Building communities, advancing science since 1817 • www.nyas.org

SPRING 2009

STIMULUS STIMULUS FOR SCIENCEFOR SCIENCEWASHINGTON INSIDERS SEE A NEW DAWN FOR RESEARCH

REMEMBERING C.P. SNOW, 50 YEARS AFTER “THE TWO

CULTURES” LECTURE

JAMES WATSON, TONI HOOVER & ANDREY PISAREV

ON NEXT-GEN SCIENTISTS

HOW PAUL ANASTAS SUPPORTS SUSTAINABLE

SUBSTANCE DESIGN

VICE PRESIDENT,PUBLISHING & COMMUNICATIONSBill Silberg

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Adrienne J. Burke

CREATIVE DIRECTORAsh Ayman Shairzay

CONTRIBUTORS Natalie Abruzzo, Abigail Jeffries, Jamie Kass, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney, Adelle C. Pelekanos, Alana Range, Chris Williams

EDITORIAL OFFICE7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich St, 40th FlNew York, NY 10007-2157Phone: 212.298.8655Fax: 212.298.3665Email: magazine@nyas.org

MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORDavid Smith

MEMBERSHIP & ANNALS ORDERSPhone: 212.298.8640Fax: 212.298.3650Email: membership@nyas.org

ADVERTISING INQUIRIESPhone: 212.298.8655Email: magazine@nyas.org

Visit the Academy onlinewww.nyas.org

President’s Council

PETER AGRE, Nobel Laureate & Univ. Prof. and Director, Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Inst., Dept. Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public HealthRICHARD AXEL, Nobel Laureate & University Professor, Columbia Univ.; Investigator, HHMILEE BABISS, Global Head, Pharma Research, Roche PharmaceuticalsDAVID BALTIMORE, Nobel Laureate & President Emeritus, CaltechETIENNE-EMILE BAULIEU, former President, French Academy of SciencesELEANOR BAUM, Dean, School of Engineering, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and ArtPAUL BERG, Nobel Laureate & Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Biochemistry, Stanford Univ.LEN BLAVATNIK, Chairman, Access IndustriesGÜNTER BLOBEL, Nobel Laureate & Director, Laboratory for Cell Biology, Rockefeller Univ.CHRISTIAN BRECHOT, Vice President for Medical and Scientifi c Affairs, Merieux AllianceSYDNEY BRENNER, Nobel Laureate & Distinguished Prof., Salk Inst.MICHAEL S. BROWN, Nobel Laureate & Prof. of Molecular Genetics, Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical CenterLINDA BUCK, Nobel Laureate & Investigator for HHMI; member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research CenterKAREN E. BURKE, Dermatologist & Research ScientistTHOMAS R. CECH, Nobel Laureate & Distinguished Professor, Univ. of Colorado, BoulderMARTIN CHALFIE, Nobel Laureate & William R. Kenan, Jr., Prof. of Biological Sciences; Chair, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Columbia Univ.CECILIA CHAN, Vice Chairman, Immtech Pharmaceuticals, Inc.AARON CIECHANOVER, Nobel Laureate & Distinguished Research Professor, Tumor and Vascular Biology Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Inst. of Tech., Haifa, Israel GORDON CONWAY, Chief Science Advisor, UK Department for International Development PETER DOHERTY, Nobel Laureate & Researcher, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN; Univ. of MelbourneFRANK L. DOUGLAS, Special Fellow, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; former Executive Vice President, Aventis MARCELO EBRARD CASAUBÓN, Mayor, Mexico CityEDMOND H. FISCHER, Nobel Laureate & Professor Emeritus, Department of Biochemistry, Univ. of WashingtonRICHARD N. FOSTER, Millbrook Management Group, LLCCLAIRE M. FRASER-LIGGETT, Director, Univ. of Maryland School of MedicineALAN J. FRIEDMAN, former Director, New York Hall of ScienceCOLIN GODDARD, Chief Executive Offi cer, OSI PharmaceuticalsJOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, Nobel Laureate & Chairman, Molecular Genetics, Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical CenterPAUL GREENGARD, Nobel Laureate & Prof. of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience, Rockefeller Univ.PETER GRUSS, President, Max Planck Gesellschaft, GermanyWILLIAM A. HASELTINE, President, The Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts; Chairman, Haseltine Global Health, LLCERIC KANDEL, Nobel Laureate & Prof., Physiology & Cell Biology, Columbia Univ.KIYOSHI KUROKAWA, former Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan; Adjunct Professor, RCAST, The Univ. of Tokyo; Professor, Research Institute of Science and Technology, Tokai Univ. LEON LEDERMAN, Nobel Laureate & Pritzker Prof. of Science, Illinois Inst. of Tech.; Resident Scholar, Illinois Math & Science Academy RODERICK MACKINNON, Nobel Laureate & John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Prof., Rockefeller Univ.; Investigator, HHMIJOEL S. MARCUS, Chief Executive Offi cer, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.GERALD J. MCDOUGALL, National Partner, Global Pharmaceutical & Health Sciences Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLPRICHARD MENSCHEL, Senior Director, Goldman SachsRONAY MENSCHEL, Chairman of the Board, Phipps Houses; Board of Overseers, Weill Cornell Medical CollegeJEAN-MARC NEIMETZ, Vice President, Global Life Science Group, Capgemini JOHN F. NIBLACK, former President, Pfi zer Global Research & DevelopmentPAUL NURSE, Nobel Laureate & President, Rockefeller Univ.ROBERT C. RICHARDSON, Nobel Laureate & Senior Vice Provost for Research, Floyd R. Newman Prof. of Physics, Cornell Univ.PETER RINGROSE, Chairman, Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, UK; former CSO, Bristol-Myers SquibbEDWARD F. ROVER, President, The Dana FoundationF. SHERWOOD ROWLAND, Nobel Laureate & Prof. of Chemistry & Earth Science, Univ. of California, IrvineBENGT SAMUELSSON, Nobel Laureate & Prof., Medical & Physiological Chem., Karolinska Inst.; former Chairman, The Nobel FoundationCHARLES SANDERS, former President, GlaxoSmithKlineISMAIL SERAGELDIN, Librarian of Alexandria, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandria, The Library of Alexandria, EgyptPHILLIP A. SHARP, Nobel Laureate & Director, The McGovern Inst., MIT Center for Cancer ResearchELLIOTT SIGAL, Chief Scientifi c Offi cer, Bristol-Myers SquibbMICHAEL SOHLMAN, Executive Director, The Nobel FoundationPAUL STOFFELS, Company Group Chairman, World Wide Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals Group, Johnson & JohnsonMARY ANN TIGHE, Chief Executive Offi cer, New York Tri-State Region, CB Richard EllisSHIRLEY TILGHMAN, President, Princeton Univ.HAROLD VARMUS, Nobel Laureate & President & CEO, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer CenterFRANK WALSH, former Executive Vice President, Discovery Research, Wyeth GERALD WEISSMANN, Prof. of Medicine, NY Univ. School of MedicineJOHN WHITEHEAD, former Chairman, Lower Manhattan Development Corp.; former Co-Chairman of Goldman SachsGEORGE WHITESIDES, Mallinckrodt Prof. of Chemistry, Harvard Univ.TORSTEN N. WIESEL, Nobel Laureate & Honorary Life Governor, The New York Academy of Sciences; Secretary General, Human Frontier Science Program Organization; President Emeritus, Rockefeller Univ.FRANK WILCZEK, Nobel Laureate & Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, MITERNST-LUDWIG WINNACKER, Secretary General, European Research Council; former President, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, GermanyELIAS ZERHOUNI, Professor of Radiology & Bioengineering, Johns Hopkins University; Senior Fellow, Global Health Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Senior Science & Technology Adviser, Sanofi -AventisGUANGZHAO ZHOU, former Chairman, Chinese Association of Science & Technology

On the cover: President Obama and his science team, from left, NOAA Chief Jane Lubchenco; President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology Co-Chairs Harold Varmus and Eric Lander, Presidential Science Adviser and Director of the White House Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren; and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. ILLUSTRATION: DAVID SIMONDS

ChairJOHN E. SEXTON

TreasurerJAY FURMAN

GovernorsSETH F. BERKLEYLEN BLAVATNIKKAREN E. BURKEMANUEL CAMACHO SOLISNANCY CANTORROBERT CATELLGERALD CHANVIRGINIA W. CORNISH

Honorary Life GovernorTORSTEN N. WIESEL

PresidentELLIS RUBINSTEIN

CounselVICTORIA BJORKLUND [ex offi cio]

KENNETH L. DAVISROBIN L. DAVISSONBRIAN FERGUSONBRIAN GREENEWILLIAM A. HASELTINESTEVEN HOCHBERGTONI HOOVERMORTON HYMAN

Vice ChairBRUCE S. MCEWEN

SecretaryLARRY SMITH [ex offi cio]

MADELEINE JACOBSABRAHAM M. LACKMANJEFFREY D. SACHSDAVID J. SKORTONPAUL STOFFELSGEORGE E. THIBAULTFRANK WILCZEKDEBORAH E. WILEY

Board of Governors

THE US ELECTION & GLOBAL SCIENCE by Ellis RubinsteinA letter from the president of the Academy

MEMBER NEWSAwards, appointments, and announcements about Academy members

INSIDE THE ACADEMYReports from the directors of Academy programs and news about Academy activities

eBRIEFINGS: BIOMARKERS IN BRAIN DISEASE, NUTRIENT SENSING, AND MOREby Chris WilliamsSummaries of recent Academy eBriefi ngs

MEMBER MEMOIR: GREEN CHEMISTRY? HE INVENTED THE TERMby Paul Anastas, as told to Abigail JeffriesTh e Director of Yale’s Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering helps molecular architects build sustainable substances

THE CULTURE CROSSERby Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum Remembering C.P. Snow at the 50th anniversary of the famous Two Cultures lecture

COVER STORY: STIMULUS FOR SCIENCEby Adrienne BurkeAs president Obama takes steps to “restore science to its rightful place,” Washington insiders and Academy members weigh in on his challenges and priorities.

PANEL DISCUSSION: OUR FUTURE SCIENTISTSA Nobel Laureate, a Blavatnik Award winner, and a pharma industry leader discuss what it will take to keep the US competitive in science

ACADEMY CALENDAR NYAS conferences and meetings in April, May, June, July, and beyond

DONOR PROFILE: KENICHI FURUYAby Adelle C. Pelekanos A Japanese member supports the NYAS mission to “create a global community for the benefi t of humanity.”

2

3

7

9

12

14

17

22

26

28

ContentsContentsSpring 2009

22221212 2828

The Board of Governors of The New York Academy of Sciences cordially invites members to the 191st Annual Meeting

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 | 6:30 PM7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich St, 40th Fl | New York, NY

RSVP by September 7, 2009E-mail: nymeetings@nyas.org | Phone: 212.298.3725

2 www.nyas.org

Letter from the President

s our Winter 2009 edition set the stage for the cel-ebration of the eerily congruent bicentennials of the births of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, I

proposed a connection between Darwin’s science and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which gave practical meaning to the groundbreaking assertion in the American Declaration of Independence that all humans are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. Th ese noble threads of American history and hindsights into the origins of humankind resonated with the landmark inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20.

Because this Spring 2009 edition looks at the science prom-ise of an Obama administration, my thoughts turn to another event that occurred only weeks aft er the birth of Darwin and Lincoln. On March 4, 1809, the third president of the United States, Th omas Jeff erson, turned the nation over to James Madi-son. According to historians, both Madison and Jeff erson were members of the New York Academy of Sciences, a fact that sug-gests America’s early political leaders held science in respect long before it made the extraordinary contributions to human welfare we now appreciate.

While Madison was no slouch as an intellect, Jeff erson was perhaps unique in the history of American presidents in his pas-sion for and knowledge of science and technology—horticulture, archaeology, architecture, and so on.

In 1962, President John Kennedy, who also held science in high regard, invited a record 49 Nobel Laureates to dinner and said: “Th is is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Th omas Jef-ferson dined alone.”

Th e worldwide scientifi c community has always yearned for leaders who, if not themselves scientists or engineers, at least comprehend the importance to society of science and technolo-gy. A few countries—notably China—hold a tradition of leaders trained as engineers. In the U.S. and too many other nations, po-litical leaders have oft en embodied the eff ects of what C.P. Snow called the Two Cultures: to them, science is a foreign tongue.

President Obama has returned us to an older tradition of respect for science. Just before his inauguration on January 20th, and just aft er his stunning list of science appointments emerged, Th e Economist’s January 8 edition cheekily announced: “Blessed Are the Geeks for Th ey Shall Inherit the Earth.”

To illustrate the point, the British weekly published the car-toon displayed on this issue’s cover, showing a broadly grinning president fl anked by his chosen science leadership. We haven’t seen this much science in the White House since the late Clinton Administration when the President became personally fascinat-ed by what science portended.

Th e Obama post-inaugural euphoria is palpable. And yet, as with every other daunting challenge our society faces today, the Obama team, brilliant as it is, cannot by itself accomplish what our world so desperately needs.

To illustrate this point, here are science tests that will con-front the new administration in the months and years to come:

» How will Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren actu-ally infl uence Cabinet decisions? Will science and tech-nology ever exert its proper policy infl uence as long as it remains unrepresented in the Cabinet?

» How will Secretaries such as Steve Chu at Energy or Kath-leen Sebelius at Health and Human Services induce those enormous bureaucracies to take a quantum leap forward?

» How will the research funding agencies overcome the aging of grant-getters and the conservatism of peer review?

» Who on the Obama team will ensure that science and tech-nology play a transformative role in driving the sort of inno-vation that leads immediately to economic and social gain?

» Even with spectacular improvements in the functioning of U.S. departments and agencies, the global challenges in climate, disease, nutrition and poverty alleviation, equi-table resource allocation, and the like require multinational solutions. Who will assemble the needed coalitions on these matters, and will they bring science and technology to the table when policy is really being made?

