Findings

The End of the Beginning

ESOF finished yesterday, but new funding from charitable foundations should assure its future for a while. And more people should be able to enjoy the fun if ESOF 2010 can pull off plans to webcast the entire show. Check out this week's print edition of Science for the details.

And if you want even more ESOF 2008, check out the posts on the Science Careers blog--one explores a discussion on whether women scientists can do both family and research and another notes that a free bag is not what new researchers want from ESOF.

See you in Turin in 2010.

--Science's European News Staff

Picking winners for Europe

The Euro is stronger than the dollar, but when it comes to making profits, Europe still has an inferiority complex about the success of the United States. That's why several sessions at ESOF targeted the question of how to better get basic research out of the lab and into the marketplace, making money for European companies. This morning, Andrew Dearing of the European Industrial Research Management Association chaired a session on "Achieving a more innovative Europe." One interesting comment from his introduction was: "We've come from a long period in which we were told we shouldn't pick winners."

Europe has always tended to spread the wealth--most of its science funding, for example, goes to so-called Framework Programmes that must involve scientists from multiple countries, even if focusing money on one group might get more accomplished. Yet that's starting to change, both for the European Union as a whole and for its member countries. France, for example, has dared to throw money at a small number of universities, hoping to make R&D powerhouses. Germany has done the same, seeking "elite" universities. In both cases, the schools not selected were none too pleased. The E.U. now has its own way of picking science's top echelon: the European Research Council, which picks the best grant proposals from researchers no matter their location, and those scientists can go work anywhere in the E.U. Yet the ERC's budget remains only about 15% of all E.U. science funding.

Some of the discussion at the session noted a July 15 letter in the Financial Times by Esko Aho, Finland's former prime minister and now president of the Finnish innovation fund Sitra, and Frank Brown, dean of the Insead business school (Aho also led a group that produced a 2006 report on "Creating An Innovative Europe"). The European Commission will soon issue a policy statement on how to create a European "Silicon Valley" and the letter urges the Commission to be brave and only pick a few existing science "clusters" to get new money instead of continuing the strategy of making everyone happy by adding more centers. Aho and Brown write:

Mars and Venus in a boat?

Yesterday I attended the provocatively titled session "Mars and Venus:  How Europeans and Americans view and use science." The American  speaker was Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS (publisher of Science) (far right in photo).  Representing Europe was Roland Schenkel (far left), Director General of the Joint Research Center (JRC) in Brussels, and the JRC's press officer, Aidan  Gilligan Patrick Cunningham, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Irish Government, who chaired the session. When I bumped into Leshner the previous night at  a party, I asked him whether the US is Mars or Venus. "Funny, everyone keeps asking me that," he said. But he neither chose the session's  title nor knew the answer. In what might be an ESOF first, the  speakers started by changing the title of their own session. "Serena  and Venus is a better analogy," said Leshner, referring to the  professional tennis-star Williams sisters. "It's a competition, but we're in the same boat."

"Science has flourished for the past 400 years in Europe," said Schenkel, "but today the U.S. dominates." Why? The reason is the nature  of the two beasts, he says. "The U.S. is a single massive economy,"  while the European Union (E.U.)--though collectively the larger economy-- is composed of many countries pursuing their own interests. To put  that into perspective, said Schenkel, "imagine a U.S.A in which the  federal government managed only 5% of overall R&D expenditure with  95% managed individually by 50 independent states." On an optimistic  note, he pointed out that the E.U.'s share of the world's peer-reviewed  scientific articles is 38% to the U.S.'s 33%. But a scientist in the  audience pointed out that the E.U. papers have a much lower total impact  factor. "The reason is that we speak 15 languages," he said before  proposing that all publicly-funded E.U. scientists be forced to publish their research in English. (Schenkel shot that idea down as unworkable.)

Leshner focused on the increasing tension between science and society  in the U.S., arguing that the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks have "skewed" research priorities. The budgets for research on "biosecurity" have ballooned, he said, while many of those for basic  research stagnated. But the biggest flies in the ointment between science and society, according to Leshner are "current scientific issues that abut against core values:  embryonic stem cell research, studies of sex, genetics of behavior, neuroscience (challenging concepts of mind/body), and the teaching of intelligent design versus evolution in science classrooms." Leshner also shared some optimism.  "Both Obama and McCain seem to be science friendly," he said. Then again, "we are facing the largest fiscal deficit in the history of the U.S." Europe's economy is facing tough times too. The science "boat" for each powerhouse region may soon encounter rough waters.

