tribute

I came across this video showing thousands of migratory birds circling the Tribute in Lights yesterday. The birds were migrating along the Atlantic Flyway and were disoriented by the lights. Other birds may have been attracted to the large number of insects and smaller birds caught up in the lights as prey (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). To reportedly help re-orient the birds and prevent exhaustion, volunteers from the NYC Audubon turned off the spotlights temporarily. Video taken by: Shervin Pishevar The lights are xenon searchlights in lower Manhattan arranged by artist Gustavo Bonevardi to…
by Dick Clapp, DSc, MPH My friend Dr. Paul Epstein succumbed to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on Sunday, Nov. 13, three days short of his 68th birthday. Here are some thoughts about him that I wanted to share with TPH readers. First, he was a compassionate physician who worked in low income communities early in his career. He went overseas with his wife Andy, a nurse, in 1978-80 as a "cooperante" in newly independent Mozambique. When he came back to Boston, he continued to practice family medicine while he enrolled in a master's program in tropical public health at Harvard. During this phase, he…
Richard "Dick" Davisson in the courtyard outside the physics building at the University of Washington (2000 or 2001). Image courtesy of Christophe Verlinde. I have been lucky to know a lot of talented scientists while I was working my way through school. One of my very good friends (and drinking pals), physicist Richard (Dick) Davisson, was the son of Nobelist, Clinton Davisson, who won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1937. Interestingly, his maternal uncle, Sir Owen Willans Richardson, was also a Nobel prize winner in Physics (1928). Sadly for all of us who knew and loved him, Dick died in…