As a first-time attendee and representative of Science in the Triangle, I divided my time between chasing down interviewees and attending panels, which were organized by participants on an online wiki.

One of those interviewees, Katie Mosher of NC Sea Grant, told me that she’d observed a coming together of science blogging and science journalism in the three years since she’d started attending ScienceOnline. More journalists are using the blog form either to replace or to supplement their print or broadcast stories, she said, some of them writing in traditional journalistic objective form and some of them adopting a point of view. Some of those journalists were present at the conference, just as she sees bloggers now attending conferences hosted by organizations like the National Association of Science Writers.

But journalists appeared to be outnumbered at the conference by scientists who blog (or tweet, or both). As a professional writer who frequently covers science, I should perhaps see these scientist-bloggers as competition. Not at all. To me, they are representative of a welcome trend in academics to communicate with the public about scientific findings and (sometimes controversially) the public policy implications of these findings. A scientist-blogger who writes well (perhaps one who attended the panel by Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong on avoiding obfuscation in science writing) and who knows how to attract an audience can have an immediate impact on public understanding of breaking news, as has been the case with the scientists at Deep-Sea News who covered science surrounding the Gulf oil spill. (Bora Zivkovic explains why scientists are such good explainers.)

A scientist-blogger takes some professional risks. Although I was unable to attend “Perils of Blogging as a Woman under a Real Name,” panelist Kate Clancy provides a detailed writeup here, which alludes to the skepticism with which academic colleagues and tenure and promotion panels view blogging and similar “soft” activities.

A scientist-blogger has to deal with certain downsides of being an online presence, most notably “cranks . . . who come onto our sites and leave comments that foment dissension rather than productive commentary,” according to Rick MacPherson, interim executive director and conservation programs director at the Coral Reef Alliance. It happens wherever evolution or climate change are discussed, he said, and he is the target for negative comments every time he writes or is interviewed about the role of climate change in sea level rise and ocean acidification, both threats to coral reefs.

According to MacPherson, the negative commenters are evidence that the general public doesn’t understand the evidence-based nature of science. “People don’t understand how science works,” he said. “It’s not a democratic process. . . . not opinions.”

His sentiments were echoed in “Lessons from Climategate” by panelist Chris Mooney, coauthor of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, who listed these depressing statistics:

• only 18 percent of Americans know a scientist
• just 13 percent follow science and technology news
• 44 percent can’t name a scientific role model; those who can most frequently name Albert Einstein, Al Gore, and Bill Gates, two of whom are not scientists
• in every five hours of cable news, just one minute is devoted to science and technology

According to Mooney, the situation “is ripe for climate skeptics; they are well-trained, skilled communicators who exploit lack of public knowledge and are willing to fight hard in ways climate scientists are not.” His co-panelist Josh Rosenau, who works to defend the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education, said that the language of the attacks against climate science has an eerie parallel in the attacks against evolution. “For 90 years we’ve been fighting same battle,” he said. “Public opinion has not moved. If that happens to climate change we are doomed.”

Mooney and Rosenau were joined on the panel by Thomas C. Peterson, chief scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville. Peterson was one of the climate scientists whose emails were hacked and published just a few weeks before the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. Although his role in the affair was minor, he was excoriated in blogs (Peterson reminds us that some “science” blogs are unsound scientifically), subjected to harassing calls and emails, and asked by a congressman to produce all emails on the topic (which he did, and which vindicated him). Yet he was still subsequently elected by his peers to be president of the World Meteorological Association’s Commission for Climatology. Clearly, in his professional circles, he is a rock star even if some of the public doesn’t think so.

For Peterson and his co-panelists, the implication is clearly that the public doesn’t understand scientists the way scientists do. Mooney said that the climate emails were taken out of context by people who don’t understand science or scientists. His solution: train “deadly ninjas of science communication”–people who can frame the message and convey science clearly to different constituencies. He wants good communicators to claim the vacancies created when CNN dumped its entire science reporting unit and when daily newspapers gradually reduced their science coverage.

That’s a space that good scientist-bloggers can occupy alongside professional writers: reporting on science from the trenches, bringing scientific research alive, demystifying the scientific method, and unveiling the wealth of unsound science out there.

Notes:

Read my colleague Sabine Vollmer’s post on credibility in science blogging here.

A great resource for finding science blogs is scienceblogging.org.

RTI water quality scientist Kenneth Reckhow says we may have trouble achieving mandated water quality standards without making major lifestyle changes.

What happens if we are unable to achieve federally mandated water quality standards in our lakes, rivers, and bays?

In 1972, Congress enacted the Clean Water Act (also referred to as the 1972 Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act) governing water pollution in the U.S. Among other things, the Clean Water Act regulates the release of pollutants into surface waters. Individual states determine water quality standards for bodies of water within their borders.

Now, a water quality scientist at RTI International is concerned that these water quality standards are unattainable in certain major bodies of water, including Falls Lake, a lake that is valued for recreation as well as being Raleigh’s municipal water source.

Kenneth Reckhow, Ph.D., says that it will be difficult for water bodies like Falls Lake or the Chesapeake Bay to meet current water quality standards without huge changes in lifestyle. He is currently serving as chair of the National Academies Committee on the Evaluation of Chesapeake Bay Program Implementation for Nutrient Reduction to Improve Water Quality. This post gives him a firsthand look at the challenges we face in achieving mandated water quality standards.

According to Reckhow, we’ve done everything expected to reduce pollution from “point sources” such as the approximately 600 wastewater treatment plants in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. They have been “improved to the limit of technology,” he says, and further changes would be costly for perhaps little additional return.

“But we still have a long way to go to reduce nitrogen or phosphorus loading,” in the Chesapeake Bay and other water bodies, Reckhow says. That’s because those pollutants also arrive in our lakes, rivers, and bays from “nonpoint sources” in the watershed: agricultural fields, feedlots, stormwater drainage from urban areas, and lawn fertilizers. In the case of Falls Lake, Reckhow also notes that nutrients contained in the agricultural soils that were flooded to create the lake could still possibly be emerging into the water.