--John Bohannon

Asking science to rescue Europe's cultural heritage

With thousands of outstanding examples of ancient architecture, artifacts, and landscapes sprinkled all around the continent, “Europe has good reasons to celebrate its cultural heritage,” Cristina Sabbioni, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Bologna, told ESOF attendees yesterday. Europe’s rich cultural heritage is at the heart of both the local tourism industry and European identity, she added.

Prompted by its impressive cultural history, Europe has pioneered many aspects of conservation science, but Sabbioni is worried about losing the edge. “Europe has a long experience in cultural heritage scientific research and has the world leadership in this sector. But to maintain this competitiveness… coordination is needed at European level,” Sabbioni said.

Next stop, Italy

ESOF still has two days to go, but one of yesterday's sessions was already looking ahead to the next edition, in 2010 in Turin, Italy. Among the new features: an ambitious plan to Webcast the meeting in its entirety. As reflected in the periodic table-inspired portion of its logo, the appropriately Italian theme of the 2010 conference is "Passion for Science." Turin beat out Paris, Copenhagen, and Wroclaw in an Olympic-style bidding process to host ESOF. The city won the bid with help from the Compagnia Sao Paolo, a big Turin-based private foundation that has also promised to be a major sponsor for the event. The size of its contribution remains to be determined, however, as do those from local and regional governments and businesses that ESOF is hitting up for money. Indeed, covering the 4 to 5 million Euro provisional budget "is our main concern right now," says physicist Enrico Predazzi, president of the ESOF 2010 management board.

Signs of the Times--Oh Baby

As noted in an earlier post, I caught a glimpse of an ESOF speaker preparing his talk on the plane flight to Barcelona. His name is Gary Morgan of City University London and the few slides I saw him preparing on his computer suggested he was going to challenge claims that "Baby Signing" classes could help an infant's brain develop faster. I didn't know what baby signing was, but it sounded provocative so I, and a surprisingly large number of people, showed up 8:30 a.m. Saturday to hear Morgan, co-director of University College London's Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, speak.

"Does anyone here do baby signing classes?" he started off. One person raised their hand.

"Does anyone here work for the baby signing industry or promote baby signing classes?" Morgan next asked. No one responded. "Good, so I can say what I want to."

Hmm, any talk that starts that way has to be good. And it was.

The Doubtful Ape

Whenever primate researcher Josep Call goes on a trip, he packs his bag the night before and puts his passport and tickets in its front pocket. The next morning, he checks to make sure they are still there. He fully remembers putting them in the bag, but he looks anyway. We humans are fallible, after all, and we know it--thus we often feel uncertain even when we have little reason to.

Over the past several years Call and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been studying nonhuman apes such as chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas to see how much they realize that they are uncertain too--a key component to the kind of self awareness we call consciousness. The experiments take several forms, including placing apes in front of two hollow tubes that they can look through. A human experimenter then places a grape in the back of one of the two tubes, either in the full view of the ape or out of his sight. All the ape has to do to get the food is to touch the right tube.

Degrading science and unfashionable career choices

Protein degradation is a gripping tale--verging on melodrama--in the hands of Aaron Ciechanover. "Every protein has its story," says the 2004 Nobelist in chemistry from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. His plenary talk yesterday began with a quick tour of the rollercoaster ride his field has taken in recent decades, from prominence to obscurity and back. Biology's fascination with the double helix and all that it brought seemed to shunt everything else aside for a time. Ciechanover's main theme was the enduring importance of ubiquitin, the molecule that he says delivers the universal "kiss of death" to molecules within the body. Proteins embraced by it are doomed to destruction. Without it, deadly errors accumulate.

Mmm, Tokamaks

The hottest power snack of ESOF08 was certainly the Tokamak doughnut. Modeled closely on the toroidal reactor vessel, or tokamak, of a nuclear fusion reactor, and engineered by Fusion for Energy, the organization procuring the European components of the global ITER fusion reactor project, the doughnuts were baked at a slightly lower temperature than the 100 million degrees typical inside the real thing. The limited edition snacks were disappearing fast from the Fusion for Energy stall this morning, perhaps because of concern among delegates that, with the US budget for ITER axed in fiscal year 08, they may not get another chance soon.

