Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Today, I asked Robin Ann Smith from NESCent 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’ve spent much of my life taking a grand tour of southern cities — born in New Orleans, raised in Atlanta, and schooled in Nashville. My Midwestern mother says that makes me and my sister g.r.i.t.s: Girls Raised in the South. My paternal grandmother grew up in Cajun village in south Louisiana and inspired me to study French, so I lived in France for two years during and after college. I moved to North Carolina in 1999.

Scientific background? I have a PhD in biology from Duke, where I studied plant ecology and evolution. Ask me about the mating habits of morning glories and I’ll give you an earful. Before that I did Master’s work at the University of Montpellier in France, mostly on how different mixes of plants rebound from disturbances like fire and grazing. While there I also learned to love things like tripe, cheek kisses, and strong coffee.

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

I’m a science writer at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), a nonprofit biology research center based in Durham, NC. NESCent is building their newsroom. That’s where I come in — my job is to help communicate some of research that comes out of the Center.

Before that I taught undergraduate writing for four years at Duke. There are several university writing programs around the country that recruit recently-minted PhDs from across the sciences and humanities to design and teach writing classes in their field. For people who want to learn more about teaching and writing it’s a wonderful opportunity. More science PhDs should apply.

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

As a staff writer for a research center I handle a wide range of writing assignments. In a given week I may write a news release, a story for our newsletter or website, a project proposal, or text for a talk or brochure. I also interview researchers, read journal articles, and attend talks and conferences to find out about research in the pipeline.

My goals? I’d like to learn how to tell stories using images and audio. I recently signed up for classes in graphic design and digital photography. I also want to keep flexing my freelance muscles via non-work related stories. In my spare time you can find me hiking, dancing, or experimenting with frozen desserts and home plumbing projects.

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

I was skeptical about Twitter until I started using it. It’s a news aggregator, for one. I use it to find the latest stories about a range of topics. Twitter has also been great for tapping into a universe of writers and editors and getting to know their interests. As for the cons? Between Twitter, Facebook, email, and a million other online outlets, some days my laptop feels like my external brain. I need to unplug and get outside. Time management is tricky.

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 first discovered science blogs by following traditional writers and journalists who expanded into blogging. Olivia Judson’s blog The Wild Side (now a subset of Opinionator) and Carl Zimmer’s blog The Loom are great examples. I recently discovered and have gotten a huge kick out of CreatureCast, a blog and podcast series jam-packed with playful videos, animation, music and original artwork about animals. Not all of my favorites are bloggers per se, but I’m also a huge fan of Susan Milius at Science News magazine for her coverage of the plant world.

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?

What stood out for me was the diversity of people there – researchers and writers mingling with artists, editors, librarians and educators. That’s definitely one of the things that distinguishes Science Online from other science or writing conferences I’ve been to. My one suggestion for next year: we need a bigger room for the pitch slam! I love that session.

Thanks, Bora.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I’ll see you around.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

I have to say that the trip was very much worth making – the exhibit is excellent! I like the way the exhibit is making good use of the space – so many exhibits feel cluttered and an all-out assault on all of one’s senses. Upon entering the room, it looks quite sparse. Yet, once I started going around I saw how much it actually covers, how well organized the exhibit layout is, how much information (including a lot of new-to-me information) is included and presented so very clearly and tastefully, and how much it has something for everyone independent of age, background or interest. And of course – the fossils! Absolutely amazing and stunning fossils! From the magnificent Megalodon jaws, to some of the strangest teeth arrangements one has ever seen in any jaw of any animal.

Then, exhausted and a little faintly from the lack of food yesterday (yes, it was a busy day), I entered the lecture hall afraid I’d fall asleep or pass out in the middle of the talk. I need not have worried – Adam Summers is an amazing speaker. I was able not just to pay attention throughout, I was excited throughout the talk. For a jaded biologist and blogger, when many public lectures tend to present stuff already well known to me, it was refreshing to keep learning new stuff every couple of minutes or so. And not just new factoids, but new questions and new ways of thinking about them – why are sharks larger than bony fish, why sharks have no bone, how do sharks swim, how do sharks and bony fish manage to swim very fast, etc. Questions I never asked myself before.

