthy workplaces. Much as the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job report focuses attention on workplace injury and illness statistics each…

Our latest annual report is now online, and we think the results are worth looking at. We started with a favorite theme -- art and science -- and took it a step further. Ten short pieces on scientific research that deals with movement -- of proteins, electrons, black holes or theoretical random walkers -- are paired with works of art on a similar theme. Then we added poetry and fiction written by scientists, for good measure. The Insomniac City Cycles Ran Slavin Still from film, 2004-2009 It might all seem a bit exuberant, in light of continuing economic crises and regional politics. But if…

It goes without saying that questions are the basis of scientific research. But all too often, especially in the PR department, we focus on the findings and forget about the process that led to those findings. So it was a refreshing change for us to put out an annual report on the theme of questions. While the report takes as its premise the "big", even somewhat rhetorical questions, many of the featured scientists relate to the driving questions that keep them in the lab from morning to night. In his message, Institute President Prof. Daniel Zajfman wrote: Each new discovery leads to…