Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are pumped into four of the experimental rings. Photo: Will Owen

Late in 2010, an epic ecological experiment in the Triangle will begin drawing to a close when carbon dioxide stops pumping from four massive rings of towers in the Duke Forest. Since 1996, more than 250 scientists at Duke and dozens of other institutions have measured the response of this forest ecosystem to the elevated amounts of carbon dioxide expected in the Earth’s atmosphere in the future. They’ve measured tree and plant growth, photosynthesis, leaf size, soil composition, root growth, and water use in the plots bathed in elevated carbon dioxide and in three other “ambient” control plots.

The first, prototype ring was built in 1994; six more came in 1996 (three controls and three experiments). Each ring consists of 16 metal towers in a 30-meter diameter. Computer-controlled instruments in the experimental rings bathe the interior of the plot in carbon dioxide. It’s called Free-Air CO2 Enrichment, or FACE. As opposed to “chamber studies,” in which plants are studied in carefully controlled growth chambers or greenhouses, the rings are open to nature. That means that mammals and insects can circulate freely and that natural events like hurricanes, ice storms, and droughts affect the research site.

Shannon LaDeau, who studied seed and pollen production at the site as a Ph.D. student, fondly calls it the EcoCircus, referring to both the ring-shaped sites and the riot of instruments, leaf-collection baskets, and colored flags staking out individual research groups’ claims to a particular layer of soil or stand of plants. LaDeau is one of at least 25 scientists who conducted Ph.D. research at FACE. “One of the really big bonuses of that site and others like it,” she says, “is that people are coming at it from different directions—biogeochemistry, biology, and so on.” There was an integration of ideas, she says, that “doesn’t happen naturally when scientists go out and choose their own site and do their own thing.”

Photo: Lisa M. Dellwo

I talked recently with Ram Oren, Nicholas Professor of Earth System Science at Duke and co-principal investigator for the project since 1998. He explained that the Department of Energy–funded project will enter a final phase this fall when the carbon dioxide is turned off. A scientific team will follow the trees for two more years to see how they respond to the “severe diet” that will be imposed on them when they are no longer receiving the added carbs.

Oren reminded me that when the experiment began, it was already well documented that trees grew faster under higher levels of carbon dioxide, especially when they were well nourished and watered. Retired Duke ecologist Boyd Strain and his students and colleagues had already established this in studies in which trees were isolated in growth chambers and treated with different regimes of carbon dioxide, nutrients, and water.

The FACE experiment was intended to test how entire ecosystems, not just trees, responded to additional carbon dioxide. In particular, researchers wanted to know if trees and soils would store or sequester extra carbon dioxide, keeping it from the atmosphere where it would contribute to a warmer climate.

The early major findings of the experiment were that, similar to the chamber studies, plants in the forest did indeed grow faster when exposed to extra carbon dioxide, especially in the presence of plentiful water and nutrients. And the ecosystem did store more carbon, but mostly in plant stems, not in soil as had been predicted.

Photo: Lisa M. Dellwo

A second wave of findings showed that the continuing growth response of plants to a “high-carb” diet depended on the native fertility of the site. Trees in fertile areas responded strongly to the carbon dioxide treatment and continued a higher growth rate, but trees in infertile areas didn’t retain their original growth response.

That’s important in the real world, because our most fertile soils tend to be cultivated for agriculture, leaving forests in less fertile areas. So we cannot expect trees to retain extra carbon in the forests of the future, says Oren.

While some scientists were studying tree growth and soils, others were finding that poison ivy has a remarkable response to higher CO2 conditions. Not only did it grow two times as fast as poison ivy in ambient conditions, but it produced much more toxin per leaf.

Shannon LaDeau, who conducted pollen studies, told me that the trees exposed to extra CO2 reached reproductive maturity at a younger age and smaller size. For those of us who suffer allergies, that is a bit ominous. While pine pollen—the yellow-green stuff that bathes the Triangle every spring—is not technically considered an allergen, other trees with true allergy-causing pollen may well have the same response as the pines, LaDeau says.

In 2004, when this photo was taken, the towers were still higher than the treetops. Now the trees have outgrown the towers. Photo: Lisa M. Dellwo

When the Department of Energy announced two years ago that it would cease funding the FACE project in Duke Forest—and similar projects elsewhere—Oren said that the project had not reached its true conclusion. He still believes that. But funding aside, there is a technical reason the project is drawing to a conclusion: the trees have outgrown the towers. When the experiment began, anyone who entered the site or who happened to fly over it could see the rings of towers clearly above the canopy. Now, trees that measured ten meters in 1996 are 21 meters high, and the towers have receded into the canopy.

