A Desperate Passion

A Passion for Parasites

To know Dickson Despommier is to know his love of parasites. Despommier’s academic text on parasitic diseases (co-edited by Robert Gwadz, Peter Hotez, and Charles Knirsch) is now in its 5th edition. In 2010, the long-time professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health tackled something new in “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.” Now he’s returned to hi...

Desperate for an autism cure.

Discriminant measures for desperate love.

Viewing desperate love as marked by urgency, neediness, dependence, a great need for reciprocation, indealization, and affective extremes, personality traits leading to desperate love were examined. A sample of 251 undergraduates, in desperate love, nondesperate love, and random groups, completed several questionnaires examining characteristic qualities of self and important others and attitude...

Disparate prescriptions in desperate times.

Ideological rants, wish lists, assertions of values, pleas for the disadvantaged and homages to the tenets of free enterprise. Desperate and disaffected souls expressing frustration over inadequate or inequitable care. Privileged and well-heeled professionals disdaining the “lifestyle choices” of the impoverished and uneducated. The Canadian Medical Association’s town hall meetings on health ca...

Desperate times call for desperate measures: where are we in addressing academic dishonesty?

M uch has been written about the prevalence of academic dishonesty in the past two decades. despite the dialogue, incidents have not only increased in number, but also in complexity as students discover even more creative and technologically savvy ways to circumvent the system. Gone are the days of simple plagiarism , glancing at another's paper during an examination , or using cheat sheats. Vi...