The agenda and slides from the meeting are here on the NSF website.
James Collins, NSF Assistant Director for Biological Sciences, spoke about BIO's FY09 funding priorities for "Life in Transition" studies. He also spoke about the terrific new study that NSF commissioned from the National Research Council, The Role of Theory in Advancing 21st-Century Biology: Catalyzing Transformative Research. Dr. Collins will be meeting with the AIBS Board of Directors later this month.
AIBS, AAAS, and FASEB staff were then asked to speak for about 20 minutes each (Rob Gropp gave the AIBS presentation) on "biology in the federal science enterprise" with respect to the following three points:
How does your organization describe and represent the biological sciences/biology with respect to science policy and budget?
What are your metrics for determining the effectiveness of “science on the Hill” and other similar activities for Congress with respect to science policy and budget?
Will your organization provide science policy advice for the transition to a new administration? To the next Congress? If so, will your efforts be targeted to a particular group or groups within the new administration or Congress, and will they emphasize any specific area or areas of science?
The talks went very well; discussions continue. As we see it, in the coming decades, the public as well as decision-makers will demand that scientists provide answers to questions of great societal importance. Informed responses to global environmental change, sustainable development, biodiversity conservation, nanotechnology, biometrics, artificial intelligence, public health threats, food security and quality, among many other issues, will require a coordinated and prioritized response from the research community. Currently, however, few individual scientists are prepared to provide this response. As a result, few scholarly or professional organizations are positioned to appropriately inform a collective response.
In order for the biological sciences to advance, a new, efficient, and coordinated trans-disciplinary community will be required. Biologists need to employ new technical skills and theoretical frameworks that build upon and surpass traditional taxonomic and integrative approaches. More importantly, biologists from various subfields must be prepared to work collaboratively with each other and with scientists from other fields, members of the media, policymakers, and science educators. A cultural shift within the scientific community's traditional organizations and new models for supporting research are required. ]]>
Anyone looking for information on how best to counter the claims and assertions in the movie should consult the National Center for Science Education's terrific new website, Expelled Exposed.
And anyone wanting to reacquaint themselves with the ability of "scientific habits of mind" to improve the human condition should do two things:
First, watch the April 7th installment of the Charlie Rose Science Series: The Imperative of Science, with Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University; Harold Varmus, President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Bruce Alberts, Editor-In-Chief of Science; and Lisa Randall of Harvard University.
Second, read Bruce Alberts' March 21st editorial in Science. Here's an excerpt:
Let's start with a big-picture view. The scientific enterprise has greatly advanced our understanding of the natural world and has thereby enabled the creation of countless medicines and useful devices. It has also led to behaviors that have improved lives. The public appreciates these practical benefits of science, and science and scientists are generally respected, even by those who are not familiar with how science works or what exactly it has discovered.
But society may less appreciate the advantage of having everyone acquire, as part of their formal education, the ways of thinking and behaving that are central to the practice of successful science: scientific habits of mind. These habits include a skeptical attitude toward dogmatic claims and a strong desire for logic and evidence. As famed astronomer Carl Sagan put it, science is our best "bunk" detector. Individuals and societies clearly need a means to logically test the onslaught of constant clever attempts to manipulate our purchasing and political decisions. They also need to challenge what is irrational, including the intolerance that fuels so many regional and global conflicts.
So how does this relate to science education? Might it be possible to encourage, across the world, scientific habits of mind, so as to create more rational societies everywhere? In principle, a vigorous expansion of science education could provide the world with such an opportunity, but only if scientists, educators, and policy-makers redefine the goals of science education, beginning with college-level teaching. Rather than only conveying what science has discovered about the natural world, as is done now in most countries, a top priority should be to empower all students with the knowledge and practice of how to think like a scientist. ]]>
NSF has created a new track in the Research Coordination Network program that is aimed at undergraduate biology education. We’d like to get news of this funding opportunity distributed as widely as possible. Would you please make sure to pass on this information to the appropriate people at AIBS so that it can be posted on your website, listserves, and in any relevant bulletins. See the announcement at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08035/nsf08035.jsp .
