Word: plasma
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...slap-happy pastoral or flash-backing exposition. There are only a few instances when writer-director-photographer Korty shows any flair for metaphor. When Sarah reminisces about sitting with her dying mother, the camera pans up the thin tube rising from her mother's arm to the vial of plasma, a sterile white building jutting vertically on the horizon seen through a window. And when Danny chops wood, the sun produces flare effects on the axe's downward lunge, a pleasant bit of work-glorifying imagery. For the great part of the film's duration, however, the audience is merely...
Alfvén, 62, a Swedish physicist, was cited for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of plasmas-the ionized (electrically charged) gases that make up the bulk of matter in the universe. Ignored at first, his work became important in the late 1940s when the plasma waves he had postulated were detected in the laboratory. Soon his theories may produce a bigger dividend: physicists are convinced that plasmas offer the only practical means of attaining the enormous temperatures (630 million degrees F.) needed for controlled nuclear fusion. Restlessly, Alfvén has already expanded into other fields: cosmology...
Appalled by this situation, the Research Council has responded by drafting a set of guidelines aimed at protecting both the donor and the user of plasma products. To weed out the unfit, it proposes limiting participation in plasmapheresis programs to persons of "fixed address...
Such a system would also prevent donors from either giving plasma too often or taking part in programs involving the injection of incompatible antigens. It also proposes strict limitations on the laboratories themselves. Under the suggested rules, a physician would be required to supervise all laboratory blood operations, examine all donors...
More than guidelines, however, are needed to deal with the burgeoning blood business. The council itself has no enforcement authority, and the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Biologics Standards can regulate only the purity and safety of those plasma products shipped across state lines. Washington can exercise only limited control over the purchase of raw plasma from unlicensed laboratories. It is up to the states to regulate the commercial blood centers, and few, so far, have shown any inclination...