A Time for Thanks and for Thinking

Sometimes the world we live in hits you on the head. Today I have been hit twice with living and understanding the environmental and economic choices we make, and it is only early afternoon.

This morning I made a trip to the market and decided to buy some of the Clementine oranges that are just arriving this season. There were two varieties, both the same price. Which should I buy? I was reading the labels when a lady approached me and asked what was the difference between the two.

"What is the difference between the two?" she asked.
"Well, one is from California and the other from Spain."

She immediately understood and picked up the box from California, as did I.
"Thank you," she gratefully said to me as we continued shopping.

I returned home and began work on the computer. The doorbell rang. As soon as I opened the door I knew I was in for it. Bible under her arm and lovely Midwestern grandmother type smiled and said what a nice home. She began her spiel. It began with "What is the world coming to?"as she opened her booklet of converting me.

She had interrupted my writing on exactly that subject.
"A agree it is a subject we are all concerned about."
"Look," she said, pointing to photos in her booklet of saving grace,"where are we going?"
"I know. I am an educator and these subjects are important in my classes."
After a short conversation about where and what I teach and that I was not really interested in what she was selling (saving me) she asked,"Can I ask you one more question?"
I nodded my head and smiled.
"Do you believe in evolution?"

We parted on good terms, but I couldn't help but think how no matter who we are, or what we believe we are all searching for answers in today's uncertain times.

Slowly but slowly

The world is changing, slowly but slowly. I certainly would like to see more of the new type of progress (sustainable) but it isn't happening nearly fast enough at my school. Sigh. Last week my own department put the kibosh on giving a proposed Environmental Science program any sustainable content. To me, all that is doing is taking the old geology program that wasn't making it, turning the same classes into the Earth Science program (also not making it), and now environmental science. All the same classes taught the same way. If you keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect different results........ but what do I know? Obviously nothing. There is still a LOT of fear and silo mentality around here.

On another front, outside of dear old Ypsilanti, the world is moving in what I consider the right direction. For example in Tuesday's NYT Science section I saw this encouraging sidebar on mimicking nature (!) from Charles M Vest, the President Emeritus of MIT:

Engineering

“We’re going to see in surprisingly short order that biological inspiration and biological processes will become central to engineering real systems. It’s going to lead to a new era in engineering.”

In the 20th century, engineers and biologists dwelt in different universes. The biologists picked apart cells and tissues to see how they worked, while the engineers designed bridges, buildings and factories based on what they understood about physics and chemistry.

In recent years, however, engineers have begun paying very close attention to life. Evolution has fine-tuned living things for billions of years, giving them many of the properties — efficiency, strength, flexibility — that engineers love. Now biologically inspired engineering is taking hold in many engineering departments. In some cases, engineers are trying to mimic nature. In other cases, they are actually incorporating living things into their designs.

Researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands, for example, are developing bacteria-laced concrete. When cracks form, the bacteria wake from dormancy and secrete limestone, in effect healing the concrete. Next year, Dr. Vest expects, more of these lifelike designs will come to light, and they will keep coming for many years.

Dr. Vest is also president emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/09/science/20111109_next_feature.html?ref=science

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Neuroscience

“I expect we will see the physical organization of a memory within the brain.”

André A. Fenton

For decades neuroscientists searched through the brain, in pursuit of physical markers of memories. They found evidence that memories form through the contact of neurons. They grow new branches to communicate with other neurons, and old branches become stronger or weaker. In just the past few years, Dr. Fenton and other researchers have discovered that one molecule present in those branches, known as PKMzeta, maintains memories. Block PKMzeta, and the memory vanishes.

This discovery opens up an exciting prospect. Scientists could train animals to perform some simple task and then compare the brains of the animals that learned with those of the ones that didn’t. There should be a unique sprinkling of PKMzeta molecules in the animals that formed the new memory. Scientists could then map all the neurons and their branches that were required for the animals to remember what they learned. For the first time in history, scientists would be able to see a memory.

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Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Biotechnology

“It seems pretty likely within this year someone will show how to go from an adult peripheral blood draw to pluripotent stem cells. It means anyone who wants to try to make stem cells will be able to give it a whirl.”

Rob Carlson

The cells in an embryo can give rise to any kind of tissue in the adult body. But once they commit to being muscle cells, neurons or some other type of cell, there’s usually no going back. A huge amount of research has gone into finding a way to induce adult cells to turn back into so-called pluripotent stem cells. Someday it might be possible to use them to grow back damaged organs from a person’s own cells.

In September, Derrick J. Rossi and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School created artificial versions of RNA molecules, the templates that cells use to build proteins. They bathed human cells in a cocktail of five kinds of RNA molecules. The cells took in the RNA and made proteins that reprogrammed them into pluripotent stem cells.

Rossi’s method has a drawback as well, however: he and his colleagues used a type of cell called a fibroblast. To gather these cells, they have to do an invasive biopsy and then culture the cells to get enough fibroblasts for their experiment.

This July, Dr. George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues had success using a different route: they drew blood from healthy human donors and genetically reprogrammed the cells to become pluripotent stem cells. Next year, Dr. Carlson predicts, scientists will combine these methods: they will draw a little blood, place it in a cocktail of RNA and — voilá! — stem cells. This advance would make producing stem cells cheap, fast and relatively easy. In fact, it may even be possible for dedicated amateurs to set up stem cell labs in their own garage.

Dr. Carlson is also the author of “Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life."

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Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Mathematics

“We’re going to see scientific results that are correct, that are predictive, but are without explanation. We may be able to do science without insight, and we may have to learn to live without it. Science will still progress, but computers will tell us things that are true, and we won’t understand them.”

Steven Strogatz

Computers have been taking over more and more of the things humans used to do, including getting driving directions and operating subway trains. They’ve even started making serious inroads into the heart of science. Rather than just churning out simulations or pretty pie charts, computers can do what scientists have traditionally done: find mathematical equations that explain complicated data. Eureqa, for example, is an “automated scientist” created by a Cornell engineer, Hod Lipson, and his students. In 2009, they reported that simply by observing a pendulum, Eureqa can rediscover some of Newton’s laws of physics.

In 2011, automated scientists are poised to make major contributions to science. Dr. Lipson and his students are looking for hidden patterns in the networks of proteins that break down food in cells, for example, and they’ve set up a Web site where people can download Eureqa free of charge and discover laws of nature for themselves.

Automated scientists may speed up the pace of discovery, but in the process they may change the nature of science itself. For centuries, scientists have solved problems with flashes of insight. But while the equations that automated scientists offer are very good at making predictions, they are often inscrutable to human scientists. We may have to program computers to explain their discoveries to us. Otherwise they will become more like oracles than scientists, handing down mysterious utterances to us mere mortals.

Dr. Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University.

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Yeah, I would love to be surrounded by such inspiration and energy. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. I have some educating work to do here.