I wanted my eighth-graders to experience jewelry making but my art room, like many of your middle-school art rooms, is not equipped with soldering stations with acetylene torches and pickling solutions.

Nevertheless, there are many important basic jewelry-construction techniques the students could still learn. I did have enough equipment to teach the students sawing, filing, sanding and polishing--all skills that are important in constructing jewelry from metal plate.

We started with 18-gauge pre-cut copper shapes, these come in a variety of shapes and for this project the students had a choice of a 2-inch circle or square. Next we traced the shape several times on a piece of 9" x 12" white drawing paper. I wanted the students to sketch several ideas of their pierced design, which they would cut into their copper metal shape. As usual you do get several students that have no idea what to draw so I let them get ideas from the computer by looking up simple black-and-white clip art.

When their drawing was finished we cut it out and rubber cemented them onto their piece of metal. Next using an awl and drill, I drilled holes into their metal where needed. Their piece was now ready to saw. The students were instructed on how to use a jeweler saw and a bench pin to have minimum saw blade breakage. The students gained some good experience cutting out their integrated pierced designs.

The students also received excellent experience on filing their piece after their designs were cut out. The students found out firsthand how important it was to cut their design out cleanly to make their filing easier. They also found out that it takes a lot of patience to file a quality piece of jewelry.

They were not finished; next we needed to sand the piece and we did this with medium- and, then, fine-grit emery cloth. Now the piece was ready to polish with tripoli and rouge. We used a Dremel[R] tool with felt buffing tips to polish the jewelry piece, or you could use a felt hand buff.

The final step was to put their jewelry masterpiece onto a key chain. The students liked the key-chain idea, as many of my students were eligible to take driver's education this summer and would now have a nice piece of jewelry to mark the occasion.

Metal Management Inc., Chicago, has announced results for its third fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, 2005, that mark a decline from the figures the company reported in the third quarter of the previous year.

The company reported net sales of $395 million, a decline from net sales of $447.6 million for the third quarter of the previous year. Metal Management reported a profit of $15.3 million for the quarter, compared to $29.5 million during Q3 of the previous year.

During its third quarter, Metal Management handled about 1.2 million tons of metal--about 1.1 million tons of ferrous scrap and 124 million pounds of nonferrous material.

For the first nine months of its fiscal year, the company reported consolidated net sales of $1.2 billion, essentially unchanged from sales the same time in 2004. Metal Management also reported net income of $37.7 million for the first nine months of its fiscal year, compared to net income of $76.1 million during the first three quarters of its previous fiscal year.

"Metal Management delivered strong results in the third quarter despite challenging ferrous market conditions evidenced by a volatile pricing environment in the U.S. and weak international demand," Daniel Dienst, the company's chairman, CEO and president, says.

"Operational excellence and diversification are two important differentiators for Metal Management, helping us deliver solid results even in very difficult market conditions," Dienst says. "The company's performance this quarter once again demonstrated the importance of rapidly turning inventories to limit the impact of price fluctuations and the strategic value of our diversified product offering and geography."

ESI Group has announced the release of its PAM-STAMP 2G 2004 software. This software has been created to assist stamping operations in design or optimization of an operation. According to ESI, the software has been designed to allow stamping evaluation, forming process validation as well as quality and tolerance control monitoring. New features include retrofitting applications, web-based reporting to allow for information sharing between locations, and an improved Distributed-Parallel-processing solver for multistage forming operations.

Numerous studies show an association between particulate air pollution and adverse health effects. Particulate matter is a complex mixture of elemental carbon, ammonium, sulfates, nitrates, organic components, and metals. The mechanisms of action of particulate matter [less than or equal to] 2.5 [micro]m in mean aerodynamic diameter (P[M.sub.2.5]), as well as the constituents responsible for the observed cardiopulmonary health effects, have not been identified. In this study we focused on the association between the metallic component of P[M.sub.2.5] and cardiac autonomic function based on standard heart rate variability (HRV) measures in an epidemiologic study of boilermakers. Thirty-nine male boilermakers were monitored throughout a work shift. Each subject wore an ambulatory electrocardiogram (Holter) monitor and a personal monitor to measure P[M.sub.2.5]. We used mixed-effects models to regress heart rate and SDNN index (standard deviation of the normal-to-normal) on P[M.sub.2.5] and six metals (vanadium, nickel, chromium, lead, copper, and manganese). There were statistically significant mean increases in the SDNN index of 11.30 msec and 3.98 msec for every 1 [micro]g/[m.sup.3] increase in the lead and vanadium concentrations, respectively, after adjusting for mean heart rate, age, and smoking status. Small changes in mean heart rate were seen with all exposure metrics. The results of this study suggest an association between exposure to airborne metals and significant alterations in cardiac autonomic function.

Editor's Note: CS Questions, CS Answers is a feature of Healthcare Purchasing News in which we offer practical solutions to questions and problems that are common to many central service and sterile processing departments. HPN welcomes your participation in this inter-active feature. To ask a question, e-mail it to cwerner@hpnonline.com, phone it in to Curt Werner, HPN editor, at (941) 927-9345, or mail it to HPN CS Questions; 7650 S. Tamiami Trail, Suite 10, Sarasota, FL 34231. Names and hospital identification will be withheld upon request.

CS Question: How long must sterilization documents such as load records, biological test results and the like be saved?

CS Answer: This is a good question and there are many opinions and practices relative to this issue. In researching the topic I have found that hospitals are saving the records from anywhere from three to 40 years. There is no one universal policy or mandate however.

Most healthcare and legal professionals agree the minimum length of time such records should be retained should be governed by the state's statue of limitations, the period of time a claimant has to file a suite following a harmful or adverse event Inmost states the statue of limitation ranges from five to seven years. The rationale that some hospitals use to retain records for much longer periods of time is based on the premise that the statue of limitations period may start at the point an individual discovers an negligent act or defect that may have been the cause of an injury. Let's say a hospital has an obstetrics department and an infant is in some way harmed during delivery or in the nursery and that infant does not become knowledgeable of the cause of their impairment until age 21, they would then have the period of the statue of limitation to file a suit, which could be seven years.