Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
High-tech, High-skilled and High-paying Careers: Selling Manufacturing to a New Generation
Pamela Prah writes: Nationwide, US employers reported in 2013 that skilled trades positions were the most difficult to fill, the fourth consecutive year this category has topped the list. A 2011 industry report estimated that as many as 600,000 manufacturing jobs were vacant because employers couldn’t find the skilled workers to fill them, including machinists, distributors, technicians and industrial engineers.
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First Ovarian Cancer Study to Use a Combination of Drugs Taken Orally
Significant improvement with the use of a combination drug therapy for recurrent ovarian cancer was reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. This is the first ovarian cancer study to use a combination of drugs that could be taken orally. more »
A Family Inheritance: More Than 'Things' ... Emblems of Our Lives
Joan L. Cannon writes: Unless memories and tradition count as “things,” these concrete reminders are not just things. They’re emblems. They’re absolute reminders — souvenirs in a literal sense — of what has happened in many lives, not just our own. As such, they serve as records that are apt to endure longer than any on paper.
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"Give Your Ideas Some Legs": Study Finds Creative Output Increases When Walking
The overwhelming majority of the participants in these three experiments were more creative while walking than sitting, the study found. In one of those experiments, participants were tested indoors — first while sitting, then while walking on a treadmill. The creative output increased by an average of 60 percent when the person was walking, according to the study. A fourth experiment evaluated creative output by measuring people's abilities to generate complex analogies to prompt phrases. more »
