Photo courtesy of Mike Siegel

This article first appeared in 2009 when I was writing for the MIT graduate student run news magazine The Graduate. However the website is no longer available and as far as I can tell The Graduate does not currently exist (perhaps it will be revived in another form someday as it has in the past). I really enjoyed working on these articles so I will be posting them on my blog over the next month. They mostly focus on groundbreaking work of graduate students at MIT.

At only 33 years of age, Neri Oxman’s list of accomplishments and accolades is exhaustive. The graduate student in the School of Architecture was most recently commissioned for an exhibit, Neri Oxman: At the frontier of ecological design, currently on display at the Museum of Science here in Boston, that highlights the unique biological influence in her design. She has been variously described as an architect, engineer, biologist, and computer scientist for her work that melds these myriad disciplines. She is intelligent and thoughtful, gracious and warm, and highly photogenic as a quick google image search of her name will prove.

Although an architecture student, Oxman’s work is a thing of art.  Taking inspiration from the natural world, she transforms nature, using computer algorithms, into impossibly complex, organic, three dimensional forms.  Her models are based on the fine structure of butterfly wings, bones, cells, informed perhaps by her earlier pursuits in the field of medicine.

For example, Raycounting, featured at last year’s Design and the Elastic Mind Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resembles a cartilaginous carapace, a landscape of light and shadow created by a double curvature of its walls forming thick and thin areas of varying opacity.  It is one of Oxman’s pieces from the exhibit that are now a part of MoMA’s permanent collection.

Raycounting - Photo Courtesy of Neri Oxman

Her designs are also shaped by their purpose.  One of her most provocative pieces yet, Beast, is a fluid, corporeal chaise lounge straight out of the depths of Pan’s Labyrinth.  It is a single surface comprised of “cells” of materials whose flexibility, curvature, and stability change and respond to the human body at points of pressure.

Beast - Photo courtesy of Neri Oxman

And because working towards a PhD in design computation is not enough, in 2006 Oxman formed Materialecology, an interdisciplinary research initiative, as a further outlet for her creativity.  The works previously mentioned arose from this project.  “Materialecology is a cultivated, intellectual working environment.  It’s an online journal to collect my thoughts and work,” explains Oxman.

While working, Oxman disciplines herself to switch between different modes of thinking during her day.  Mornings are spent writing, while afternoons are reserved for the physical process of making.  Nights are dedicated to generating algorithms and computer modeling.  And like most MIT students, Oxman notes she “spends many hours in front of a computer.”

To construct these highly imaginative forms, Oxman has created a new way of 3D printing.  Known as FAB.REcology it moves beyond tradition methods of 3D printing by mixing materials to create structures whose density varies from region to region.  This creates effects of light, and allows dense, structural support to be built directly into the design.  This idea may one day revolutionize building and construction.

For her work on Materialecology and FAB.REcology, Oxman has been honored as one of the 100 Most Creative People by Fast Company magazine and appeared on the cover of the issue.  She was also the winner of the first ever The Earth Awards hosted by the inimitable Charlie Rose.

Oxman’s choice of MIT to pursue her graduate degree was deliberate.  She felt drawn to MIT for its “culture of making and thinking and its great interdisciplinary spirit. I feel liberated by its unstructured nature.”

At the moment Oxman’s work is on a small scale, but she hopes to live to the day when ideas like hers can be implemented in full scale in the design of buildings.  “This is difficult now,” says Oxman, “because the construction industry is so far behind in advancements in materials.”  She points out that, “there is a mismatch between the scale of knowledge and the scale of application.  The smaller the product, the more advanced the design.”  For example, moving from a building, to a car, to a medical device, there is a similar movement to more sophisticated technology and materials.

For now, Oxman is transitioning from designing on the scale of furniture to the scale of building components.  She wants to build larger, but is adamant she will do this “without compromising the values and the science.”