» How will Education Secretary Arne Duncan address our deeply troubled primary and secondary school system to ensure that we don’t merely improve learning standards but begin to excite young people in S&T careers?

» What will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano do to implement new visa policies that welcome the best and brightest from all over the world instead of blocking their entry?You will have other questions of this sort. Many will be more

incisive than mine. Don’t hesitate to e-mail me yours. It would be fascinating to see what our community realizes are the challenges that run deeper than simply how our stem cell policy changes or what level of added funding should go to NSF and NIH. And to our international members, since American science has played a crucial role in catalyzing investments in science and technology in your countries, what do you expect of this Obama Adminis-tration? Send your thoughts to erubinstein@nyas.org.

Ellis Rubinstein, President

A&The U.S. Election Global Science

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 3

Member News

Decades into a distinguished psychology career researching and decoding the facial expressions of people from California to Pap-ua New Guinea, Paul Ekman now fi nds himself dedicating half his time to a Fox Network television show.

A new series, Lie To Me, which airs Wednesday nights at 9:00 pm ET, is based on the life work of the scientist known for developing the Facial Action Coding System to read the meaning in human expression. Th e show’s protagonist, Cal Lightman, is “the world’s leading deception expert” who assists law enforce-ment and government agencies by studying facial expressions and involuntary body language to discover whether and why someone is lying.

Ekman, who had attained celebrity scientist status over the years as he appeared in numerous magazines, national newspapers, and television shows including Larry King, Oprah, Johnny Carson, and the Bill Moyers’ special Th e Truth About Lying, says the new Fox program “is an unusual role for a scientist in a television pro-gram, and an unusual television program to rely on science.”

Th e show’s genesis was a 2002 New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell that described Ekman’s work. It caught the eye of Brian Grazer, head of Imagine Television and producer of the shows 24 and House and blockbuster movies such as Th e Titanic and Ghost-busters. “Brian contacted me and said ‘I love your work and I want to get it on TV and I want to get the right writer’,” says Ekman. Two years later, Ekman began collaborating with writer Samuel Baum and now has a contract with 20th Century Fox to critically review each script for scientifi c accuracy and plausibility.

Ekman loans the show’s producers his private collection of materials depicting liars and truth tellers, and provides the show’s actors with video clips of him demonstrating some of the most diffi cult-to-perform facial expressions and gestures. Ekman also

writes a weekly column, Th e Truth about Lie to Me, in which he elaborates on parts of that week’s episode that are based on sci-ence and explains which parts shouldn’t be taken seriously. For fans who want even more detail, Ekman pens a bimonthly news-letter about the nature of lying called Reading Between the Lies.

Ekman says that while many cases on the show draw on his own experiences, Fox’s writers are barred from basing per-sonal aspects of Lightman’s character on him. For instance, Ek-man says, “Cal Lightman is young, divorced, British, and has a strained relationship with his one child while I have 30-year marriage and good relationships with my two children.”

Ekman says there are also some striking professional diff er-ences between him and the television version of the lie expert: “Lightman is always more certain than I am about everything. He solves in 24 hours what sometimes take me 6 months. He has a better equipped, better looking lab than me. And I do work with a number of government agencies, but not as many as he’s working with. Clearly more branches are impressed with the usefulness of his work than the usefulness of mine!”

Nevertheless, Ekman says each case mimics work he is ei-ther doing at the moment or has undertaken in the past. “Th ey haven’t done anything that I haven’t already done, but they’re do-ing more of it because they’re better funded and he’s younger than me!”

As the show’s fi rst season comes to an end with episode 13, Ekman says network executives will decide whether to com-mission a full season of 22 episodes for next year. To watch past episodes, read Ekman’s analysis of each show, or test your own deception skills, visit www.fox.com/lietome. Read Ekman’s Annals paper, “Darwin, Deception, and Facial Expressions” at www.interscience.wiley.com/ekman.

Burton M. Altura, Professor of Physiology, Pharmacology & Medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, has been elected Fellow of Th e Royal Society of Medicine in the UK. Altura, who earned a PhD from the New York University School of Medicine in 1964, investigates the role of magnesium, sphingolipids, and lipid messengers in vascular biology and disease processes, such

as stroke, diabetes mellitus, and atherogenesis. An additional major interest is the role of alcohol and substances of abuse in stroke etiology. Research done in Altura’s laboratory has already led to the prevention of atherosclerotic lesions, hypertension, and stroke-like events in experimental animal models. Addi-tional experimental studies, using manipulations in divalent cat-

Paul Ekman PHOTO: MICHAEL IAN The cast of Fox Network’s Lie to Me, based on Ekman’s life work

Deceptive Celebrity: Paul Ekman’s Work Makes Prime Time TV

4 www.nyas.org

Member News

ion metabolism have been very eff ective in the prevention and amelioration of alcohol-, phencyclidine-, cocaine-, and other substance abuse-induced strokes.

Osama S.M. Amin, Director of the Department of Neurology at the Baghdad Teaching Hospital in Iraq has published Get Th rough MRCP Part 1, a guide for completing the Membership Diploma of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, UK. Th e book was published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press, Ltd, London, as part of its Get Th rough series. From cardiology to clinical sci-ences, the book is designed to help MRCP candidates prepare for the fi rst part of the examinations. It tests their knowledge and understanding of the clinical sciences relevant to medical prac-tice and of common or important disorders to a level appropriate for entry to specialist training.

Lorella Battini, a medical doctor and Professor of the Organi-zation Gestosis Affi liated and Sponsored Hospitals (OGASH), which was founded in 2003 in Tbilisi, Georgia, was recognized by the Intercontinental OGASH Academy of Medical Social Sci-ences for her research on preeclampsia. Battini’s studies, done in collaboration with Irma de Luca Brunori, on the etiopathologi-cal role of HLA-DR in preeclampsia, were published in Human Reproduction in August 2000, in the Journal of Reproductive Im-munology in August 2003, and presented at the annual World Organization Gestosis Meetings in China, Croatia, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Mauritius, the Philippines, Romania, and South-Africa. Battini says preeclampsia/gestosis is the leading killer in the obstetrics fi eld, and she urges a new generation of physicians to enroll in the fi ght for safe pregnancy and neonatal outcomes, particularly in developing countries.

Dorita Berger, a music therapist, concert pianist, and educator, is the author of “On Developing Th erapy Goals and Objectives,” published in the March 1, 2009, edition of Voices: A World Forum for Music Th erapy. Berger, who treats pervasive developmental disorders, autism, language learning delays, sensory issues, and anxiety disorders at her music therapy clinic in Norwalk, Conn., suggests that clinicians who assess human behaviors from a physi-ological perspective can design treatment goals and objectives to address not just symptoms of diagnoses, but to treat defi cits through music therapy interventions. Berger’s past publications include the books Music Th erapy, Sensory Integration and the Au-tistic Child, and Th e Music Eff ect: Music Physiology and Clinical Applications, co-authored with Daniel Schneck.

Aviv Bergman, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Mark Siegal, an assistant professor at New York University’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, are co-authors of a study on genetic variation that was cited by Nature as an “evolutionary gem.” Th e journal chose 15 studies published over the past decade that “illustrate the breadth, depth, and pow-er of evolutionary thinking” as part of its celebration of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin.

In their study, published in 2003, Siegal and Bergman ex-plored “evolutionary capacitance” which asks, “do species who remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, then change dramatically and suddenly, store the potential for these sudden alterations, unleashing a fl ood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress?” Th e researchers used numerical simulations of complex gene networks and genome-wide expres-sion data from yeast strains in which single genes had been de-leted to show that most, and perhaps all, genes hold variation in reserve that is released only when they are functionally compro-mised. Th eir fi ndings suggested that evolutionary capacitance goes wider and deeper than a single protein.

David Bickers, the Carl Truman Nelson Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at Columbia University Col-lege of Physicians & Surgeons and Director of Dermatology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Columbia University Medical Center, has been appointed Vice Chair for Medicine and Health at the American University of Beirut. He earned an MD degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1967. A leading researcher in environmental carcinogenesis and photo-biology, Bickers has been member of the board of the American University of Beirut since 1996.

Richard Bonneau, an assistant professor who holds appoint-ments at New York University’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, was named by Discover Magazine as one of 20 “visionary” scientists under the age of 40. Bonneau’s work in the fi eld of systems biology examines how genes infl uence each other via extremely large net-works of interaction and how these networks respond to stimuli, adapting over time to new environments and cell states. Bonneau has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Washington and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute pre-doctoral fellow in the biological sciences.

Dorita Berger

Lorella Battini

Richard Bonneau

Aviv Bergman

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 5

Corinna Cortes, the Head of Google Research New York, Google Labs, and a member of the Academy’s Machine Learning Steer-ing Committee, was awarded the Association for Computing Machinery’s Paris Kanellakis Th eory and Practice Award. Cortes won the award with her colleague Vladimir Vapnik for their rev-olutionary development of a highly eff ective algorithm known as Support Vector Machines. SVM is a set of related supervised learning methods used for data classifi cation and regression common in the fi eld of artifi cial intelligence. Th e Association for Computing Machinery honors innovations in computing tech-nology that benefi t society through their profound impact on the way we live and work.

Peter Cresswell was appointed the Eugene Higgins Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University. Cresswell’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of antigen processing, in which fragments of proteins from viruses, bacteria, and other disease-causing organisms bind to the major histocompatibility complex molecules on human cells during an infection. Th ese molecules are recognized by T lymphocytes and are critical for making ef-fective immune responses to infectious agents. His laboratory is also investigating the antiviral mechanisms of proteins inducible by Type 1 and Type 2 interferons. One such protein, viperin, me-diates resistance to infection by infl uenza virus and human cyto-megalovirus. Cresswell has been a Howard Hughes Medical Insti-tute investigator since 1991, when he joined the Yale faculty as a professor in the Department of Immunobiology. He is an HHMI investigator, a member of the National Academy of Sciences edi-torial board, and associate editor of Immunity.

Terry A. Krulwich, Professor of Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, and Program Director of the Post-Baccalaureate Re-search Education Program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will be awarded the 2009 American Society for Microbiology William A. Hinton Research Training Award during the 109th General Meeting of the ASM in Philadelphia in May. Th e award

recognizes outstanding contributions toward fostering the re-search training of underrepresented minorities in microbiology. It honors William A. Hinton, a physician-research scientist and one of the fi rst African-Americans to join the American Soci-ety for Microbiology. Krulwich is credited with revolutionizing the training of underrepresented minorities at Mount Sinai. She served as Dean of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences from 1981 to 2002 and established and directed the Medical Sci-entist Training Program, where she personally mentored more than 100 underrepresented students.

David Middleton, a pioneer in modern statistical communica-tion theory, died at age 88 on November 16, 2008, in New York City from complications due to cancer. Middleton’s models of communication channels and systems contributed to the explo-sive growth of data and wireless communications systems, fi nd-ing applications in radar, underwater listening devices, satellite technology, and signal processing. During his 60-year consulting and teaching career, he served on the US Naval Advisory Re-search Committee and on the Scientifi c Advisory Board of the Supercomputing Research Center, Institute of Defense Analysis.

His prolifi c written works include An Introduction to Statisti-cal Communication Th eory (1960), widely translated and reprint-ed, a classic in the fi eld; Topics in Communication Th eory (1965); and Elements of Non-Gaussian Statistical Communication Th eo-ry: A Space-Time Treatment, a sequel to his fi rst book which until his death he worked to complete. Condolences may be posted to web.me.com/boots911/In_Memorium:_David_Middleton.

William D. Romey, Professor of Geography Emeritus at St. Law-rence University has published an e-book, Journals of a Geologist-Geographer in Russia. Copies of the CD in Microsoft Word For-mat and PDF are available from Ash Lad Press, P.O. Box 294, East Orleans, MA 02643. Other recent e-books by Romey include An Illustrated Guide to the Geology of Sites Commonly Visited Around Th e Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands (2005), and Norway Th rough a Geologist’s Eyes (2006).

Daniel Stein, Dean of Science and a professor in New York Uni-versity’s Department of Physics and at its Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, was named a fellow of the American As-sociation for the Advancement of Science in February. Stein was chosen by his AAAS peers for his pioneering work toward un-derstanding how randomness and disorder infl uence the orga-nization of matter in a range of materials, including glasses and biological matter such as proteins. AAAS also recognized Stein for his “distinguished contributions to science through univer-sity and organizational leadership.”

Stein is considered a leader in theoretical condensed mat-ter physics, which centers on building models of physical pro-cesses and transferring these models into other areas of research. Stein’s scholarship has contributed to topics as diverse as protein biophysics, biological evolution, amorphous semiconductors, superconductors and superfl uids, liquid crystals, neutron stars, and the interface between particle physics and cosmology.

Terry A. Krulwich Daniel Stein

Peter Cresswell David Middleton

MRI and Ultrasound in the Diagnosis and Management of Rheumatological Diseases

Edited by: James D. Katz; Kathleen BrindleThis volume constitutes an in-depth reference on the physics and uses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound on patients with rheumatological disorders. Readers will appreciate the basic physics behind advanced imaging techniques and learn of clinical nuances in musculoskeletal imaging and derive an understanding of the research methodology surrounding issues such as the grading of lesions.

Highlights from theAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Edited by: Alan Kingstone, University of British Columbia;Michael B. Miller, University of California, Santa BarbaraThis is the second annual volume in an ongoing series that will provide in-depth reviews of the major issues and emerging topics in this fi eld. The 2009 volume contains the following reviews:

Michael C. Corballis, The Evolution of Language

Leah Krubitzer, In Search of a Unifying Theory of Complex Brain Evolution

Simon Baron-Cohen, Autism: the Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory

Tania Singer & Claus Lamm, The Social Neuroscience of Empathy

Scott T. Grafton, Action Simulation and the Substrates of Embodied Cognition

Elina Birmingham & Alan Kingstone, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Attention

Jason B. Mattingley, Attention, Automaticity and Awareness in Synaesthesia

Matthew P. Walker, The Role of Sleep in Cognition and Emotion

Jon-Kar Zubieta, Neurobiological Mechanisms of Placebo Responses

Daniel J. Levitin & Anna K. Tirovolas, Current Advances in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

Stanislas Dehaene, Origins of Mathematical Intuitions: The Case of Arithmetic

Peter A. Bandettini, What’s New in Neuroimaging Methods?

