Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Mount Holyoke College has a new President


Yesterday I had the honor of representing George Mason University for the inauguration of Lynn Pasquerella as its 18th President.  I have family roots in the Nation’s oldest women’s institution of higher education (1837) and it the pageantry was wonderful. But more stirring was Dr. Pasquerella’s speech which eloquently called for global social justice for women–and for MHC’s alumnae to lead that effort.

As an aside, the Fall Colors are just starting to burst forth in the Pioneer Valley. New England is just weeks away from its annual spectacular show of autumnal brilliance.

Anthony Gottlieb on the limitations of Science

A fine short essay from the Blog More Intelligent Life can be found here. Anthony is the former Executive Editor of The Economist.

His central point, which is well-taken, is that while the scientific method may be flawed, it’s the only game in town….Somewhat in the spirit of Winston’s Churchill’s view of democracy.

I would only add, that issue of publishing negative results he raises is somewhat overblown. Negative results that are truly paradigm-breaking, are newsworthy, and hence will find a scientific (and usually public) audience.  So for example the famed 1919 test of Einstein’s theory, not withstanding Einstein’s famous quote, would have definitely have been published even if the result had been negative.

The critical role of a scheduler

My scheduler is fabulous. So as I read Tony Blair’s new book, I thought the following quote just about sums it up:

“Kate Garvey was the gatekeeper, the custodian of the diary. There is a whole PhD thesis to be written by some smart political student about the importance of scheduling….to call it being ‘in charge of the diary’ is like calling Lennon and McCartney people who ‘wrote songs’.”
Tony Blair, My Journey, p. 22

Advanced Instrumentation Support at Research Universities

I’ve been thinking lately about the various mechanisms that research institutions use to both acquire and then subsidize advanced instrumentation such as MRI’s, Mass Specs, or Two Photon Microscopes. Obviously there are the direct charges to research grants, but in practice, that may not be enough–especially when there are technician salaries, depreciation costs and service contracts to worry about. So here’s a bleg: how does your institution support such shared equipment?  Are there cross-subsidies such as start-up packages?

Ending meteorological summer and the State of Krasnow

Here in Washington, we can already see the orange and red of leaves on the streets of our neighborhood. This weekend in the mountains, the passing of summer was even more abundantly clear with crisp temperatures, and the velvet Milky Way extending across the night skies, Cygnus nearing the zenith. This has been the hottest summer I can remember in Washington. But it also was the snowiest winter on record. A year for extremes I guess.

This past week I got a hardhat tour of the new Phase II construction including a harrowing trip up to the new roof. What a view! The new Krasnow will have have many more wet laboratories to complement our computer modeling. I hope to expand greatly on our translational research partnership with Inova Health Systems, to continue our investment in integrative neuroscience using the full spectrum of methods from molecular and cell biology, and to move into new model systems (for us) such as zebra fish. At the same time, we keep our eyes firmly on our bread and butter–the scientific opportunities that have already brought us success–in neuroinformatics, computational neuroscience, cognitive sciences and a massive integration of all of these areas with the computational tools for studying complex adaptive systems.

A week from this Monday, I’ll be giving the academic year’s inaugural Monday afternoon lecture on the State of the Institute. To telegraph a bit of my remarks, Krasnow is thriving, two decades following its founding.

As Earl Bears Down…we consider meritocracy

My favorite New England village, Woods Hole, hasn’t face the likes of this since Hurricane Bob visited us on August 19, 1991. That was a very exciting day.

In the meantime, I can recommend to loyal readers this wonderful post by Conor Friedersdorf while guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Conor, like myself, grew up in Southern California. His perspectives on the Ivys reflect my own conflicted ideas regarding the elite schools in the Northeast–yes, they are meritocratic, but no they don’t adequately serve as a good filter for membership in our society’s decision-making elite.

Welcome back Day at Krasnow

It’s become a tradition at the Institute–we welcome back faculty, staff and students with a picnic barbecue. Today, the weather is picture perfect–the torrid heat of the Washington summer is in transition to the much more temperate norms of Fall–the University’s dormitories are being refilled as I write these words with new incoming freshman and a huge crane is pouring the concrete for the slab on the second floor of the new Krasnow expansion building.

I’m looking very much forward to today’s events and for a productive semester.

For the readers of this blog, I’ll be posting from around the globe this semester as my travels take me overseas.