As I’ve said, he is an extremely intelligent man, and he has formed many ideas about the field of neuroscience, on which he does his research. He studies the olfactory system in particular (and was awarded the Nobel Prize with Linda Buck for discovering odorant receptors – the protein structures in your nose that detect smells). One student in the room asked him whether he thought that humans have pheromones – chemicals that animals use to communicate with each other about food, sex, predators. The behaviors that pheromones trigger are often innate, hard-wired, instinctual responses since they are about things essential to live and reproduce (eating, mating, avoiding being eaten…), as opposed to learned behaviors. Pheromones are detected much in the same way as smells, using the vomeronasal organ which is also in the nose, although in humans the vomeronasal organ is pathetic and wimpy and its function in humans is very controversial.

Which brings us back to Richard Axel. He espouses the view (or at least said so to generate a rousing conversation) that ALL human behavior is learned – basically we have no instincts. While we put him to task on this – providing lots of promising counterexamples – he shot them all down. I and perhaps much of the room am not entirely convinced, I had some interesting examples concerning studies of female sexual arousal (graphically detailed by the talented Mary Roach in her book Bonk if you are now aroused to know more) up my sleeve that I did not get to bring up, but it was a very interesting conversation in which one particularly outspoken grad student earned the dubious nickname “the philosopher”.

This brings me to Woody Allen. Partway through the lunch Axel nonchalantly drops something to the extent of, “I was having lunch with Woody Allen a few months back.” At this our eyes promptly bug out of our heads (actual celebrity? you mean if we become famous scientists we can meet real celebrities?). Here’s the story (greatly paraphrased): Axel was having lunch with Woody Allen in New York (they both live there… makes sense…) and Allen wanted to ask him a question since Axel is the expert on genes and behavior.

Allen says, “So this has got to be in my genes. I’ve got a daughter.”

Here Axel, in an aside to us says, “I was going to say, Yeah, and you married her.” Heehee.

So Allen says, “When she was born, even though I just knew her for a minute, I had this rush of emotion. I could die for her. Is this in my genes?”

Axel responds, “Well, take this. What if I took one of your cells and I cloned it. Would you feel the same way about your clone as you do about your daughter?”

And Allen, being Woody Allen responds, “If I was having coffee with my clone and some guy with a gun came in, I’d say ‘Shoot that guy!’”

So, reader? Is it in the genes?

So now I am at a crossroads where many a senior grad student before me has stood. I hope to be finishing up by the end of the year, but I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I think I am very much interested in medical writing – kind of a catch-all for technical, non-journalistic science writing – but I’m really really scared to leave this lifestyle to which I’ve devoted much of my life. I do love working for myself, deciding how to schedule my time, what I want to do next (with guidance and blessings from my PI of course). But I also do like the idea of a job with regular hours, no tedious benchwork, and no guilt for taking a WHOLE weekend off! Although perhaps the grind is the grind no matter where or what. I do still have a insane passion for science and would probably be pretty happy with whatever I do as long as I get to think science. But what if I make the wrong choice! (I must admit I also feel like a bit of a jerk for sitting here whingeing about all of this when I am in the very privileged position of having numerous, fantastic career options practically laid at my feet, and in this ecomony).

One thing I do wish PhD programs would do is to provide more support for those of us seeking non-academic positions. While yes, there are tons of career panels about being a consultant or working at biotech or patent law, let’s think outside the box already! How about offering some training for skills we don’t pick up in grad school, like writing for a lay audience, or management training, etc. It’s time for university’s to recognize that the reality is there just aren’t enough positions for all of us grad students in academia – and there is an increasing number of 8 year postdocs and second postdocs. Either admit less of us in the first place or try to provide some more creative, flexible training. I myself have taken classes in journalism, blogged, joined the NASW and AMWA, networked a bit with people with other jobs I’m interested in, but I think many grad students find themselves a bit paralyzed when they realize they’re dreams coming into school do not match their current ones.

Well, that’s enough for now. I plan to blog a bit more regularly (not that it would be hard to beat a year plus no blogging . So keep checking back!

Take this thread for example in response to the BBC’s “Have Your Say: Will synthetic biology do more harm than good?“  The public seems to have a bit of a B-rated sci-fi flick mentality when it comes to science.  They hatch up all sorts of doomsday plots including one of my favorites: what if these bacteria are engineered to consume carbon dioxide but then mutate to consumer oxygen and then consume ALL the oxygen in the ENTIRE WORLD?!! 