Academy members have free, unlimited online access to thousands of full-text Annals articles. Members are also entitled to one free Annals volume each year. See insert for ordering information.

Steroid Enzymes and Cancer

Edited by: H. Leon Bradlow; Giuseppe CarrubaThis volumes provides an updated picture of the existing knowledge about the association between steroid enzyme expression/function and the development and/or progression of major human cancers, including classical (breast, prostate) and non-classical (lung, liver) hormone-related tumors.

Immunology and Pathogenesis of Viral Hemorrhagic FeversEdited by: Aftad Ansari; Rafi Ahmed

Oligonucleotide Therapeutics: Fourth Annual Meeting of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics SocietyEdited by: John Rossi; Michael Gait; Fritz Eckstein

Biomarkers in Brain DiseaseEdited by: Simon Lovestone

Cancer VaccinesEdited by: Jacques Banchereau; Olja Finn

The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology, 2009Edited by: Richard S. Ostfeld; William H. Schlesinger

The Year in Evolutionary Biology, 2009Edited by: Carl D. Schlichting; Timothy A. Mousseau

Forthcoming Volumes

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 7

Inside the Academy

A three-pound, nine-inch sculpture of a molecule is currently gracing a shelf outside the Academy’s President’s offi ce. Art en-vironmentalist Mara Haseltine loaned Estrogen molecule: estra-diol benzoate, a dynamic three-dimensional homage to the ste-roid molecule, for display through June 2009. Th e artist says she chose the piece, which she considers a celebration of women and women scientists, because “it is elegant, it represents a scientifi c discovery, and it showcases the merging of science and art.”

Academy member Haseltine, the daughter of well-known biotech entrepreneur and NYAS President’s Council member William Haseltine, says this is not the fi rst time her artwork has been inspired by the molecule that is the catalyst for the female reproductive cycle. Th e piece is part of a series entitled Estrogen Tales: Th e Story of Nine Molecules and How Th ey Bonded, and is inspired by the research of medicinal chemist Hyun K. Kim on molecular improvements to contraception and women’s health.

Haseltine designed the sculpture using molecular data gleaned from X-ray crystallography as an armature. It accu-rately depicts the structure and the space that the atoms occupy. Th rough the use of scientifi cally accurate data and visual aesthet-ics, Haseltine says the work conveys a new understanding of a

scientifi c concept because “you can touch and feel and experience the microscopic molecule.”

Th e Academy isn’t the only place you can fi nd the sculpture: Th e Society for Women’s Health gives a copy each year to the out-standing female scientist winner of its Medtronics Award.

For more information about Haseltine’s artwork, including a new project that introduces geo-therapy through the lens of oys-ter restoration in New York City’s urban environment in conjunc-tion with Th e New School of Liberal Arts’ Oyster Gardens Class, visit www.calamara.com. —Natalie Abruzzo

Estrogen Amplifi ed: Sculpture Spotlights Women and Science

Douglas Braaten joined the Academy as the new Director and Executive Editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sci-ences. Braaten, who previously served for three years as an editor of Nature Immunology, completed a postdoctoral research fel-lowship in viral immunology in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University in St. Louis aft er earning a PhD from Columbia University. Earlier, he trained as a staff associate and senior research staff assistant in the microbi-ology and biology departments at Columbia.

Braaten is responsible for day-to-day management of the Annals, the oldest continuously published scientifi c serial in the US, and works closely with NYAS publishing and scientifi c staff on developing new editorial and business opportunities. “It’s an exciting time to be involved with the Annals and the Academy to produce volumes of the best and most cutting-edge science pos-sible for our worldwide readership,” Braaten says. “I’m especially excited by the prospect of working closely with scientists, bring-ing to bear my experience as a research scientist and then editor, to develop Annals volumes that are important and useful to the scientifi c community.”

Braaten will oversee the Annals expansion in 2009 from 28 to 32 volumes, which include the second year of a new col-lection of annual reviews volumes in immunology, neurology, ecology, addiction, and several other areas, that have contributed to signifi cantly increased exposure of the Annals in the scien-tifi c community. In recent months the Annals has been among the 10 most popular titles of 1,400 available through the Wiley Interscience online service. Wiley has published Annals on the Academy’s behalf for the past three years.

Braaten Takes Helm as New Director, Editor of Annals

8 www.nyas.org

Inside the Academy

To better serve a national and global audience, select meetings of the Academy’s Science Alliance Program for Graduate Stu-dents and Postdocs are now being broadcast over the Internet via “webinar.” Program Director Robert Tillman says the technol-ogy permits off -site meeting attendees to join by voice over IP or teleconference and to engage via video with meeting speakers and live audience members. “We’re removing the geographical boundaries,” says Tillman. “Webinars allow us to expand our membership and also to provide a higher level of service to our members.”

Tillman tested out the webinar format for the fi rst time with the February 5 meeting, “From Science to Equity,” a presentation by scientist and former Academy staff er Eric Viera, who became an equity researcher on Wall Street. While Viera presented at the Academy, all 40 PhDs, postdocs, and one MD who attended the one-hour meeting did so via webinar from as far away as Ro-mania and Turkey. Says Tillman, “Th e meeting went very well and the feedback was great. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to take part online.” Tillman says most attendees joined from their laboratories. All that’s required is a high-speed internet connec-tion, earphones or speakers, and a chat function if you wish to speak with other attendees or the group as a whole.

Tillman plans to host an exclusive online Science Alliance event once per month. In May, Paul Cramer of the Harvard Ne-gotiation Project will give a webinar lecture on the art of negotia-tion and “getting to yes” with his brother Steve Cramer, a Univer-sity of California, Davis, scientist.

Th e meetings, which are free for NYAS members, will be archived on the Academy’s website at www.nyas.org/webinar.

Webinars Expand Live Audience For Science Alliance Events

In a forthcoming paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, psychiatrist Lord John Alderdice, a Northern Ireland politician, states that, “Given the failure of the ‘War on Terror,’ it may…be time to explore how far alternative analyses provide a bet-ter key to understanding politically motivated violence. All these matters are essentially issues of human relationships and, as such, are driven much more by emotion than by rational thought.”

Th e chance to discuss ideas such as Alderdice’s drew more than 130 delegates from over 20 countries to Barcelona in No-vember 2008 to attend the Academy conference “Values and Empathy Across Social Barriers: A Neurocognitive Approach to Fairness.” (Th e forthcoming Annals volume shares the same ti-tle.) Th e two-day First Barcelona Social Brain Conference turned a neuroscientifi c lens on the human qualities of empathy, sacred values, and cooperation. Speakers hailing from eight countries included Lord Alderdice and Scott Atran, an expert on the roots of suicide terrorism and a professor of anthropology at the Uni-versity of Michigan, whose paper, “What Motivates Participation in Violent Political Action,” will also appear in the new Annals volume.

Social Brain Conference DrawsGlobal Delegates to Barcelona

Presentations at the meeting addressed the latest research into neuroimaging for understanding the building blocks of fair-ness, genetic markers for good and bad cooperators, and anthro-pological perspectives on fairness in social confl icts. Academy Program manager Kathy Granger, who coordinated the meeting in partnership with Catedra UAB “el cervell social” and Fundacio Catalana per a la Recerca I la Innovacio of Barcelona, and the European Science Foundation, called it a “wonderful success” and added that “speakers and delegates from all over the world engaged in interactive scientifi c discussions about social neuro-science. Meetings such as this are instrumental in strengthening scientifi c ties between New York City and other cities of scientif-ic excellence such as Barcelona.” Granger is now busy planning the next NYAS meeting in Barcelona: “Personalized Medicine in Cancer,” to be held in May 2010.

Academy’s Darwin Bust CopiedIn High-Tech Project for NASIn honor of the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, the New York Academy of Sciences’ bust of its legendary member is being replicated for display in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. Th e replica is being produced using a state-of-the-art digital scanning and computer-controlled mill-ing process.

Th e original bronze, one of very few known to exist of Dar-win, was commissioned by NYAS in 1909 for the centennial of his birth and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s famous book, On the Origin of Species. Working from a photo-graph, sculptor William Couper produced a remarkable likeness of the scientist in his later years.

Aft er admiring the sculpture on a recent visit to the Acad-emy, NAS President Ralph Cicerone became interested in hav-ing a duplicate made for his organization. Not long ago, such a venture would have put the original at risk of damage during transportation to and from a studio and during the casting of a new mold. But today’s technology leaves the original touched only by light.

Direct Dimensions, a company enlisted to make a digital model of the bust, used a portable coordinate-measuring ma-chine consisting of a laser scanner attached to an articulated mea-suring arm to collect the three-dimensional data. Technicians moved a structured laser line along the surface of the sculpture while a camera sensor mounted in the laser scanner captured the data. Th e cloud of data points was transferred to a soft ware pro-gram that translated it into a digital polygonal model. Th e whole process took only fi ve hours and the bust never left its home in the Academy’s lobby at 7 World Trade Center.

To begin the journey back to bronze, the restoration pres-ervation company John Milner Associates next made a foam base using a computer-controlled milling machine driven by the digital information. An artist then applied a very thin clay coat-ing to smooth out the tool marks. Th is “clay-up” was sent to the foundry, for the creation of a silicon mold. Th e rest of the process follows an age-old casting technique, from which a new Darwin will be born. —Jamie Kass

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 9

Academy eBriefi ngseBriefi ngs are online multimedia reports documenting recent Academy events. Find the new and

noteworthy ones previewed here and more at www.nyas.org/ebriefi ng. Compiled by Chris Williams

See the full eBriefi ng at www.nyas.org/biomarkers-brain.

on the web

ntil relatively recently, biomarkers were not a popular area of investigation. By the 1980s, many believed that by individualizing treatment, subdividing disease, and

explicating pathophysiology, genetics would make biomarkers unnecessary. Th e essential role of biomarkers as tools to under-standing how drugs work and disease progresses was eclipsed by the rising star of the human genome.

But the need for biomarkers has only grown. Today a lack of reliable biomarkers is actually preventing basic research from identifying the underlying mechanisms of many common dis-eases. It is also crippling pharmaceutical research, as drug devel-opment pipelines dry up and record numbers of experimental compounds fail in expensive late-stage clinical trials. Th e need for clinical biomarkers may soon become acute: the most prom-ising candidate treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease are likely to be most eff ective for patients in the earliest stages of disease—possibly even before the onset of symptoms.

Although the term can mean diff erent things in diff erent contexts, a biomarker is a quantifi able measure that is correlated with or that can help predict a physiological process involved in health or disease. Neurological and psychiatric conditions in particular need good biomarkers. Th e inaccessibility of the brain, lack of knowledge about pathophysiology, and the chronic degenerative course of many of these diseases make it diffi cult to judge who has the disease, how best to treat, and whether or not experimental treatments are successful. Biomarkers could answer these questions.

At a recent conference organized by the Academy and held in Oxford in cooperation with the Global Medical Excellence Cluster of South East England, it was clear that some progress has been made in identifying biomarkers for brain disease. Disease-related profi les in cerebrospinal fl uid (CSF) have been established for Alzheimer’s disease, and much attention is focused on doing the same in plasma. Imaging techniques are becoming useful ad-juncts for the diagnosis and monitoring of neurodegenerative dis-ease and for the testing of anti-depressant candidate drugs. And

proteomics and metabolomics will no doubt identify characteris-tic biochemical signatures of relevant physiological processes.

Nevertheless, the identifi cation of biomarkers for brain dis-ease faces a signifi cant challenge as researchers struggle to fi g-ure out how to standardize the data necessary to validate them. Th is concern is particularly important because large-scale col-laborations, including public-private partnerships, will need to be undertaken during trials. Issues that seem trivial, such as which samples to collect, what readouts to measure, and how these should be curated and documented, are major hurdles that will need to be overcome. Th e conference focused on case stud-ies and strategies to address this problem.

As keynote speaker William Potter of Merck Research Lab-oratories pointed out, no technique is ready to answer the big-gest questions. At the same time, he sounded an optimistic note, remarking, “It’s not too strong to say that biomarkers are shining a light on the brain processes involved in these diseases.”

Biomarkers in Brain DiseaseBiological andRegulatory Challenges

U

10 www.nyas.org

Academy eBriefi ngs

The Work Ahead of Us: Public Health and Human Rights

See the full eBriefi ng at www.nyas.org/health-human-rights.

on the web

Maintaining a careful balance between stored energy and caloric intake is important to ensure that the body has enough energy to maintain itself, grow, and engage in activity. When balanced improperly, obesity and its accompanying disorders can result, a problem that is all too evident in the recent explosion in rates of diabetes and obesity worldwide. At the same time, however, re-searchers have made many advances in understanding the com-plex signaling pathways that regulate metabolism.

According to Gary Schwartz, researchers have a good sense of how signals are transmitted from the gut to the brain. Th e duodenal lumen in the small intestine is embedded with large numbers of sensing cells that are responsive to nutrients, and transmit signals through the vagus nerve to the brain stem. When signals reach the brain, forebrain sites including the hypothala-mus, amygdala, and limbic cortex sense levels of nutrients, drive feeding behavior, and regulate metabolism. His group has been looking at the biochemistry involved in this communication.

Others have begun to look specifi cally at the signaling path-ways within the brain. One important case is the TOR pathway,

Nutrient Sensing: How the Brain and Gut Regulate Food Intake

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a set of 30 principles meant to ensure individual rights and free-doms worldwide. In addition to legal concepts like equality and due process, the document affi rms the most basic of human rights—the right to personal health and wellbeing.