In addition to the generation of ecological scientists trained at the site and the more than 250 papers reporting on the response of the ecosystem to elevated CO2, Oren believes that an important legacy of the FACE experiment will be the data gathered there over 17 years. Very few experiments last that long, and the accumulated data from FACE is being made available to computer modelers who will use it for years into the future to test and extrapolate responses to future climate change on a larger scope.

The store was packed. The store sold out all the books before Scott was even done talking. The C-Span Book TV crew was there filming so the event will be on TV some day soon. Scott was also, earlier yesterday, on WUNC’s The State Of Things (the podcast will soon be online here) and the day before that he was on KERA’s Think with Krys Boyd (download MP3 podcast by clicking here).

Scott’s energy and enthusiasm are infectuos. He held the audience captive and often laughing. The questions at the end were smart and his answers perfectly on target. But most importantly, we all learned a lot last night. I think of myself as a reasonably curious and informed person, and I have visited at least a couple of infrastructure plants, but almost every anecdote and every little tidbit of information were new to me. Scott’s point – that we don’t know almost anything about infrastructure – was thus proven to me.

What Scott realized during the two years of research for the book is that people in charge of infrastructure know what they are doing. When something doesn’t work well, or the system is not as up-to-date as it could be, it is not due to incompetence or ignorance, but because there is a lack of two essential ingredients: money and political will. These two factors, in turn, become available to the engineers to build and upgrade the systems, only if people are persuaded to act. And people are persuaded to act in two ways: if it becomes too costly, or if it becomes too painful to continue with the old way of doing things. It is also easier to build brand new systems for new services than it is to replace old systems that work ‘well enough’ with more more modern ways of providing the same service.

There are people who advocate for moving “off the grid” and living a self-sufficient existence. But, as Scott discovered, they are fooling themselves. Both the process of moving off the grid and the subsequent life off the grid are still heavily dependent on the grid, on various infrastructure systems that make such a move and such a life possible, at least in the developed world.

What is really astonishing is how well the systems work, even in USA which has fallen way behind the rest of the developed world. We are taking it for granted that the systems always work, that water and electricity and phone and sewers and garbage collection and public transportation always work. We get angry on those rare occasions when a system temporarily fails. We are, for the most part, unprepared and untrained to provide some of the services ourselves in times of outages, or to continue with normal life and work when a service fails. And we are certainly not teaching our kids the necessary skills – I can chop up wood and start a wood stove, I can use an oil heater, I know how to slaughter and render a pig, how to get water out of a well, dig a ditch, and many other skills I learned as a child (and working around horses) – yet I am not teaching any of that to my own kids. They see it as irrelevant to the modern world and they have a point – chance they will ever need to employ such skills is negligible.

I got the book last night and am about to start reading it – very eagerly so. Scott started with his house in Raleigh and traced all the wires and cables and pipes going in and out of the house to see where they led. He compared what he learned in Raleigh and its various infrastructure experts and officials, to the equivalent services in other geographical places, and traced them back in history. I can’t wait to read the synthesis of all that research. I hope you will read it, too.

I have interviewed Vanessa last year so you can learn more about her there.

I received a review copy recently and am halfway through. Once I finish I will post my book review here.

From Publishers Weekly:

Devoted to learning more about bonobos, a smaller, more peaceable species of primate than chimpanzees, and lesser known, Australian journalist Woods and her fiancé, scientist Brian Hare, conducted research in the bonobos’ only known habitat—civil war–torn Congo. Woods’s plainspoken, unadorned account traces the couple’s work at Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary, located outside “Kinshasa in the 75-acre forested grounds of what was once Congo dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s weekend retreat. The sanctuary, founded in 1994 and run by French activist Claudine André, served as an orphanage for baby bonobos, left for dead after their parents had been hunted for bush meat; the sanctuary healed and nurtured them (assigning each a human caretaker called a mama), with the aim of reintroducing the animals to the wild. Hare had only previously conducted research on the more warlike, male-dominated chimpanzee, and needed Woods because she spoke French and won the animals’ trust; through their daily work, the couple witnessed with astonishment how the matriarchal bonobo society cooperated nicely using frequent sex, and could even inspire human behavior. When Woods describes her daily interaction with the bonobos, her account takes on a warm charm. Woods’s personable, accessible work about bonobos elucidates the marvelous intelligence and tolerance of this gentle cousin to humans.”

