Messier 13

It was a perfect night to point the 250mm Dobsonian reflector telescope skyward here at the Wintergreen house. Without the light pollution endemic to Washington, the stars, even to the naked eye stretched out in eddies across the sky. The Milky Way galaxy was clearly visible–it can only be imagined in the Nation’s capital.

My target for last night was the great globular cluster in Hercules, now, in July, almost at the Zenith. I was using a powerful wide-angle eyepiece that coupled a large field of view with the ability to resolve very faint objects.

And there it was, a large snow ball of stars, dots of light, extending away from the center in all directions.

These globular clusters are thought to mainly contain older stars, as far as our galaxy goes. The globulars, like M13 apparently orbit the galactic center–not in the plane of the galaxy (such as our Sun) but rather as a ghostly ellipsoid halo.

Thoughts on double-dip

First a caveat–the view from Nelson County Virginia is never great. Not talking about the mountain views, we can see sixty miles up the Valley from here. Looking out of our windows is a major recreation while we’re here. Rather, the Recession only exacerbated what was already a very difficult economy locally. Other than Wintergreen Ski Resort, there’s not a lot of money pouring into this corner of the Blue Ridge–ever.

I brought the Financial Times from Washington and reading it, this afternoon, listening to Miles Davis with the windows wide open to mid-sixty degree temperatures and blue skies, provokes cognitive dissonance. A consensus seems to be developing that the the global economy isn’t going to improve substantively anytime soon.

This outcome, if true, would have major consequences for science funding around the globe. Certainly here in the U.S., it might coincide with the ending of ARRA (Recovery Act) grants to create something of a perfect storm.

On the other hand, my state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, is projected to have ended the fiscal year with a surplus!

So it’s difficult to read the tea leaves.

Is vacation actually possible?

I’m headed off to our mountain house which is about 180 miles south of Washington, on the top of the Blue Ridge. The views, as you might imagine from this image, are pretty amazing. And in spite of the remoteness, there is an adequate broad band Internet connection although ATT’s cell signal is weak to nonexistent.

This should then, be an excellent place to unwind, relax and above all, think. However, experience tells me that the very connectedness of this house works against its remote location and there is an inexplicable tendency to get caught up in work.

It’s in fact a magnet for telework.

I ask then, loyal readers, for suggestions on how to actually take a true vacation in this modern age of Ipads and Droid Phones. Are vacations even possible?

Please don’t suggest cutting the broadband connection (smile).

The Larval Stage of Institutional Development

Krasnow’s larval stage was as a stand-alone institute constituted as a non-profit. It operated out of rental class-B commercial space in downtown Fairfax and had several employees (two of whom are still with us!). The Institute for Advanced Study had grand plans though–even at that time (nearly two decades ago), and moves were afoot for a meeting to be co-sponsored with the Santa Fe Institute which would focus our scientific program towards the intersection of neurobiology, cognitive psychology and computer sciences. There were also plans and money for a dedicated facility (albeit more like a think tank than a place with laboratories), and a seminar series was commenced that also, continues to this day. The initial aspirational models for the Institute were places like the Santa Fe Institute and to a lesser extent Cold Spring Harbor Lab, and Woods Hole. The notion is that we would always be stand-alone and that in a decade or so, there would be bricks and mortar, a powerful governance board that would provide the resources for an endowment and a cadre of scientists who would be principally identified as investigators rather than as academic faculty members.

The larval stage ended in 2002 with the merger with George Mason and the metamorphosis into the mature Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study as a full academic unit of the University. And yet, there are elements of the larval DNA that still remain: one of which is a commitment to the elite post-graduate educational programs offered by our early aspirational peers. While we have buttered our bread over the years since the merger with the development of doctoral programs in neuroscience and computational social sciences, this early notion of running summer short courses remains. The location of course is dramatic and special (the Institute is only 12 miles from the US Capitol Building). We now have superb conference and hotel facilities. And there is a critical mass of both faculty and related content/research that might be offered.

So we’re reactivating that latent part of Krasnow’s genome, left over from our larval era. In the meantime, we enjoy the massive advantages that come from being a part of a large, healthy public research university.

Neurology update

Neurology is in the news this week. Oliver Sack’s wonderful piece on alexia is still behind the New Yorker firewall. But by all means go out and find yourself a copy of the magazine. It’s an excellent read.

Then, Andrew Sullivan has a short blog entry on anosognosia that is itself linked to a great piece by Eroll Morris where he interviews V.S. Ramachandran.

Enjoy!

Thinking about the Two Cultures

I’ve been thinking a lot about C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lately. Snow, in his seminal mid-twentieth century lecture (followed by an article and two books) put forward the notion of a dialectic between the social sciences and the hard sciences. One of his most famous quotes concerns querying some literary friends about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in response to their complaints about the general ignorance of scientists about literature. The upshot is that they didn’t know about entropy or the 2nd Law.

Here at Krasnow, we have, only in recent years, become a true locus for advanced studies as we added, first a center for social complexity and second a department of computational social sciences to our existing center of mass in neuroscience (writ large). These days research at Krasnow spans Snow’s two cultures pretty effectively, but largely without the communications divide postulated in Two Cultures.

Why is this?

For one thing, I think it’s a result of an unspoken norm at Krasnow to strive mightily away from the technical jargon of one’s field. For another, it’s the result of another de facto agreement to actually communicate intellectually outside one’s comfort zone. Taken together, the result is what has been called a “third culture”. From my own perspective as Institute director, this third culture is one where intellectuals actively appreciate the connection between human creative and artistic expression and the neural activity of brains that produce those expressions. Hence high culture becomes an emergent of interacting human minds, rather than a no-go zone for those well-steeped in the hard disciplines. At the same time, intellectuals in the social sciences are willing to explore and leverage the tools of hard science (especially computation and complexity theory).

New design and new location for Advanced Studies

Welcome to our new design. And the new address is www.jamesolds.com –we’re still on blogspot, but we’re using our own domain.

The Annual Science Retreat

This is one of my favorite times of year: our annual science retreat at the Institute for Advanced Study. This year, as with others, we get a fabulous overview of the depth and breadth of the research portfolio at Krasnow. Yesterday’s session featured back-to-back talks, today student poster sessions and a faculty luncheon.

In the foreground here Giorgio Ascoli is engaged in a deep discussion about networks with Claudio Cioffi. Behind them doctoral students and Ted Dumas focus in on a poster.