Decades later, rights violations continue to have dire conse-quences for public health. But advocates and researchers work-ing in the fi eld have been able to use the UDHR as a tool for pro-moting health in the context of human rights. Highlighting this connection at a symposium commemorating the Declaration’s 60th anniversary, Navanethem Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, declared that public health issues are inextri-cable from political rights and international security. “A world that is greatly out of balance in matters of health is neither stable nor secure,” she said.

Th e ongoing cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is just one ex-ample of how human rights violations can lead to public health crises. Eager to help those in need, some groups have called for depoliticizing aid. But Chris Beyrer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health pointed out that this health emergency is manmade—a result of policies, fraudulent elec-tions, and the unwillingness of the international community to intervene. Because of this, he argued, “Progress on human rights is inseparable from development, and gains in global health that we all seek … cannot separate out the human rights piece. It ab-

solutely won’t work in terms of human rights, and it won’t work in terms of advancing science and public health.”

Several speakers suggested that scientists and physicians have important roles to play in promoting human rights, both in the United States and internationally. Pillay called upon health professionals to counter discrimination by providing simple, ac-curate information to users of health services, using technology to reduce information gaps, and prioritizing R&D in areas where the poorest are left unprotected. Gara LaMarche, CEO of the At-lantic Philanthropies, urged physicians to be advocates for health and human rights, noting that they are perceived as highly cred-ible and can bring recognition to human rights issues. Leonard Rubenstein of Physicians for Human Rights recounted cases of corruption in the scientifi c and medical communities involved in torture at Guantanamo Bay. Several speakers also pointed to the need to integrate human rights training as an integral part of the curriculum for educating all health professionals.

which as Randy Seeley explained, “sits in the middle of a vari-ety of … metabolic manipulations in the central nervous sys-tem that have potent eff ects on food intake.” At the same time, the relationship between TOR and other signaling pathways in the hypothalamus like AKT and AMPK remains unclear. John Hanover of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is looking at the hexosamine signaling path-way, which aff ects insulin production and other pathways by re-sponding to nutrient availability. And as Shai Shaham reported, glial cells in the brain may also play important roles in regulating food intake.

Some studies show that other organisms residing in the gut may also aff ect the way mammals extract nutrition from food. Ruth Ley studies the diversity of bacteria in the body, and has

Systems Biology Discussion Group steering committee members Gustavo Stolovitzky and Andrea Califano with the goal of evalu-ating systems biology tools for building biological networks. At its core are the DREAM challenges, which invite researchers to pre-dict network structures from observed data. Although some entries into the competition showed success in describing the underlying networks, structural problems in the contest that appeared during the conference suggested that assessment of reverse-engineering methods remains an ongoing challenge.

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 11

LIFE SCIENCES» Biotechnology and Pharma: Evolution and Adaptation» Cutting Back on Screen Time:

Innovative Discovery Platforms for Drug Development» Fourth Annual Meeting of the

Oligonucleotide Th erapeutics Society» A History of Resistance: Bacterial Adaptation and Pathogenesis» An Inside Look: PET and Drug Development» Neural Architecture:

Systems Approaches to Brain Structure and Function» Th e Next Frontier:

Phosphorylation Targets in Neurodegenerative Disease» Organ-Specifi c Toxicities:

Identifying Risks during Drug Development» Th e Serpentine Path:

Advances in 7-Transmembrane Receptor Th erapeutics» Shine a Light: High-Resolution

Microscopy and Imaging in Biology» Translational Cancer Research: Bench, Bedside, and Community

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES & POLICY» Power Couple: Plug-In Hybrid Cars and Smart Grids» Zero Net Energy Buildings: Case Studies

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & ENGINEERING» Turn Down the Volume:

Microfl uidic Systems in Biotechnology and Fluid Dynamics

Recent and Forthcomingfi nd these eBriefi ngs at www.nyas.org/ebriefi ng

See the full eBriefi ng at www.nyas.org/recomb-dream.

on the web

As the amount of available genomics data has skyrocketed, com-putational and experimental scientists have been working hard to develop a systems-level understanding of how it all fi ts togeth-er. Recently, more than 500 researchers met at the Broad Institute at MIT to discuss current research directions, new methods, and their latest fi ndings in eff orts to characterize gene and protein networks. NYAS was there to document the wide-ranging, fi ve-day “triconference” in a rich, multimedia eBriefi ng that features video of the keynote talks.

Among the advances that have made such investigations possible is the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies. George Church was a pioneer in this fi eld, and at the conference reported on his vision for the Personal Genome Project, which aims to collect genomic profi les of 100,000 indi-viduals. Importantly, the project is also gathering information about the individuals’ environments, traits, and cellular data. By collecting many attributes, he said, researchers will be able to mine the data for patterns and “get a hint about how the genome plays out” in the context of specifi c tissues.

Other presentations off ered a wide range of ways of thinking about genetic networks. John Tyson and Boris Kholodenko dis-cussed methods for dissecting and replicating functional motifs within networks. Daphne Koller and David Botstein consid-ered networks responsible for metabolism. Uri Alon and Aviv Bergman looked at evolution of networks. Eddy Rubin and Mark Gerstein presented approaches to identifying enhancers and other regulatory elements in the noncoding genome. Chris Burge and Th omas Tuschl looked at post-transcriptional regu-lation by microRNAs. And Todd Golub and Dennis Lauff en-burger explained how systems approaches can be useful in studying cancer.

One of the major elements of the triconference was the third annual meeting of the DREAM Project (Dialogue on Reverse Engi-neering Assessment and Methods). DREAM was initiated by NYAS

Crossing Paths: The RECOMB Regulatory Genomics / Systems Biology / DREAM Conference

See the full eBriefi ng at www.nyas.org/nutrient-sensing.

on the web

found that in both mice and humans, gut microbiota that help a host organism to extract additional calories from food may be an environmental factor that contributes to obesity. Although Ley does not see this as a cause of obesity, she suggested that it could contribute to comparatively higher weight gain across the lifes-pan. James Brown of the University of New Mexico also contrib-uted a comparative, ecological perspective to this interdisciplin-ary meeting, suggesting that fractal-like networks for taking up and making use of resources that exist throughout nature.

12 www.nyas.org

grew up in the small town of Quin-cy, Mass., where I lived on a hill overlooking one of the most beauti-

ful coastal wetlands imaginable. When I was ten years old, the bulldozers rolled in. Th is upset me so much that I tried to fi ght it in the usual way by circulating petitions around the neighborhood. Today perhaps two percent of the wetland still exists; the rest is a business park. My father who was a biology teacher said to me at the time that if you really care about something you have to understand it deeply in order to protect it. More than anything else, that set me on track to become a scientist.

Aft er earning a BS in chemistry, I went on to graduate school where I fo-cused on the total synthesis of natural products to make anti-cancer compounds. Th is research eventually became person-ally diffi cult because so many good people I knew were being diagnosed with and dying of cancer. Roger Garrett, the found-ing chief of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Industrial Chemistry Branch, had followed my work on structure activ-

ity relationships. In 1989 he off ered me a position at EPA where, instead of trying to treat or cure cancer by making new mol-ecules, I was able to think about how mol-ecules could be created so that they never cause cancer in the fi rst place.

In 1991 I coined the term “green chemistry” and developed and launched the US EPA Green Chemistry Program. Th e concept expanded rapidly. Green chemistry wasn’t just about cancer-causing molecules; it was about toxicity from the point of synthesis through all phases of the chemical life cycle. In 1997 I was awarded the EPA Silver Medal for designing and developing the program, which is currently based in the Offi ce of Pollution Prevention and Toxic Substanc-es, and is best known for administering the Presidential Green Chemistry Chal-lenge Awards. Th e achievements of the award winners, excluding nominees, ac-count for removing or preventing the gen-eration of enough hazardous substances to fi ll a train of boxcars 200 miles long. And this has occurred while maintain-

ing or increasing commercial profi tability. Above all, the fi eld of green chemistry has shown that economic and environmental needs can be met simultaneously.

Aft er establishing the US EPA Green Chemistry Program, I served during the Clinton and Bush administrations as As-sistant Director for the Environment in the White House Offi ce of Science and Technology, Policy Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the Director of the US Green Chemistry Program. During those years I focused on writing about and promoting green chemistry principles. I was astonished when Teresa Heinz deliv-ered the news that I had won the Heinz award for environment in 2006. Th is moved me tremendously. Senator Heinz was a visionary, and Teresa Heinz is an environmental movement legend. When I received the phone call from her, she asked if I was aware of the Heinz awards, and at that moment I was certain she was going to ask me if I would serve on the judg-ing panel. When she delivered the news I was speechless. I was so proud to be in the

I

Green Chemistry? He Invented the TermBy Paul Anastas, as told to Abigail Jeffries

Member Memoir

PaulANASTASTeresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment and Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University

NYAS member since: 2007

Age: 46

PhD: Chemistry, Brandeis University, 1989

Recent awards: Honorary Doctorate, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2007; John Jeyes Award, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2007; H. John Heinz III Award, Environment, 2006

Also enjoys: Family woodland hikes and reading bedtime stories to 17-month old daughter Kennedy

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 13

company of the other winners. Although science will not be the only

element in any government decision, it should be a part of every decision. So far President Obama’s administration has demonstrated an early recognition that science is a fundamental building block of policy and that it needs to be a piece of the wide range of policy decisions a government makes. Many of our attempts at environmental regulation have been mandates for technological bandages that didn’t always foster innovation. Th ough some accomplished the desired goals, the approaches were oft en costly and ineffi -cient. Th e next generation of actions tak-en by government in concert with NGOs and industry needs to be far more about innovation and thoughtful design.

Green chemistry uses the same tal-ents, creativity, and expertise as tradi-tional chemistry and engineering but from a new perspective. Th e research I do in my current position at Yale is focused on achieving increased understanding of the molecular basis of sustainability so

that chemists—molecular architects—can learn to design substances to have these critical properties. Th e green chemistry imperative says that because we now un-derstand the molecular basis of hazard, we have an obligation to design molecules so they don’t cause harm to humans or the environment. Unfortunately, human and institutional inertia can be obstacles to living by the imperative. For instance, students are intensely eager to learn about and apply the principles of green chemis-try but may not have access to instruction until graduate school. We can do a better job of showing students that science and technology off er a path for those who want to change the world.

Th ere is a real understanding that green chemistry is the way people want to go, but we need to fi gure out how to facili-tate the necessary shift in our molecular infrastructure. We are currently getting tremendous performance from chemi-cals, but at a great cost. Th e only way to address the overwhelming challenges we face is to address them at the most fun-

damental level. Th is means considering feedstocks and the way they are manu-factured, and then biodegradability at the end of the product life cycle. I hope that my work will highlight the power and po-tential molecular scientists have to help the world even more dramatically than we thought.

Abigail Jeff ries is a freelance health and science reporter based in Tolland, CT.

For a report on Paul Anastas’s presentation at the May 2007 NYAS meeting, Green Chemistry: Its Role in Building a Sustainable World, go to www.nyas.org/greenchem.

To view the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry visit: www.epa.gov/greenchemistry/pubs/principles.html.

on the web

PHOTO: HEINZ AWARDS PHOTO / JIM HARRISON

Th e Academy’s upcoming symposium “Th e Two Cultures in the 21st Century” considers a now 50-year-old lament that a divide between the sciences and the humanities impedes social progress. Here, two of the symposium’s organizers, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum put C.P. Snow’s famous University of Cambridge Rede Lecture into context.

TheCultureCrosser

14 www.nyas.org

Essay

Raffaello Sanzio, The School of Athens, 1511

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 15

BORN IN 1905 IN LEICESTER, CHARLES PERCY SNOW grew up in a family that barely clung to the British middle class. His father taught piano lessons and clerked in a shoe factory. Th e family home didn’t even have a real bathroom. But Snow would pull himself up through education: A prestigious science scholar-ship took him to Cambridge and gave him the opportunity to study physics at the famed Cavendish Laboratory alongside Ernest Ruth-erford, who pioneered our understanding of the atomic nucleus.

Soon Snow launched what would become a highly success-ful career as a novelist, and then began to serve Her Majesty’s government in a variety of science-related capacities. By 1959 he had already become Sir Charles and was en route to Lord Snow. Soon to leave government service, he began to punditize and pronounce in nonfi ction format—to say what he really thought.

And so late in the day on May 7, 1959, Snow rose to a Cam-bridge lectern to deliver the yearly Rede lecture, a centuries-old aff air, and an invitation to pontifi cate for someone deemed to have earned it. He was 53 years old and, as a contemporary put it, “a kindly looking, avuncular fi gure, who beams at the world out of a round face through round glasses in a way which in-spires a belief in man’s better nature and the benevolence of the universe.” Snow had spent his life up to that point moving among two separate and atomized groups of very smart people: literary intellectuals on the one hand, and scientists on the other. Now he seized the occasion to address a problem that had been “on my mind for some time…a problem I could not avoid just because of the circumstances of my life…By training I was a scientist: by vocation I was a writer.”

Th is pedigree gave Snow a natural credibility as he went on to describe a disturbing “gulf of mutual incomprehension” be-tween these two intellectual groups. Soon he illustrated the point with a canonical example:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with con-siderable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been pro-voked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Th ermodynamics. Th e response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientifi c equiva-lent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

Th is tends to be how we think of Snow today: A man at a cocktail party, trying to broker a peace between warring tribes of eggheads. It’s also how we tend to think about the “two cultures”: A divide between people who do equations, and people who do Shakespeare.