One commenter brought up the Will Smith movie, I am Legend, in which Smith is the only survivor of a disease which has transformed the population of New York into mindless, light-fearing zombies.  The commenter, in all seriousness, uses this as an example of science gone horribly wrong.  Whoa.  And what is worse – there are more people that agree with this commenter than point out that you can’t compare Hollywood to reality.  I fear Hollywood’s special effects are getting a little too realistic these days.

Another thing that just killed me (not the zombies this time) was that many people tried to inject rational science into the argument, but GOT IT WRONG!  We need to teach people better science in school, because sometimes they try to use it, but they just don’t know the facts!  In this case, people were saying (and I’m paraphrasing), no way these bacteria could mate with other wild bacteria, they only reproduce asexually, commenter such and such, you’re so stupid suggesting they could mate (you know how much people like to take digs at other commenters since they’re anonymous and all).  Except, the fact is that bacteria CAN swap DNA, even with other bacterial species, even with non-bacterial species!  (Fascinating Scientific American article on this here.) They are quite promiscuous little bugs, going around slurping up bits of DNA other bacteria just drop all over the place.

I think that these conversations can provide scientists, and science educators with useful information.  We do still need to work on the quality of science education, but we need to also help change the public’s perception of science.  One way to help this is to get the public more involved in a conversation with scientists about science and perhaps even involved with decision making in science.  At the moment the funding for scientific studies is mostly ok’ed by peer scientists.  While yes, this very good, it’s really important to remember that the public’s perception of what these studies are doing, does not always (often?) match the reality.  Since it’s largely public money going to fund science, as we get into these stickier and trickier ethical issues, we the scientists need to take a step back and listen to what people are saying and start a dialogue.  Both to figure out where perception is grossly distorted but also to find how mature we are as a society and what we are ready for next.

But why should we care about the public’s scientific literacy?  Well, Mooney has answers for you.  He outlined four reasons: 1) knowledge is generally good in and of itself, 2) it empowers people, 3) it leads to good citizenship, 4) it also leads to good policy.

So now that we’ve got that squared away, what’s the problem?  Those are all great reasons, so why does the public have such a big problem with science?  Mooney sees it as the problem of two cultures (from C.P. Snow’s lecture).  He believes that in society today, there is a clash between science and a few things: politics, journalism, pop culture, and religion.

So what are we, as scientists and science writers, to do?!  For one thing, scientists need to engage the public.  As Mooney puts it, they should learn from recent the Climategate scandal and invest in public engagement for the good times, and the bad.

Mooney also thinks that there should be more public engagement-type jobs for PhD students.  Since only 7% of PhD students end up with tenure track faculty positions (not exactly sure where that stat comes from… but it’s gotta be close), it makes sense to also start educating these students for jobs outside of the lab.  Man would it have been awesome if I didn’t have to sneak away from lab every Friday afternoon for the part-time New Media Internship I did last semester, fearful of being caught playing hooky by my adviser.  If only my PhD program wasn’t in denial that all its students would become academic faculty (or at the very least – biotech minions – kidding, I know lots of people in biotech – totally worth the pay for years and years of training).

To wrap things up, Mooney left us with a quote from Matthew Chapman, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin:

“Ya..there was a certain amount of pressure to be academically successful… most people as they grow up imagine they will do better than their father.. or better than their grandfather and certainly better than their great great grandfather and I figured that was not going to happen in the academic sphere… So I kind of dropped out..”

Wait… that’s the wrong one… I didn’t actually write down the one that Mooney left us with, but it was memorable… trust me…

However this one also works – all PhD students can’t go on to be academics, so let’s figure out what we can do instead with all that scientific knowledge stuffed in our heads.

Skloot’s years and years spent researching this book, from her tireless attempts to sway the Lacks family to talk with her, to her endless patience in gaining their trust, has given her a uniquely personal perspective on this story.  While she first heard of Henrietta Lacks, the woman who is HeLa cells, in a college course, she has over the years integrated herself into the story of the Lacks family.  When it came to finally writing this story she decided to do so from a first person perspective, interweaving information about the Lacks family, Henrietta, and the science made possible by HeLa cells, with her own narrative of researching this book.