Dan Udovic, Program Officer, DUE/NSF, Phone: 703-292-4766, e-mail: dudovic@nsf.gov
NSF's RCN grants are innovative funding vehicles to encourage and foster interactions among scientists to create new research directions or advance a field. In this case, quoting from the announcement, it's "an opportunity to request support for networks that will catalyze positive changes in biology undergraduate education. Application of new technologies to enhance pedagogy, increased use of inquiry based learning, enhancement of curricula with ideas from the frontiers of science, and building research into curricula to motivate the next generation of scientists all may benefit from increased collaboration among those who develop and offer undergraduate biology curricula. Research Coordination Networks – Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) will provide opportunities to join biology and education researchers and practitioners in networks that enhance the exchange of ideas and innovative practices." ]]>
AIBS has now officially endorsed Science Debate 2008; I sent the organizers a note today on behalf of AIBS President Rita Colwell and the AIBS Board of Directors.
The scientific, education, and business communities are coming together in truly impressive breadth and numbers to move this call for a debate ahead. As my friend Lee Allison (State Geologist and Director of the Arizona Geological Survey, as well as a fellow organizer of the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science) writes at Arizona Geology, American leadership -- economic and political -- is suffering, due in large part to our falling behind in science and technology. We simply must have more information about where our presidential candidates stand on their understanding and appreciation of the issues and challenges.
Here's a sampling of the organizations and individuals that have endorsed Science Debate 2008 over only the last ten days or so:
02/02/2008 Columbia, Case Western Reserve, and AIBS officially sign on
02/01/2008 PBS Online NewsHour: Scientists, Journalists Push for Science-based Election Debate
02/01/2008 U.C. Berkeley, Chancellor Birgeneau, & Friends of the Earth sign on
01/31/2008 The "Science 57": Fifty-seven universities and other organizations join
01/31/2008 Nobelist Laureates Holland and Watson, Columbia President Bollinger, Congressman Baird, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Mason join
01/30/2008 U of Maryland & ASU presidents sign on; also former NIST director William Jeffrey
01/29/2008 Council on Competitiveness supports a Presidential Debate on Science & Economy; becomes official cosponsor
01/29/2008 Richard Meserve, President, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and George Scalise, President, Semiconductor Industry Association, Member, President Bush's Science & Technology Advisory Committee, sign on
01/28/2008 Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, endorses us, as does the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
01/23/2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science calls for presidential debate on science & economy
01/20/2008 Intel's Craig Barrett: Flagging economy needs science investments
This week's announcement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's endorsement of Science Debate 2008 gives even more of a boost. And social networking sites such as The Intersection blog, the Uncommon Ground blog (I could go on--it's a long list of related blogs) and Science Debate 2008's own Facebook group are bringing many more people into the efforts.
All this said, it's still easy to find doubt within yourself that this initiative will ever succeed, even as you applaud its goals. Dan Greenberg's posting on the Brainstorm blog, A Debate on Science? Ho-Hum provides a cold half-empty glass of water in the face assessment of the challenges that lie ahead, as do, to provide only one other example, some of the readers' comments at The Intersection. Not until nationwide business interests are also truly on-board with the effort, the cautions say, will a presidential debate on science have a chance of moving forward and being taken seriously.
This is all true enough and the challenges should not be taken lightly, but let's return to the aforementioned moxie and ability to organize being demonstrated by the scientific community. It's galling to see science's and scientists' success in improving the human condition being taken for granted by too many policy makers--those in office and those running for election alike. These attitudes are treating science as a public good that can always be counted on to be there, producing material and economic prosperity, regardless of how poorly treated and neglected it might be.
You can't win if you're not in the game. So, a presidential debate on science, technology, and the economy? Heck yeah.
AIBS has worked with CNIE / NCSE over the years, and this year it's a special pleasure to see that both organizations are making climate science a focus of their annual meetings in Washington DC. NCSE's annual meeting is next week, 16 - 18 January, on "Climate Change: Science and Solutions"; AIBS's annual meeting is 12 - 13 May , on "Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases."
Furthermore, NCSE is running a session at the AIBS meeting on "Climate Change and Human Health: Developing Collaborations with the Public Health Community." This will fit nicely with the rest of the AIBS meeting's program, whose speakers include Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and co-author with Terry L. Maple of the new book, "A Contract with the Earth" and James Hansen, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, speaking on climate change models and predictions.
