Event: Investing in Our Future

If you're in the DC area, you're strongly encouraged to join some of your fellow New Voices on Capitol Hill next Thursday to discuss the value of investing in the next generation of researchers (read: you!).

The invite is below. RSVP ASAP and leave a comment so we can be sure to catch you at the event.


and honorary co-hosts

Senator Barbara Mikulski
Representative Rush Holt
Representative Vernon Ehlers

cordially invite you to a luncheon briefing:

Investing in Our Future:
A New Generation of Researchers

October 7, 2010, 12:00-1:30 p.m.
Dirksen Senate Office Building G50

A robust U.S. scientific workforce is essential for maintaining our nation's global competitiveness, increasing our long-term economic prosperity, and solving many of the pressing global problems we face. But when resources are limited, surviving in an already competitive federal R&D system becomes even more difficult for early-career researchers.

To ensure that we have the research leaders of tomorrow, the U.S. must cultivate a new generation of scientists now, by investing in agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This briefing will highlight the societal benefits of federal research and the challenges and opportunities early-career investigators face in establishing a foothold in the scientific profession.

Opening Remarks
The Honorable John Edward Porter, Chair, Research!America

Moderator
James Gentile, PhD, President, Research Corporation for Science Advancement

Panelists
Iain Cockburn, PhD, Professor of Finance and Economics, School of Management, Boston University 
Marshall Shuler, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, The Johns Hopkins University 
Raquel Lieberman, PhD, Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology 
Meryl Comer, President, Geoffrey Beene Gives Back Alzheimer's Initiative

To RSVP: Register online or contact Michelle Hernandez by email mhernandez@researchamerica.org or phone 571-482-2715.

Meet Joe Hanson, Molecular Biologist

Today we're introducing you to Joe Hanson, a graduate student in Dr. Lambowitz's lab at The University of Texas at Austin.

NV: What do you do?

Joe: I’m a graduate student, getting my PhD in cell and molecular biology. I like to say the world of molecular biology is 50% work and 50% waiting. I tell people it’s long periods of boredom interspersed with intense excitement. In between those times you have to occupy your brain while you’re waiting.

NV: How did you get started in advocacy?

Joe: In 2008, during the election, being a young politically-minded person, I found out on Facebook about a group called Scientists and Engineers for America. They were working on a science-related survey for the candidates. They wanted us to focus in on local races. I became the Texas state captain.

Through my unsuccessful attempts dealing with the press and [candidate’s] offices I realized how little the people outside of the science buildings we work in realize how these issues affect them. So now I help put on layperson-friendly Science Pub seminars and I blog and microblog about science research issues.

NV: What motivates you to do outreach/advocacy?

Joe: From a grad student perspective I have a unique approach to this. A desire to educate people outside science. For younger scientists like me, especially in the biological sciences - and there are a lot of us out there - I think it’s important for people to develop these skills, to reach outside the science world. As our job evolves in the future, it won’t involve just the bench. It will involve a lot more of these skills - outreach, communication, advocating for solid science. We need the communication with our elected officials to come from other perspectives like post-doctoral fellows, young professors, and graduate students. Not a lot of young people [are doing that] yet.

NV: What limits your ability to do advocacy?

Joe: Certainly trying to graduate. There’s not a system that really rewards young scientists for doing this kind of thing. These are things we feel are valuable, but we're limited by time. It’s not expected for this to be part of our professional life. There are a lot of demands on our time. We give it a lot of value but it doesn’t translate to our day-to-day work.

NV: Do your colleagues do advocacy and outreach? Why or why not?

Joe: I see very few of them doing it. If anything, among graduate students the echo chamber effect is accentuated. It’s such an insular community, and it gets worse when they talk only to each other. Graduate students are nervous to use any of their time outside of lab for efforts like these. It’s very rare. There are people who attend pub nights, seminars, things like that, but in terms of reaching out beyond scientists it’s unfortunately rare. There’s no reward for people taking part in those things.

NV: What advice would you give to a scientist who is interested in doing outreach or advocacy?

Joe: Get in touch with as many other people who have been doing it as possible in the medium you want to be doing it in. If you want to be online, the worst thing you can do it start a lonely blog that no one knows exists.

If you want to start a seminar or science-for-kids series, there are resources where people have done it before and they’re willing to share ideas. They’re not just faces on the internet, they are willing to share and help. Lots of books and publications by the National Academies and AAAS (like Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Unscientific America, and Don’t be Such a Scientist) lay out what the problems are. It pays to study what people need.

Thank you to Joe for giving his time via phone so we could learn more about him and his advocacy work. Be sure to check out his new blog!