The effects of these pollutants range from annoying to dangerous. Nitrogen and phosphorus, ingredients in fertilizers, cause excessive algae growth, which in turn can deplete oxygen needed by fish and shellfish. Fish kills can result. Some algal blooms are toxic, causing potential threats to mammals up the food chain, including humans. Also, affected water can become discolored or cloudy and take on odors, impacting recreational activities like swimming and boating.

Measures to control nonpoint pollution are expensive and often imposed on communities that don’t directly benefit from the body of water being protected. For instance, New York state is required by the Environmental Protection Agency to produce a plan to reduce its contributions to Chesapeake Bay pollution. Not surprisingly, local officials in affected jurisdictions are balking at measures they believe would be “exorbitantly costly.”

And here in North Carolina, the state’s Environmental Management Commission has drafted regulations to clean up Falls Lake that may financially impact Durham and other upstream communities more than Raleigh, whose drinking water comes from the polluted lake.

Reckhow believes that our current urban/suburban lifestyle doesn’t mesh with the water quality needed to support desirable uses like recreational fishing, and he says that achieving mandated water quality may require such drastic measures as banning lawns and restricting agriculture within a watershed, limiting development, or even “moving people out of the watershed.”

Given the improbability that we will halt development or curtail agricultural activities in watersheds, Reckhow believes it is unlikely that we can achieve mandated water quality standards in many of our major U.S. water bodies. To him, an important question is what we gain by partial compliance: does a 70 percent reduction in pollution equal a 70 percent gain in water quality benefits? Not necessarily, says Reckhow, and that’s where computer modeling and analysis, his academic specialties, can help support decisionmaking.

“Do we say we want blue crabs and oysters badly enough that we curtail development and forego our manicured lawns?” Learning what measures might lead us to even partially achieve water quality goals is something he believes we need to engage in “earlier rather than later.”

Reckhow joined RTI International in October as chief scientist for the Water and Ecosystem Management Program. His hiring signals an emphasis at RTI in expanding its capabilities in water resource management, and he is serving as a thought leader and principal investigator there. He is currently involved in around a dozen projects and proposals.

Previously, he was a professor in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment for 30 years and was director of the University of North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute. He is a widely cited expert on the development, evaluation and application of models and other assessment techniques for managing water quality.

One of the best flights of fancy that has come from the wireless revolution is the Cloud. Loosely speaking, the cloud is the Internet—all of those computers out there that connect us in the world wide web. But cloud computing also refers to applications and sometimes data that reside “out there” rather than on your own computer. It’s rather soothing to think about all of those bits of code bouncing around the stratosphere on a cumulus mattress rather than residing in earthbound bunkers of supercomputers.

I was charmed, therefore, when reading up on Yap, Inc., to learn about the Speech Cloud. Yap provides software-processed (rather than human-processed) speech recognition services, largely via partners like Microsoft and Sprint and other phone carriers. Voice mails, conference calls, and other bits of dictation are transported to Yap’s Speech Cloud and rendered into text by software and returned to the customer’s computer or device.

The Speech Cloud is a "stone soup" of voices from all over, that cumulatively contribute to Yap's speech recognition accuracy.

Transcribing Conversations Accurately

According to the company’s web site, “Yap pioneered the world’s first high accuracy, automated speech recognition platform for ‘long duration’ dialogues. Long duration dialogues are conversations and audio content ranging from 10 seconds to several hours.”

As a writer, I’m involved in a lot of “long duration dialogues,” i.e. interviews. And as someone who came of age right after shorthand became a dead language, I have long struggled with the technology of reporting. Recorders are great, but recordings have to be transcribed. Traditional speech recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking are said to be able to handle one person’s voice after training, but are not meant for transcribing multiple voices. Computer tablets with handwriting recognition are not currently ready for prime time.

So it’s a tablet (of paper) and pen for me, with plenty of ad hoc abbreviations that I have to quickly translate for myself after each interview.

Understandably, then, I was more than a little intrigued with the possibility that Yap CEO Igor Jablakov would be able to present me with a written transcript of our recent phone conversation. But that was not to be. It’s not that the software is incapable of handling interviews, he assured me, but the demand isn’t currently great enough for Yap or its partners to develop interview transcription as a direct-to-consumer product.

Jablakov explained that Yap works largely through partners—like the aforementioned Microsoft and Sprint, and through companies like RingCentral and Vocalocity that provide assorted telephony services to businesses. Those partners can offer their enterprise customers with call mining, for example, in which Yap software produces transcripts of customer service calls that can be examined for market research purposes.

Yap touts the accuracy of these transcripts as compared to human transcriptionists and also the added value of privacy protection when transcriptions are created by software rather than people.

Founded in 2006, Yap, which was recently named one of North Carolina’s 25 Companies to Watch, is peopled with a team who had previously worked with Dragon Naturally Speaking and Via Voice, IBM’s entry into consumer speech recognition software. Jablakov, who headed a portion of IBM’s speech group in Research Triangle Park, got the startup bug after being a mentor in IBM’s Extreme Blue Program, an internship program in which students are involved in technology of software development.

“The company was founded on a love of cutting away annoyances in our lives,” Jablakov says, and those include sending text, receiving long long voice mails, and having to check multiple accounts for different types of messages (voice, text, and email).

This March, Yap achieved national recognition when Microsoft announced its partnership with Yap to provide code for its Talk-to-Text mobile application. Users can speak their text messages and emails, saving time and keystrokes.

The Microsoft announcement “caught a lot people’s attention,” says Jablakov. “It said we have arrived, and our capabilities are seen as world class.”

Yap App

This year also saw Yap’s foray into the iPhone applications world in its first direct-to-consumer offering. The free Yap app allows you to send incoming voice mails to the Speech Cloud and then receive them as text messages. If you’re the kind of person who receives dozens of voice mails a day, this could be a real timesaver.