Chaired by AIBS President Rita Colwell, the AIBS meeting this May will examine how the interrelationships of climate, environment, and human health are manifested in infectious disease patterns, notably seasonality. Vector borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, Avian influenza, SARS, and related diseases are known to be closely linked to the environment and, more recently, to climate. Interactions between climate, climate change, and the environment have been studied extensively by investigators in the US and abroad. The AIBS annual meeting will address these issues, and it is a pleasure have NCSE joining us.
]]>EOL aims to serve as an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described. EOL will be used as both a teaching and a learning tool, helping scientists, educators, students, and the community at large gain a better understanding of this planet and all who inhabit it.
AIBS joins the EOL Institutional Council:
* To provide strategic advice and guidance to the EOL Board
* To promote awareness of EOL internationally
* To bring a broader perspective to the EOL Board from a wide range of institutions and programs
* To identify individuals, programs and other activities for possible involvement in EOL
* To provide advice on possible funding and other resources
* To assist in evaluating performance against EOL’s planned outcomes
AIBS's appointees to the EOL Council are AIBS Executive Director Richard O'Grady and Paula Mabee, Dept. of Biology, University of South Dakota, a former President of the Society of Systematic Biologists.
NEON is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species on ecology. NEON will gather long-term data on ecological responses of the biosphere to changes in land use and climate, and on feedbacks with the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. NEON is a national observatory, not a collection of regional observatories. It will consist of distributed sensor networks and experiments, linked by advanced cyberinfrastructure to record and archive ecological data for at least 30 years. Using standardized protocols and an open data policy, NEON will gather essential data for developing the scientific understanding and theory required to manage the nation’s ecological challenges.
AIBS has been the recipient of NEON-planning funds from the National Science Foundation since 2002 and now becomes a Founding Member of the Institutional Council of the NEON Inc. organization that will build and run NEON. Institutional members include colleges, universities, museums, scientific associations, and ecological or environmental non-profit institutions interested in promoting the purposes and activities of NEON.
AIBS's appointees to the NEON Inc. Council are AIBS Executive Director Richard O'Grady and AIBS Board-member Eric S. Nagy, Department of Biology, University of Virginia, the Associate Director of the Mountain Lake Biological Station.
The blogger is Holly Menninger, a Public Policy Associate at AIBS and AIBS's COPUS Activities Manager. Holly works on COPUS issues for AIBS with fellow staff-member Sheri Potter, who is the COPUS Network Project Manager--see the Media and Outreach section of the COPUS website for more information.
AIBS is getting ready to release a guide for biologists and other scientists on how to work with the media on science-communication issues. Holly's leading this project, which includes the offer of services from AIBS to run science-communication workshops and "bootcamps." Quoting from her November 26th COPUS blog, "You too can do something to improve the communication channels between scientists and the public. Be it through media interviews, volunteering your time working with visitors at your neighborhood nature center, or writing a science column for your local newspaper, we each can contribute to the translation of science."
]]>President Bush announced on November 16 that the Ecological Society of America ( ESA ) is one of the recipients of the 2006 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). ESA is the only organization to receive the 2006 PAESMEM award; the other awardees are all individuals. The award, the highest of its kind in the United States, is supported and administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and includes a $10,000 grant for continued mentoring work.
ESA ‘s program, Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability (SEEDS), garnered the presidential award. Made possible by generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Society established the program in 1996 to anchor its diversity initiatives.
“We view the ESA SEEDS Program as the jewel in our crown,” said ESA President Norman Christensen. “It is truly one of the initiatives of which we are most proud and today’s award underscores its tremendous value.”
Over the years, ESA has partnered on SEEDS with the United Negro College Fund, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges , the Institute of Ecosystem Studies , and others. With the goal of diversifying and advancing the profession of ecology, the SEEDS program provides a full spectrum of mentoring and learning opportunities to underrepresented undergraduate students.
Managed by ESA ‘s Office of Education and Diversity Programs, these include SEEDS ecology clubs and chapters, research fellowships, group field trips, and travel to the ESA Annual Meeting where students are assigned a mentor for the duration of the meeting. SEEDS directly serves over 200 students and its chapters serve nearly 2,000 students. These students credit SEEDS with enabling them to pursue a career in ecological science and to forge lasting relationships with both peers and mentors that help support their academic pursuits.
