Technicians

John Holt surveyed the scene of a recent Columbia home burglary -- chairs and clothes strewn everywhere by thieves whose work was interrupted by the unexpected return of the homeowner.Holt is one of five Howard County crime lab technicians who work anonymously behind the police tape and flashing lights, gathering evidence at crime scenes. What they find is often crucial to breaking cases.At the house, Holt examined a bag of electronics equipment apparently dropped by the burglars."Your adrenalin is pumping," said Holt.

Anthony "A.J. " Williams works in science by day and in the sweet science by night. He's accustomed to the good-natured verbal jabs he takes about his pursuit of a boxing career. "They actually just make jokes about it all day every day," the 26-year-old fighter said of his colleagues at Parexel International, a bio/pharmaceutical services organization, where he works as a research technician in Baltimore. "When I was an amateur, I had to be clean-shaved. So I came into work with a pencil mustache looking like I was someone's father.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s newest power plant, which will be switched on Thursday, is driven by computers and two technicians.The power plant, near four of BGE's oil-powered plants in Perryman, is one of a new wave of generators that use natural gas as their primary fuel. More expensive oil is used only as a backup. This makes the power plant, called Perryman Unit 51, cheaper to operate than older oil-burning plants.The new power plant is designed to provide electricity during peak times, for example the hottest summer days, when air conditioners are turned to their highest settings, said Peter Buote, project manager.

Employees who were barred from their offices on the Johns Hopkins at Keswick campus because of water contamination have been granted additional paid leave days, human resources officials said Friday. Employees in the campus' south building, which was closed two days, will get two days of added leave, said Pamela Paulk and Charlene Moore Hayes, executives for Hopkins' health system and university, in an email to employees who work at the North Baltimore office complex. "You will be able to use the two days as you wish," the human resources officials said.

Some Comcast customers lost access to cable TV service in the Baltimore area on Thursday morning, as a result of "technical issues related to a piece of equipment," according to spokeswoman Alisha Martin. Video service has been disrupted for some Baltimore area customers since shortly after midnight, Martin said, and customer relations lines have been jammed since 3 a.m. Martin said she did not have a figure for exactly how many customers were affected. She said some customers have had their service restored already, and technicians are working "through the morning to restore service for all remaining customers as quickly as possible.

Before Fort Meade's Tipton Airfield can be turned into the Baltimore region's newest civilian airport, the Army has a lot of blowing up to do.Moving inch by inch, 41 munitions technicians are sweeping hand-held metal detectors across the airfield in what looks -- from a distance -- like a retiree beach outing.But the technicians are probing for unexploded shells, mortars and grenades used during range training from 1917 to 1950."They were all, at one point, designed to kill people. They still can," says Richard Johnson, the project manager for Human Factors Applications, the private bomb-locater company hired for the $2.5 million cleanup.

Two state employees who were gathering water samples in the lower Pocomoke River have developed health problems that appear to be related to exposure to the toxic microorganism Pfiesteria piscicida, state officials said yesterday.The two are lab technicians who were splashed in the waters off Shelltown while aboard small boats, said Robert M. Summers, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.A 4.5-mile stretch of the lower Pocomoke River near Shelltown was closed as a health precaution for almost a week because of a significant fish kill.

WASHINGTON -- A billion-dollar air traffic control system that is scheduled to start service next spring will jeopardize air safety, according to the union representing the technicians who will maintain it, because it lacks alarms and monitoring systems to warn when it is beginning to fail.In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration is not sure the new software, which will not enter service until 1999 at the earliest, will function properly after the calendar rolls over to 2000.The union, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, is seeking a delay in the phase-in, which is scheduled to begin in March 1999 at Reagan National Airport near Washington.

At 9:30 p.m. Monday, three digital clocks stationed on a couple of barges in the Inner Harbor will put into motion a fireworks show that will turn Baltimore's skies into a kaleidoscopic landscape of colors and shapes, from half-moons to jellyfish. It will take just two seconds for one of the 1,400 fireworks to zoom 800 feet into the sky and explode. But what often seems like an all-too-brief show takes about 20 hours to design, and five days (and four technicians) to set up. "Just one minute of the show takes an hour to design on the computer," said Victor Weinmann, lead technician for Pyrotecnico, the company handling the effects.