For Yap, offering a free app allows the company to be privy to what end users want; by customer reviews and comments in the App store and on Facebook and Twitter, the company can learn what features to tweak, whether in their own application or in the code that’s shipped through partners.

Back to the Speech Cloud. How it works is something of a trade secret, Jablakov told me, but he did indicate that the multitudes of voices that accumulate there all become part of a “stone soup” that helps contribute to the software’s accuracy. If you ever used Dragon or Via Voice, you’ll remember having to “train” the software to understand your unique voice through recording selected text and assiduous correcting of mistakes.

Yap, on the other hand, is “intentionally meant to be speaker-independent,” says Jablakov. You might get voice mails from the same person every day, but also from random people who will never call you again. But you need a high degree of accuracy from all of those calls, he says.

A voicemail transcribed by the Yap App. With the exception of bobbling the callee's name, it was very accurate.

So is it accurate? I ran a very unscientific test with a Science in the Triangle colleague who has an iPhone. My first short message, sent from a cellphone with less than stellar clarity, was as follows: “Hi Tessa, it’s Lisa. Um, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be in Durham on November 12 through 18 and I’d like to try to set up a meeting with you and Chris. I’ll send you an email to confirm this as well. Thanks. Bye bye.” The screenshot, at right, shows the transcription Tessa received. You’ll see that it bobbled her name but impressively got the rest of the message right and deleted my “um.” Not bad, especially because I have a problem with the letter “S.” Because of that, I subsequently left a more detailed message that I intentionally larded with “S”s. Let’s just say that my contributions to the Speech Cloud were reminiscent of my occasionally frustrating efforts to train the dragon.

My inconclusive experiment shouldn’t take away from the impressive challenge of creating accuracy from a virtual tower of Babel. And I’m still holding out for the possibility that one day Yap software will be able to transcribe reporters’ interviews.

Today, I asked Marla Broadfoot to answer a few questions.

Welcome to Science In The Triangle. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I live in a big old farmhouse in Wendell, a little town east of Raleigh. My husband’s great great great grandfather Dr. Henry Avera built it in 1870-something, so the house has been in the family for nine generations. I’m more of a city girl myself, but it has grown on me, high ceilings, cold winters, busted plumbing, mice, and all. I love doing my interviews from my antique desk, looking out at our resident groundhog as she suns herself in the yard. It’s not such a bad place to muse and write.

I was a research scientist before I was a writer. I had always thought I wanted to be a scientist, until I was one. The way it was laid out in textbooks, science was a beautiful and surprisingly simple thing. But once I delved deeper into the discipline, doing research of my own, I found that nothing was as simple as it seemed. Take that elegant DNA double helix that Watson and Crick first described. It doesn’t always look that way – often it is twisted like a rope, and sometimes it is completely reversed!

Not that I detest complex topics – actually, some of my favorite things to write about are the most basic of basic sciences, which are hardly ever simple. But I did feel like every time I attempted some feat at the bench, the complexities of the science made it take ten times longer than I thought it should. Some people embrace those complications, delving into every detail of the problem they are working on. But I was just too impatient for that. I wanted answers, and I wanted them right away.

I found myself enjoying reading up on the science, presenting the science and writing about the science more than doing the science. I dabbled a bit in science writing, creating a couple of pieces for American Scientist and Endeavors, the research magazine at UNC, where I was in graduate school. I enjoyed the writing immensely, but wasn’t sure I was willing to jump off the track that I had laid out for myself so many years before. So I applied for a very competitive fellowship in clinical molecular genetics at the National Human Genome Research Institute. There was only one spot available, so I figured if I got it that meant I should stick with research; if I didn’t, then clearly writing was my new path. Well, I got it, and once I got over the boost to my ego, I realized I would have to keep doing research. I loved the fellowship, even though there was a huge learning curve as I was one of only a few PhDs in a group of MDs. And then there was that week where I thought I had Marfan syndrome (which Abraham Lincoln may have had) because I could reach around my back with one arm and touch my belly button (I learned in class that was one of the signs of the disease). Turned out it was just part of the hypochondria that sets in after reading up on clinical disorders for hours at a time.

But the research still frustrated me, so I finally admitted to myself (and my mentor) that I was going to take the leap and leave research altogether. I finished my fellowship, passed the boards (a qualification I never used) and let my country mouse of a husband “drag” me down to this quirky old home. I wrote for Duke full-time for a little over a year, most of which it seems I spent pregnant, and then left to pursue freelancing and motherhood. Now I spend my time switching between two completely different worlds: one, where I am often alone on my computer translating scientific jargon and the other, where I am being jumped upon by one little body or another. Both jobs are fun and challenging, though in completely contradictory ways.

I love the concrete nature of writing. I am no longer working with molecules too tiny for the eye to see – I’m manipulating words that I can see transform into something real and telling right there on the page. I love it that I don’t have to hear about the failures or pitfalls of science – no colony contamination or troubleshooting PCR conditions make it into my articles. Because of my stint in research, I have a strong admiration for scientists and the dedication it takes to succeed in the discipline. I also think I can be even more critical of the work I report on because I know how science is done, how it can be manipulated even unintentionally, and how it is ever changing.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

Over the last year and a half I have been working on a series on Women in Science for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Many women go into science, but just like me, leave around the time of starting their own lab. Russ Campbell at the BWF, God bless him, gave me free reign to completely delve into the problem of why more women don’t make it to the high ranking positions in academia. I pored over the literature and talked with about twenty researchers at all different stages of their careers. The result was a four-part series on a variety of topics from equity issues to mentoring to the biological clock to institutional biases. I found that outright discrimination may be mostly in the past, but subtle biases still exist, and accumulate over time, putting women at a disadvantage for awards, tenure and promotions. And men aren’t solely to blame – women and men alike tend to undervalue the contributions of female scientists. So we may have come a long way, baby, but there is a long way yet to go. Russ and I are putting the four articles and just as much supplemental material into a mini-novella of sorts that we are going to distribute nationally to continue to raise awareness about the issue.