R&D spending as percentage of federal budget, FY 1962-2009

Sure, federal spending on R&D more than tripled in the past 50 years to about $147 billion in fiscal year 2009, as Lane pointed out Saturday in a talk at N.C. State University. But R&D’s share of all federal spending has been shrinking from nearly 12 percent during the height of the Apollo program in the late 1960s to about 5 percent in 2009, according to numbers from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Lane, a professor at Rice University and a senior fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, is particularly concerned about federal funding for research in physics, mathematics and engineering, the disciplines that brought forth computers, the Internet and mobile devices such as the cell phone.

AAAS numbers show that much of the increase in federal R&D spending over the past 30 years has gone to biomedical disciplines. Last year, funding for the National Institutes of Health made up about half of all federal spending for basic research and for R&D that was not aimed at defending the U.S.

Neal Lane

“We do have a president who cares about science,” Lane said. He called the scientists whom President Obama appointed as scientific advisors and government administrators a “terrific team.” But considering the rising federal deficit, budget shortfalls and polarized political leadership, Lane added, “I’m worried that federal research spending will get squeezed.”

Lane visited NCSU on invitation of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, or PAMS, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. But his talk had significance beyond PAMS, even beyond NCSU, one of many U.S. universities tasked with educating tomorrow’s scientists, furthering technological development and feeding the U.S. knowledge economy.

Federal R&D spending is the lifeblood of the entire Research Triangle area, a state economic engine and national R&D hot spot that is known around the world.

Research Triangle Park, which has NCSU, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as its corners, reflects the federal R&D funding evolution that began during World War II. Work to establish RTP began in 1957, the same year the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first earth-orbiting satellite. The science park opened in 1959, just as the space race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. got under way.

In the past 30 years, RTP’s development has mirrored the shift in federal R&D funding priorities from the space age with its focus on national security to the age of medicine and a new focus on health. Today, first signs are emerging that RTP, which employs more than 40,000, is tapping into the next phase in federal R&D funding, a phase that focuses on renewable energy, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and technologies that reduce the U.S. dependence on oil.

This phase rests on climate changes that remain controversial even though scientists have tracked them for years.

“The threat of climate change is out there,”  Lane said. “But it’s less urgent than the economy, jobs and health. The message is muddled. There’s some work for us to do out there.”

About 60 percent of all Americans consider public funding for R&D essential, according to a 2009 survey report from the Pew Research Center. More than 70 percent say that government investments in basic research and engineering and technology pay off in the long run.

Despite the broad support, Lane said, “science has never really emerged to be important at the ballot box.”

Scientists have to do a better job conveying this public support to the politicians, he added. “We have to figure out how to be more helpful, how to interact better with the public.”

Where are the scientists and engineers?

Why? Because it could help the U.S. remain a technology exporter in a world where emerging countries such as China and India are gaining ground.

“China is a rising player,” Lane said, pointing to AAAS numbers that show about one-quarter of the world’s 5.8 million scientists and engineers were in the U.S. in 2006. China had about 21 percent and the number was rising, Lane said.

A similar picture is emerging in R&D spending. The U.S. still spends more on R&D than any other country, but Asian countries are turning up the heat.

To bolster his argument that the U.S. is in danger of falling behind, Lane referred to writings by Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin. In a 2007 essay called “Is America falling off the flat earth?” Augustine quotes UNC President Erskine Bowles:“Think about this: in the past four years, our 15 schools of education at the University of North Carolina turned out a grand total of three physics teachers. Three. And we’re going to compete with those guys in Asia? Come on – not that way.”

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?

While Dr.Eggleston conducts research in several areas (and several geographic locationa), in this talk he focused on the ecology, conservation, and restoration of oyster reefs in North Carolina.

Improvements in oyster harvesting technology a century ago almost immediatelly decimated the oyster populations in the estuaries of North Carolina rivers and Atlantic coast. A century of harvesting, particularly harsh during the Great Depression and WWII, led to the current record lows:

Oyster beds are important for more than just a potential source of food for humans. They serve as refuge for young fish from their predators, they break the tides and potentially slow down erosion, and the oysters themselves, as filter-feeders, clean up the water from organic materials. Thus healthy oyster beds are important components of a healthy coastal ecosystem.

