Archive for the 'Newsletter' Category

By Joseph R Mendelson III from American Scientist

I learned great and terrible lessons in my first year of graduate work in 1989—more than I expected and more than I realized at the time. My advisor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Jonathan Campbell, arranged for me to spend a field season in Guatemala surveying the amphibians and reptiles in the environs of a coffee plantation near Pueblo Viejo, in the Department of Alta Verapaz. I was going it alone with no Spanish language skills in the midst of a brutal civil war. But there had never been any herpetological work done in this particular part of the country, so I balanced my apprehension with a vision of myself following in the footsteps of the intrepid tropical natural historians and explorers whose monographs I was intensely studying.

During that summer I assembled a good collection of reptiles from Pueblo Viejo, but only a poor collection of amphibians. We all assumed at the time that the paltry representation of amphibian specimens was due to my incomplete skills; where I come from in southern California, reptiles are common and amphibians are scarce. Twenty years later, it is clear to all herpetologists that I had arrived on the scene of a massacre. That field trip launched my research career as an amphibian taxonomist and, indeed, I discovered my first species of frog new to science at Pueblo Viejo. Since then I have had the pleasure of discovering and naming dozens of new species, but some of them I “discovered” on museum shelves and not in the field. My finds had become extinct before they were even named. I chose to become a herpetologist, not a paleontologist, because I enjoy working afield with live animals. Recent reflection has forced me to reconsider my academic title. I am a forensic taxonomist.

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By Carolyn Abraham from The Globe and Mail

Humanity has long dreamed of perfection, striving to be faster, stronger and brighter, pushing nature to the limit. Four centuries before people were conceived in a petri dish, Swiss alchemist Paracelsus claimed flawless little beings could be grown in pumpkins filled with urine and horse dung, but there is no record he produced a crop.

With the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the test tube finally succeeded where the pumpkin had failed, and the year she turned 11, scientists moved beyond making life in a lab: They found a way to peer into an embryo’s genes and predict what that life might be like.

That ability is now morphing into a whole new approach to baby-making, one that gives people an unprecedented power to preview, and pick, the genetic traits of their prospective children.

Photo of Stephan Hawking

By Sean Carroll from Discover Magazine

Sorry for the light blogging of late. Actual work intervenes, and it might remain that way for a while. But I’ll try to pop in whenever I can.

Stephen Hawking is celebrating his 70th birthday today. That in itself is an amazing fact, just as it was amazing when he celebrated his 40th, and 50th, and 60th birthdays, as well as every other day he’s lived and thrived with a debilitating neuron disease. The extra fact that he continues to make contributions to science pushes beyond amazing to practically unbelievable.

Everyone likes to tell Hawking stories, and this blog is no exception. So here is mine, meagre as it is. I’ve gotten more than enough mileage out of this one in person, I might as well put it on the blog so I won’t be tempted to tell it any more.

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By Quinn O’Neil from 3 Quarks Daily

There’s been a lot of talk about reforming American K-12 science education and it’s getting difficult to take it seriously. Educators, scientists, and politicians have been sounding alarm bells over the state of American science education for decades. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education revealed the US to be trailing most other industrialized nations in science performance. The commission’s report began: “Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. [...] What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur–others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.” It almost sounds as if the level of educational attainment isn’t as important as the rest of the world being below it.

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Image by Michael Lamont / Geffen Playhouse

By Casey Rentz from Smithsonian.com

After a long career in movies, theater and television shows including “M*A*S*H*” and “Scientific American Frontiers.” Alan Alda has written his first full-length play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie. It debuts at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles on November 9.

What got you interested in Marie Curie?

What got me interested was that this part of her life is such a dramatic story. But what kept me interested and what kept me going for the four years I’ve been working on the play was her amazing ability not to let anything stop her. The more I learn, the more I realize what she had to struggle against, and she has become my hero because of that. For most of my life, I couldn’t say I had any heroes—I never really came across somebody like this who was so remarkable in her ability to keep going no matter what. It really had an effect on me.

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