We can relax about celebrities talking about science

Clive Cookson in today’s Financial Times on an organization to prevent celebrities from making misstatements about science.

Money quote:

A year ago Sense About Science, the educational charity, launched a drive for celebrities or their agents to check the facts before making claims. It quoted many examples of famous people making questionable statements.

The group’s scientific reviewers found a marked decline in gaffes during 2007, although there were still controversial statements.

“Dodgy claims about make-up are definitely up,” says Sense About Science. “Celebrities [also] continue to believe that they eat chemical-free food and use chemical-free products.”

Update from the Blue Ridge

Well it’s been about two weeks since I decamped from Fairfax to the northwestern ridge of Wintergreen mountain in Nelson County Virginia. In the meantime, the new year has started and there’s a lot going on at the institute for advanced study. We are still in the midst of faculty recruiting season (it’s getting exciting) and at the same time working on getting a new cellular imaging facility in place as a core facility. I’m looking forward to returning to Mason on Monday and diving into the backlog of email. In the meantime, broadband seems to be working well up here and I’ve developed new respect for the old-fashioned land-line telephone.

Jim

Science rethinks its JSTOR decision

Here’s some good news for 2008. Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on-line reports that SCIENCE has rejoined JSTOR. I reported on their withdrawal here back in July.

Jim

Single action potential, single vesicle released

In PNAS, Balaji and Ryan use imaging to show that a single action potential usually results in the release of a single vesicle’s worth of neurotransmitter molecules.

Pretty amazing what can be done with optical imaging these days. The microscope is the new telescope (as in “brown is the new black”).

Happy New Year!

Jim

Putting 2007 to bed

Today marks the last day of what has been a very eventful calendar year for the Institute. It began with a new MRI brain imaging center and ends with plans for a Decade of the Mind. At the same time, it marked the beginning of my second term as institute director and the opening of a new chapter as a full academic unit of George Mason University with two new departments: Social Complexity and Molecular Neuroscience.

None of these achievements would be possible without the folks who do the science here, our faculty. So, to all of our faculty–those who have just joined us, and those who have been here since the beginning back in 1990, I wish you the best of luck in 2008 and heartfelt thanks for your creative efforts in 2007.

I would also like to thank our support staff–your dedication, loyalty and hard work act to enable our scientists. Happy New Year.

Jim

Decade of the Mind: Wikipedia

I’ve been working today on the Wikipedia entry for the Decade of the Mind project. Turns out to be more complicated than writing a blog entry. The key trick was to link it appropriately into the category tree, provide the citations and un-orphan it (from the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study entry).

And yes, I confess to using Wikipedia extensively when reading scientific articles outside my own field.

Jim

Physics takes a big hit in the latest federal budget

The omnibus federal spending bill really gives experimental physics the raw end of the deal. This is a large cut for the fiscal year already under way. It’s going to only hurt this country’s competitiveness over the long haul.

Jim

The compact between States and Public Research Universities

Stanley Fish writing in the NYTimes on-line about the withering of the social contract that used to exist between States and their public research universities (with SUNY as an exemplar and Michigan as an exception).

What was the contract? It was simply a stable share of the state revenues in return for low tuition and broad access.

Jim

Big Business and Research Universities

The link is to a NYTimes.com piece by G. Pascal Zachary….

Successful research universities are increasingly allowing corporate privileged access to their latest findings in science and technology. I know there are positives and negatives to this…those arguments have been back and forth for years. What’s interesting are the perspectives from the players and what this all means, not that it’s happening.

Money quote:

The appeal of these arrangements is that “we get broad engagement with universities,” says Andrew Chien, Intel’s director of research. “Their researchers work on frontiers, in unexplored territory. We want explorers.”

Intel hopes to learn more about scientific and technical developments that might influence its business, even decades from now. The company says it benefits from having its own employees rub shoulders with professors, while gaining the chance to observe younger talent in Ph.D. programs.

“You can view this as a pure pipeline,” says Chien, himself a former professor.

This is a perspective that I think has particular resonance for the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study and its various stakeholders and friends–particularly those in the private sector. One of the strategic directions that we’ll be heading in the next year will be towards building relationships like the ones Intel has with Berkeley, University of Washington and CMU.

Strategic thoughts–on holiday

I’m off to the mountains for the next two weeks. I hope to be thinking very strategically about the Institute as it heads into 2008 and the election cycle. From my standpoint, the key is aligning ourselves (from the standpoint of our scientific and educational activities) to the larger “weather” of the economy and government funding without compromising our scientific excellence. Not an easy task when that environment is as unstable as it appears to be right now.

As I’ve said before on this blog, ultimately we have to decide what not to do, given our finite size. Difficult, but tractable.

Jim