--Daniel Clery

Photographic Revolution

"The most revolutionary picture of the 20th century"

It's not a shot of a group of soldiers raising a flag on Iwo Jima, not even Marilyn Monroe standing over an air vent in a white dress. CERN theoretical physicist Alvaro De Rujula thinks the title should go to this blurry picture of the Sun. Why? Because it shows the Sun´s core, which is usually invisible to us, and because it was taken not with light but with neutrinos, ghostly particles that rarely interact with matter.

Light usually takes thousands of years to work its way from the core to the Sun´s surface before making the 8 minute journey to Earth. Neutrinos, on the other hand, zip straight out from the Sun´s heart but their disinclination to interact with matter also makes them extremely hard to detect. The camera used for this picture was a vast tank containing 50,000 tons of water 1 kilometer underground in a mine in Japan. The Super-Kamiokande detector took the picture in the mid 1990s with an exposure lasting 500 days. So, as well as being the last century's most remarkable picture, it may also have been among the most expensive to produce.

--Daniel Clery

EAGLES fly in GM food fans

European scientists have never been able to persuade European consumers to embrace genetically modified (GM) crops. Now, some are hoping that scientists from developing countries can make the argument more convincingly. A group called European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES) plans to expose the European public to voices such as those of former World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin, who now leads the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. It's an attempt to drive home the message that GM crops are key to addressing food shortages around the world.

At ESOF, EAGLES organized a session about science in the developing world that carried a strong pro-GM message.

Poetic Justice -- Roald Hoffmann

I can't think of a worse place for a poetry reading than the dreaded Room 14, the venue for yesterday's session on "Poetry and Science." A flimsy plastic door and curtain were all that stood between the science-poets and the roar of the crowd at the tapas bar and exhibition stands just outside. The audience leaned forward to hear, grimacing as a string of announcements blared over loudspeakers outside. But just as I was cursing ESOF and about to give up on the session, Roald Hoffmann rose to the challenge. Within a minute he made the noise melt away--I knew I had to stay.

It's not just that Hoffmann is a talented poet, though he certainly is. It's that he is at least as gifted a scientist. (He won the 1981 Nobel chemistry prize and now teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.) The first that he read to us was about solitons, a strange and very rare form of wave that carries energy across great distances with almost no loss of energy. Within the poem was a slyly hidden statement about human relationships. It's a very rare poet indeed who can draw on such a deep understanding of science.

The most haunting poem that Hoffmann, now 71, shared with us has never been published. "Nature commissioned me to write it in 2003 for the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA," he said. The result was a poem titled CODE, MEMORY. "They rejected it," he added with an ironic smile. I can see why the Nature editors might have been scared away. It's not a simple poem, neither in structure nor mood. Layered in are references to Nabokov, evolution, Mendel, genetics, and genocide. (As a boy in Złoczów, Poland, Hoffmann narrowly escaped the Holocaust; most of his immediate family were murdered.)

After the session, I asked Hoffmann if Science could have the honor of publishing the poem online here. He agreed and we present it below (And in case your blog reader disrupts the formatting of the stanzas, we offer a PDF version).

--John Bohannon

Download Code-Memory.pdf

Science Fiction

Okay, I'll admit I fell for it too. At the ESOF stand for the Swedish Research Council (SRC), nifty "MRI helments"--that's what the stand staff calls them--are stealing the show. Put one on, tighten the strap, then look into the mirror to see a real-time scan of your brain, superimposed over the mirror image of your head. Turn around, walk a few steps; your brain moves right along!

Everbody is fascinated. "Can you also see how somebody feels? Whether they're happy or sad?" one woman asks.

But wait a minute... MRI scanners are big machines with giant magnets inside. Who built that into a simple bike helmet?

Nobody did, the research council's Emilie von Essen admits. MRI helmets don't exist; that thing you're wearing with the weird antenna doesn't do anything, and that's somebody else's brain in the mirror, cleverly projected over your astonished face. It's just a way of getting people interested in brain science, von Essen says -- and I guess it works. But can you still call it science education when you're showing people science that doesn't exist?

--Martin Enserink

LHC Collides With the Olympics

A hot topic at ESOF08 has been the imminent switching on of CERN´s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will be the world´s most powerful particle accelerator and should answer a number of burning questions in high energy physics. Ironically, an ancient tradition, the Olympic games, may slightly delay this modern technological marvel.

At a press conference with a number of CERN staffers--and with CERN director general Robert Aymar in the audience--LHC construction chief Lynn Evans was pressed on the exact timing of the first beam through the giant 27-kilometer long accelerator. Five of the eight sectors of the ring have been cooled to the operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin and are ready for use. The remaining three are also cooled, but CERN engineers are still fixing a few final glitches. "During the month of August the first beam will be injected into the LHC," Evans said confidently, and later added that it will probably mid August.

