Sat in on the search for a new faculty position in Molecular Neuroscience today. The pool is really both large and excellent. It was very difficult to even think about making a first cut! On Thursday, at the Institute’s Advisory Board meeting, I’ll be working to secure the resources to ensure future robust faculty growth at Krasnow both in the neuroscience area, but also in our newly formed department of social complexity.

Jim

On the subject of neuroarchitecture…

According to [Jim] Olds, [a neuroscientist at George Mason University], not every design firm is sold on the idea that architecture affects people on a neurological level. Still, he notes that what he calls ‘neuromarketting’ is a growing and well funded field that could well expand into mainstream architecture.

“Well, neuromarketting is a big field and it’s highly funded… And brain scanning is now replacing the focus group as a way to do marketing and certainly product placement in a retail space is an extremely important component of marketing,” said Olds.

Hmmm….I don’t agree with Andrew on everything, but this is good to see.

Jim

I had the pleasure and honor yesterday evening to attend and speak at the “Coating Ceremony” at Loudoun County’s Academy of Science High School. Loudoun County, home to Washington’s Dulles Airport and the Janelia Farm complex of Howard Hughes Medical Institute is one of the fastest growing places in the US. The academy of science idea for a high school is a variation of the magnet school concept but one that I think can be particularly powerful. In particular, the school’s director George Wolf, seeks to have high school students designing their own experiments and subsequently carrying them out, as distinct from the more common concept of “farming” science high school students out to mentor laboratories. I really think this is an excellent idea. The Academy is also conducting a very interesting collaboration exercise with a high school in Singapore. The research, into high school science education, is supported by the National Science Foundation. As I understand it, students at the Academy of Science will be paired up with students in Singapore and collaborate over the net to do their science.

Jim

Financial Times columnist John Kay has a column in today’s paper that really clearly states the difference between science and scientific consensus (often used to generate science based policy decisions). It’s a good read, if a bit controversial.

Taken out of the climate change debate and placed instead in the field of neuroscience, I think it’s pretty spot on. Fifty years ago there was a consensus that each neuron had one single neurotransmitter. That’s one example of many, where consensus was scientifically wrong.

Jim

Gene targeting was the method they developed (in mouse)….Congrats to Drs. Mario Cappechi of the University of Utah, Oliver Smithies of UNC and Sir Martin Evans at Cardiff!

And by the way–it’s a technique that is being used here at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study.

Jim

The sky was perfect for observing last night here in Wintergreen
Virginia. The comparison with the skies of Washington DC is
startling: instead of perhaps 20-40 stars visible (Washington) you
can see perhaps 6000 with the naked eye up here. Through my telescope
I got an incredible view of the Andromeda Galaxy: millions upon
millions of stars.

Tomorrow, Columbus Day, there are no classes for Mason's
students….but it's a regular work day for the administration. So be
it. I have a pile of work waiting for me when I get back.

Jim

I’m in my Wintergreen house for the Columbus Day weekend. If I get lucky this evening, I’ll be able to do a bit of amateur astronomy with my TeleVue-85 refractor, a small jewel of an instrument which travels well and doesn’t require a lot of adjustments. That’s not me by the way, it’s from the advertising material. But my instrument looks just like that.

When we built this house, we put in a small observatory deck facing south, opposite the main view of the house which looks north up the Shenandoah Valley. With its height (above the trees) and southern view, this will be optimal for Fall and Winter observing.

Tonight, if it stays clear, I’ll take a look at M57, the ring nebula in Lyra–one of my favorite sights.

Jim

In my class yesterday we practiced framing a proposed scientific program within the constraints of a given Request for Applications from an agency. I think this is quite an important exercise for trainee scientists because success in grant writing depends on it. It’s not enough just to have great ideas and some great experiments planned to test those ideas. Additionally, one needs to develop the facility to take those ideas and plant them firmly in the context of a funder’s ideas and goals.

Jim

George, as you may recall, moderated the recent Decade of the Mind conference at Krasnow in May. Here is his take on where AI is these days: human brains mated with computer algorithms are powerful tools.

Money quote:

What is spreading through the Web is not exactly artificial intelligence. For all the research that has gone into cognitive and computer science, the brain’s most formidable algorithms — those used to recognize images or sounds or understand language — have eluded simulation. The alternative has been to incorporate people, with their special skills, as components of the Net.

Go to Google Image Labeler (images.google.com/imagelabeler) and you are randomly matched with another bored Web surfer — in Korea, maybe, or Omaha — who has agreed to play a game. Google shows you both a series of pictures peeled from the Web — the sun setting over the ocean or a comet streaking through space — and you earn points by typing as many descriptive words as you can. The results are stored and analyzed, and through this human-machine symbiosis, Google’s image-searching algorithms are incrementally refined.

This is an article about the Mcgovern Institute up at MIT….and a proliferation of similar institutes funded by super-wealthy individuals. Money quote:

McGovern is not the only technology billionaire to dedicate a fortune to the brain. Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, donated $100m to establish the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. And Jeff Hawkins used his fortune from Palm Computing, creator of the Palm Pilot, to set up the Redwood Neurosciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jim