Author: jlolds

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

Last thoughts before Fall semester….

First, we need to think about how an institute for advanced study fits into the current rapidly evolving American public university. Second, we need to engage far more actively with the private sector so that the resources for our research mission remain stable, even as Federal R&D decreases. Third, we need to  tell our story more effectively and certainly more often. Finally, we need to think about how our education mission–at all levels from undergraduate to executive short courses–can take better advantage of technology to reach more learners.

The overarching theme for the Institute remains how human cognition emerges from the biological activity of brains, individually and played out across societies, all of them embedded in the larger biosphere.

The human talent for making Krasnow the special place it is, remains our greatest resource: faculty, students and staff alike.

The Institute gears up for Fall semester…

On Wednesday of this week, the University begins to stir from Summer with the annual planning conference that, to my mind, marks the beginning of the semester. Classes don’t begin for another ten days or so, but you can already feel the Institution picking up its pace.

Superimposed upon a sense of impending activity are the concerns about the macro-changes that are central to the current higher education debate and the sense that political paralysis may indeed lead to this country going over a “fiscal cliff” in January.

I’m sure these will be among the major topics for discussion in Aspen, later this month….

David Frum’s take on the current American anxiety

From The Daily Beast, here.

Money quote:

In 1959, during the golden age of the American middle class, bestselling writer Allen Drury set the scene for his novel Advise and Consent by describing a world that “had seen America rise and rise and rise, some sort of golden legend to her own people, some sort of impossible fantasy to others …”
This is the fear that haunts us now, the worry above all worries: Has the golden legend of America-the constantly renewed promise of a better economic future for its citizens-finally reached an end? And if so, what alternative future awaits us?

Shout out to one of our own: Claudio Cioffi…

From Nature Magazine, the link is here. Money quote:

Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, a computer social scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, welcomes cliodynamics as a natural complement to his own field: doing simulations using ‘agent-based’ computer models. Cioffi-Revilla and his team are developing one such model to capture the effects of modern-day climate change on the Rift Valley region in East Africa, a populous area that is in the grip of a drought. The model starts with a series of digital agents representing households and allows them to interact, following rules such as seasonal migration patterns and ethnic alliances. The researchers have already seen labour specialization and vulnerability to drought emerge spontaneously, and they hope eventually to be able to predict flows of refugees and identify potential conflict hotspots. Cioffi-Revilla says that cliodynamics could strengthen the model by providing the agents with rules extracted from historical data.

Wheels down on Mars

As a scientist I can’t help but be overjoyed and amazed at the successful landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars early this morning. Regardless of what happens ahead, the ability to autonomously land an automobile-sized robot under the conditions of the “7 minutes of Terror” is a lasting human achievement worthy of the 21st century.

Last day in Woods Hole…

I’m heading home to DC tomorrow….and excited to host Mason’s new President as he visits the Krasnow Institute on Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m enjoying some final hours of cool sea breezes off Vineyard Sound.

It’s been an incredibly productive week scientifically. I’m more convinced than ever that understanding the molecular control (e.g. WNT, FOXP2) of neural development is central to our ever making sense of the Connectome.

MBL’s great strength lies in its ability to generate scientific renewal, as well as scientific birth.

Sitting on the dock on the bay….

Lillie and Marine Resource Facility, Early Morning Woods Hole

Eel Pond, in the foreground is usually glassy first thing in the morning and today is no exception. I’ve got some time before heading to a lecture on the metabolism of the Malaria parasite to ponder the question of why we study biology.

But wait…

Surely the larger question is what is the thing we call “life”? Here on Earth, at least, it’s a process that’s dependent on Carbon (among a few other elements), the consumption of energy (either directly from the Sun, from carbon-based sugars, or sometimes from the geothermal energy present in deep ocean vents). The information for life is encoded in polymers of nucleic acids and that information is read out into proteins made of amino acid building blocks. These proteins can be either used to build the structure of life forms or to act as chemical catalysts. The amino acids themselves are built up by energy consumption in the form of metabolism.

But life begins and ends all without any sudden phase change in the stuff of life. Yes, the building blocks are recycled, but not immediately upon death. Neither is it mandatory that all the processes of life cease upon the death of a living thing.

Which brings us back to this larger question of defining life. I suppose at one level, it’s a local decrease in entropy and hence a temporary reprieve from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but there are lots of such things in the Universe that we don’t normally think of as alive. And on this Biosphere, it’s defined within the constraints of a special carbon-based metabolism and XNA-genetics, but it needn’t be elsewhere.

But it surely is compelling and that’s what makes a place like the MBL in Woods Hole so very important.

Science: hobby for the wealthy?

That’s what it was often in the 19th century before public funding took root. And that’s what it may be again if such funding collapses in the future. Docked at the WHOI pier this morning is this research vessel owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute…as in Eric Schmidt of Google fame. Typically this class of research vessel would have been paid for by a government research agency such as the National Science Foundation–no longer. The RV Falkor is perhaps a window into the future of science: back to the future.