A very interesting report in Nature suggesting that the Hodgkin Huxley view of action potential generation may be qualitatively incorrect. The evidence in the article based on in vivo and in vitro measurements of the the dynamics of action potential initiation. Bottom line: sodium channels may be acting cooperatively with one another. What would be the mechanism?

Jim

I know of a sitting provost who has published a multitude of books in his field and continues to do so, at a blistering pace. I know of an NIH director, who, during his entire successful tenure, maintained a very active lab and research group. I know of a medical school department chair, who is as immersed in signal transduction data (from his own laboratory) as I was as a young post doc.

Successful science administrators are very often active in their research groups, if not the actual lab bench. Why is that? The skills of science administration, at first analysis, while requiring perhaps some understanding of science (and the relevant fields for the job) do not seem to overlap with those of a working scientist.

However, I suspect that maintaining an active research program enhances one’s credibility with the scientists who are being managed. I also think that being active in research may facilitate the “walking around” component of leadership (i.e. informal meetings outside of the director’s office) because conversations can at least start off in the enjoyable domain of science before per chance evolving into more stodgy domains such as space utilization.

About that NIH director: we may have disagreed with his decisions about our lives on campus, but we all grudgingly gave him his dues as a top notch scientist.

Jim

Yesterday we completed our first human scans–on volunteers Professors Kalbfleisch and McCabe–the joint co-chairs of Neuroimaging Core of the Krasnow Institute (click on the link). So things are now rapidly moving along.

One of my favorite journals has always been Behavioral and Brain Sciences with its target articles followed by peer-reviewed commentary

Aside: For an excellent example, check out Shors and Matzel’s “Long-term Potentiation: What’s learning got to do with it?” 20:597 (1997).

In any case, the Public Library of Science now has something similar in the works that will be called PLoS ONE (click the link above).

Money quote:
“With PLoS ONE, papers need no longer be static markers in an ongoing process of scientific discovery, but the beginning of a conversation between authors and readers alike. Authors looking back on papers written 6 months or a year ago may see things that they would have written differently; new data may have arisen to strengthen or alter some of the conclusions. PLoS ONE will provide authors with opportunities to make those changes and so acknowledge the evolution of their ideas. This will not alter the scientific record–the original paper is still the original paper–but authors and readers can build upon it. And anyone with an interest can read and benefit from this.”

Over the next year I intend to evolve the Krasnow Director’s Blog in two
ways: First, I would like to open the blog up significantly, both for
comments, track-back, and for guest bloggers. The hope is that we can keep
things reasonably focused on science and the Institute while at the same
time creating more of a forum for ideas. I’m particularly looking for
input on the long-term future of Krasnow, as this will be the transition
year between my first and second terms as director.

Second, I plan to link more extensively to other content, and hope that my
commenters and guest bloggers will do the same. One of the powers of a
good blog is the inherent ability to reference other material in support
of an argument.

We have actually four new PI’s coming on board over the summer. As I
mentioned, I’ll ask each of them to contribute here. Perhaps that can
serve as a begining to this new phase of the director’s blog.

Jim

This blog is now a year old. What started as an experiment has turned into a key communications tool although there is clearly room for useful improvement and evolution. Today, I put forward some thoughts on what I’ve learned from the process. Tomorrow I’ll address where I’d like to go with the Krasnow Director’s Blog over the next 12 months.

My initial idea was that it would be a good idea to have a place on the web where Institute colleagues could go to gain insight into the decision processes of this office. The notion was that the blog would supplement an office open-door policy in terms of communicating with Krasnow Staff.

An additional initial goal, was to facilitate Krasnow staff participation in the various expansion and construction projects–essentially to serve as a virtual “town meeting” for concerns about the slated growth of the institute.

What turned out however, was that a fairly large percentage of the repeating visitors were from outside the Institute or even the University. These were often visitors from peer institutes and research facilities from around the world.

So then the purpose of this blog evolved–from one primarily focusing on internal communication, to its current role that very much includes content for external visitors. That content included blog entries about such general policy topics as mentoring, lines of institutional authority and scientific productivity that reflect my personal opinions on issues that are perhaps as relevant for Krasnow scientific staff as they are for the science community writ large.

But they are very much personal opinions and do not reflect the official position of my University. Even with that caveat, however, I’m always aware of the potential for the blog to give the inaccurate perception of official university positions, and hence I’ve tried very carefully to avoid partisan political content.

Towards the end of the year, the blog served as an vehicle for communicating my ideas about what the next five years at Krasnow should look like. Those blog entries, taken together serve as my current vision, for my second term as Krasnow Director–which begins July 1 of 2007.

Finally, one housekeeping reminder: to search this blog, use the query entry form at the upper left corner of this page.

Jim

Of course I’m talking about the biotech economic engines in the Bay Area and Boston respectively. These regions have seen a powerful synergy develop between research universities and the various components of the biotech business ranging from genomics to informatics. In each of these areas, the tech industry has also played a key role in economic development.

Other regions have attempted to create similar sandboxes (Silicon Shire in the UK and La Jolla come to mind) and have seen some real success, however the original two regions remain the most salient.

What is interesting about the National Capitol Region in this respect is the following: a unique combination of federal (NIH and NSF), private (Howard Hughes’ Janelia Farm, Inova Health Systems, Howard University, Medstar) and large public Carnegie Research I educational institutions (Mason and University of Maryland College Park) intersecting with a burgeoning tech sector that is increasingly interested in biotech.

I believe that any attempt to blindly emulate Silicon Valley or the Route 128 corridor would have great difficulty succeeding–anywhere. However, I do think the notion of building an economic engine based on an intersection of biosciences (writ very large) and tech, nourished by federal and private R&D expenditures could be exactly what is needed to create a new version of these extraordinary economic success stories.

Jim

The MRI is being ramped up this afternoon. If all goes well we should have a 3T field strength with proper homogeneity later today. Secondly, the pile driving is now complete on the Krasnow Expansion Project. Next stage will be the foundation work.

To my mind, Memorial Day, marks the begining of the summer, even if it’s a tad early as far as the calendar is concerned. At an Institute like Krasnow, this is generally a time when the pace of activities are somewhat reduced, as many of our scientists are on travel. My own summer science travel will involve a trip to Santa Fe (home of our sister institute), a great apes research center in Iowa and two weeks in Woods Hole at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

This summer is slightly unusual for the Institute in that the construction will continue a pace. We’ll make a renewed effort to summarize where we are in terms of the Expansion laboratories, so that folks here at least will have some idea of where we are in the overall project.

Jim

So here are two pictures taken from my trip last week. The first picture is of the Highlands coastline facing the Atlantic. The odd shaped island is Eigg (pronounced “egg”). The second is a picture of Ian and Loreen who were without question superb and very friendly staff members on our train, The Royal Scotsman–they are offering us refreshments as we return from an outing along the western coast.