Such interpretations aren’t wrong, they’re merely simplistic. Th ey don’t help us understand why Snow would later express the wish that he had titled his lecture “Th e Rich and the Poor,” and suggest many had missed its central point. Snow cared a great deal about breakdowns between scientists and writers, but the

reasons he cared are what ought to most concern us, because they still resonate across the 50-year remove that separates us from Snow’s immediate circumstances. Above all, Snow feared a world in which science could grow divorced from politics and culture. Science, he recognized, was becoming too powerful and too important; a society living disconnected from it couldn’t be healthy. You had cause to worry about that society’s future—about its handling of the future.

For this lament about two estranged cultures came from a man who had not only studied physics and written novels, but who had spent much of his life, including the terrifying period of World War II, working to ensure that the British government re-ceived the best scientifi c advice possible. Th at included the secret wartime recruitment of physicists and other scientists to work on weapons and defenses, activities which put Snow high up on the Gestapo’s Black List. So, no: Snow’s words weren’t merely about communication breakdowns between humanists and scientists. Th ey were considerably more ambitious than that—and consid-erably more urgent, and poignant, and pained.

It helps to think of Snow as an early theorist on a critical modern problem: How can we best translate highly complex information, stored in the minds of oft en eccentric (if well-meaning) scientists, into the process of political decision-making at all levels and in all aspects of government, from military to medical? At best that’s a diffi cult quandary; there are many ways in which the translation can go wrong, and few in which it can go right. Yet World War II had demonstrated beyond question that the nations that best marshal their scientifi c resources have the best chance of survival and success, making sound science policy an essential component of modern, advanced democracies.

Th e oft -told story of the atomic bomb, in which a letter from none other than Albert Einstein helped alert President Roosevelt to the danger, makes this point most profoundly. But in a lec-ture delivered at Harvard little more than a year aft er his “Two Cultures” address and entitled “Science and Government,” Snow illustrated the same dilemma through the example of radar. He argued that if a small group of British government science ad-visers, operating in conditions of high wartime secrecy, had not spearheaded the development and deployment of this technol-ogy in close conjunction with the Air Ministry, the pivotal 1940 Battle of Britain—fought in the skies over his nation—would have gone very diff erently. And Snow went further, identifying a bad guy in the story: Winston Churchill’s science adviser and ally F.A. Lindemann, who Snow described as having succumbed to the “euphoria of gadgets.” Rather than recognizing radar as the only hope to bolster British air defenses, Lindemann favored the fantastical idea of dropping parachute bombs and mines in front of enemy aircraft , and tried (unsuccessfully) to derail the other, pro-radar science advisers. Churchill’s rise to power was an extremely good thing for Britain and the world, but as Snow noted, it’s also fortunate that the radar decision came about be-fore Churchill could empower Lindemann as his science czar.

So no wonder Snow opposed any force that might blunt the benefi cial infl uence of science upon high-level decision-making.

16 www.nyas.org

Cover StoryEssay

Th at force might be a “solitary scientifi c overlord”—Snow’s term for Lindemann—or it might be something more nebulous and diff use, such as an overarching culture that disregards science on anything but the most superfi cial of levels, and so fails to com-prehend how the advancement of knowledge and the progress of technology simultaneously threaten us and yet also off er great hope.

Such a culture is what Snow detected in Great Britain in 1959; such a culture is also, to a great extent, what we fi nd in the United States today—albeit for very diff erent reasons.

WITH THIS BACKGROUND IN PLACE, WE CAN BEGIN to understand and translate one of the more seemingly antiquated parts of Snow’s lecture: His particular beef with literary intellec-tuals, who come in for by far the greatest thrashing in the speech. Nowadays, when the profession of academic literary criticism is “losing its will to live” (as one Yale English prof recently put it), it’s hard to imagine a period when literary intellects virtually ran things. Yet that is what Snow claimed to observe around him, and what he was reacting to.

It’s not that bookworms were directly controlling the British government. But Snow felt that his country’s “traditional culture” strongly privileged training in literature and the classics, rather than in the sciences; the assumptions of this traditional culture then greatly infl uenced society and its institutions. As a conse-quence, much of the British intelligentsia failed to comprehend science and seemed to abhor its extension in the form of indus-trialization, technological advancement, and economic growth. For Snow, such an attitude was wrong-headed: Technological ad-vancement held great hope for improving the health and welfare of the poor people of the world.

In a nod toward even-handedness, Snow delineated the faults of both intellectual groups treated in his lecture. But any-one could see he did not regard those faults as entirely equal. His scientists come off as can-do men of great sympathy and opti-

mism, albeit “self-impoverished” because of their inability to see the relevance of literature to their lives. But as for the other camp, the literati who fail to comprehend science, but enjoy sneering at it? “Th ey are impoverished too—perhaps more seriously, be-cause they are vainer about it.” Snow even observed that while scientists have “the future in their bones,” literary types respond “by wishing the future did not exist.” Th ey were, in Snow’s words, “natural Luddites.” Such a quality did not recommend itself at a time when science had begun to transform the world far more rapidly than ever before.

To the “two cultures” problem, Snow saw just one solution. England had the most specialized educational system in the world—one that separated students with scientifi c talent from those with humanistic leanings at an early age, and then fun-neled them in diff erent directions—and for Snow it simply had to change. Otherwise, his country would remain ill-equipped to tackle the leading political problems of the day, especially the gap between the industrialized and developing world—an issue Snow thought the scientists understood best, and could best ad-dress by working to spread the benefi ts of technology abroad. Or as he put it:

For the sake of the intellectual life, for the sake of this country’s special danger, for the sake of the western society living precariously rich among the poor, for the sake of the poor who needn’t be poor if there is in-telligence in the world, it is obligatory for us and the Americans and the whole West to look at our education with fresh eyes.

Seen through an adequate lens, then, Snow’s “Two Cultures” lecture, his “Science and Government” speech, and in fact all of his other major addresses reduce to the same point: Let’s align our intellectual resources so science can achieve its full world-changing potential. Let’s not let anything get in the way of the translation of scientifi c knowledge into social relevance and ac-tion—not petty rivalries and egos, not scientifi c overlords and their pet theories and gadgets, and not disciplinary divides or cultural disconnects. Because it’s simply too important.

Today, Snow’s point is more poignant than ever. Innovative scientifi c and technological solutions are the key to meet the 21st century’s economic, environmental, public health, and security challenges that transcend political borders. Just 50 years ago, Snow probably could not have foreseen global threats such as cli-mate change, bird fl u, or bioterrorism. But his vision of the need to unify the disparate intellectual camps in order to achieve the world-changing potential of science was prescient.

Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist and the au-thor of Th e Republican War on Science. Sheril Kirshenbaum is a marine biologist and author at Duke University. Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s forthcoming book, Unscientifi c America: How Sci-entifi c Illiteracy Th reatens Our Future, will be published in the summer of 2009.

The Two Cultures in the 21st CenturyOn May 9, 2009 visionaries, scientists, authors, and the media will join together to explore the persistence of the “two cultures” gap and how it can be overcome.

Don’t miss this unique and important event, featuring keynote addresses by Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson, former Congressman John Porter, and Segway inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen.

Register now at www.nyas.org/twocultures.

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 17

IT’S NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT APPLAUSE RANG out in the halls of science on January 20 when President Barack Obama pledged during his inaugural ad-dress to “restore science to its rightful place.”

“If you heard a faint cheer about 30 rows back when he said those words, that was me,” says physicist and Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ). Scientists in laboratories across the country were likewise delighted by the statement, as were New York Acad-emy of Sciences staff ers who gathered in a conference room to watch the new President sworn into offi ce.

President Obama’s pledge was consistent with his appointments, announced a month earlier, of several distinguished career scientists, including two Nobel Laureates and three NYAS members, to the top government science posts. And in his fi rst two months in offi ce, he took several more steps toward upholding it.

In February, the President signed off on an unprecedented $24 billion in new funding for science and technology re-search and development, including more than $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $3 billion for the National Science Foundation, as part of the Ameri-can Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Days later, in his fi rst address to Congress, the President acknowledged the importance of science to an economic recovery, say-ing that the solutions to America’s reces-sion reside “in our laboratories and our universities.”

In March, he made good on campaign promises to reverse the Bush administra-tion’s restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research by directing the NIH to develop new rules within four months. And when Congress, days later, con-

Cover Story

As President Obama takes steps to “restore science to its rightful

place,” Washington insiders and Academy

members weigh in on his challenges and

priorities.

By Adrienne J. Burke

Stimulus Sciencefor

John HOLDREN, Assistant to the President for Science & Technology; Director, White House Offi ce of Science & Technology Policy; Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advi-sors on Science and Technology

Former Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Di-rector, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Spoke on climate change at the New York Academy of Sciences on February 27, 2007. See eBriefi ng at www.nyas.org/climate.

18 www.nyas.org

fi rmed Harvard physicist John Holdren as Presidential Science Adviser and Director of the White House Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy, Obama had already assigned him the task of developing “a strategy for restoring scientifi c integrity to govern-ment decision making.”

FORCED CONVERSATIONTh ough it remains to be seen if the federal support for science will be sustained beyond the Administration’s jobs-creation pro-gram, to many, the new President’s announcements mark a re-

freshing departure from eight years of neglect and even rejection of sound science on critical issues by White House. Some sci-entists and sci-ence advocates see Obama’s recent moves as their pay-off for months of

hard work aimed at bringing the country’s science crisis to his attention before he took offi ce, or while he was still on the cam-paign trail.

Shawn Otto, a Minnesota-based screenwriter with a bach-elor’s degree in physics and a passion for science policy, began during the November 2007 Hollywood writers’ strike to advo-cate for discussion of the scientifi c issues among the contend-ers for the US presidency. With the help of fi ve other volunteers, Otto established ScienceDebate 2008 with a website and a peti-tion calling for a presidential science policy debate. Th e move-ment gained momentum as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academies, and Council on Competitiveness became ScienceDebate cosponsors and 38,000 scientists, engineers, and other concerned citizens, including the presidents of more than 100 universities, signed the petition.

Although no debate took place, ScienceDebate did succeed in get-ting the Obama and McCain cam-paigns to provide written answers to 14 science policy questions on topics including climate change, energy, sci-

ence education, biosecurity, stem cells, genetics research, and US competitiveness. Says Otto, “It’s the fi rst time we are aware that the endorsed candidates for president have laid out their science policies in advance of the election.”

Th e Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists also urged the president to take up the cause of science. With input

from thousands of scientists, current and former government science advisors, congressional aides, reporters, and public inter-est organizations, in January the UCS submitted a set of detailed recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress for restoring scientifi c integrity to federal policymaking. UCS senior scientist Francesca Grifo saw the Scientifi c Integrity Presidential Memorandum that Obama issued in March as “proof that the ad-ministration had heard the cry” of almost 15,000 scientists who had signed a statement denouncing the politicization of science.

Other groups including the National Academies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars issued re-ports urging the new president to quickly appoint a nationally respected scientist to the position of Presidential Science Advis-er. John Edward Porter, a former Republican congressman from Illinois and chair of the committee that wrote the National Acad-emies’ report, says, “Th e Bush administration largely ignored science and wouldn’t provide ongoing funding increases even at the level of infl ation. I believe [the new] president understands the importance of science.” He and others are gratifi ed by the early appointment of Holdren.

SCIENCE AS JOBS PROGRAMObservers are also pleased to see science being recognized as a crucial contributor to economic growth—in Obama’s speeches and especially in the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Columbia University Professor and NYAS President’s Council member Eric Kandel led 49 Nobel Laureates and several other top American scientists in penning a January 9, 2009, letter to the then Presi-dent-elect urging him to “consider an immediate increase in funding for scientifi c research” as part of the economic stimulus package. “Increased science funding is an ideal stimulus: it cre-ates good jobs across the economy; there is large pent-up need so that money can be spent immediately; and it represents an investment in the infrastructure of scientifi c research and higher education that are vital to the future,” Kandel and his colleagues wrote in the open letter published as an op-ed in the New York Daily News and the Financial Times in January.

Th e massive funding for science and technology included in the fi nal bill is “an acknowledgement of the importance of sci-ence to economic health,” says Kandel.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he is “very much in favor of a science-intensive approach to how we think about the future of the country.” Over the next 25 years, he warns, “waves of new knowledge will aff ect our economy, the environ-ment, health, national security.” Although he considers the bulk of the $787 billion Recovery Act to be “a remarkable waste,” Gin-grich says he is pleased with how it treats science.

“Most scientists have been reluctant to present science as a jobs program because it cheapens it,” says Congressman Holt. “But if you get an NIH or NSF grant, that money goes to hire $50,000-a-year lab techs and electricians who will wire the labs. Science funding does indeed make jobs.” In a speech on the House fl oor in February, Holt urged colleagues to consider that for every $1 billion invested in science, 20,000 US jobs are created.

Cover Story

Harold VARMUS, Co-Chair, President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology

President, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; former Director of the National Institutes of Health

Winner 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Seated on NYAS President’s Council, Life member of NYAS since 2001

Eric LANDER, Co-Chair, President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology

Founding Director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Named by Time Magazine one of 100 most infl uential people of our time for work on the Human Genome Project

NYAS member since 1998

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 19

SLOW LEARNERSNevertheless, many politicians still don’t buy into the importance of investing in science as economic stimulus. Congressman Ver-non Ehlers (R-MI), an atomic physicist who sits on the House Science & Technology Committee, says, “I can’t say that the mood toward science in Congress has changed because of the current recession. Very few individuals relate science with stimulus.”

Holt concurs. At the recent annual meeting of the AAAS in Chicago he told an audience, “Most members of Congress avoid science at all costs.”

“It’s really amazing,” says Kandel. “Th e whole Internet era has exploded and every aspect of industry came out of a few technical institutes throughout the country, yet science has been seen as the underpinning of the intellectual enterprise but not the economic enterprise.”

Truth be told, even Obama and his team of economic advisors had to be coached to adopt their science-friendly point of view. ScienceDebate CEO Otto says science was simply not on either Obama or McCain’s campaign agenda before the grass roots orga-nization gained critical mass. “I think Obama came to understand through our eff orts and the eff orts of others during the campaign how passionately people felt that science had been abandoned by the previous administration and substituted with ideology.”

