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F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 8  Health & Safety By this month, according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Department of Health and Human Services must set practices for medical providers and insurers to follow in order to protect the confidentiality of personal health information that is maintained on electronic systems. Specifically, health providers and insurers must, over the next two years, assign identifiers to all those who access patient records, and establish "audit trails" that monitor all access to clinical information. They must also encrypt all patient-identifiable information that is transmitted over the Internet and other public networks. The act further requires that Congress enact a national patient-confidentiality law by August of 1999. A 1995 survey of Fortune 500 companies found that a third consult individual health records when making job-related decisions, sometimes without informing employees. The Skies 
February 1: The waxing crescent Moon lies close to Saturn, high in the
southwest just after sundown; Jupiter and Mars are low on the western horizon.
11: Full Moon, also known this month as the Snow or Trapper's Moon.
23: Venus, just past peak brilliance for the year, hangs near the waning
crescent Moon in the predawn sky. 26: A solar eclipse peaks at about
12:30 P.M. EST. The eclipse will be total only in a narrow path across Panama,
Colombia, and the southeastern Caribbean; for most North American observers it
will be manifested as a small chip out of the Sun.
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Related Link: Daily information on the skies posted by Michigan State University's Abrams Planetarium. |
Q&A
Are animals "handed," preferring one paw or claw to another?Many are. Unlike human beings, though, the members of other animal species tend to be evenly divided in terms of which side they favor. There appear to be exceptions: most polar bears, for example, are thought to favor the left paw. (Wildlife experts offer this advice, for what it is worth: if chased by a polar bear, move to the left, so that the bear will not be attacking with its dominant paw.) Scientists have long believed handedness to be an adaptation among animals that use their hands, paws, or claws regularly for activities such as catching and eating food. However, researchers have recently discovered evidence of forepaw preference in toads, which do not typically use their forepaws to manipulate objects -- a finding suggesting that the phenomenon may have a longer evolutionary history than previously suspected. Arts & Letters 
Two exhibits drawn from the Vatican Museums open in the United States this
month. On February 4 "The Invisible Made Visible: Angels From the
Vatican," a collection of more than 100 paintings, sculptures, and artifacts
depicting angels, opens at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center,
in Los Angeles. The works range from a ninth-century B.C. Assyrian stone relief
to paintings by modern artists such as Georges Rouault and Salvador
Dalí. Nearly half of them have never before been shown outside the
Vatican. On February 8 "Vatican Treasures: Early Christian, Renaissance,
and Baroque Art From the Papal Collections" opens at the Cleveland
Museum of Art. It contains some 40 paintings, sculptures, illuminated
manuscripts, and other works, including one of the Vatican's most important
altar paintings: Caravaggio's The Entombment of Christ. Also this month
Sotheby's will auction more than 40,000 items that once belonged to the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, including the mahogany table at which, in 1936, the
Duke, then King Edward VIII of England, signed his abdication. The collection
has been owned by Mohamed al-Fayed since the Duchess's death, in 1986.Expiring Patent 
No. 4,250,900. Cigarette Filter Holder With Optional Snorkel Bypass Accessory.
"A cigarette holder ... adapted to receive a filtered cigarette end, [with] a
flexible snorkel tube having a pointed end for insertion in a side of said
cigarette forwardly of said holder, ... providing means for inhaling smoke
forward of said holder bypassing said cigarette filtered end, whereby said
article can be used for inhaling unfiltered smoke from said snorkel and
filtered smoke from said cigarette."Government 
This month is the first in which manufacturers can by law sell television sets
equipped with V-chips -- devices that let parents block the reception of programs
that include adult language, sex, or violence. The sweeping Telecommunications
Act of February, 1996, mandated that parents be provided with timely
information about the nature of upcoming programming and be given a means of
blocking shows they don't want their children to see. In order to give
broadcasters adequate time to institute a ratings system, among other reasons,
the act also required that manufacturers wait at least two years before
starting to sell TVs with V-chips. Because of delays in working out the ratings
system and the technology itself, however, it is unlikely that new TVs will
contain V-chips for several months. Eventually -- the date has not yet been
set -- all new TVs 13 inches or larger will have to contain V-chips.75 Years Ago 
Robert M. Gay, writing in the February, 1923, issue of The Atlantic
Monthly: "There is ... deep-seated in every manly breast a determination
not to be, or at least not to appear to be, interested in anything that any
teacher, lecturer, or preacher may say; and it is merely masculine to register
this obscure impulse in any way short of audible groans. A woman will tell you
that men are poor listeners because they want to do all the talking themselves;
but such an unjust suspicion must be ascribed to the satirical view that one
sex naturally holds of the other. However this may be, it is certainly true
that women are courageous church-goers, concert-goers, lecture-goers, without
whose encouragement most of the public talkers of the world would have to go
out of business."
Illustrations by Regan Dunnick Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; February 1998; The February Almanac; Volume 281, No. 2; page 14. |
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