While preserving existing ecosystems is always easier, cheaper and more effective than recostructing them – it may take decades for ‘artificial’ ecosystems to start functioning fully as the the natural ones – once the ecosystem is destroyed there is not much one can do but try to rebuild it from scratch. And rebuilding from scratch can be expensive, thus it has to be done in a way that is most likely to be successful, i.e., informed by rigorous scientific research. And this is where Dr.Eggleston and his colleagues come in.

Mathematization of biology in the 1930s-40s by the likes of Fisher, Haldane and Wright was not primarily concerned with conservation issues – those were the beginning of formalization of evolutionary theory and ecology. Yet many of the models built at the time and refined since have important roles to play in conservation decision making. Most of the models have been tested primarily in the terrestrical ecosystems, so more work is needed to establish how they apply to marine environments where movement of individuals is much easier, energy-efficient and faster than on dry land.

The most important ecological model in this case is that of a metapopulation that is composed of a number of small populations with some migration between them. The concepts of ’sources’ – populations with large population growth from which surplus individuals tend to emigrate from – and ’sinks’ – populations which would not be able to sustain themselves if not for individuals that immigrate from elsewhere – are important concepts to keep in mind when devising conservation programs. Analysis of a metapopulation provides the answer to the question if one large space needs to be conserved or rather a number of smaller spaces. In terrestrial ecosystems, it appears that preservation of one large space is a better solution, but studies of marine environments to date suggest this may not be the case there.

Dr.Eggleston’s research is testing the theoretical models, as well as simultaneously using the models to devise conservation strategies. With help from a gadget-happy fisherman, they mapped the entire ocean floor of the bay.

Then, they built about a dozen centers of artificial oyster beds out of B-grade rock and populated those with oysters. Then they started sampling and monitoring the beds as well as the entire bay. A collaborator mapped the direction of water flow within it, which they then tested by monitoring the movement of oyster larvae which are poor swimmers and are thus passively transported by the water currents. The data matched the model quite well.

Interestingly, oyster larvae decide where, after two weeks of passive swimming in the currents, to swim down an attach to the substrate by sensing dopamine. The source of dopamine are other oysters already there. This makes sense, as the likelihood of successful reproduction depends on close proximity (and temporal synchronization) of other oysters during spawning.

The researchers then evaluated each center for several parameters. What they found is that some centers show fast growth, other centers good survival rates, other centers broad range of dispersal of larvae, and yet other centers evolved a level of resistance to disease, and yet no single center was “good at everything”. What they found instead was that, altough neither one of the centers was a net source of oysters, the system (metapopulation) as a whole can sustain itself. Thus, they conclude that conservation should not focus on just one or two ‘best’ locations, but the large area as a whole. Furthermore, the implications of the results of the study is that several more such centers need to be built for the oyster population to become fully self-sustaining as well as a potential source of oysters outside of the area (where presumably they could be farmed for food).

They still do not have the data – too early for that but they are working on it – about the ability of these artificial oyster beds to serve as refuge for young fish against predators, or about the ability of the oysters to clean up the water. But it looks promising for now.

Monday

- 3:40 p.m.

N.C. State University, 105 Schaub Hall, Raleigh

Dept. of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences Seminar: Enumeration of sublethally injured escherichia coli 0157:H7 in ground beef using selective agar overlays versus commercial methods

Speaker: John McKillip, Ball State University

- 4 p.m.

N.C. State University, Stephens Room, Gardner 3503, Raleigh

Dept. of Plant Pathology Seminar: Transcripton factors involved in virulence and proteins secreted during intial infection in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae Speaker: Gregory Bernard, Ph.D. candidate, NCSU

- 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Tipsy Teapot, 409 Evans Street, Greenville

Science Cafe: Coasts in crisis – a vision for the future

Speaker: Stan Riggs

More information here.

Tuesday

- 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Research Triangle Park headquarters, 12 Davis Drive, Research Triangle Park

Emerging Technologies and Trends Breakfast: Social media – the personal, corporate and enterprise use of social media to gain an edge

Cost: $30 for NCTA members

More information here.

- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

N.C. Biotechnology Center, 15 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park

SBIR Commercialization Seminar: From R&D to the market

Cost: $149

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 ABC

Distinguished Lecture Seminar Series: Genes and environment in the epidemic of diabetes and obesity

Speaker: Dr. Ronald Kahn, Joslin Diabetes Clinic

- 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

N.C. State University, McKimmon Center, 1101 Gorman Street, Raleigh

CED: University Innovation Showcase

Cost: $15 for non-NCSU attendees

More information here.