Still, Holt told Th e New York Times in January that the Presi-dent’s economic advisors “don’t have a deep appreciation of the role of research and development as a short-term, mid-term, and long-term economic engine.” Holt suggested that the billions contained in the stimulus package for energy research are not enough.

SCIENCE IS STIMULATEDFor now, the money is beginning to fl ow back into the country’s labs. Kandel says the eff ect of the stimulus bill has been immedi-ate: “I’m speaking to a project offi cer now to get about $100,000. Everybody and his uncle is doing this, and within four to eight weeks I will be able to create some jobs.”

From agriculture, energy, and IT to oceans, medicine, and space, research of all kinds will indeed benefi t from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Th e bill contains atleast $24 billion for sci-ence and technology research and development (see table p. 21).

NSF Director Arden Bement announced in March that his organization is working on a plan for quickly disbursing the $3 billion it was awarded. Bement said NSF would award the major-ity of the $2 billion available for “Research and Related Activi-ties” before September 30 to proposals that were already under review or had been declined since October 2008.

Th e NIH, awarded more than $10 billion to be allocated by September 2010, will direct $1 billion to institutions seeking to construct, renovate, or repair biomedical or behavioral research facilities; about $100 million to Biomedical Research Core Cen-ters for multidisciplinary research; and another $200 million for “Research and Research Infrastructure Grand Opportunities.” Acting Director Raynard Kingston told Th e New York Times in February that the agency would also quickly act to fund some of the 14,000 applications with scientifi c merit that have been turned down lately due to insuffi cient funds.

Restoring Science to Its Rightful Place

Number of US jobs created with each $1 billion invested in science:

20,0001

Amount of stimulus package funding to go to build-up of centers for shared biomedical resources:

$100 million2

Amount to be channeled to GO Grants—research and research infrastructure “grand opportunities”:

$200 million3

Amount provided for research into clean fossil fuels, advanced batteries, and renewable energy:

$8.4 billion4

Amount to be used for climate change research:

$400 million5

Of 3,400 scientists at nine federal agencies polled in the last three years, percent reporting they feared retaliation for openly discussing their respective agencies’ mission and work:

41%6

Percent of EPA scientists who said in a 2007 survey that they personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the previous fi ve years:

60%7

Amount of new business activity generated by each $1 billion of NIH research grant funding:

$2.21 billion8

Of 535 members of 111th Congress, number who are trained scientists or engineers:

119

Percent of US GDP growth since 1959 attributed to development and adoption of new technologies:

50%10

Sources: 1 Information Technology & Innovation Foundation; 2,3 NIH; 4 Scientifi c American; 5,8,9,10 House Committee on Science & Technology; 6,7 Union of Concerned Scientists

The Stats

Th e legislation also includes $1 billion in funding for NASA, of which $400 million will go for science missions; more than $800 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration; $1.6 billion for physical sciences research funded through the Department of Energy Offi ce of Science; and an-other $400 million for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy to support high-risk, high-payoff research into energy sources and energy effi ciency in collaboration with private industry and uni-versities. Energy Secretary and Academy member Steven Chu announced that nearly $1.2 billion would go “for major con-struction, laboratory infrastructure, and research eff orts spon-sored across the nation by the DOE Offi ce of Science.”

Steven CHU, Secretary of Energy

Former Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Winner 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics

NYAS member since 2006

20 www.nyas.org

©Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C. 2009. An equal opportunity employer. SMALL-COMPANY ENVIRONMENT/BIG-COMPANY IMPACT is a registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson.Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C. is a member of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

find morecareers.jnj.com

Clinical Research PhysicianScientists/CNS Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C., amember of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, is proactivelyseeking qualified candidates for future Clinical Research PhysicianScientists/CNS positions, to be located in Titusville, NJ.

The MD candidate will be a responsible member of a clinical teamdedicated to the development and execution of medical strategies andthe clinical and operational implementation of a complex compoundprogram. The candidate will provide active medical and scientificcontributions to a cross-functional clinical team developing a newmolecular entity currently being studied for central nervous systemapplications. Research and mentoring opportunities will be providedby recognized leaders in the CNS area.

To learn more about an opportunity shown above, visit careers.jnj.comand enter the requisition number in the QuickConnect menu. There youcan express interest in specific opportunities, establish a career profile,and select to be notified about future opportunities.

REQUISITION NUMBER: 0900352

At Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C.we celebrate and promote small-company environments that support theneeds of individuals and families. At the same time, as a member of theJohnson & Johnson Family of Companies, we enjoy the resources andimpact of a global health care leader.

Discover the small-company environment behind the big-company impact

of the Johnson & Johnson Companies

Who says you have to choose?

BIG-COMPANYIMPACT

BREADTH

OPPORTUNITIES

GLOBAL REACH

SMALL-COMPANYENVIRONMENT

AGILITY

FOCUS

INNOVATION

RESTORING TO RIGHTFUL PLACE Despite the bounty, scientists and sup-porters warn that a stimulus package and a presidential memo alone won’t restore science to its “rightful place.”

Many worry that the jobs-cre-

ation funding, much of which must be distributed within two years, will not be sustained. “You can’t support science for two years,” says Kandel. “Science goes on in perpetuity. To solve problems of health and environment, science has to be support-ed long-term. Obama is aware of this, but he has made no state-ment about how long [this level of funding] will last.”

“I’m not being critical of the stimulus package, but it’s not clear that things in it will ever see another dime,” says Lewis Shepherd, chief technology offi cer of the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments and a former senior

technology offi cer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. “It’s not as easy as telling Los Alamos National Laboratory, ‘we’re going to give you a 60 percent budget increase for one year only.’ Th at’s just not the way science works.”

Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN), chair of the House Committee on Science & Technology, says it’s legitimate to be concerned that the boost for science will be a fl ash in the pan. “With diffi cult economic times you could see how that could happen,” says Gordon. “But when the President called me before his swearing in he said he was a science guy, and when Speaker Pelosi talks to any group about our future and our competitive-ness she says there are four things we have to do and that’s ‘sci-ence, science, science, and science’.”

BRING BACK THE OTAOne way some are suggesting that Congress can be kept apprised of the importance of science funding would be to re-establish the Offi ce of Technology Assessment, the congressional scientifi c advisory body that was shut down by the 1995 “Contract with America.” With a $22 million annual budget and a staff of 143, the offi ce was known for generating high-level reports on bleed-ing-edge science and technology issues. Shepherd says, “Th ere’s been a gaping void for 15 years since OTA was disestablished. I

Cover Story

Jane LUBCHENCO, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Former Professor of Marine Ecology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology, Oregon State University

Former President AAAS

Winner 2002 Heinz Award in the Environ-ment, MacArthur Fellow, 2003 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 21

The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act: Science & Technology Research Funding

$1,300,000,000$8,200,000,000

$500,000,000

$400,000,000$10,400,000,000

$220,000,000

$20,000,000$360,000,000$600,000,000

$400,000,000$150,000,000$400,000,000

$50,000,000$1,000,000,000

$2,500,000,000$400,000,000$100,000,000

$3,000,000,000

$300,000,000

$2,000,000,000$3,400,000,000$5,400,000,000

$1,600,000,000$400,000,000

$2,000,000,000

$200,000,000

$140,000,000

$350,000,000$4,350,000,000

$650,000,000$5,350,000,000

$23,870,000,000

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH» National Center for Research Resources» Offi ce of the Director» Buildings and Facilities» NIH / Transfer from Agency for

Healthcare Research & QualityAgency Totals

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY» Scientifi c and Technical Research and

Services (Research)» Transfer from Health Information

Technology Initiative» Construction of Research Facilities

Agency Totals

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION» Science» Aeronautics» Exploration» Cross-Agency Support (Construction)

Agency Totals NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION» Research and Related Activities» Major Equipment & Facilities Construction» Education and Human Resources

Agency Totals RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST AND EVALUATION, DEFENSE-WIDE » Rapid Technology Transition and

Demonstration of Energy Effi ciency Technologies

DOE / ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY» Advanced Battery Manufacturing» Low Carbon Power

Agency Totals DOE / OFFICE OF SCIENCE » Science» ARPA-E

Agency Totals DOD RESEARCH PROGRAMS » R & D US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY» Surveys, Investigations, and Research

NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION» Broadband Mapping» Advanced Broadband Program» DTV Coupons

Agency Totals

S&T RESEARCH TOTAL

Source: ScienceDebate.org. Table represents analysis by ScienceDebate 2008 of fi nal ARRA. “Agency totals” do not refl ect total budget by agency, but the amount of stimu-lus spending listed in this analysis of the fi nal bill. Amounts are in addition to existing agency budgets. Th e bill contains additional S&T funds not listed above, particularly in DOE and HHS, but generally not research- or R&D support-related.

suspect, as others do, that much of the last decade’s decline in R&D and scientifi c programs have occurred at a time when Con-gress disarmed itself from getting advice.”

Speaking at the AAAS meeting, Holt said, “When OTA was disbanded, Congress gave itself a lobotomy. Our national poli-cies have suff ered ever since. Th e issues have grown more com-plex, but our tools to evaluate and understand them have not.” Holt intends to submit a formal request for funding and to argue the case for reopening the OTA before the full Appropriations Committee in May.

PAY ATTENTION TO PCASTHow else to ensure that scientists and scientifi c research get the respect they need from government to contribute to a renewed economy of innovation? Th e President should consult frequently with Presidential Science Adviser Holdren and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (P-CAST), say many observers.

Gingrich notes that “presidential advisers matter as much as presidents listen to them.” P-CAST has been truly infl uential only three times in history, he says: “When it was created un-der Eisenhower, when it was a part of the Apollo program under Kennedy, and when the science adviser was indispensable under Reagan in preparing a Strategic Defense Initiative.”

But most agree that the scientists Obama selected to co-chair P-CAST—Nobel Laureate and former NIH director Harold Varmus and Broad Institute Director Eric Lander (both NYAS members)—are not the types to go unheard. Further, Porter says he is optimistic that Holdren will not be “ignored” the way he says President Bush’s science adviser John Marburger was. “I hope that Holdren is put at the table for cabinet meetings when-ever a matter involving science comes up, that the president will go to him regularly for science advice.”

Th ere’s an urgency for more scientists to involve themselves in policymaking, he says. “In the US, scientists have been aloof from the political process. We need them in policymaking posi-tions where they’re part of the decision-making process.”

Porter suggests that scientists call up the campaign of their favorite candidate and ask to join their science advisory com-mittee. “Most of them will say, ‘We don’t have one,’” says Porter. “So, say, ‘OK, I will start one for you!’ Campaigns aren’t in the business of refusing people who want to work for them. We have scientists all across the country who could step up.”

Rush Holt says this is the perfect climate for scientists to get involved. “Th e essence of science is to ask questions so they can be answered empirically and verifi ably, always with the understand-ing that you may be proven wrong,” he says. “Th at’s an essential underpinning of science. Obama seems to operate that way.”

Otto, the ScienceDebate CEO, is cautiously optimistic. “We don’t think with one election the world has changed. In order for the president to get some of his aggressive initiatives through, he’s going to need the support of Congress and they of the American people. So this discussion of science’s role in America is going to have to be ongoing.”

ON FEBRUARY 25, THE ACADEMY HOSTED A SCREEN-ing of the new fi lm, Naturally Obsessed: Th e Making of a Scientist (see www.naturallyobsessed.com). Th e hour-long documentary, directed and produced by past NYAS President Richard Rifk ind and his wife Carole, an author and fi lmmaker, takes viewers in-side the protein crystallography laboratory of Larry Shapiro at Columbia University and follows the trials and triumphs of three PhD candidates there. Aft er the screening, broadcast journalist Garrick Utley moderated a conversation among Academy mem-bers James Watson, Toni Hoover, and Andrey Pisarev to address the question “What does it take to produce the scientists we need to keep America competititve?”

Watson is a molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate known for solving the structure of DNA with Frances Crick. He is chan-cellor emeritus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and has au-thored several books, most recently Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science.

Toni Hoover is Senior Vice President Global Research & Development, and Director of the Groton/New London Labo-ratories of Pfi zer. She received her BA, MA, and PhD degrees in psychology from Harvard University where she trained in exper-imental psychopathology and neuropsychological assessment.

Andrey Pisarev is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

Utley’s 40-year journalism career has included posts as news anchor for NBC, ABC, and CNN. What follows is an abridged transcript of their conversation.

GARRICK UTLEY: We want to talk about science, about what’s happening or what will be happening to the pipeline. Th e qual-ity, the quantity of young scientists. How are we going to develop

them, nurture them? Where are they going to be coming from? Where is the support for them going to be coming from?

What are you seeing, from your various perspectives, in the younger generation of scientists that are coming through the pipeline, coming into the fi eld? Is this fi lm an accurate refl ection of what you are seeing? And what does that mean for the future of the scientifi c community? JAMES WATSON: I thought it was a very good fi lm. Today, the main question is whether you can get a job aft er [you earn your PhD] and, always my worry was, was I bright enough? Would I be able to really solve a problem? I worried whether I would ever have an idea. Th is was my chief concern, and then I was with people who said that if you don’t do anything by 25, your career is over. I was 20, so I had about fi ve years, but crystallography is a pretty scary fi eld because sometimes you just don’t get crystals. It’s very clear when you’ve got a result. In many fi elds you can sort of fudge it, but you can’t fudge this one.

GU: When you look at the young scientists coming today, do you see anything diff erent?JW: My own impression is they are not as bright because the problems are much harder. People are really trying to do much more diffi cult things and to do them in the face of this unknown competition. When I was there you knew all your competition. Now someone you’ve never heard of could publish a paper. And, you know, there are 500 graduate students in Beijing solving crys-tal structures. People are scared for diff erent reasons now than we were. We were scared about whether we would rank with the great people. Now it’s much more about “can I get a job?” TONI HOOVER: In our laboratories we go from individuals who are late baby boomers all the way to millennials, so it is a laboratory of various types of scientists in how they do business,

Our Future Scientists

Panel Discussion

22 www.nyas.org

A Nobel Laureate, a Blavatnik Award winner, and a major industry scientist chat about what it will take to keep the US science talent pipeline pumping out quality, competitive professionals.