I have also become interested in the idea of translational medicine. According to one statistic, it takes about 17 years to turn a mere 14 percent of research findings into changes in care that benefit patients. To me, that just seems too little too late. When I was in graduate school, I discovered a sort of cure for beta-thalassemia, a Mediterranean blood disorder. Essentially, I obliterated the disease in a Petri dish, published my papers, and then graduated. Patients were contacting me to find out when the treatment would reach them, and all I could see were the nearly insurmountable steps before it would ever get there. I have been writing a number of articles about a large national effort underway to cut down on those steps, and to make those that must remain at least a little less daunting. Right now I think the public is hungry to see some return on their investment. I read somewhere that it is the National Institutes of “Health,” not the National Institutes of “Scientific Publications.” Clearly the bar for success as a scientist has to change.

Another thing I have particularly enjoyed doing is creating an “Ask a scientist” series for the SciTech page of the Charlotte Observer and News & Observer. The series explores relatively basic questions that many of us may have heard about but only have enough knowledge to be dangerous. Topics like “What is ozone?,” “How does chemotherapy work?,” and “Why does Thanksgiving dinner make us sleepy?” The scientists I have talked to really revel in the opportunity to revisit old topics and allay some common misconceptions about science. A lot of the questions are inspired by my kids, who like all kids are innately curious and always want to know more. Plus I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from adult readers, asking for more details and suggesting new topics.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Honestly, most of my time is taken up by my two little rugrats, Marilyn age 4 and Viola “Vi” age 2. I remember when Vi was just a baby I flew to Seattle to cover a meeting for aids2031, a group of all these brilliant researchers from around the world who were trying to cure HIV. I was immersed in highly technical discussions and worked 12 hour days practically every day that week. Yet I got more rest than I had in a long, long time. Being a parent is definitely the most exhausting thing I have ever done. Personally, I find writing more exhilarating than exhausting. I know it sounds trite, but sometimes it really feels like a hobby I get paid to do. I frankly don’t have time for any other hobbies – a little yoga, a little reading, but if I have free time, I write, because that is what I love to do. So I guess with regard to my career, my goals are quite simple. To keep getting paid to do what I love to do, for people to read my work, and for it to make them think, perhaps even look at the world a little differently than they did before. But I guess when it comes to what matters most in my life, it is that I raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids. Let them save the world.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Practically every major issue facing the world today – global warming, the economic crisis, universal health care – has some aspect of science within it and will likely require the critical thinking and technological advances of science to solve. I personally think that science communication is an excellent vehicle to educate the public, not necessarily so that everyone can name the four bases of DNA, but more so that people can see how science can change their lives. I have always thought science was incredibly cool, and I want to impart that same excitement to those around me. My focus is on biomedical research, so I am constantly trying to explain how even the most basic research can have far-reaching implications (yes, I think fruit fly studies in France are worthwhile). But I also think it is important not to make false promises about the speed with which science is likely to progress or blow the effects of small studies out of proportion, no matter how sexy the question being tackled. That is a risk that has increased as so many dedicated science reporters have been cut from staff rooms, but hopefully the burgeoning number of independents reviewing and writing about science online can pick up the slack.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I read fellow NASW member Tabitha Powledge’s blog break-down every week. I use Twitter mainly to pick up on interesting topics in science and science journalism that I might have missed through (more) traditional channels. And I use Facebook almost entirely to share the cute or horrifying things my kids did that day. I enjoy having social media in my life, especially considering that on the days when I am working it can be the only social interaction I get. But I don’t dedicate a lot of my time to it – I mostly lurk on the sites and read a little, rarely posting myself.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I didn’t get a chance to attend many of the sessions, so I hope I will have the opportunity to go to more of them this year. I enjoyed hearing Michael Specter talk, particularly the discussion afterwards on how a journalist knows when they have talked to enough experts and done enough research to do a particular story justice. I have grappled with that same question myself, sometimes wondering if I should include the other side in a story even when that other side represents a small minority of scientific opinion. I recall one of the participants saying that scientists do the same thing as journalists, accumulating data until they think a story is complete and then submitting it to a particular academic journal. I guess scientists and journalists aren’t all that different, we just have to use our best judgment in how we present our work and the work of others.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope you willl be there again next January.

Dr. Robert Koger

Dr. Robert Koger is president and executive director of Advanced Energy, a nonprofit organization established by the North Carolina Utilities Commission in 1980 to forestall electrical rate increases by promoting energy conservation and alternative and renewable sources of electricity. Advanced Energy provides services that focus on energy efficiency for commercial and industrial markets, electric motors and drives, plug-in transportation, and applied building science.

Advanced Energy also operates NC GreenPower, a program funded through consumers’ voluntary contributions, designed to increase the amount of renewable energy put on the electric grid in North Carolina and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

This month, Dr. Koger assumes the chairmanship of Triangle Area Research Directors Council (TARDC), a group of science and technology leaders from local companies, nonprofits, and universities. The group meets over lunch monthly from September to May, to exchange ideas and information and to hear from guest speakers. TARDC’s first meeting under Dr. Koger’s leadership will be September 21, and the guest speaker will be Mr. Joe Freddoso, president and CEO of MCNC/NC STEM. Non-members of TARDC can attend the luncheons.

I recently asked Dr. Koger about the history of Advanced Energy and about his leadership of TARDC.

You were chairing the North Carolina Utilities Commission when it launched Advanced Energy as a nonprofit. What factors went into that decision?

During the 1970s and early 1980s, North Carolina was experiencing phenomenal growth in electric energy demand resulting from both population growth and greater energy use–particularly with homes and businesses installing air conditioning on a very wide-scale basis. Depending on your age, you may remember that very few homes had air conditioning in the 1950s and 1960s. I know my wife and I bought our first house in 1970 and installed air conditioning in it. It had been built in the 1940s.

