Author Archives: David Bruggeman

Next European Research Commissioner Used To Be An Engineer

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We have a new Commissioner (H/T ScienceInsider) for Research, Science and Innovation at the European Commission.  (There are separate Commissioners for climate change and energy and for the environment and marine affairs.)  Carlos Moedas, currently the secretary of state to the Portuguese Prime Minister, will take over the research portfolio from Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.  Incoming Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker outlined his expectations for the portfolio in a letter to Moedas.  The Commissioner-designate will have responsibility over the Horizon 2020 research programme as well as the following elements of Commission agencies:

  • Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (RTD)
  • The relevant parts of the European Research Council executive agency (ERCEA)
  • The relevant parts of the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME)
  • The relevant parts of the Innovation and Networks executive agency (INEA)
  • The relevant parts of the Research Executive Agency (REA)

(The European Parliament must approve the full slate of Commissioners, and is expected to vote on them later this year.)

Moedas was in investment banking prior to his government service in Portugal.  But his education was in civil engineering, and he worked for five years after school for a French engineering concern.  That was almost 20 years ago.  His relatively lack of experience in research is consistent with his predecessors in the position.

Also worth noting in the slate of designated Commissioners is that the Commission will be reorganized, with an eye toward encouraging more teamwork amongst the Commissioners.

Hieroglyph, Not Just An Anthology (Or A Pictographic Character)

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Today Hieroglyph is available in dead tree and electronic editions.  The anthology is co-edited by Kathryn Cramer and Ed Finn and has 17 different stories.  You may recognize several of the names, depending on how much science fiction and/or science journalism you read.  Many of the authors also have scientific training.  There are promotional events for the book scheduled throughout September across North America.

Hieroglyph is the namesake of Project Hieroglyph, hosted at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University (Ed Finn, co-editor of the anthology, is the Director).  You can hear more about the Center from Finn in this April 2014 radio program. Hieroglyph is a collaborative space and research effort on the nature of that collaboration.  There are discussion fora and groups organized around the iconic ideas or projects that are considered modern hieroglyphs.  At the moment there’s the book, a very tall tower, and a massively multiplayer online education game listed amongst the projects.

The space is open to everyone 13 or older.  You will need to register in order to participate.  I’d recommend you review the site’s terms of service and data privacy statements before committing.

Science and Technology Guests on Late Night, Week of September 8

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Added September 10 – Kunal Nayyar, who plays a scientist on The Big Band Theory, will be on Conan Thursday night.

Original Post

Well, the summer repeats are over.  That doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect more science and technology guests, just that there are more new shows.

The newest kid on the late night block, Seth Meyers, returns to these posts.  On Tuesday he will host Jeff Kluger, science and technology reporter at TIME.  On Thursday, Harry Connick, Jr., who plays a marine veterinarian in Dolphin Tale 2, will visit with Seth.  (Connick will appear on Ellen this Friday.)  Also on Thursday, Jimmy Kimmel will talk with Connick’s co-star Morgan Freeman.  Freeman plays a prosthetic researcher in the film.

In non-guest late night content, once again recent episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have something to offer.  On August 5, The Daily Show covered the Ebola outbreak.  That same day, The Colbert Report covered a translation program that used elderly Americans to assist Brasilians with their English, by way of videoconference.

The last personnel change in American late night, for now, has been finalized.  James Corden will take over for Craig Ferguson on The Late, Late Show sometime in 2015.  Ferguson’s last original program is December 19th.  With no sense of what Corden has planned for his show, it’s hard to say how he might approach science and technology content or guests.  Corden is from England, and has experience hosting panel shows in the United Kingdom, in addition to his acting work.

 

Ebola Roadmap And U.S. Response Should Remind Us That It’s A Big Deal

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By the best estimates of people at the World Health Organization (WHO), we are at least six months, and probably nine, away from successfully containing the current outbreak of Ebola (the largest outbreak ever recorded).

At least that’s the goal.

The agency released a roadmap in late August to outline the necessary response to the disease.  There have already been over 3,500 reported cases, and the death toll is approaching 2,000 (or has surpassed it, depending on your source), making this outbreak larger than any previous recorded outbreak combined).  The estimates within the roadmap are sobering, with the possibility of over 20,000 people suffering from the virus.  By the end of September the WHO will do all it can to establish full coverage of Ebola response activities in the affected countries.