There were things in there that are outside my realm of expertise, for which I am essentially a layman: engineering principles, a formula I am unfamiliar with, a couple of graphs….yet all of that was made very clear on an intuitive level. How? Because Adam is really good at using analogies (“think of this as…”) and metaphors (snuck into the description without any warning). Be it water-filters, armor, stacks of coins, or houses made of sponges, it all becomes vivid and immediately makes sense.

It is also obvious that a lot of research went into this, yet very few actual data were shown – only the key data that are essential to make the point. This is a public lecture – there is no need to drown the audience in gazillions of graphs and discussions of statistics. The slides, including the images and brief video clips were both beautiful and essential for grasping the point he is making. And then there was quite a lot of humor, mainly of the self-deprecating kind making fun of himself and his students in the context of scientist stereotypes – how they look, talk, think and behave.

All in all – well done. Who ever said that scientists don’t know how to communicate to lay audience, eh?

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

The main idea of the meeting is that evolutionary theory has something to offer in the realm of understanding human societies and thus shaping policies governing aspects of human activity. In the domain of economics, for example, it appears that the classical economics (i.e., the Chicago School) is unbeatable in the corridors of power. Yet, it is essentially faulty and this has been shown many times, including by numerous Nobel Prize winners in Economics. The idea that humans are rational (and perfectly informed) economic players is just plain wrong. Yet our economic policy is built upon that error. Perhaps developing and using models from evolutionary theory can finally bring the well-past-due overturn of the faulty economics and become the basis for smart, modern economic policies. The work is just beginning.

Perhaps the insights from the study of social and eusocial animals, mainly insects, can inform the discussion about social behavior of humans. How do simple rules for simple brains result in complex behaviors of, for example, bee swarms? Perhaps if we used such simple rules, instead of relying on every individual human being highly intelligent, impartial and rational, we can devise policies that will actually work, in various domains of human activity.

Taking into account multi-level selection models of evolution one can start understanding the differences between small-group societies (e.g, in rural areas) and large-group societies (e.g., in large cities), why those result in diefferent behaviors of individual humans living there, and why the differences between the two types of groups often lead to civil wars (often wars we usually do not see or describe as civil wars due to our own myopia, not realizing that a war between two adjacent regions may, in fact, be a war between the city and the country “mentality” – something quite obviously applicable to the US red vs. blue states, really small-town conservatism vs. big-city liberalism). Why imposing large-group organization (i.e., a President and a Parliament, i.e., a ‘centralized government’ of a unified country) may not work in a country like Afghanistan in which the society was always organized via local kin-and-friend networks – evolutionary theory can open our eyes on such questions.

This group of people, coming from a variety of backgrounds including history, anthropology, ecology, economics, psychology, political science, ethology and evolutionary biology, will try to tackle these and similar questions over the years to come. Interestingly, the meeting was apparently an Unconference (though they have never heard of the term before), with discussions starting some months before the event (I presume online), leading to the choices of topics actually discussed in sessions which were free-style discussions, not speeches.

One of the panelists noted that interdisciplinary meetings are usually excercises in misunderstanding, as each participant brings in different language and different axioms, but not this meeting – people actually made an effort, in advance, to study and learn other people’s perspectives before encountering them in the sessions in real life. This made the meeting, judging from the enthusiasm of all panelists, a resounding success.

This was the first time I ever visited NESCent (though I was excited when I first heard about its founding five years ago) and it was really nice to see Craig McClain and Robin Ann Smith again, as well as to meet, for the first time in real life, John Logsdon who blogs on Sex, Genes and Evolution and has come to NESCent for a nine-year sabbatical.

MONDAY

10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, 2024 W. Main Street, Durham
Panel discussion on how evolutionary theory can contribute new insights to regulatory problems such as financial reform, environmental regulation and the regulation of between-group conflict. Leading experts in the field of evolutionary biology, economics. law, psychology and political science will participate.
More information here.