As a consequence, North Carolina electric utilities (who had not had any rate increase cases for many, many years) started filing yearly large rate increase applications to support the construction of new generating plants and transmission lines needed to serve the growing electrical load (growth in electricity demand was averaging 10 to 12% a year). We would have hundreds and hundreds of people turn out at the public hearings held across the state to oppose the increases.

In the fall of 1979, I was returning from one such hearing in Reidsville that ended at about midnight. Several protestors had suggested placing more emphasis on renewable generation. Also, at that time, little was being done by utilities anywhere to assist their customers with any kind of energy efficiency practices. It occurred to me that we might dampen the need for new generation by looking at ways to conserve energy and also look at alternative ways to generate some of our power requirements. Hence, I thought we might want to propose the establishment of a non-profit corporation that all the state’s utilities (through a tiny surcharge on their customers) could contribute to in order to explore such opportunities. Having one such entity would avoid unnecessary duplication of effort that might result from asking each utility to explore these issues on its own.

My fellow commissioners supported the idea, and we established a hearing on the concept for the first week in January of 1980. Soon after the order was issued, Governor Hunt called me and said that he wanted to testify at the hearing in favor of the concept. In the two months prior to the hearing, I met with several groups at the Governor’s request, to explain the concept.

The Commission approved the concept after public hearings and receiving almost unanimous support for it, and the Alternative Energy Corp. was formed. The name was changed in 1997 to avoid confusion with our overall purpose. I think this was the first or maybe the second so-called “public benefit” fund formed within the U.S. Now a number of states have them.

Photo: Advanced Energy

Advanced Energy works as a global consultant for energy efficiency. Was it originally envisioned in that way or was the original mission to work within North Carolina?

Our original thought was that it would work only in North Carolina, and it remained that way for about the first 10 years. It was mainly a grant-giving organization during those years, with some projects being carried on by the staff.

I resigned from the Commission and assumed the leadership of Advanced Energy after the Corporation was about nine years old, when the first director left for a position in Oak Ridge.

The company had done a lot of good things and had gotten a good bit of favorable publicity for all that it had done. However, I thought we could do more by having more expertise on staff as opposed to trying to find outside contractors most of the time. So we made the transition, including establishing major laboratories to do testing and training.

Soon we were getting requests for assistance from entities in other states. The Commission approved our expanding beyond North Carolina. One reason was that we were able to expand our internal capabilities by hiring more experts, which then allowed us better resources to train younger workers that we were hiring. All this taken together meant that we could do more for our North Carolina utilities and their customers.

What are the most exciting developments Advanced Energy is pursuing?

Advanced Energy's Plug-In Hybrid Electric School Bus Media Event in Raleigh on May 17, 2007

That’s a very difficult question because we are involved in so many cutting-edge projects. We are heavily involved in the technical aspects of electric cars (plug-ins and all-electric), testing and locating charging stations, etc. In terms of electric motors, which use a huge amount of our overall energy, we have the only independent electric and drive motor test facility in North American and do a lot of testing of motors that are shipped into this country. We have done some testing of  “hub” motors that could theoretically be used to transform existing cars into “plug-ins.” We have also assisted other countries in setting up testing labs–most recently, South Korea.

We are working closely with the Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We are collaborating with the DOE and National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the preparation of the national standards for retrofits for houses by bringing together experts from around the country. For EPA, we are preparing the training manuals for their new Energy Star housing requirements taking effect in 2012.

Tell me about NC GreenPower.

We operate NC GreenPower as a separate company. We initiated this non-profit in 2002 at the request of the Utilities Commission, following a request from a legislative committee. I think NCGP has done a lot to lay the groundwork for more renewable generation in North Carolina, particularly, in terms of showing that renewables could be safely added to the grid.

You are assuming the leadership of TARDC this year. What has that organization meant to you?

I have been a member for several years. I am reminded of Claude McKinney’s comment (he was the designer and director of NCSU’s Centennial Campus) that “education is a contact sport.” He wanted the campus to be a place for research to be done by both industry and the university and he made sure that we were in “contact” by location of the building and by the formation of partnerships. And his vision is being carried on today.

I think TARDC serves some of the same purposes. It brings together people and helps all of us know what is going on in the Triangle and how we might benefit in some way from that knowledge.

For more information on participating in TARDC, please contact Cara Rousseau at tardc@rtp.org or 919.549.8181.

Today, I asked Morgan Giddings to answer a few questions.

Welcome to Science In The Triangle. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I am presently situated geographically in the center of North Carolina, specifically the Triangle area. If someone has already done it, then I’m bored with it. If the answers are already known, then I’m looking somewhere else.

My scientific background combines degrees in Physics, Computer Science, and a PhD focused on bioinformatics from UW Madison. After that, I got introduced to proteins and proteomics, and ever since have been tinkering with systems and approaches for combining proteomics, genomics, and computing to do hopefully useful things like helping to annotate the genes on the human genome.

My philosophy is that academic science has boxed itself into a bit of a corner with the direction it’s been headed. The “single pathway or system” focus that worked so well 20 years ago no longer works. We are in the era of “integration” but nobody knows how to do it. I am working on a book that touches on this.

Mid-career I had a realization that we scientists are horrible marketers for our work. I had this realization after co-founding a sustainable lifestyles bike shop, and trying to apply my “academic scientist” mentality to selling bikes. It didn’t work. After re-programming myself to market better, I realized that this also applies to everything I do in running a science lab.