Skloot also brings up numerous tricky issues tied to the story of Lacks family.  Some are social – class, race, education.  Some are ethical – particularly the issue of consent.  Her afterward gives a fantastic overview of the state of tissue-donor consent for research in the U.S. today.  In many cases consent is not needed to use tissues taken from patients in research.  That mole you had biopsied?  It might be in storage somewhere, waiting to be used for future research.  Once tissue is taken from your body, you no longer have control of it.  While this is gradually changing – you may be notified in the fine print that your tissues may be used for future research – it remains a problem.  Especially for the one-in-a-million sample that turns out to be special in some way and becomes extremely valuable for biomedical research, just like Henrietta’s tumor cells.

On the other hand, when consent is given for using tissues in research, there can be problems if the donor puts too many restrictions on the use of their tissues.  Take for example, a cell line, where a donor stipulates that the cell line made from their cells must be destroyed after a certain period of time.  Perhaps the donor’s cells will be turned into stem cells for research on adult stem cells (these are called induced pluripotent stem cells by scientists), and the donor is worried about what might happen to the cells in the future since stem cells can be turned into almost any type of other cell, just like the stem cells in an embryo can form all the parts of the body.  When the scientists who originally do the research publish what they did to share with the entire scientific community, how will other scientists be able to verify that what they say is true if the specific cells they used to do the research don’t exist anymore?

Something similar to this actually did happen and is outlined in an editorial that was published in the research journal, Nature, last August.  It’s an expectation in science (and stipulated by many journals that publish scientific research) that once research is published, all the things used to do that research needs to be available to other scientists, either sent to them from the original lab, or available to buy from a company.  And this includes living things like cell lines.  This ensures that further valuable research can be done, and also allows independent researchers to verify results.  If a cell line is not longer available because of restrictions placed on the cells by the donor, then this severely limits the impact and usefulness of the research.  It can’t be tested again, why should anyone believe it?

This is only an itty itty bit of the huge conundrum surrounding using human tissues in research.  Especially now that tissue is no longer anonymous.  With DNA sequencing technology it’s theoretically now possible to find the identity of the donor.  And what if the donor’s tissue has a mutation in a gene that might give them a high chance to have a disease like heart disease or cancer?  Do you tell them?  What about their children who might also have this mutation?  What if their insurance company finds out?  Thankfully in 2008 the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act was passed to prevent this kind of situation with an insurance company or employer.

Althought I haven’t covered this in depth I hope I’ve given you some interesting things to think about!  And go read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks!  Even if you aren’t a super nerdy scientist like me – it’s written for everybody.

Wine Wine Wine, creative commons Ingorrr

A study published Monday in the journal, The Archives of Internal Medicine, shows that women who drink moderately gain less weight they are middle-aged.  I first stumbled across mention of this yesterday on the BBC news website in this article, Women Who Drink Wine ‘Likely to Gain Less Weight’.  Then I ran into it again today on the front page of the LA Times website in this article, Women Who Drink Moderately Tend to Gain Less Weight in Midlife.  Being a moderately drinking woman myself, I’ve decided to delve further into this supposed new, exciting, scientific discovery!

When I first read these two news articles I thought, why the heck would someone do a study on alcohol decreasing weight gain?  What’s the point?  It can’t be directly related, can it?  What the news failed to explain is why the study was conducted in the first place.  Since obesity is increasing becoming a problem in the US, the study’s authors wanted to see if drinking alcoholic beverages contributed to weight gain (at least this is what I gather from the journal article they wrote – I haven’t asked them).  Imagine their surprise to see that moderate drinking actually may lead to weight loss!

While this may be a case of correlation not equaling causation, it’s pretty interesting that a moderate drinking lifestyle may contribute to a more healthy weight.  Counterintuitive huh?  As the news articles mention, it could be that other factors, such as less snacking by drinkers, could lead to this finding.

