Author: jlolds

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

Mobilizing for Phase II

Today, the mobilization began for the next phase in the facility that houses the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. Over the next 12 months we’ll be adding approximately 15,000 new square feet of wet labs, core facilities and offices to bring the Institute’s main facility up to about 60,000 square feet.

With our outstanding faculty, programs and staff, we’re well on our way to reifying the vision of our scientific founders.
In the meantime, I’m already thinking about Phase III on the other end of the Institute, to bring our Center for Social Complexity and Department of Computational Social Sciences all under this one roof.
Cheers,
Jim

The Atheneum at Caltech

The week before last, I had the pleasure of returning to the place I grew up, Pasadena California. This is the Caltech Atheneum, probably the nicest faculty club I know of. Staying here for a short work visit to LA was full of memories–this place was my family’s first temporary home, back in 1969 when my Dad moved from Ann Arbor to take a job here. But for a few modernizations (such as the student lounge with flat screens in the basement) it’s pretty much the same.

For those with cinematic memories, you may recognize the Atheneum from the movie, Beverly Hills Cop!

Brain Training Resesarch

From Nature via the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Last month Nature published a study that said training your brain was pretty much useless. While practicing a particular task might make you better at that task, the improvement was nontransferrable. Doing crosswords doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you better at doing crosswords. Those sad findings were reported all over the place.

Spring semester

As we enter the latter part of the Spring Semester, the view from the windows of Krasnow’s Great Room gets greener. Only eight weeks ago, the view outside was arctic-like, with mounds of snow that looked to be permanent.

This has been an excellent year so far for our science. Most exciting has been the proliferation of large-scale grant awards that bring together many of the disparate disciplines represented at Mason’s Institute for Advanced Study.
It’s also been gratifying to open Krasnow’s new cellular imaging facility and to welcome two new functional brain imagers to our faculty.

Defining high risk/high payoff

Click on the link above for the mandate from the US Congress to NSF on funding more high risk research.

And what constitutes “high risk”?
“Research driven by ideas that have the potential to radically change our understanding of an important existing scientific or engineering concept, or leading to the creation of a new paradigm or field of science or engineering, and that is characterized by its challenge to current understanding or its pathway to new frontiers.”

Seeking isolation: social neuroscience (or the absence of it)

Sarah Maslin Nir has a fascinating piece in today’s NY Times on-line about men who seek nearly complete social isolation (think Robinson Crusoe) here. Money quote from the University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo:

In our culture, there is this mythic individualism that we cherish,” said Dr. Cacioppo, who studies the biological and cognitive effects of isolation. “That’s particularly true for men — they are supposed to be an island unto themselves. They take that myth more seriously and try to pursue it.