Meanwhile, one CERN official quietly suggested a different window: the last week of August or the first of September. The reason for this discrepancy? In mid August CERN will not be able to get hold of a satellite uplink to televise the switch-on because of the Olympics, which is hording them all. So CERN's media office is pushing for a slight delay so the world can better see LHC's successful start....

--Daniel Clery

Croatia: Aiming High

Was it a scheduling error that put Croatia on a panel yesterday afternoon with scientific powerhouses USA and Britain for a session on what governments can do to spur innovation and compete globally? It seems that way at first -- until Dragan Primorac, Croatia's science chief, begins to unveil his grand strategy. As he flips through slide after slide dense with statistics, it's obvious that Croatia is punching above its economic weight in ambition. And Primorac--minister for science, education, and sports  since 2003 (seen at left in the red shirt, training with Croatia's national football team)--seems to enjoy the challenge. Scientists improve by measuring themselves against the best, he says, and he intends to do exactly that.

Our Gluttonous Brains

Our brains make up only about 2% of our body mass, but when it comes to metabolism they are real energy guzzlers. About 20% of the oxygen we breath and 25% of our glucose supply goes straight to our heads, keeping the brain's 100 billion neurons, plus astrocytes and other cells, well nourished. And yet our brains use almost as much energy when they are seemingly doing very little as when they are firing away on complicated tasks or thoughts. In a keynote talk at a session entitled "Looking inside your brain," neuroscientist Pierre Magistretti of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland suggested some possible answers.

Magistretti's talk was actually about the neuroscience of brain imaging, particularly the mechanisms behind the metabolic changes detected in techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional MRI--techniques now routinely used in both medicine and basic research. But in the course of figuring those mechanisms out, Magistretti and others have begun to hypothesize about the high-energy brain states that make such imaging possible. Magistretti suggested three possible explanations for the high baseline rate of brain energy consumption, all of which could be part of the story. First, a lot of energy might be going into keeping the brain from getting over-stimulated: About 15% of the neurotransmitters in brain synapses are inhibitory molecules rather than excitatory. Second, new discoveries about the brain's plasticity--its ability to create new synapses in response to new experiences or situations--suggest that the brain is working away even when information is not being transmitted. And finally, Magistretti said, unconscious processes may keep the brain ticking away at a rapid rate even when we are inactive, such as during sleep.

All in all, a lot of food for thought before the meeting breaks for dinner tonight.

--Michael Balter

Photo: A 3-D view of a neuron by digital holographic microscopy

We have liftoff

The meeting officially started today but sunny Barcelona makes it tough for ESOF attendees to stay inside, so several science outreach activities take place in the fresh air. One of the more visually arresting was yesterday's balloon-aided launch of a mammoth paper boat that had been created by local children and adults. It's hard not to hear or see science this week in the city. On my plane flight to Barcelona, I noticed a person working on his slide presentation for ESOF. It was fascinating enough I plan to attend his talk tomorrow and tell him I spied on him--look for a report tomorrow afternoon.

It's obvious that ESOF presents a European perspective on science--a session that just ended saw a debate over the German and UK stem cell positions. And I also overheard this provocative snippet of conversation from an attendee strolling through the Place Espanya:

"I don't know why Americans always think their system is the best one?"

Perhaps by the time the meeting ends Tuesday I'll know the subject of her annoyance. If not, I'm sure my colleagues will keep you entertained. One is now watching a man make bubbles big enough that he can step into them. I'm guessing that the science of surface tension is involved?

--John Travis

ESOF 2008--Tapas Anyone?

Later this week Science's European news staff will descend on ESOF 2008, Europe's answer to the annual AAAS meeting. ESOF (Euroscience Open Forum) is currently held every other year and this year's conference in Barcelona is the third such event--ESOF 2004 was in Stockholm and ESOF 2006 was in Munich.  I would normally say the diverse program offers a smorgasbord of activities, but given our Spanish location, I think a broad tapas menu is the more apt analogy. Indeed, ESOF will each day host a "Tapas with the Professor." Other items that have caught our eye are a Science meets Poetry session that includes contemporary  poets, including a Nobel prize-winning scientist, and a session on "Atomic Detectives", the forensic scientists tracking nuclear material and trying to prevent it from landing in the wrong hands. Come back starting Friday for a taste of this Barcelona meeting.

--John Travis, Science's European News Editor