Further details are available from ESA here.
More information about the 2006 PAESMEM Award program can be found on the NSF website.
]]>ASPB and AAAS report as follows:
These professors were arrested and jailed in August 2007 and remain in custody to this day. The arrests were made by a Joint Task Force under the direction of the Director General Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the central intelligence agency of the Bangladeshi armed services, in connection with student protests, and the arrested academics have not been charged with any crime.
In addition to the 12 professors, an unknown number of students from both universities have also been arrested, and concern for their well-being is growing as well. Indeed, on September 4, 2007 Secretary General Irene Khan of Amnesty International, in a letter to Bangladesh’s leader, Chief Adviser Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, called for authorities to ensure that all human rights violations reported in the context of recent student unrest be thoroughly investigated and those responsible brought to justice. Khan further stated that use of excessive force, as well as reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees while being interrogated by military intelligence personnel are matters of deep concern. Moreover, the detainees’ denial of access to lawyers and family members is in clear violation of international human rights standards.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D - MA) in a letter of October 26, 2007 to M. Humayun Kabir, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Washington, D.C., urged the Bangladeshi government to release the 12 professors and any students who have also been detained for political reasons. Sen. Kennedy further stated that “holding these twelve men without charge and for political reasons is a major assault on the integrity and independence of the academic community of your nation and calls into question your government's commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”
For more information, see the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .
By mid-week I discovered the delightful Planet Bob website and YouTube video, from the Arizona State University Institute for Species Exploration. Professional, creative, and downright puckish, it succeeds brilliantly in just 6 minutes and 29 seconds to explain for a general audience the importance of work in biodiversity, taxonomy, and natural history collections. Go Bob!
And the week's ended with news of the launch of the Research Coordination Network for Building a National Community of Natural History Collections. Funded by a Research Coordination Grant from the National Science Foundation to Michigan State University, this project aims to build a strong collaborative community among researchers and other stakeholders in systematics, biodiversity, and related fields that use natural history collections. AIBS and two other professional organizations, the Natural Science Collections Alliance and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, are among the partners in this effort. The objectives will be met with activities that include workshops, symposia, internships, and a website, www.CollectionsWeb.org, which will provide a forum for interaction, host workshop reports, and provide information on ways to become involved. Several major community resources will be developed, including a catalogue of NHC, a survey of the status of NHC, a register of curatorial expertise, and an inventory of innovative and successful educational programs.
]]>Occupying about 10,000 square feet of office space in Reston, Virginia, on the way to Dulles Airport, the 20 or more staff of AIBS SPARS work with AIBS IT staff to convene peer review panels of outside experts and provide scientific management/program review, meeting facilitation, and IT services to a diverse client base, including agencies of the U.S. government, private foundations, and non-profit organizations. With decades of activities that have covered virtually every aspect of the biological sciences, AIBS SPARS's recent projects include work for the National Council for Science and the Environment, for the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, for the Kansas University Medical Research Institute, and for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Among its largest projects at the moment, AIBS SPARS is tasked by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command to provide independent peer review of proposals submitted to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder/Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program in Fall 2007. The PTSD/TBI Research Program was established in FY07 to promote research that will advance the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of military-relevant PTSD and TBI. The Program focuses its funding on innovative projects that have the potential to make a significant impact on improving the function, wellness, and overall quality of life for military Service members as well as their caregivers, families, and the American Public.
The FY07 PTSD/TBI Research Program challenges the scientific community to design innovative research that will foster new directions for, address neglected issues in, and bring new investigators into the fields of military-relevant PTSD- and TBI-focused research. Proposals from investigators within the military Services and proposals involving multidisciplinary collaborations among academia, industry, the military Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other Federal Government agencies are highly encouraged. Though the Program supports groundbreaking research, all projects must demonstrate solid judgment and rationale.
The FY07 TBI appropriation is $150M. The TBI Concept Award mechanism is being offered for the first time in FY07.