Wednesday

- 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Research Triangle Park headquarters, 12 Davis Drive, Research Triangle Park

Innovation in RTP Speaker Series: Text messaging – the countless possibilities of 160 characters

Speaker: Alan Pascoe, product marketing executive at Tekelec

More information here.

- 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

N.C. Biotechnology Center, 15 T. W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park

CED’s Biotech Forum: New paradigm for financing – how to create a successful virtual company

More information here.

Thursday

- 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

NIEHS, 111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park

Rall Bldg. Room D450

LMC Seminar Series: Leptin and cancer

Speaker: Eva Surmancz, Temple University

- 5 p.m.

National Humanities Center, 7 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park

Lecture: Parental feeling in 19th century, middle-class Britain

Speaker: Eileen Gillooly, Columbia University

More information here.

Friday

- Noon

National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200, Durham

Seminar: Phylontal – ontology alignment meets phylogeny

Speaker: Peter Midford, University of Kansas

More information here.

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.

Tuesday

Noon to 12:45 p.m.
SBIR/STTR training series
Webinar: Intellectual Property: Conception and capture (to include war stories of what not to do managing government-funded work)
Presented by Scott Merrell, Hutchison Law Group
More information here.

7 p.m.
Broad Street Cafe, 1116 Broad St., Durham
The Periodic Tables: Science on tap: The chemistry of beer
Presented by Triangle Brewing Co. and Brewmaster Store
More information here.

Wednesday

9 a.m. to 10 a.m.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
111. T. W. Alexander Srive, Research Triangle Park
Keystone Room 1003AB
Seminar: Idenfication of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers of metal exposure and metal-induced disease using environmental toxicogenomics and systems biology
Speaker: Rebecca Fry

11 a.m. to noon
NIEHS
111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Rodbell B
Seminar: Unarmed but dangerous
Speaker: Tawana Williams, Wilson

4:15 p.m.
Raleigh Convention Center
BioProcess International Conference and Exhibition
ObamaCare: Stimulus Spending, System Reform and Market Change
Speaker: J.D. Kleinke, medical economist and author, Oxymorons: The Myth of a U.S. Health Care System
More information here and here.

Thursday

7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.
N.C. Biotechnology Center
15 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Triangle Global Health Consortium breakfast discussion: Cloud computing for health system strengthening
More information here.

7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Embassy Suites, 201 Harrison Oaks Blvd., Cary
Triangle Business Journal symposium: Health care and you – what’s at stake?
Cost: $28
More information here.

10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
NIEHS
111 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park
Rall Bldg. Room D450
Seminar: Environmental exposure to engineered nanomaterials as a potential cause of lung inflammation, fibrosis and cancer
Speaker: James C. Bonner, N.C. State University

Today, the marketplace of ideas is virtual. It has no borders. Everybody can participate and be a publisher. And the number of channels to distribute the information is increasing.

At the same time, ever smaller and more specialized bits of information are spread on YouTube, blogs and Twitter and it is becoming more difficult to figure out which information is accurate, which information serves a hidden special interest and how different bits of information relate to each other.

As gatekeepers of printed information, newspapers were naturally suited to check, organize and analyze the increasing flood of information on the Internet. But most newspapers dropped the ball when they decided to give away their information online. How much can free information be worth? And once you attach no value to your information, doesn’t that change what you gather?

As a reporter writing about science, I learned to measure the value of information by how much readers could act on it. That turns information into intelligence. That’s why I cherish working on stories about breakthrough ideas: the discovery of new medicines, companies with counterintuitive business models, scientists whose innovations change the way things are done.

These stories are special because they tap the thinking of some very smart people. But fewer and fewer of these stories are appearing in newspapers. I hope scienceinthetriangle.org will not only fill that void, but fill it better.

The Internet is more suited to follow thought processes. In print, something gets lost from the fact gathering to the writing. Maybe it’s the immediacy I feel when I research the facts. Maybe its the back-and-forth of the interview. Maybe it’s my own thoughts that were triggered collecting the facts.

More than five years after writing about Oliver Smithies, the UNC-CH professor who received the 2007 Nobel Price in Medicine, I remember Smithies’ collection of laboratory journals. These handwritten accounts and pencil drawings of experiments, the earliest about half a century old, represented Smithies’ intellectual life’s work. But I’m still wondering how I could have better captured what unfolded on the pages of these journals.

The answer is important, because ideas spring from the information we get and digest.