That is the basis of my book “Four Steps To Funding” and another upcoming book, “The Golden Ticket in Science”.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I started in computer science and physics, then jumped ship as I started pursuing a PhD in computer science. I realized that pure computer science was a bit too dry for me. I joined a lab developing DNA sequencing technology, fell in love with combining computers and biology, and never looked back. After developing software for interpreting DNA sequencing data, I moved onto the harder problem of interpreting protein data from Mass spectrometers (so called proteomics). That opened up a lot of interesting projects, including:

- Contributing to a deep annotation of the Human Genome using protein/proteomic data

- Modeling bacterial systems with “agent based models” to uncover the basis of behaviors like chemotaxis and competence switching

- Developing methods to find posttranslational modifications on proteins from mass spectrometry data

- Examining the mechanisms that lead to antibiotic resistance in the bacterium P. aeruginosa

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

My time is split between standard academic duties, and my true passion, which is figuring out the “meaning of life” and writing books about it.

After I finish my next book on science careers, I’ll move onto my most ambitious project, which is a book that ties together consciousness, evolution, computing, and creativity. More on that when the time comes.

I also spend some fair bit of time helping scientists advance in their careers through consulting and training on things like how to get more grants and less rejections.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I love blogging and writing. I love giving talks, and figuring out how to convey a message to an audience for the maximal effect possible.

This is why I think “marketing” is so powerful. Marketers have studied how to convey effective messages to people for as long as there have been goods to sell. In particular, the last 100 years have seen many studies of human behavior in the context of how we receive (or don’t) messages.

While some might only associate marketing with nefarious purposes, I take the strong view that it is a value neutral activity. You can use it to promote bad things or good things.

Since most science is good to some extent, I believe that applying marketing could more effectively convey the value of science to other scientists, and the rest of the populace.

Considering that science funding is ever more in doubt, this couldn’t come a moment too soon. All of us scientists should be out telling people what benefit science brings to their lives, and doing so in the most effective way possible. I believe that if we don’t get our act in gear on this point, then science funding will continue to dwindle.

Hence, I am well on my way to becoming a definitive go-to resource on how to “market” one’s science, whether it is in writing a grant proposal, or talking to a member of congress.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I use blogging both to report on some of my science work, as well as to opine about matters related to “science marketing” and science careers. I use social networks to achieve further reach for some of the ideas, but frankly, I don’t have enough time to do that with regularity.

I find that the blogging (both my own and others’) is essential for forward progress, particularly in discussing matters that don’t get published in journal articles – like how to grow and manage a lab, or how to get a grant funded in a competitive environment.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I discovered them through tweets by Bora Zivkovic, sometime in 2009.

I like A Blog Around The Clock, and a wide variety of other science blogs. I’m more focused on finding blog-posts with relevant content than following specific blogs.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I realized how far I have to go in conveying the notion to my peers that we, as scientists and science communicators, must up our game on “marketing” our work. For example, I attended a session on how to get published with several authors. While it was clear that the authors were ahead of most of the audience in “figuring out” the marketing game for their books, there is a lot of content elsewhere in the world on how to do this successfully that hasn’t filtered into the science community. It was also clear from the questions that were asked by the audience that everyone is still stuck in thinking of book publishing in the traditional model of: get an agent, have the agent find a publisher, then have the publisher publish, promote, and distribute the book.

But things are rapidly changing. For example, e-books are a great alternative to the above model that provide a lot more flexibility to the author (and potentially profit, too). And there are lots of ways to self-publish a physical book as well, without having to go through a “gatekeeper”.

After having self-published my first book, I’d never do it any other way. I can see going with a publisher only if/when I’ve sold enough copies and had enough feedback that I really have strong evidence that it is a concept worth producing thousands of copies of.

In fact publishers are going towards this model as well. They prefer taking successful self-published titles, because it reduces their risk.

But the key to self-publishing is understanding how to market one’s work. Anyone who tries to self publish without understanding that will fail.

So the options for those who wish to publish their ideas in a book, without having to do any promotion or marketing, are becoming very scarce. This means that everyone needs to better learn to market their ideas. By marketing I mean “making the content and message relevant to the audience.”

I’d like to see more discussion on this point at a future conference.

The other thing I notice is that the people who attended the conference are the leaders in science communication. Many scientists are mostly (or completely) oblivious to the rapidly changing nature of science communication. I believe it will be important to spread the message more widely to working scientists as to why modern science communication is so important. I think that the conference could play a role in that.

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

Thanks for the opportunity!

Today, I asked Jennifer Williams to answer a few questions.

Welcome to Science In The Triangle. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

Hi Bora, thanks for including me in the ScienceOnline2010 interviews. I am jazzed to hear that plans for 2011 are already in full swing! I definitely want to attend again next year (it will be my 4th year) so I’ll keep the date reserved. Attending is pretty easy for me since I live in the North Carolina Triad. I work & blog for the online company OpenHelix. My PhD and post-doc were in yeast disease research, but for about the last 10 years I have worked virtually either curating for bioscience databases, or creating tutorials on them for OpenHelix.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

To paraphrase Blanch Du Bois, in my career “I have always relied on the encouragement of colleagues” – and it has led me to wonderful jobs that have allowed me to move with my husband’s career, to be both a mother and a scientist, and to accomplish many other professional and personal goals.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Of course my job takes up large amounts of time and it is one that I am passionate about – teaching researchers how to efficiently and effectively use the public databases and other bioscience resources that are freely available online. We just got a paper published on sources (many free) for informal learning in bioinformatics, entitled “OpenHelix: bioinformatics education outside of a different box”. I am passionate about education outside of work as well, and volunteer some of my efforts to the Early College at Guilford College, and try to give career talks whenever and wherever I am invited to do so. As a goal I’d like to be able to promote alternative careers in science, such as those I’ve been involved with.