Andrey Pisarev, James Watson, Toni Hoover, and Garrick Utley

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 23

PHOTOS: MICHAEL IAN

how they engage in scientifi c pursuits, and what types of ques-tions are they asking. I am extremely hopeful about the types of solutions that we are going to be able to come up with through the constant cross-fertilization of the more experienced scien-tists with the young scientists. I see them asking diff erent types of questions, and working in diff erent ways, with diff erent meth-ods that increase the diversity of the underlying scientifi c pur-suits that we’re embarking upon.

I almost jumped out of my chair last night as I was watch-ing President Obama’s fi rst address to Congress, because about three minutes into his address, he said, “Th e solutions reside in our laboratories and in our universities.” And he was speaking to the grave challenges that we face, not only in our country but around the world in that the source of those solutions is going to be in science.

And so I continue to be extremely hopeful about our ability to continue to dream big dreams because of the fact that we have the capabilities. We have the greatest educational institutions in the world that can produce the best scientists in the world and we also have a way to link with science all over the world. So we are doing science in a very diff erent type of way. Science has become a very global kind of pursuit. I believe that our scientists today, all over the world, are capable of climbing new heights because of the way that we continue to evolve the way that we embark upon our scientifi c pursuits.

GU: I’d like to come back to the title of the fi lm tonight, “Natu-rally Obsessed.” In any fi eld you have to have a certain obsession with what you are doing. Do you see any weakening of this ob-session in science? Is the supply going to be there of quality sci-entists? With the choices in the world or the concern over jobs, as Dr. Watson was saying, is there something changing here or

are you confi dent the human supply is going to be there?TH: I would submit to you that there are certain types of scien-tists and scientifi c competencies that we probably need more of now, and potentially will in the future. I’m not sure if we’ve identi-fi ed a way to say, okay, this is where we are going in the future and so we are going to need these types of skill sets and these types of people answering these types of questions.

In the bio-pharmaceutical industry, where we rely upon a great deal of science, collaborations externally as well as within our own walls, you might not be able to fi nd the scientifi c talent for a specifi c area. However, what we need to do more of is help to grow the type of scientifi c talent that we think is required, and that starts very early on. You have to nurture that type of passion very early on. Th at passion that you saw in Rob didn’t just start when he was on that ship in the Navy. I would imagine it started very early on and it had to be nurtured. What are we doing to help build that infrastructure, that foundation where the passion for science is embedded in a much larger pool of students?

GU: Andre, you are of a slightly younger generation, maybe a few years closer to the kind of students we saw in the fi lm to-night. What are you seeing in the talent pool that you are work-ing with or in the students coming through? ANDREY PISAREV: What do I think about my generation of young scientists? I think that there is enough supply of good educated young scientists, and you will fi nd a lot of smart peo-ple leave academic science to go to business. Science is under-fi nanced. I am trying to fi nd my own position right now and I have not succeeded yet. I have been selected as one of the best young scientists in the tri-state area, so, what can I say about other people? Th ere are a lot of smart people around!

GU: Let’s come back and pick up on something that Dr. Watson mentioned: the globalization impact. In the scientifi c communi-ty and workforce, whether it is 10,000 scientists in China study-ing crystals or what have you, what is going to be the impact of this? What is the impact on the sheer quantity as well as quality of scientifi c research? And what is the impact on how informa-tion is being shared? TH: We are not building laboratories. We are working much more virtually and linking up with research institutions and leasing laboratory space, for example, in Shanghai. We have laboratories in Sandwich, UK, outside of London, and then we have our major R&D laboratory in Groton/New London, Con-necticut. And we have major laboratories in St. Louis and in La Jolla, California. But we are doing a lot more collaboration with academic institutions and not building a lot of new laboratories.

We are a global organization so we go where the science is. We continue to go aft er the best talent wherever they are in the world, and when we have to, we bring them to our research cen-ters in the US and UK or wherever. I don’t know specifi cally what percentage of our researchers are non-US, because we consider ourselves a global organization and we are in a war for talent with our competitors.

24 www.nyas.org

GU: What do you think the Obama administration needs to do to maintain this competitive advantage the United States has long enjoyed, as well as to continue to be the place where people come for training and hopefully stay on? How much of this is a function of money, funding? And how much of this is something in the culture or just the changing nature in the dynamics of the world we live in today? And why don’t we start with you Andre. When you talk to the people who are training in the US, and then going back to their home countries, would money solve it?AP: I’m sure the money is one thing. But not only the money. I can share with you the story of my country. In the time of the So-viet Union, scientists lived as the most prestigious professionals in the country. Th ey had modern salaries. Th ey had very high, very great respect from society. Th ey had support from government and many advantages. And that really stimulates you to work.

Th e situation in Russia right now [is that] if you are a scien-tist, people laugh at you because you have a very, very low salary. You cannot support your family. You struggle with your life. You cannot support your kids, your wife, your parents. You have all these obligations. You stop thinking about science at all.

GU: Toni, what do you see happening under the current admin-istration with the people that the President has brought in as his scientifi c advisors?TH: He obviously has a scientifi c advisory board, but I think the most important thing he is doing right now is talking about

the fact that science is at the core of solving many of the chal-lenges that we are facing. Also in his speech last night, [President Obama said] that he is “committing to the largest investment in research in history.” Well, we obviously have to wait to see how that manifests itself, but just the fact that he’s talking about it is encouraging.

You asked, is it a question of money or culture in terms of where we need to go? I think it’s a combination. Obviously we need to be supporting the scientifi c enterprise, the NIH. We also recognize that science with government support can partner with other organizations that can provide sources of funding. Th at will help to continue to provide possible revenue streams and oppor-tunities for funding research within the academic institutions.

But also, we have to create the sense of respect that Andre talked about in our culture, about the fact that it’s cool to be a scientist, and that this is a noble pursuit, and that you can have a huge impact on society. We have a generation of students grow-ing up in our society who are looking to have big impacts on society. And one way that you can have an impact on society is through science.

Panel Discussion

Listen to the Academy’s Science & the City podcast on Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist. Visit www.nyas.org/naturallyobsessed.

on the web

Throughout Dr. Anna Goldfeder’s 66-year research career, she was an active member of New York’s scientifi c community. Dr. Goldfeder’s pioneering discoveries in cancer cell growth and radiation treatment continued until she retired from the laboratory at the age of 91. Her commitment to NYAS was strong during her career, and she created a lasting legacy through a bequest to the Academy.

Learn how you can support the Academy in perpetuity through a will or living trust. Your donation will ensure that the Academy continues to support scientifi c advancement and future generations of scientists. We would be delighted to discuss opportunities to include the Academy in your estate planning.

For more information, please contact:

Kiryn Haslinger Director of DevelopmentThe New York Academy of Sciences7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich Street, 40th Floor New York, NY 10007-2157212.298.8673khaslinger@nyas.org

In Honor of the memory and generosity of

ANNA GOLDFEDER, PH.D.1898~1993

Distinguished biologist, teacher, longtime Academy member, and friend.

Her thoughtful bequest enabled development of plans for how the Academy’s home can better

serve members and the world.

We cherish her inspiration.

�

Leaving a Legacy for the Advancementof Science

Exclusive 50% NYAS member discount

Subscribe today for only $100www.nature.com/subscribe/NYAS

For the latest science that shapes your

21105-01 NYAS Advertv3.indd 1 9/2/09 15:34:36

26 www.nyas.org

Academy CalendarAprilTh ursday, Apr 16 • 1:00 PM - 3:00 PMApply the Principles and Methods of Quality Control to Your LifeJim Browne speaks at this meeting of the Lyceum Society, comprised of the Academy’s retired and semi-retired members. Lyceum meetings are brown-bag lunches and open to any Academy member. Lunch at 11:30 AM, lecture and discus-sion at 1:00 PM.

Th ursday, Apr 16 • 5:00 PM - 6:30 PMTexas Hold’em: Algorithmic TradingIan Domowitz of Investment Technology Group speaks at this meeting sponsored by Quantitative Finance, a PS&E program about the use of algo-rithms to optimize execution of trading strategies, which has surged in popularity in recent years. Th is meeting will feature experts discussing recent ad-vances in algorithmic trading. Reception to follow.

Th ursday, Apr 16 • 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM •NYU’s Woolworth BuildingLearning the Circuits that Run Life’s ProgramIn partnership with NYU’s School of Continuing & Professional Studies, and the Offi ce of the Dean of Sciences at NYU, Science & the City hosts a lecture by NYU systems biologist Richard Bonneau explor-ing the hidden secrets of the genome.

Monday, Apr 20 • 2:00 PM - 7:00 PMGenome Integrity Discussion GroupBrian Tsou, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; John Petrini, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Eric Greene, Columbia University; David Stern, Yale University; and Craig Bassing, University of Pennsylvania, present at this meeting of the Genome Integrity Discussion Group, which presents meetings featuring talks by graduate students, post-docs, or laboratory heads from the tri-state area with an emphasis on new and emerg-ing data. Reception to follow.

Wednesday, Apr 22 • 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM •CUNY Graduate CenterCitizens of the Most Probable State: The Science and Politics of Uncer-tainty in fi n-de-siècle ViennaDeborah R. Coen of Barnard College & Columbia University speaks at this meeting of the History & Philosophy of Science Section. Please RSVP for the reception following the lecture to jdauben@gc.cuny.edu.

Wednesday, Apr 22 • 6:00 PM - 8:00 PMZero Net Energy Buildings: Recom-mendations from the WBCSD ReportGuy Battle of Dcarbon8 and William Sisson of United Technologies speak with moderator Noel

Morrin of Skanska at the third of a four-part series sponsored by Green Buildings, a PS&E program, focused on achieving zero net energy in buildings. Hear about the recommendations from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development report on Energy Effi ciency in Buildings. Reception to follow.

Th ursday, Apr 23 • 4:00 PM - 5:30 PMSmart MaterialsEric Dufresne, Yale University; Steve Bitler, Landec Intelligent Materials; and Suresh Rajaraman, Air Products and Chemicals speak at this meeting of Soft Materials, a PS&E program. Recent advances in the understanding of material properties allow for better material design and manipulation. Th is meeting will highlight two prominent researchers in the fi eld, followed by a student poster session. Reception to follow.

Monday, Apr 27 • 8:00 AM - 5:00 PMThe Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Clinical Investigator SymposiumDistinguished awardees and alumni of the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award program speak about groundbreaking discoveries in translational cancer research, including a keynote by cancer research pioneer Robert A. Weinberg, of the White-head Institute and MIT, and a panel discussion “Moving from Discovery through Development – Th e Evolving Relationship between Academia and Industry.” Join us for this excellent opportunity to learn about the latest advances by the brightest young physician-scientists in cancer research.

Tuesday, Apr 28 • 1:00 PM - 5:00 PMProtein Kinases: Structure-Guided Drug DiscoveryTh is Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group meeting is held jointly with the American Chemical Society’s New York Section. X-ray crystallography and solution NMR spectroscopy are playing ever increasing roles in the drug discovery process. At this symposium, leading scientists from academe and the pharmaceutical/biotech industry will dis-cuss recent advances and future challenges of this burgeoning fi eld.

Wednesday, Apr 29 • 6:30 PM - 8:00 PMWhat is Music to Your Ears? The Science of HearingAt the fi nal event in Science & the City’s Science of the Five Senses Series, Daniel Levitin, psycholo-gist at McGill University and author of Th e World in Six Songs is joined by Grammy-winning singer songwriter Rosanne Cash in a discussion and per-formance to explain how the brain processes aural information and how our perception of sounds can inspire emotion. Reception and book signing to follow.

MayMonday, May 4 • 6:00 PM - 9:00 PMDefying and Justifying: Contesting Person-Making Concepts to Kill or Let LiveBrackette Williams, University of Arizona speaks at this meeting of the Academy’s Anthropology Section, sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Founda-tion. A dinner reception will precede the discussion at 6:00 PM.

Monday, May 4 • 7:00 PM - 8:30 PMNeurocinematics! WhereNeuroscience Meets FilmmakingJoin the NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies, the Offi ce of the Dean of Sciences at NYU, and Science & the City, as a panel of experts on the brain and cinema draw an interdisciplinary con-nection between fi lm and neuroscience. Reception to follow.

Saturday, May 9 • 8:00 AM - 6:30 PMThe Two Cultures in the 21st CenturyOn the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s famous Rede Lecture on the importance of bridging the sciences and humanities, this day-long sympo-sium brings together leading scholars, scientists, politicians, authors, and media representatives to explore the persistence of the Two Cultures gap and how it can be overcome. With keynote lectures by E.O. Wilson, Dean Kamen, and the Honorable John Edward Porter. Hosted by Science & the City, ScienceDebate2008, the Science Communication Consortium, and Discover Magazine.

Tuesday, May 12 • 9:00 AM - 5:00 PMRNA in Stress Response and LongevityTh e RNAi Discussion Group presents Frank Slack, Yale University; Ramanjulu Sunkar, Oklahoma State University; Anthony Leung, MIT; Evgeny Nudler, New York University; Irina Groisman, Center for Computational and Intergrative Biol-ogy speak at this forum for scientists engaged in research into the biology, biochemistry, and ap-plications of RNAi silencing to discuss advances in this exciting new fi eld and to promote inter-insti-tutional and interdisciplinary dialogue. Reception to follow.

Friday, May 15 - Saturday, May 16 • BeijingRegenerative MedicineWith the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Ministry of Health, the Academy brings together experts from academia and the pharmaceutical industry for an exciting 2-day event on regenerative medicine, a frontier fi eld in medical treatments. China, with a host of new national initiatives aimed at advancing regenerative medicine research, is an ideal location to host this international, interdisciplinary meeting.

