Martin Kohn – författare

Some of the world’s greatest literature is devoted to expressing the joys and sorrows humans experience as they grow old. New opportunities and challenges appear: retirement, a special closeness with the family, failing health, the recognition of personal mortality, prejudice against the elderly, and grief over the losses of loved ones and places. This collection of more than 60 short stories, poems, and plays addresses these issues primarily through the works of modern American writers, including Bernard Malamud, Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, Edward Albee, Robert Frost, Denise Levertov, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. The selections represent the experience of aging from the perspective of persons of diverse color, ethnicity, and background, and are complemented by illustrator Elizabeth Layton’s wry and perceptive prints.

This book reflects on Samuel Shem's ""The House of God"" and its impact on medical resident education.Samuel Shem's ""The House of God"" is widely regarded as one of the most influential novels about medical education in the twentieth century. Decades after being published, this satire still raises issues of how interns and residents are trained and how patients experience their treatment. ""Return to The House of God"" is a scholarly and creative response to the best-selling novel, exploring its impact on medical education, residency training, and the field of literature and medicine.Among the contributors are some of the foremost scholars in medical humanities and the most highly respected physician- and nurse-writers. This collection responds to the surprises, challenges, and wit of ""The House of God"". Some contributors point out constructive changes that the novel stimulated, while others see today's medical residency experiences as still in need of a cure. Some contributors appreciate the novel's black humor regarding overworked residents in hospitals, while others wince and deplore it. A few even take their cue from Shem and transform their experiences into literature. Final words of the volume come from Janet Surrey, Shem's wife, and Stephen Bergman himself, aka Sam Shem, reflecting on thirty years of doctoring and writing.Teaching faculty in medical schools, residency programs, bioethics, and medical humanities, as well as Shem fans worldwide, will enjoy this important contribution to the study of literature and medicine.

COST – the acronym for European COoperation in Science and Technology – is the oldest and widest European intergovernmental network for cooperation in - search. Established by the Ministerial Conference in November 1971, COST is presently used by the scientific communities of 35 European countries to coop- ate in common research projects supported by national funds. The funds provided by COST – less than 1% of the total value of the projects – support the COST cooperation networks (COST Actions) through which, with € 30 million per year, more than 30,000 European scientists are involved in - search having a total value which exceeds € 2 billion per year. This is the financial worth of the European added value which COST achieves. A “bottom up approach” (the initiative of launching a COST Action comes from the European scientists themselves), “à la carte participation” (only countries interested in the Action participate), “equality of access” (participation is open also to the scientific communities of countries not belonging to the European - ion) and “flexible structure” (easy implementation and light management of the research initiatives) are the main characteristics of COST.