This is part of the ongoing Profiling New Voices series.

Finding Your Voice

This week's tuneage comes from an NSF series, Finding Your Science. Since this is New Voices, here's a segment on finding your unique voice.

Out of Town

Comic Credit: PhD Comics

Family, Food, & Fun Friday

Today is full of fun holidays like Family Health and Fitness Day and Punctuation Day, as well as being part of the Great American (low cholesterol/ low fat) Pizza Bake Month. (We swear, we are not making these up.) So since it is Friday, we're taking a few moments to talk about family, food and fun (because we also like alliteration).

Kate's Memories
Have you noticed that it’s cooler in the mornings and the air is crisper? Fall is sneaking up on us! I love the fall. I am a hiker, and the fall is one of the best times of the year to get out on the trails. The trees are changing colors, the temperature is comfortable and the air just smells like autumn.

I distinctly remember hiking in Hocking Hills with my family when I was a kid at least once every fall. It was always such a treat—we packed a lunch, got out our hiking shoes, and piled in the car. On the trail, we would find the brightest leaves to press between wax paper or pick up the perfect walking stick along the way.

I had no idea that those hiking trips in my childhood would shape who I am today.

Heather's Memories
Growing up, my family of five was busy. Somehow, despite softball and swim team practices, my working mom going back to school and my dad commuting from Miami, we managed to eat together almost every night. Many of those dinners are now a blur, but some of the more memorable were pizza nights.

Sure, we all loved pizza (I am Italian-American after all!) but pizza night was special because we got to make our own. Together we'd add homemade sauce, pepperoni, olives, green peppers, mushrooms, and lots of cheese onto dough we'd smushed onto cookie sheets. Our pizzas were special because they: 1. messy 2. rectangular 3. brought us together.

Our advice
Studies show that kids from families that eat dinner together regularly are happier and healthier. So how can you make pizza night just as fun and doubly healthy? Here are some deliciously good-for-you options:

• Use whole wheat pizza dough or purchase a pre-made whole-wheat pizza dough (make sure there are no hydrogenated oils in the ingredients).
• Try low-fat/reduced-fat mozzarella (or other cheese) to reduces the fat and cholesterol.
• Make your own sauce: To sauteed onions and garlic add 1 can of crushed tomatoes, a teaspoon each of parsley, basil, and oregano, and a splash of milk (or pinch of baking soda). Delicious and less salt, sugar and preservatives than jarred sauce.
• Load the pizza with veggies to give an added health boost and fill you up.
• Put your pizza on the grill.
  
• Substitute chicken- or turkey-sausage or pepperoni for less fat and cholesterol.
• Or try this collection of healthy pizza recipes.

Also, now is a great time to get outside and make wonderful memories with your family. You don’t have to plan a faraway trip, either.

• You can take a walk in a nearby park or in your neighborhood to enjoy the changing colors of the trees.
  
• You can rake those leaves into a pile and jump into them with your kids and be a kid again, even if just for a moment.

As the weather cools, there are plenty of ways to stay active even indoors.

• Pull out your favorite music and dance around the house with your kids. You can stage your very own version of American Idol.
• Play Simon Says with your kids and see who can follow the fitness moves.

Now is the time to teach your family a happy and healthy lifestyle.

Deaf Awareness Week

Sign language alphabet

From the chair in my office I can currently hear:

• The air conditioner in my office building whirring.
• Keys on my computer's keyboard clicking.
• Colleagues down the hall quickly chatting.

When I step outside there'll be:

• Birds chirping.
• Bugs buzzing.
• Radios playing in passing cars as their engines purr (or putz) and their tires crunch minuscule gravel on the road.

This morning, I missed a call from my boss because I didn't hear my phone ring while on the metro and it caused a two hour period of intense work. All because I couldn't hear my phone for a few minutes in a tunnel.

But what if I could never hear my phone? What if I could never hear my doorbell ring, or my alarm clock go off, or that pesky alert-thing from Outlook that tells me it's time for my next meeting?

As we go about our hearing lives this week, take a moment to reflect on what it might be like to be deaf in today's society. Sure, research has done marvelous things to help people (like me) be able to hear and there are a number of fabulous ways that deaf Americans have adapted to living in a hearing society; but we are just that - a hearing society.


What would your day have been like if you couldn't hear today?

Why Science is Important

Just a little food for thought...