With some crime victims in Baltimore County waiting more than an hour for the arrival of evidence collection teams, police officers are filling jobs that had been done by civilians. County police officials say that they are reluctant to take officers out of precinct stations but that the loss of several civilian employees over the past few years in the crime scene unit gave them no choice. Crime scene technicians "are just as important as cops in solving crimes," said Col. William A. Kelly, chief of the Police Department's administrative and technical services bureau.

Four patients treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital are likely to have contracted hepatitis C from a rogue medical technician accused of stealing drugs and leaving contaminated needles behind, lab tests have confirmed. Special molecular testing on blood specimens done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the patients were infected with strains of hepatitis C closely related to infections linked to David Kwiatkowski, state health officials said Friday. The new cases bring to five the number of people in Maryland believed infected by Kwiatkowski.

When David Kwiatkowski was found slurring his words and smelling of alcohol in a Boston-area hotel room littered with prescription pills late one July night, his life as a traveling medical technician had largely unraveled already. In his early 30s, he was living out of hotels, hopping among hospital jobs - including four in Maryland - and addicted to the powerful narcotic fentanyl, according to court and police documents. Federal investigators, meanwhile, were hot on his trail as they probed an outbreak of hepatitis C at a hospital where he had worked.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against a Columbia-based medical staffing agency claiming it acted negligently in 2008 by hiring and placing a medical technician who allegedly went on to expose the plaintiffs to hepatitis C. The lawsuit also says the firm and UPMC Presbyterian, the Pittsburgh hospital where the technician allegedly came in contact with the plaintiffs, knew he had put patients at risk by stealing narcotics but never informed...

Four Maryland hospitals are offering free hepatitis C testing to at least 1,750 patients who may have been exposed to the viral disease by a traveling medical technician, as state officials launch a broad regulatory review in response to the case. The testing and review follow the arrest of David Matthew Kwiatkowski in New Hampshire last month. Authorities say he injected himself with stolen narcotics-filled syringes while working at a hospital there and left the contaminated needles to be re-used by unwitting staff in patients, infecting at least 30 people.

Four Maryland hospitals will be contacting patients who might have come in contact with a health care worker infected with hepatitis C when he worked in the state between 2008 and 2010, according to the state health department. David Matthew Kwiatkowski, 32, who worked as a health technician, was arrested Thursday in New Hampshire, according to a statement on the FBI website. He was charged with illegally obtaining Fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic, and with infecting at least 30 people with hepatitis C at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire, the FBI said.

Some Comcast customers lost access to cable TV service in the Baltimore area on Thursday morning, as a result of "technical issues related to a piece of equipment," according to spokeswoman Alisha Martin. Video service has been disrupted for some Baltimore area customers since shortly after midnight, Martin said, and customer relations lines have been jammed since 3 a.m. Martin said she did not have a figure for exactly how many customers were affected. She said some customers have had their service restored already, and technicians are working "through the morning to restore service for all remaining customers as quickly as possible.

Washington television station WDCA-Channel 20 may be off the air "for a couple days" longer as technicians tackle a problem in the transmission line, according to Dick Williams, the independent outlet's general manager.The problem has left the station dark since just before midnight Monday, and Baltimore viewers have been unable to see it since about 3 a.m. Monday, when the problem first prompted a reduction to 30 percent power.The station's scheduled broadcast last night of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup playoff game between the Washington Capitals and the Pittsburgh Penguins was shifted to Washington public broadcasting outlet WHMM-Channel 32.Mr.

Using the national theme for EMS Week of "We're Ready -- Are You?" local emergency medical services personnel will kick off a celebration in Carroll County on Sunday.Activities during the week aim to educate the public about emergency medical care and how to use local emergency services.Other activities will include recognizing local EMS providers for their services throughout the year and highlighting ways to prevent injuries.Many Marylanders, including some from Carroll, will be honored May 27 at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore for their heroic, life-saving action or for distinguished service to the EMS community.

Rhoda P. Levin, a national leader in community health care education and a community activist, died July 5 of leukemia at her Pikesville home. She was 82. Rhoda Powell was born in New York City. In 1942, she moved to Baltimore when her parents opened a grocery store at Division and Wilson streets, where they lived above the store. While attending Forest Park High School, from which she graduated in 1947, she met and married a classmate, Norman Levin. Married at 18, Mrs. Levin worked as a comptometer operator while her husband earned his degree from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.