For this PTSD/TBI Program, AIBS SPARS is managing the review of more than 1,000 research proposals, including convening at least 24 peer review panels this fall/winter in the DC Metropolitan area, as well as conducting numerous reviews using a custom online application developed by the AIBS IT Department. For more information, contact the SPARS Director, Scott Glisson, sglisson@aibs.org
]]>(I am quoting heavily here from communications from Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU))
Encouraging news this week concerning the success of a collaborative effort by AU and more than 30 other organizations, including AIBS and some of its member societies, to press for the removal of a provision in a federal appropriations bill that would have directed $100,000 in federal funds to a Louisiana group that promotes creationism in the science classroom.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) had inserted the earmark into the Appropriations Committee's report on a bill allocating money for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. Sen. Vitter wanted to designate $100,000 to the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) "to develop a plan to promote better science education."
In a letter to every member of the Senate, the AU-led group argued against the funding on constitutional grounds. The letter's signatories came from across the scientific, educational, civil liberties and religious communities, including the American Association of School Administrators, the American Association of University Women, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, the Herpetologist's League, the National Center for Science Education, the National Education Association, the National Science Teachers Association, the Organization of Biological Field Stations, the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Union for Reform Judaism.
Sen. Vitter has now requested that the earmark be removed. On the floor of the Senate, the Louisiana Republican insisted that the money was not designed to promote creationism and blamed the controversy on groups promoting "hysterics."
"This is great news for the children of Louisiana," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "The federal courts have repeatedly held that teaching creationism in public schools is unconstitutional."
]]>I'm pleased to note here AIBS's and COPUS's association with Student Pugwash USA, a DC-based nonprofit with a mission to prepare science, technology and policy students to make social responsibility a guiding focus of their academic and professional endeavors. I had the pleasure of giving a lunch-hour talk to their group a few months ago, along with Erika Shugart, Deputy Director of the Koshland Science Museum, National Academy of Sciences.
SPUSA encourages young people to:
Indeed, the SPUSA pledge program embodying these principles was initiated in response to the awarding of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize to the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs and Sir Joseph Rotblat, a founding member of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs.
Notable among SPUSA's current activities is their development of a web-based 2008 Science & Tech Policy Guide for the upcoming U.S. presidential elections to enable students to make informed choices and express their views on critical science policy issues. Leading up to the publication of the guide, Student Pugwash USA is conducting a survey of 18-25 year olds on Facebook to gather data on attitudes toward science policy issues. I encourage broad participation in this online survey so as to help inform the creation of the policy guide.
]]>AIBS has since grown to almost 200 member societies and organizations while remaining remarkably faithful to its original purpose, as stated in Article II of the AIBS Constitution:
"The purposes of the Institute shall be the advancement of the biological sciences and their applications to human welfare, and to foster and encourage research and education in the biological sciences, including the medical, environmental, and agricultural sciences. To serve these purposes, the Institute will assist societies, other organizations, and biologists in such matters of common concern as can be dealt with more effectively by united action; hold and sponsor scientific meetings; cooperate with local, national, and international organizations concerned with the biological sciences; provide a voice for biologists in the public forum; promote unity and effectiveness of effort among all those who are devoting themselves to the biological sciences and their applications; and foster the relations of the biological sciences to other sciences, to the arts and industries, and to the public good."
The AIBS website, the pages of BioScience, and many other venues document our successes, along with our challenges and near misses (25th [1972] and 50th [1997] anniversary historical reviews of AIBS are online in the About AIBS section, as is a 2004 booklet). None of us would say that AIBS is "there" yet. Much has been accomplished by many good people's hard work and collaborations over the years, but there's always more to be done.
In this regard, we can contrast the iconic AIBS with the actual AIBS. The iconic AIBS embodies biologists' aspirations of what a national umbrella organization for U.S. biologists can, should, and ought to do. The actual AIBS is the members, board directors, and staff in the here and now, always aiming, with the resources and funds in hand, to live up to and honor their predecessors' accomplishments, the organizations's founding purposes, and AIBS members' expectations (so please keep sending those dues payments!).
Success on this front is a victory for all and the power of we. Anything less than success means that, together, we roll up our sleeves a little bit higher and redouble our efforts as we think about how future generations of biologists will judge our work.
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