Meetings & Conferences

The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine • Spring 2009 27

Friday, May 15 • 8:00 AM - 5:00 PMTherapeutics for Cognitive AgingHoward Fillit of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation moderates this symposium on the de-velopment of novel therapies for cognitive decline across the lifespan of humans, featuring speakers Paul Aisen, University of California, San Diego; Steven Ferris, New York University School of Medicine; Lenore J. Launer, National Institute on Aging; Victoria Luine, Hunter College; Timothy Salthouse, University of Virginia; Gary Small, University of California, Los Angeles.

Th ursday, May 21 • 1:00 PM - 3:00 PMIs Copernicus the Victim of a Bum Rap?John Snygg speaks at this meeting of the Lyceum Society, comprised of the Academy’s retired and semi-retired members. Lyceum meetings are brown-bag lunches and open to any Academy member. Lunch at 11:30 AM, lecture and discus-sion at 1:00 PM.

Th ursday, May 21 • 6:00 PM - 7:00 PMMathematics and Astronomy in India: An Evening in Honor of David PingreeTh e Academy’s History and Philosophy of Science Section hosts Kim Plofk er of Union College. Please RSVP for the reception following the lecture to jdauben@gc.cuny.edu.

Tuesday, May 26 • 9:00 AM - 5:00 PMExpanding Role of Angiogenesis in Cancer Therapeutics: The Folkman LegacyTh e Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group hosts this meeting jointly with the American Chemical Society’s New York Section. Clinical trials have indicated that anti-angiogenic therapy will be a mainstay of cancer treatment—a fourth arm with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Th e purpose of this symposium is to discuss new data that enables scientists to better utilize and identify angiogenic therapies for treating cancer.

JuneMonday, Jun 8 • 2:00 PM - 7:00 PMGenome Integrity Discussion GroupWith Steve Kowalczykowski, University of Califor-nia, Davis. Reception to follow.

Monday, Jun 15 • 6:30 PM - 9:30 PMNew York Area Drosophila Discussion GroupOrganized by Mary Baylies, Sloan-Kettering In-stitute; Laura Johnston, Columbia University; and Jennifer Zallen, Sloan-Kettering Institute. Recep-tion to follow.

Th ursday, Jun 18 • 1:00 PM - 3:00 PMFrom Age-ing to Sage-ing: Are we of any use to the young?Miriam Hecht speaks at this meeting of the Lyceum Society, comprised of the Academy’s retired and semi-retired members. Lyceum meetings are brown-bag lunches and open to any Academy member. Lunch at 11:30 AM, lecture and discus-sion at 1:00 PM.

Friday, Jun 19 • 8:00 AM - 7:00 PMCircadian Disruption and CancerA meeting bringing together established and young career cancer biologists, epidemiologists, geneti-cists, molecular biologists, oncologists and chrono-biologists to exchange information and determine the systemic, cellular and molecular mechanisms by which circadian disruption increases cancer incidence and cancer growth rate. Participants will discuss cutting-edge, novel scientifi c and clinical research on the complex relationship between cir-cadian rhythm disruption and cancer. Th e potential implications of this comorbidity for therapy and even for prevention will be also addressed.

BeyondWednesday, Sep 23 – Friday, Sep 25Cell Biology of Disease: Chromo-somes, Cancer and Stem CellsTh e Academy joins the Journal of Cell Biology to host this 2.5-day conference addressing recent advances in our understanding of disease pathol-ogy at the cellular and molecular level, with a focus on cancer. Presenters will discuss diseases caused by chromosomal abnormalities, DNA repair mechanism defects, and other nuclear irregulari-ties. Th e meeting will also highlight progress in stem cell research with a focus on its application to cancer and diseases. Th e symposium will focus on basic science, but will provide some integration with subsequent clinical applications so that bench researchers and clinicians can develop a mutual understanding of the potential for translation of basic research into eff ective therapeutics.

Wednesday, Oct 21 – Saturday, Oct 24Ninth Cooley’s Anemia SymposiumTh is symposium will illuminate many unsolved but critically important issues in the understanding and treatment of thalassemia, thus off ering the scien-tifi c, clinical, caregiving, and patient communities the most up-to-date exchange on the current and future perspectives of the disease.

Wednesday, Oct 28 – Friday, Oct 304th International Conference on Oxi-dative/Nitrosative Stress and DiseaseAn open forum for the discussion of recent advanc-es related to the cellular and molecular mechanisms mediating the generation of reactive oxygen and

Meetings Policy

DATES, TIMES, AND TOPICS OF EVENTS LISTED HERE ARE SUB-JECT TO CHANGE. For up-to-date information, including ticket prices, please visit our online calendar at www.nyas.org/events.

Registration is required for most and strongly encouraged for all events. To register to attend an event, please use the Academy events calendar online at www.nyas.org/events or contact the meetings department at 212.298.3725 or nymeetings@nyas.org.

Unless noted otherwise, Academy events are held at:Th e New York Academy of Sciences7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich St. at Barclay, 40th FlNew York, NY 10007 Photo ID is required for entry.

Meetings Policy

For further details on meetings and conferences, check our calendar at www.nyas.org/events.

on the web

The Board of Governors of The New York Academy of Sciences cordially invites members to the 191st Annual Meeting

THURSDAY, SEP 17 • 6:30 PM7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich St, 40th Fl

RSVP by September 7, 2009E-mail: nymeetings@nyas.orgPhone: 212.298.3725

nitrogen species and their role in the pathogenesis of human disease, with a particular focus on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, this confer-ence will bring together basic and clinical scientists in the fi eld with unique approaches and research eff orts. Th e goal is to facilitate collaborative studies that will lead to new insights into the pathogen-esis of cardiopulmonary diseases characterized by excessive oxidative and nitrosative stress and may suggest innovative directions for therapeutic intervention.

A Global Giver

28 www.nyas.org

Darwin Society member Kenichi Furuya lends support from overseas

t the core of the New York Academy of Sciences’ mission is a commitment to “creating

a global community of science for the benefi t of humanity.” It is a statement that deeply resonates with NYAS members from 140 countries – including Darwin Society member Kenichi Furuya. For this Japanese researcher, NYAS membership is one important way to bridge the distance between Tokyo, New York City, and other international hubs of science.

Furuya, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, holds both an MD and PhD. He is a professor and Chairman of the De-partment of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Japan’s National Defense Medical College. In addition to his association with the Academy, Furuya is a fellow of the Inter-national College of Surgeons (headquar-tered in Chicago) as well as a number of Japanese medical societies. He was born in Tokyo in 1953, and still lives in a cen-tral area of the city, Bunkyo-ku.

A PROUD SCIENTIFIC TRADITIONFuruya graduated from the School of Medicine at Japan’s Juntendo University in 1979. He recounts his alma mater’s history with pride: “Our medical school was founded as one of the oldest western-style private hospital/schools in Edo City (Tokyo), in 1838,” during a period of na-tional isolation. Th irty years later, Japan’s Meiji Revolution opened the country’s doors to the West, Furuya explains. Jun-tendo’s third president, Susumu Sato, was the fi rst Japanese student to study abroad offi cially, and since the late 19th century the school has encouraged international education and collaboration between re-searchers. Furuya is a product of this tra-dition, as evidenced by his active mem-bership and generous support of NYAS.

In the almost 30 years since gradu-

ating from Juntendo, Furuya has worked in various areas within obstetrics and gynecology, including basic molecular research, reproductive immunology, clin-ical reproductive medicine (such as IVF-ET and laparoscopic surgery), and clinical pelvic surgery (such as ovarian and uter-ine cancers).

In his current work, Furuya focuses on two areas of gynecological research. First, he is studying the mechanisms by which the fetal period of pregnancy (week 10 through birth) aff ects the development of metabolic disorders in children. In par-ticular, Furuya is interested in diabetes, obesity, and hypertension as epigenetic infl uences of this period, in pregnancies complicated by placental malfunctions such as gestational diabetes mellitus, nutritional defi ciency, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

Secondly, Furuya is working to clari-fy the basic mechanism of the relationship between ovarian endometriosis (EM) and ovarian cancer. Epidemiologic fi ndings indicate a strong positive correlation be-tween ovarian EM and ovarian clear cell carcinoma characterized as “refractory,” or resistant to chemotherapy, he explains.

IT RUNS IN THE FAMILYFuruya’s family, past and present, shares the doctor’s dedication to medicine. Fu-ruya’s wife is an anesthesiologist, his son is an obstetrics-gynecology resident, and his daughter is in dental school. His late father, Hiroshi Furuya, was a gynecolo-gist and emeritus president of the Society of Tokyo Maternal Health. In the 1970s, the elder Furuya was a visiting professor at Germany’s Hamburg University, as well as Columbia University. Furuya not only inherited his father’s vocation, but also his passion for participation in the global sci-ence community. It was his father’s status

as NYAS member during his time at Co-lumbia that inspired Furuya to become a member 20 years later.

SUPPORT IN AN IMPORTANT TIMEFuruya’s proud support of NYAS conveys his passionate support for scientifi c col-laborations across the globe, and in partic-ular, between the US and Japan. With the new presidential administration, Furuya believes that the American society may be undergoing its “fourth revolution”—iden-tifying the fi rst as the American Revolu-tion, the second as the Civil War, and the third as the end of World War II. “I have been impressed indeed that [the US is changing its] basic social, political, and historical foundations,” Furuya explains. He likens this period in American his-tory to his own country’s Meiji Revolu-tion, the time that ushered in new world views and sparked international dialogue between Japan and the world. Furuya’s long-distance membership is his vote of confi dence in the current and future rela-tionship between the US and Japan.

Although Furuya has traveled to New York a number of times, he has not been to the new NYAS headquarters at 7 World Trade Center. He plans to visit in the near future, and to continue his support of NYAS. “It is my great honor to support the activities of NYAS given its long history and many pure science traditions,” Furuya says.

Adelle C. Pelekanos is a freelance science writer in New York City.

By Adelle C. Pelekanos

A

Donor Profi le

SUPPORT THE ACADEMY!

To learn more about giving to the Academy, contact Kiryn Haslinger, Director, Development at 212.298.8673 or khaslinger@nyas.org.

April 27, 2009The Damon Runyon Cancer ResearchFoundation Clinical Investigator Symposium2009 marks the 10th year of the prestigious Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award. Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators will discuss their groundbreaking translational research, covering a broad range of topics including the latest work in cancer prevention, biomarkers, cancer stem cells, and immunotherapy.www.nyas.org/damonrunyan

May 15-16, 2009Regenerative MedicineExperts from academia and the pharmaceutical industry will convene in Beijing, China, to discuss advances in medical treatments and a host of new national initiatives aimed at advancing regenerative medicine research.www.nyas.org/regmedPoster Abstract Deadline: March 20th

May 15, 2009Therapeutics for Cognitive AgingHear about the development of novel therapies for cognitive decline across the lifespan of humans in three main areas:1) the defi nition of cognitive aging, 2) the underlying neurobiology of cognitive aging, and 3) issues in the development of potential new therapies for cognitive aging including the use of biomarkers, drug therapy, and a discussion of related regulatory issues.www.nyas.org/aging

May 26, 2009Expanding Role of Angiogenesis in Cancer Therapeutics: The Folkman LegacyClinical trials have indicated that anti-angiogenic therapy will be a mainstay of cancer treatment – a fourth arm with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. This symposium will discuss new data that enables scientists to better utilize and identify angiogenic therapies for treating cancer.www.nyas.org/folkman

June 19, 2009Circadian Disruption and CancerThis 1-day meeting will provide cutting-edge, novel scientifi c and clinical research about the complex relationship between circadian rhythm disruption and cancer as comorbid conditions and its therapeutic implications.www.nyas.org/cancercircadianPoster Abstract Deadline: April 10th

September 23-25, 2009Cell Biology of Disease: Chromosomes,Cancer and Stem CellsSponsored by the Journal of Cell Biology, this 2.5 day conference is specially designed to highlight outstanding young investigators. Moderated by senior editors at JCB, discussions will address recent advances in our understanding of disease pathology at the cellular and molecular level, with a focus on cancer.www.nyas.org/cancerstemPoster Abstract Deadline: July 17th

October 21-24, 20099th Cooley’s Anemia SymposiumAt this 4 day conference, scientists and clinicians will integrate basic science and clinical research to develop a mutual understanding of recent progress in thalassemia.www.nyas.org/cooleys9Poster Abstract Deadline: August 14th

October 28-30, 20094th International Conference on Oxidative/Nitrosative Stress in Cardiovascular DiseaseThe symposium will integrate basic science and clinical research so that both bench researchers and clinicians can discuss the role of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in infl ammation and lung disease.www.nyas.org/oxidativePoster Abstract Deadline: August 21st

For a full listing of events visit www.nyas.org/events

2009 UPCOMING CONFERENCES

7 World Trade Center250 Greenwich St, 40th FlNew York, NY 10007-2157

Address Service Requested

The New YorkAcademy of SciencesConference Center

Where Scienceand People MeetBoasting unparalleled views of the city, the New York Academy of Sciences is one of Manhattan’s newest and greenest venues. Our state-of-the art facility is in the fi rst and only gold-certifi ed LEED green building in New York. The sleek modern lines of the interior, 40 fl oors above the bustling streets, feature serene 270-degree views of the skyline. Our four highly fl exible spaces include the Kayden Auditorium, our stylish lobby, the conference room, and the boardroom, all perfect for high-level events and meetings. In-house audiovisual technicians are on staff, and our professional event team have years of experience. Consider us for your scientifi c or social events for groups of 25 to 300 guests.

Book your event or learn more now by visiting www.nyas.org/hostanevent or by e-mailing us at hostanevent@nyas.org.

Ask us about our summer rates!

© D

avid Lind

ner Stud

io