Challenges and rewards of educating a profoundly deaf student.

The faculty and administrators of a college of nursing in a public university learned that awareness of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 is very different from complying with its mandates in the education of a profoundly deaf nursing student. The process began with many challenges and ended with rewards beyond the expectations of all involved. Faculty, who initially resisted the concept of educating a "deaf nurse," developed creative teaching strategies and ultimately gained a new perspective regarding who has the potential to become a good nurse. In the final analysis, everyone agreed that this exceptional young woman was not only our student, but was also our teacher.

Note: High density pulsed molecular beam for cold ion chemistry.

A recent expansion of cold and ultracold molecule applications has led to renewed focus on molecular species preparation under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Meanwhile, molecular beams have been used to study gas phase chemical reactions for decades. In this paper, we describe an apparatus that uses pulsed molecular beam technology to achieve high local gas densities, leading to faster reaction rates with cold trapped ions. We characterize the beam's spatial profile using the trapped ions themselves. This apparatus could be used for preparation of molecular species by reactions requiring excitation of trapped ion precursors to states with short lifetimes or for obtaining a high reaction rate with minimal increase of background chamber pressure.