However there is also the question of whether the leaner, lush-er women are actually healthier than their teetotaler contemporaries – I think this drawback could have been emphasized more in the news articles.  The study used Body Mass Index (or BMI) to compare women.  There is some controversy of whether BMI is a good predictor of healthy weight, especially for people who fall between a “healthy” BMI score of <25 and an obese score of 30 or more.  Further, the study mentions that drinking was also correlated with more smoking and a less healthy diet (although aslo more physical activity).  The authors say they adjusted for factors like these and the results didn’t change… but they didn’t show the data, and who knows how well these modeling things work, I’d say it’s still murky territory (any statisticians out there with a different opinion?  Maybe I should issue a disclaimer here, I dropped stats when double integrals appeared that required MATLAB to solve).  Finally, not enough heavy drinkers were evaluated to see how heavy drinking could impact body weight and other studies that the authors cite indicate it may lead to weight gain.

The two news articles did do a good job pointing out that this study does not show that drinking causes weight loss but I think they missed a key point about the importance of this study, and then didn’t place enough emphasis on the drawbacks (I almost always think there isn’t enough emphasis on the drawbacks – people need to understand that science is not infallible – although for some specific fields people need to realize that after extensive rigorous testing science does reveal truth – it gets so messy when politics and religion get mixed up with science, but that is fodder for another discussion).

Recently a crew from BBC Horizon came to the lab I toil in as a graduate student to film this clip for a program they titled, “What Makes a Genius”.  They wanted to film a knockout mouse a postdoc in the lab created, and that I happen to be doing my thesis work on.  This mouse is missing a gene that is important for proper growth of neurons.  Some of my work, and others, has shown that it has trouble forming connections in its brain during development.  This is why we think it is not a great learner.  However, the way this clip explains the research, I’d want to give my boss, Elly, a Nobel Prize for finding THE intelligence gene.  So let’s go through this clip’s weak and strong points.

There are actually MANY MANY genes important for learning and memory (in the news here, here, here, here, etc), not just one!  However, this gene does happen to be pretty interesting because the mouse version is 100% identical to the human version which is not very common.  As Elly notes in the video, “It’s usually a sign that something’s very critical because evolution hasn’t fiddled with it.”

So now a strong point.  I really like the way they describe the experiment they show.  It does a great job breaking down the test and bringing up the analogy to Pavlov’s dogs – which many people have learned about in school.

Ok, another thing that bothered me.  The mice can actually learn.  They’re just slower learners than regular mice.  Maybe that would have sounded less cool – but saying that they “simply can’t learn” is kind of deceptive.  The brain is probably the most complex organ in the body, it’s really hard to just find one gene that totally messes up learning.

There are back up systems that evolution has built into our brains so that they aren’t dependent on just one gene for each function.  Instead many genes are important for everything the brain does.  This overlap ensures that when one gene is mutated, the brain can still develop and function pretty well.  With the thousands of genes it takes to build the brain, it’s likely we all have a less than optimal mutation or two in some of our brain building genes.  And this is why I think studying the brain is so very awesome – and at the same time extremely challenging.  I’ve heard that there are more bytes of information moving around in a single human brain than in the entire internet!  That’s how incredible our brain really is – each of us is walking around processing more information than the internet!  That’s like 6 billion internets walking around the earth – the product of millions of years of evolution.  Have I impressed upon you how phenomenally amazing this is yet?

Getting back to the video, it’s sad when basic science programs feel the need to twist the science they are explaining.  I expect this from Hollywood movies, but from a show that is supposed to be explaining science?  Why do they need to sensationalize?

Also – you can see my handwriting on the pink cards at minute 3:57 – cool – my handwriting was on TV!

Marcia McNutt, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey

I just returned from the 2010 AAAS meeting in San Diego.  Since I am really interested in science writing and communication, I attended most of the sessions along those lines.  While I took away many awesome tips and saw many fantastic presentations, I was still shocked at how bad some people were at communicating.  At a conference where communication and engaging the public was a key topic, it was a shame.

There were way too many instances of people reading from their notes – eye contact people!  Even some of the plenary speakers seemed quite uncomfortable with their material.    Marcia McNutt, the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey was particularly painful to watch on Sunday night.   Her lecture was filled with “um”s and awkward pauses while she consulted her notes to figure out which slide she was showing.  One moment in particular had me and my conference buddy in a fit of giggles we almost couldn’t hold in: Referring to the slide (see below) on California’s efforts in marine planning, she mentioned the picture on the bottom right saying, “And this is a picture of…” here she paused, we waited eagerly, “…fish.”

