Meeting Daniel Schorr somewhat by accident

I had signed up to attend Daniel Schorr’s lecture yesterday evening at the Cosmos Club. There was a reception and in typical fashion, my wife and I picked a table in the very back of the Powell lounge to enjoy some cheese and wine before the lecture. A few minutes after sitting down, an elderly gentleman sat down at our table and introduced himself as Dan Schorr. And so we began to talk about the current financial crisis, foreign policy and Mr. Schorr’s NPR reports. He is really a remarkable journalist–of the old Edward R. Murrow school.

Only in Washington.

Jim

I wonder if this is true with Amazon’s Kindle?

Regarding reading words from your computer screen, from the Chronicle of Higher Education….Money quote:

people took in hundreds of pages “in a pattern that’s very different from what you learned in school.” It looks like a capital letter F. At the top, users read all the way across, but as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page. Near the bottom, eyes move almost vertically, the lower-right corner of the page largely ignored. It happens quickly, too. “F for fast,” Nielsen wrote in a column. “That’s how users read your precious content.”

Scientists talking to the media

Here’s a great piece from SCIENCE with some concrete advice on the challenges of being a scientist and having to talk with members of the media about your work. 

The bottom line: there’s a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, but if you don’t take the chance, someone else will explain your science and probably bumble the job.
Jim

Chronicle on Woods Hole

Here’s an interesting piece from The Chronicle Review by Sam Kean on my favorite marine lab, the MBL in Woods Hole….

Money quote:

This writer soon discovers what Olds means, about both the science and the embarrassment. I’d never seen a sea urchin before, and in short, there’s no easy way to sex them. During a class I’m probing one — a black, spiky tennis ball — with a syringe, looking for soft spots around its (I think) mouth. Injecting seawater supposedly forces it to spew sperm or eggs out its (I think) rear, at the top. He/she is hard to pierce, like sticking needles through a leather work glove, but I drive it home.

Problem is, urchin sperm and eggs look alike at first. After many long days in the lab, my brain is fried. And I’m taking only a dumbed-down version of the core “discovery” class on embryology. In the nicest possible way, our instructors laugh and say my class has no idea what graduate students go through.

Beyond the question about sea urchin reproduction, the piece raises some questions concerning MBL compared with its Long Island neighbor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

But what Cold Spring had for years that MBL didn’t was the director James Watson, co-discover of the double-helix structure of DNA (and a former summer faculty member at the marine lab). Watson had pretty much stopped working in labs by 1968, when he took over at Cold Spring, but his name and vision drew many eager, hungry scientists. Cold Spring started off with no more than MBL had, possibly less, but has since jumped into a different stratosphere: In 2006, it raised $90-million from private donors, compared with the marine lab’s $12.5-million.

Borisy hopes to add new facilities soon, possibly in biodiversity and regenerative medicine, both of which Maienshein says fit neatly with a marine lab. Scientists also praise Borisy’s new programs in fields like microscopy, a traditional strength at MBL.

But the education laboratories need up to $15-million worth of work first. Plus, the marine laboratory’s core strengths — teaching and providing summer venues for scientists — cost more than they bring in, and probably won’t inspire the proverbial little old lady to donate a million dollars. The education certainly won’t wither away or face cuts, says Borisy. But however much scientists adore the place for what they learned there, some are resigned that the MBL of 30 years ago may not look the same in another 30.

I’m not sure I agree with Sam Kean regarding the fairness of the comparison. CSHL’s focus on molecular biology was being driven by an economic engine that gave us the likes of Amgen and Genentech. That revolution is now behind us I think. A new revolution will have as its engine the need to address the challenges of climate change, microbial diversity and energy security. MBL may end up better placed with its existing strengths combined with some judicious investments.

Jim

Impressions of the Ohio State campus

I had visited Ohio State before, but this past weekend my brother-in-law was kind enough to offer up a very comprehensive tour of the Columbus campus. With Ann Arbor as my baseline for what a Big Ten university looks like, the contrasts were quite interesting.

Above all, the Ohio State campus stands geographically distinct from the Columbus in a way that the Michigan campus does not from Ann Arbor. This creates a coherence that I found very positive. I was also struck by the large number of enormous state-of-the-art athletic facilities which range from the iconic football stadium to a 21st century student recreational facility that might be orbiting the earth (think 2001 A Space Odyssey) were it not linked very firmly to the ground.
The Medical School/Hospital complex is part of the overall campus complex–it is both heterogeneous and modern. Oh, and I forgot, also elephantine. I wonder if it is making money (profitable university hospitals are a rare commodity these days).
But the student dorms were clearly in stasis. Compared with the gorgeous spanking brand new residence halls at George Mason, these were pretty much unchanged from when they were built at various points in the last century–at least on the outside. That would seem to be an important area for the campus to invest in. And perhaps…that’s in the works. A huge new student union was under construction. With a large new union, new dorms would logically follow.
Jim

From Columbus Ohio

Ohio State beat hapless Youngstown State University by an enormous margin, while Michigan lost to Utah yesterday in college football. They are very happy about that here today. It’s too bad I’m a Michigan fan. But the weather here is spectacular, even as we worry once again about New Orleans in the context of a hurricane.

I’ve enjoyed this holiday Labor Day weekend. Tomorrow we return to Washington and the work of the Institute.

Jim