Category: Uncategorized

Fragile Ecosystems…

A freshwater pond on Fogo Island off Newfoundland

I took this photo a while back while on a hike in one of Canada’s more remote locations. It was early in the short boreal summer and I was struck by both the high biodiversity and the enormous spurt of primary productivity that, out of necessity occupies a very narrow time window. These remote parts of Earth’s biosphere are encountering climate disruption more intensely than most of the planet. How they will fare is unknown, but it’s a good bet they will be challenged because they are inherently fragile.

Humans affect the trajectory of our home planet’s ecosystems. But we can’t accurately predict how those dynamics will feedback upon us. We are coupled complex adaptive systems.

Viral Spillover: predictable?

The New Yorker routinely does an excellent job with science. This piece by Matthew Hutson is another good one. The debate is whether it’s worthwhile even trying to scientifically sample the animal reservoirs (e.g. bats) where this zoonotic transfer begins. Is it hopelessly complex? Is the sampling itself playing with fire?

My own sense (based on my NSF experience) is that there are valuable rule sets that can be revealed and these are what we must try to figure out. Yes, the complexity is high–the interactions span genomes to ecosystems, but the payoff could be immense. Early on in the pandemic, I blogged about a hypothetical COVID30. Because of climate change, we may be facing new infectious disease assaults on humans much more frequently than that as animal reservoir species and humans migrate towards intersections in space and time.

How will we use our quantum computers?

One of my colleagues asked me the other day what I thought the opportunities were for using quantum computing in the biomedical application space. My answer was pretty skeptical. It’s easy to see how AI has paid off for life sciences. Not so on how quantum computing will make a big difference. I’d love to be wrong though. Could quantum computing allow us to predict the trajectory of a viral phenotype accurately? Could we automate rational small-molecule design? How will we use our quantum computers?

Is Sponsored Research a Loss Leader….

The question I’m asking is whether universities and academic medical centers actually make money on federally-funded sponsored research through the recovery of indirect costs. It’s a fair question: indirect cost rates vary greatly by institution. They are nominally paid by the US government to allow institutions to recover the costs of keeping the laboratory space functioning as a venue for conducting experiments. The indirect cost rate for a given institution is the product of a bi-lateral negotiation between government and the university guided by a formula which takes various factors into account. Is there arbitrage going on? I don’t know. But I do know that various administrators that I’ve talked to across the country have described the entire enterprise as a loss leader for universities. That is: their story to me is that they are actually loosing money on their research activities. And…I can see why a school would do that. Research success is very prestigious and can attract other revenue-creating activities such as students paying tuition. But it also seems that, because of the one-on-one nature of the negotiation for each institution, the balance could be the other way: institutions could be making a profit on research. It would be useful to see the hard data for this.

…just asking for a friend (smile)

Woods Hole and doing science…

The Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole on a Summer Morning 2022

There is a kind of science that takes place during the summer in Woods Hole that follows a unique process: two scientists (they can be at any level of seniority–one might be a senior professor, the other a grad student for example) sit down by the water over lunch and compare experimental results. Together they notice someone odd and unexpected in some recent data. They wonder if the oddness might be explained by some ‘totally out there’ explanation. They design a new experiment to test their hypothesis. That evening, they set up the experiment and around 2AM the next day, they both witness the result which changes our understanding of biology.

The bringing together of life scientists to randomly interact like that and then, productively, move our field forward of course happens elsewhere. But I’ve never seen it happen more regularly than at MBL. There is a magic to the place that is beyond the beauty of an Eel Pond sunrise. As with evolution itself, both history and contingency play an important role in Woods Hole’s secret sauce. I’m not at all sure that it can be scaled. But it’s an important example of how science can be a successful enterprise.