My main focus and experience is with online work for stay-at-home parents. However I really enjoy learning about any ‘oddball’ ways to be a scientist. Being a tenure-track professor at a research institution just isn’t the best way for everyone to be a scientist: not only aren’t there enough jobs, but it just ISN’T in everyone’s temperament or life-style goals. And science is SUCH a COOL thing to do! I truly believe there is some version of a science career that is absolutely perfect for just about anyone even half way considering it – it is just a matter of finding the perfectly fitting ‘oddball science career’ (Hey, could that be the beginnings of a title for a session? Hmm I wonder…)

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

That’s easy – learning to be better at it! I really related to your interview with Andrea Novicki when she said “As a confirmed introvert, I find blogging difficult.”! I blog as part of my job at OpenHelix & my blog partners, Mary & Trey, are great! They allow me to contribute tips, and other posts when I get the bug, but they are absolute pros at it (Mary has been chosen for inclusion in The Open Laboratory 2008) & I am learning from them. I (of course) also learn new stuff every year at the ScienceOnline conference & I think I may be sowing the seeds of interest (with Mary’s help) in my offspring.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I ended up getting value from every ScienceOnline event that I attended last year, from the Friday night Gala at the RTP headquarters thru the “Connections with mathematics and programming through modeling” session Sunday morning. The thing that I find so remarkable about the conference is how often I refer to it in casual conversations, even 7 months later – there were SO many topics and conversations that were noteworthy both scientifically, and just for life in general. And it is not just last year’s sessions. I’ve been attending for the last 3 years now and I’m still growing & learning based on some of my conversations in years past. I am very much looking forward to ScienceOnline2011!

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview.

Dr. Anu Sud talks to Robby Fisher, a Durham student participating in the Scientifica program she helped found.

Dr. Anu Sud’s two daughters were accomplished in science by the time they were in high school, in part thanks to coaching by their mother, who had been a cytogeneticist at UNC-Chapel Hill and at LabCorps. The older daughter attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and the younger, Shivani, won a $100,000 scholarship in the Intel Science Talent Search and numerous other top science honors when she was a junior and senior at Jordan High School.

When Shivani went off to Princeton, Dr. Sud was like many professional women who interrupt their careers to raise kids: should she return to her former career or try a new path? Then Shivani said to her, “Mom, why not help other kids like you helped us?”

She went to Dr. Carl Harris, then superintendant of Durham Public Schools, and out of their joint vision, she says, Scientifica was founded. This unique program exposes Durham Public School kids to scientific research being conducted at local universities and companies. The kids are mentored by students at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill and are given the opportunity to conduct research during summer internships.

Now Dr. Sud feels that she has 300 kids—the approximate number who have benefited from Scientifica through internships and science club programs in the last two years.

The program’s mission is to create an environment in Durham schools where excellence in science is fostered. That kind of excellence cannot always be achieved by classroom instruction and book reading.

Students who complete Scientifica internships present their research to fellow students. By excelling in research and public presentation, they become positive role models to their peers.

Many of the undergraduate mentors come from the ranks of A.B. Duke, Robertson, and Morehead Scholars—some of the top students at Duke and UNC. They are able to tell the students how they got to their high level of achievement, which was often by participating in science fairs and other extracurricular programs. Sometimes professors come to talk to classes, and last year, a Duke professor’s lab adopted a middle school classroom for two days, dividing them into small groups and teaching them how to isolate DNA.

The heart of the program is the summer internship program, where students not only complete a research project but learn from mentors how to write up research results and present them to their classmates. The hope is that the student participants will extend the reach of the program by impressing their classmates with how comfortable they’ve become doing research and presenting it publicly.

A grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund now offers both the students and their mentors the ability to receive a stipend for their summer of science.

Scientifica is broadening its reach by forming science clubs at many of the public schools and by creating teams to compete in science fairs and other competitions like Envirothon and the International Robotics Competition. For the latter, Durham public high school students joined with peers at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. “It was an amazing experience for our students, both the competition and the partnership with Science and Math,” Dr. Sud says.

Durham students prepare for the International Robotics Competition. They had six weeks to design and build a robot.

The competition boosted the students' physics and engineering knowledge as well as their interpersonal skills.

Students and their volunteer academic coaches worked after school for five hours every day for six weeks to design and build a robot. Participating in the project was a great way to learn physics, says Dr. Sud. The robot had to navigate a bump, which meant the students had to figure out the size of wheels that could handle that angle. “Things like that you can’t as easily learn in books,” she says.

Terry Crystal presents her research project.

Working in a group, they also had to develop real-life skills like negotiation and showing your best side, she says.

Scientifica’s programs are designed for students who have already shown a commitment to and aptitude for science. Sometimes, those kids need an extra boost, and there are few programs available for them, Dr. Sud says. She remembers a girl in the program, Terry Chrystal, a B student who did research internships two summers in a row at Duke. After the first year, she thought she’d be happy getting into any college. After the second year, she was talking Duke and Yale.

“This program gave her that confidence,” says Dr. Sud.

More information on Scientifica, including application forms, is available here. View a video about the program produced by Durham Public Schools here.

Today, I asked Stephanie Willen Brown to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I’m Stephanie Willen Brown, aka CogSciLibrarian living in the Triangle area in North Carolina. I’ve been a librarian since 1996, and I started calling myself the CogSciLibrarian in 2004, when I was the librarian for the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. I started the blog as a way of sharing cool cognitive science stories and books that I thought my colleagues would enjoy.

My scientific background is limited to that of a librarian, supporting faculty and students working in cognitive science, communications, and psychology over the years. I’d grown up intimidated by math and science, but cognitive / brain / neuroscience is so interesting AND there is so much good, accessible writing about it that I have become a fan.

My current reading interests include the effect of mindfulness on the brain, the development and use of language, and concussions in NFL and other athletes.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I’m thrilled to be working at my dream job, as director of the Park Library at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It incorporates many of my interests, such as library science, journalism, marketing, and advertising. I am a consumer of mass media, and I love to be around academics who are studying various aspects mass communication.

My first love is helping students and colleagues find resources that will enhance their research, and the work is double-plus good when it involves subject matter I find interesting as well as amazing library colleagues at the UNC Libraries.