The United States will contribute to the effort.  More than 100 experts, and $100 million, have been committed to the region, with more money and personnel expected.  The U.S. military will be involved, according to an interview with President Obama broadcast over the weekend.  This re-emphasizes the severity of the problem, in part because Doctors Without Borders typically eschews military involvement in outbreak responses.  But the organization is stretched too thin to turn down such help.  With much of the outbreak area emerging from civil war, infrastructure and institutions are either broken or strained close to breaking.  Perhaps this lack of capacity has contributed to the spread of the outbreak.  If this is true (and we simply don’t know), addition resources applied to the region in a systematic fashion should help contain and better understand this outbreak before the virus has an opportunity to mutate.

While I’m certain that the U.S. public health infrastructure is in better shape than it’s West African counterparts, this crisis has made me mindful that maintaining such infrastructure involves constant investment and participation.  Without the facilities, regular training, and meaningful information provided by patients using those facilities, it becomes much harder to track diseases and be in a better position to contain or anticipate outbreaks.  In other words, for the grace of preparation go us.

Rapping Evolutionary Religious Studies Could Use Your Help, And Soon

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Baba Brinkman is working on his latest Rap Guide, and using Kickstarter to fund animations for the songs.  The Kickstarter effort is closing on Tuesday, and he has a fair piece to go before hitting his goal and funding the project.

The Rap Guide to Evolution will examine the evolution of religion through behavioral sciences.  Eight songs are already completed, and supporters will receive downloaded tracks upon pledging.  Brinkman has performed the Rap Guide over the summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival so the collected funds will be focused on the animations that will augment the album.

As you might guess, I have pledged funds to the project, and encourage you to do the same.

Park’s CTO Successor Named; Job Duties Expected To Shift, Again

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Yesterday on the White House Blog the President’s Science Adviser relayed President Obama’s announcement that Megan Smith will succeed Todd Park as federal Chief Technology Officer.  (That the White House statement is not easily found doesn’t look good, especially for this appointment.)  Smith has worked at Google and other Silicon Valley firms, and will be the first woman to hold the position.  I was quite wrong about the timing of this announcement, and happily so.

Both The Washington Post and The Atlantic have noted the fluctuating duties of the position over the course of its history.  The inability of Congress to pass a law to place this position into law (and their oversight) makes it easier for a federal CTO responsibilities to shift over time.  Given Smith’s engineering background and her work on next-generation projects at Google, I can see where The Washington Post thinks the position will become something closer to a technological equivalent of the President’s Science Adviser.  It would appear that Smith will, like Park, not hold a concurrent appointment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, as the first CTO (Aneesh Chopra) did.

However, there appear to be two related, but distinct, missions for which the Chief Technology Officer could lead.  Getting the government to incorporate more information technology into its mission and services has been, arguably, most of the focus of Smith’s two predecessors.  Getting out in front of the policy implications of new technologies and their consequences has not – in my opinion – been a major focus of the Chief Technology Officer.  For instance, the CTO was not a major force in the Administration’s Big Data Review.  Deputy CTO’s, including the newly appointed Alex Macgillivray, and technologists in Cabinet Departments, usually get to tangle with those matters.  I think it’s too early to know what the right mix is of people and duties in this area is, so there may be value in maintaining the flexibility of keeping these appointments exclusively under executive branch discretion.

Massaging A Rat Gets Researchers A Goose

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With two weeks to go before this year’s awards ceremony, the last Golden Goose Award of 2014 was announced today.  Tiffany Field of the University of Miami, Gary Evoniuk of GlaxoSmithKline, and Cynthia Kuhn, and Saul Schanberg of Duke are recognized for their work with rats and its application to the care of premature infants.

The work started back in 1979, with Kuhn, Schanberg and Evoniuk working at Duke on the factors influencing growth in rat pups.  Through their experiments, the group came to realize the impact grooming had on rat pup growth.  The tactile stimulation from researchers prompted increases in enzymes and growth hormone.  That same year Drs. Field and Schanberg met at a conference.  Field’s work is in pediatrics and her research was on stimulating growth in prematurely born infants.  She partnered with Schanberg and his colleagues to better understand their work.  She later applied their work to premature infants and was able to demonstrate greater growth rates, increased alertness and shorter hospital stays for premature infants who received tactile stimulation (infant massage).  Her work and that of her colleagues at Duke were sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.  Dr. Field’s infant massage techniques have led to significant cost savings

Dr. Schanberg has passed, but the rest of the team will be at the awards ceremony on October 18, along with the two other groups recognized for their research that had successful, but quite unanticipated, applications.