11 a.m. to noon
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Rodbell A
Seminar: Maternal control of fertilization and early development: Insights from mouse genetics
Speaker: Dr. Jurrien Dean, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

11:15 a.m.
NCSU, 3503 Thomas Hall, Raleigh
Dept. of Entomology Seminar: Behavioral and ecological determinants of Argentine ant invasion success
Speaker: Jules Silverman, NCSU

1:30 p.m.
NCSU, 3503 Thomas Hall, Raleigh
Dept. of Genetics Seminar: How to get published in Science
Speaker: Dr. Laura Zahn, associate editor of Science

1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
NIEHS, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Rodbell A
Seminar: Post-diagnosis weight change, physical activity and survival among women with breast cancer: A longitudinal study with missing data
Speaker: Patrick Bradshaw, department of epidemiology, UNC-CH

3 p.m.
NCSU, Room 105 Schaub Hall, Raleigh
Dept. of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences: “Food Inc.,” the movie, will be shown

4 p.m.
NCSU, Stephens Room, Gardner 3503, Raleigh
Dept. of Plant Pathology: Analysis of selected parasitism genes of the root knot nematode
Speaker: Adrienne Smith, PhD candidate, NCSU

4 p.m.
NCSU, Riddick 301, Raleigh
Dept. of Physics Colloqium:Phase-change memory: Progress in development of a new computer data storage technology
Speaker: Stephen Hudgens, Santa Clara University

TUESDAY

Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Research Triangle Park headquarters, 12 Davis Drive, Research Triangle Park
Triangle Area Research Directors Council luncheon
Speaker: Rudy Juliano, Carolina Center for Cancer Nanotechnology

3:30 p.m.
Duke University, Physics 298, Durham
Triangle Nuclear Theory Colloqium: Universality in pion-less EFT with the resonating group model: Three, four and six nucleons
Speaker: Johannes Kirscher, George Washington University

4 p.m.
NCSU, 101 David Clark Labs, Raleigh
Dept. of Plant Biology Seminar: HD videoconferencing: opening doors to new research, collaboration and teaching between the David H. Murdock Research Institute and NCSU
Speakers: Eva Johannes and John Mackenzie, NCSU

WEDNESDAY

7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Duke University Fuqua School of Business, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham
Duke MBA Health Care Conference: Defying uncertainty: Changing the future of health care
Cost: $150.
More information here.

8:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.
NCBIO, 100 Capitola Drive, Suite 106, Raleigh
NCBIO’s emerging companies forum.
More information here.

11 a.m. to noon
NIEHS, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Room F193
Seminar: Mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in the adult and developing nervous system
Speaker: Serena Dudek, NIEHS

Noon to 1:30 p.m.
CED Entrepreneurship Center, 100 Capitola Drive, Suite 106, Durham
Direct Connections: Technology trends and emerging issues in the technology sector, including the view from partners and investors
More information here.

3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
NCSU, Centennial Campus Center for Wildlife Education, 1751 Varsity Drive, Raleigh
Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Resources: Managing native warm-season grasses: Striking a balance between wildlife and livestock interests
Speaker: Craig Harper, professor at the University of Tennessee

5:30 p.m.
UNC, Maurice J. Koury Auditorium, Chapel Hill
Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative: “The story of an entrepreneur”
Speaker: Ping Fu, CEO of Geomagic, shares her gripping story from Chinese prison to the Research Triangle Park

THURSDAY

7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.
N.C. Biotechnology Center, 15 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Triangle Global Health Consortium breakfast discussion: Local response to the novel H1N1 pandemic
Facilitator: David Weber, professor of medicine and pediatrics, professor of epidemiology, UNC-CH
More information here.

10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
RTP headquarters, 12 Davis Drive, Research Triangle Park
Environment@rtp: Solid waste management vendor fair
Speaker: Scott Mouw, N.C. Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance

10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
NIEHS, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Room D450
Seminar: The complex roles of IKK and NF-kappaB in oncogenesis
Speaker: Albert S. Baldwin, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
NIEHS, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Room F193
Seminar: Mass-spectrometry-based structural proteomics: HD amide exchange, chemical mapping and free-radical footprinting
Speaker: Michael Gross, professor of chemistry, Washington University

4 p.m.
NCSU, 101 David Clark Labs, Raleigh
Dept. of Biology Seminar: Understanding the behavioral context of ultrasound production by wild Peromyscus mice
Speaker: Matina Kalcounis-Rueppel, UNC-Greensboro