Author: jlolds

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

Social neuroscience

Many loyal readers know that I’m an avid fan of the Saturday Financial Times–in many ways superior to the Old Gray Lady’s (NY Times) Sunday edition–just my opinion. 

Here’s a really interesting article about Ohio State University’s John Cacioppo and his research on the neurobiology of loneliness. My sister, a psychiatrist, has written about the subject in her book (written with her husband, also a psychiatrist) Overcoming Loneliness in Everyday Life. But Cacioppo’s approach is different–his research appears to reveal a gene network that is triggered by loneliness with potentially lethal affects. And perhaps more importantly the notion of a new subfield: social neuroscience.
Jim

Allen Institute to go after Human Neocortex now

Money quote from MSNBC:

The Allen Institute already has a head start on the human brain, thanks to its studies of gene expression in the human cortex. Today marks the official beginning of a four-year campaign to characterize gene activity in the entire human brain.

Jones said the institute spent about $41 million to create the mouse brain atlas, and about half of that work can be leveraged for the new project. However, he estimated that completing the human brain map would require $55 million more, spread over four years.

“The human brain is 2,000 times as large as the mouse brain,” he observed. “The first thing that you’re faced with, right out of the gate, is that it’s 2,000 times as big.”

Medical Education Reinvented

Here’s an interesting look at some of the big changes that are taking place in medical education as the YouTube generation heads towards the clinic and hospital bed.

One of the most exciting things about the current crop of the medical schools is that they’re coming on-line at the same time as the entire medical curriculum is undergoing a reinvention. We’ve called this change “Flexner II” elsewhere in this blog.

Jim

HHMI to the rescue: new PI grants program

Jack Dixon, now at HHMI, is heading up a new program to help newly minted assistant professors in the biomedical research areas.

Here’s the quote:

The Early Career Scientist Program will pay salaries and provide research money for people who have held tenure-track positions for only two to six years, with the goal of supporting them through the early period before they are likely to get a research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Jim

Demographics shift to affect college admissions

Tomorrow’s NY Times suggests that higher education may be in for a big shift: less applicants.

Here’s the money quote:

Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students likely finding it easier to get into college.

Mountain weather

Arrived in the mountains this morning. DC was rainy when we left, the mountain was actually warmer and sunny. But less than an hour later, it was white out conditions as a front blew through, now it’s clear again. Can’t really be bored by the weather on the Blue Ridge.

Yesterday at the Institute for Advanced Study we had a very interesting workshop considering biomimetics as a principle for thinking about designing applications and more importantly social behavior (think ant colonies). It was wonderful to see old friends and new friends sharing their latest ideas. Biology is a tremendous treasure trove of clues to the nature of the Universe. My friend and colleague Harold Morowitz believes that it may provide the most important clues.
So much for physics, except for the fact that all of biology is in fact physics operating at an incredibly complex level.
Jim

The Institute Advisory Board

Tomorrow the Institute’s Advisory Board will gather for its regular Spring meeting. These individuals play a crucial role in providing me with strategic advice. Even more importantly the board members have, through their gifts, made much of the scientific discovery at Krasnow possible.

And scientific discovery is ultimately the purpose of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. The other day I was tasked with creating a new Institute mission statement for the upcoming re- accreditation process whereby George Mason is reaffirmed as a university. That’s worth thinking very carefully about–because behind the words, there has to be something measurable. To my mind, this measurable thing has to be scientific discovery. That is the creation of new knowledge about the natural world within the context of “mind” research.
Tomorrow I’ll ask the Advisory Board to join me in the work of creating this new mission statement: one that places discovery at the central point of our work.
Jim

Big Tobacco Grant Money Drying Up?

A confusing story from the Chronicle suggests that Philip Morris is getting out of the extramural grant business. But towards the end of the piece it gets nuanced….

How the decision will affect many academic research projects was unclear, but one antitobacco crusader, Stanton Glantz, a bioengineer at the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that tobacco money was not going away.

He cited the $6-million Philip Morris grant won by Edythe D. London, the researcher at the university’s Los Angeles campus whose home was flooded by animal-rights extremists in October and who was the target of a firebomb attack this month. Her grant was not awarded through the external-research program, Mr. Glantz told the magazine.

The question about these grant dollars is of course the same as taking money from the big drug companies: are they paying for a specific result?

Jim

Flu strikes blogger

Yes, the wonders of viral biology. I’ve been struck down for the past
few days, but also filled with respect. Max Delbruck worked on a really
wonderful organism.
If…problematical for us humans.

Jim