California Marine Planning

Unintentional humor aside, I found her lack of preparation disrespectful to her many esteemed colleagues in the audience (not including of course this lowly blogger/grad student).  Maybe she’s super busy with her governmental business, but I hope she’s got it more together when meeting with the President.  And what was she wearing?  Were those leggings???

Another particularly stand-out session for its miserable presentations was Communicating Science: Covering Global Climate Change and Adaptation from the Ground Up.  I had such high expectations for the session too seeing as it was organized by likes of Deborah Blum, a bright, chirpy woman and fantastic science writer, and Phil Hilts, an old-guard newspaper man with tons of personality now working with the MIT Knight Fellows program.

While the first two presentations were merely ok, I can excuse them.  The first woman, Dalia Abdel-Salam was from Egypt, and didn’t have great English, and didn’t seem to have much experience with presenting, but hey, she’s a woman reporting in an Arab speaking country on a very difficult, controversial topic, so props to her.  And the second, James Fahn, has been living and working in Thailand trying to improve the coverage of climate change in the developing world, awesome as well.

The third presenter, Margot Roosevelt from the LA Times, really had no excuse.  She has tons and tons of experience talking with people.  Yet her presentation was read off notes, had no visuals, and she seemed extremely disaffected and blase about the whole thing.  Why did she agree to speak at this session if this is her attitude about covering climate change?  Maybe this is just how she comes off in person?  Anyone ever seen her present before?

However, the pain of sitting through these presentations was rewarded with a exceptionally spicy Q&A at the end that even included an honest-to-goodness climate change skeptic!  After being cut off by the moderator, he managed to ask why people were denying the seriousness of the the so-called Climategate emails (read my take on the not-so-climate-scandal here).  James McCarthy, a climate change expert, and also one of the discussants for the session (I imagine the questioner’s glee to have cornered an honest-to-goodness climate scientist), handled the question admirably, unhesitatingly challenging the questioner.  He argued that many of the quotes from the email used words like “tricks” that can also be found in the scientific literature, and that anyone’s email probably contains some pretty negative stuff if taken out of context. McCarthy said he was sure that after investigation it would be clear there was no scientific misconduct – and countered by asking who is investigating the hacking of the emails in the first place.

This then led into a discussion of why climate scientists are so afraid to engage the public.  In my opinion this unwillingness to engage the critics damages scientists’ reputations and decreases the public’s trust of climate science.

Another point that was brought up again and again at the conference was the need for scientists to engage with social media.  This is where average Americans interact, so to reach these people, scientists really need to be a part of it.

And I’ll leave you all with some valuable words from Marcia McNutt’s speech last night, “um, and so um.”

Eric Lander Addressing AAAS Attendees

I was excited to see Eric Lander, a co-chair of the the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, address the attendees at AAAS 2010 tonight.  As a TA I’ve watched Lander deliver numerous intro biology lectures to bored, young MIT undergrads (mostly engineers who couldn’t pass out of the Biology requirement), but I’ve never seen him give a public talk.  I was particularly thrilled when, while giving his speech on Science and Technology in the First Year of the New Administration, he went off on a bit of a strange tangent to talk about (what else?) the movie 2012! (I mean, seriously, who will survive 2012?)

He brought it up because in 2012, the hero is a scientist.  And not just any scientist, Dr. Adrian Helmsley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), the Deputy Geologist for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP – get with the lingo people, acronyms are all the rage) of which PCAST is a part.  I looked it up and I can’t actually find a Deputy Geologist, but it’s reasonable.

Also in 2012, the hero scientist is able to admit that he is not infallible, that at one point, apparently in the oval office, he admits to the President that he was wrong (disclaimer: I am taking Lander’s word for this as I have not actually seen the movie).  And Lander feels that this is the kind of scientist that should be advising the public, one that knows that science isn’t perfect and isn’t afraid to admit it.

However, Lander does admit that when it comes to the actual science in the movie, something about solar neutrinos heating the earth’s core, “The science itself… is sort of utterly incoherent.”