Comic credit: Jeffery Brown

World Alzheimer's Day

Today is World Alzheimer's Day and nothing is going to make a dent in Alzheimer's Disease like research will. It's important to value not just the research, but those people who make advances in medical research possible. The clip below is from a Rock Stars of Science congressional briefing, where Aerosmith's Joe Perry performs live and unplugged with National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, and Harvard neuroscientist Rudy Tanzi, PhD to show that scientists are rock stars too.

Mad Scientist

One Friday afternoon I was driving around when I caught Science Friday with Ira Flatow on NPR. I usually feel like Ira’s on my side—science can be interesting even to non-scientists. Imagine my feelings of betrayal when I heard this exchange on his program.

Vincenzo Natali was describing his new movie “Splice” in which the main characters, scientists, decide to splice together human and animal DNA. Shockingly, the experiment goes horribly wrong. Natali says of his main characters, “While they are quite brilliant and they fully understand the chemical building blocks of life, they don’t have a full appreciation of what life is. They lived a very sequestered, hermetic kind of existence in their lab.” Groan.

SPLICE: Movie Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley

Oh wait, it gets worse. A caller comments on the movie, “I wonder what the relationships are of the researchers in real life. I wonder if they’re not cold and clinical in their real life.”

And the worst part is that no one, not even Ira, defended scientists, explaining that they are normal people, too! How could you do this to us, Ira?

Somehow, scientists have gotten a bad reputation for not being able to interact in normal social situations. But are we really any different than other Americans?

• Scientists work hard, often more than a 40-hour workweek. Not to worry though, there is a lot of social interaction in a lab (and much more than at the desk jobs I’ve worked).

• Scientists have bosses who forget how long it takes to complete a project and wanted it done yesterday.
• Scientists have office mates who gossip near the water cooler and leave weird things in the refrigerator.
• Scientists “talk shop”, just like lawyers referencing cases, brokers naming stocks, or mechanics discussing car parts.
• Amazingly, scientists have normal relationships. Somehow, we’ve convinced someone to like us.

Adam Ruben wrote a post in Science recently about the caricature of science much more humorously than I can. Oh, Adam Ruben, you crack me up! (PS, he’s a scientist AND he’s funny!)

This misrepresentation is clearly a widespread problem. But, what’s a scientist to do about it? We have to change our image. My first suggestion is to get out of the lab and socialize with non-scientists (happy hour with your coworkers in between PCR runs doesn’t count). Have fun, talk, laugh--especially when you realize that most people can’t even tell that you’re a scientist.

What else would you suggest?

We've got the code, but what does it mean?

If everything you know about DNA came from CSI, there might be a few gaps in your knowledge. It’s not that I dislike these shows, but laboratory scientists everywhere roll their eyes when there is a 100% DNA match…in 5 minutes! (Besides the fact that the scientists in these shows are often depicted as geeks with no social skills, but more on that pet peeve in another post.) It turns out DNA is useful for more than catching bad guys.

First of all, DNA is really cool! (Okay, so I am a geek, but I have social skills!) I’ve always heard the structure of DNA called “elegant, “and I think that really is the best description. There is so much information encoded by only 4 letters put together in certain sequences that ultimately form a message to mean something.

I find it fascinating that more than 99% of DNA is identical among humans. The remaining variable sequences are what make up the differences in each of us, such as the risk of developing a disease or how we’ll react to a medication.
The complete set of DNA in a person is called the genome. The government undertook an amazing project, called the Human Genome Project, to try to understand that DNA. They sequenced the complete human genome, or identified the order of the four bases that make up DNA—A, T, C, and G—in 2003. Now, the really important work is being done. Researchers everywhere are working to understand what that sequence means for human health.

For instance, we now know that a mistake, or mutation, in the sequence of a particular gene called BRCA1 is a sign for increased risk of developing breast cancer. The mistakes can be identified by genetic testing. Knowing that there is a mutation, and which mutation is present, can help the doctor and the patient decide what treatment or preventive measures to pursue.

So, what else can DNA tell us? Scientists are hard at work identifying other mutations that are markers for disease risk and also developing drugs that target these specific mutations. It’s incredibly important for private companies and public research systems to work together to simultaneously develop the diagnostic tests that will be able to identify the mutations as well as the drugs to target them. This type of collaboration will allow sharing of knowledge and money, which is necessary for projects like these.

There’s some great news that will help us utilize the information encoded in DNA. Congress acted proactively to pass the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). This ensures that employers and health insurance companies cannot fire you or deny insurance coverage based on your genetic information. It also means that more people will be able to know if they have a particular mutation and get the treatment that will work best for them.

There is so much information kept in our genome, and we’re now decoding the message and learning what it means. Now isn’t that cool?!