I do miss supporting cognitive and communication science, as I don’t have much interaction with my all-time favorite database PsycINFO. It’s got great content and robust metadata (did you know you could limit your search to age group of subjects studied? Or that you can limit results to just empirical studies or literature reviews?), though it’s not the go-to database of choice for mass communication.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Science needs good public relations right now, and I agree with @ErinBiba’s essay in the May issue of Wired “Why Science Needs to Step Up Its PR Game.” I’d like to play a small part in the merger of science and PR by training public relations professionals to do good research and generally supporting their academic endeavors. Libraries and news* (newspapers, news outlets, etc.) need good public relations too, but that’s for another post.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

One of the great things about my job is that I feel empowered – even obligated! – to read about social networking and participate in various social networks professionally and personally. I promote the Park Library via Twitter (@JoMCParkLib and Facebook and have dabbled in FriendFeed.

I believe we in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication should be teaching our students to use social networks in their professional work, so I think of myself as modeling good professional use of social networks.

I tweet as @CogSciLibrarian as well, which is where I keep up with my science buddies and science news.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I discovered science blogs years ago as I began my own blog, though I read science librarian blogs such as John Dupuis’ Confessions of a Science Librarian more than practicing scientist blogs. I met science documentarian Kerstin Hoppenhaus at ScienceOnline2010 and really enjoy her More Than Honey blog.

I’ve since migrated to Twitter for most of my online / science interactions, and I follow some great science folks there, including @SteveSilberman , @tdelene (DeLene Beeland), @VaughanBell (contributor to Mind Hacks), and my favorite psychology radio show @allinthemind (Australia’s Natasha Mitchell).

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

Gosh, I loved #scio10! It was great to be exposed to so much science in a casual, friendly environment, and I enjoyed spending time with like-minded librarians like Christina Pikas, John Dupuis, and Bonnie Swoger . I was also happy to meet Irtiqa’s Salman Hameed and Tom Linden’s Master’s students in UNC’s Program in Medical & Science Journalism. There were many more as well, but the most amazing aspect of ScienceOnline is the interaction with interesting and interested science, journalism, and library professionals. I have just put #scio11 on my calendar and look forward to meeting more interesting folks!

Thank you so much for the interview. I hope to see you soon, and of course at the next conference in January.

Today, I asked William Saleu to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

My name is William Saleu and I blog at BomaiCruz. I am from Papua New Guinea (PNG), an independent island nation making up the eastern part of the island of New Guinea which lies immediately north of Australia. I am a research fellow at the Duke University Marine Lab (DUML) in Beaufort, North Carolina.

I am part of a team that studies population structure and species connectivity among invertebrates from hydrothermal vent systems from the western Pacific. Most of our samples were collected from PNG so as you can imagine I have naturally taken up a personal interest in this subject. My ultimate goal is to be able to use the results of this research and other similar work to help identify and design conservation strategies for these unique ecosystems in PNG.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

So one might wonder how I ended up doing this. To answer that question I will have to take you back to my final days as an undergraduate at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). I was a biophysics major and was almost at the end of my program when I realized that my options for employment after college were very slim and I decided to look at opportunities for post grad research at UPNG. I spoke to my physics advisor but he was not so enthusiastic about having me on his projects but told me to come up with my own project.

I was sitting in a microbiology class when I heard the professor say something about chemosynthetic bacteria and how they were the basis of life at hydrothermal vents but she went on to say that because of the extreme conditions they lived in, not much was known about them as it was very hard to culture them. I also found out then that we had hydrothermal vent systems in PNG that geologists were so interested in studying. This was it, this was the project I was looking for. I decided I was going to build an incubator that would house pressure sensors and thermometers and could go all the way down to the sea floor, collect these bacteria and bring them to the surface at similar conditions to that of their sea floor habitats, little did I know that people in the developed world have already invented deep sea submersibles and remotely operated vehicles that did the same thing. Anyway, my proposal never went through as no one in PNG ever took it seriously.

I ended up in the streets like so many other Papua New Guineas before me who had gone through college but could not find anything to do. Then, one day while reading a newspaper, I came across an advertisement for people with advanced degrees in science to submit applications for a semester long traineeship at Duke University Marine Lab (DUML). I did not have an advanced degree but one of the requirements was that applicants should have sound knowledge in molecular biology and lab work skills and I knew I could use this to my advantage as I had been an intern at the PNG Institute of Medical Research’s molecular and virology labs and this was the only lab in PNG doing molecular work.
Well, I submitted an application and got the opportunity and came over for the traineeship and went home but thanks to the network I have set up before, I am back now as a research fellow studying the same things that I wanted to work with when I was an undergrad.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

As far as my blogging family tree goes, I guess I will look up to Southern Fried Science as my blog parent and Deep Sea News as the granny. These guys have been awesome at helping me in everything from day one of BomaiCruz. The name ‘Bomai’ hails from the Simbu language of PNG and would translate for someone from the deep jungles, while ‘Cruz’ is from tok pisin, one of the three main languages of Papua New Guinea. ‘Cruz’ actually means to wonder around, hence, BomaiCruz, “someone from the deep jungles wondering around.”

I did not know about blogging, Twitter or Facebook before coming to the USA but am now on Twitter as BomaiBlat and on Facebook too. All this is very exciting for me but keeping up to speed with every one of them can be quite a hassle. I have found that networking can be quite addictive but is also so much fun and is a great way of sharing information and learning about what is going on in the world or just to take part in arguments and discussions. Personally, I have learnt so much more from networking and socializing with other members however, my only word of advice here is that networking and socializing can be so much fun as long as you know how to control its use.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I know this is not going to go down well with other bloggers but I was lucky enough to attend the ScienceOnline conference just a few weeks after I posted the first blog post on my wall. Unfortunately I cannot make comparisons with past science online conferences but from what I saw in this year’s conference, I should say that it was one of the best conferences I have been to in terms of organization and set up. There are two sessions I will remember for a very long time, first was Rebecca Skloot where she was talking about her book and the second and I should say, the one I really liked was the Open Access talk. I think the importance of Open Access as outlined by the speakers is one thing I will take away with me and make sure to pass on to others that I might end up working with.

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.