One advantage of being in FITCI is that we were enrolled as some of the first subscribers to Smart Company Magazine, a publication featuring businesses in Frederick & Washington Counties.
The article is an interview with Akonni President & Founder Charles Daitch. Rumor has it he’s also a principle of the Bentz Street Sports Bar, but he doesn’t talk about that in the interview. Since the Bentz Street Sports Pub is a Cleveland Browns Backer bar, I wonder if he’s a Browns Fan like me? Are you ready for some football?
I’ve been busily toying around in the Lab and following up with different SciFoo lead, so haven’t been posting much.
The first plug is literally a plug, or a bunch of plugs. A couple of years a go I went in on half a batch of Mushrooms with Paul Silber : spiral dowels infused with mushroom mycelium. We split the loot in 1/2, each taking a hundred or so mycelium infused dowels of Shiitake, Chicken of the Woods and Oyster Mushrooms. I spent the better part of two days drilling holes and plugging logs and nothing happened. But I got some advice from Paul Stamets at SciFoo and decided to plop a couple of logs in the creek for a couple days, now the Shiitakes are in bloom!
I also wanted to mentioned that our friends around the corner in the Omega Center, ImQuest, have won an NIH grant in the tune of $6.5MM over the next five years. The grant is “to support the development of a long lasting, safe, and acceptable combination topical microbicide product” for the prevention of HIV transmission. I had the chance, briefly, to meet Robert Buckheit when he was in FITCI last week. He’s been reading the blog and promised to make the next BioBeers (not scheduled yet, but probably in November or December).
And today, trying to come up with something to post about, I read this little write up on The Periodic Table of Videos in Genome Technology. There is a video of almost every element in the periodic table, narrated by some whacky chap from Nottingham with hair standing straight up in the air. This one about Na (sodium for you Biology majors) is particularly amusing:
One of the recurring them es of the SciFoo week has come back to me full circle. An article in today’s Frederick News-Post has many noted scientists proclaiming that the necessity & benefits of peer review and transparency of the data and methods used to evaluate the evidence in the Anthrax mailings.
The FBI said Monday that it expects scientists who did work related to the case will publish more than 10 papers based on their work in the next six months to two years. Apparently, there were a number of “novel” methods employed, which I find puzzling since I would think Anthrax is fairly well characterized already.
The last day of Scifoo camp, now a full week later, has sessions from 9:30 AM until noon, then lunch and a wrap up session at 2 PM.
I was still laughing about Brian’s session the night before, as my mind turned to mush listening to a full day’s worth of sessions and talking shop in between with strangers and new friends, not to mention staying up past my bedtime two nights in a row.
I was pointed in the direction of Brian Malow‘s “science” routine on YouTube, more representative of his routine last night:
Sunday’s first session was presented by Saul Griffith. I had happened to leave my laptop charging on a table in the main room Saturday and when I came back Saul and a couple of other people were sitting at the table, so I decided to veg and see what they were up to. I didn’t realize Saul’s celebrity status until talking with Joseph Jackson in the hotel lobby after camp. Seemed like your typical Kiwi(oops, Aussie) to me, but others had been somewhat intimidated by talking with him, or his lovely wife Arwen, because they’re in the O’Reilly crib. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss, I guess. I was continually amazed at Scifoo, just reading a name tag and then googling the name. It seems like half the people I searched have either their own wikipedia page or a YouTube on their TED talk. Amazing.
Anyway, Saul gave a talk about “Energy Audit“, in which he performed a “balance sheet” on his personal energy consumption as well as global supply (very similar to the linked talk from the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, CA, March 4, 2008). An interesting talk, but I can’t help thinking that there is something fundamentally missing from the premise. After all, the alternative is global doom and gloom in another 25 years and I believe that the Earth is much more resilient, but don’t have any specific data to back that claim up. His talk, more than anything, has convinced me I need to rethink my take on the situation. he clearly impressed Stanford’s Global Warming guru Steve Schneider.
Next was a very interesting talk by Shelley Batts about cochlear regeneration. It was very good research, but she went on to talk about her ideas for improving cochlear implants, which was really interesting. I am sworn to secrecy about the nature of these improvements, but she is successful (which I have every certainty she shall be), it will be a major breakthrough in curing deafness. Amazing, just trust me.
There was a third session on Sunday morning, but I was spent and decided to skip it, instead spending my time outside smoking and talking with Jeff Marrongelle about Frederick and Ft Detrick.
Then I had a most interesting lunch with Lee Smolin, Steve Hsu and Shane Curruth. What started as just another lunch at Scifoo (me again picking a table of innocent enough looking strangers to break bread with), turned into some interesting conversation about martial arts and then film making. I should’ve picked theoretical physicist Lee Smolin’s brain on the String Theory, but recalled Steve had mentioned jujitsu and MMA in his intro, so we talked about that for a while. Then we started on Shane and I found yet another amazing story in him. His independant film, Primer, won the 2004 Sundance film festival. A lot of technical talk about cameras and such, but then I asked if he was hanging out at the hotel (or something to that effect, since scifoo was wrapping up and I was looking to have a drink with someone after words). Shane was catching a plane later in the day because he had an appointment with Steven Spielberg in LA on Monday. On the set of Universal Studios. But he’d already been there as Spielberg’s guest during the filming of Oceans 13, so it wasn’t a big deal. Just another lunch at Scifoo.
The closing ceremonies wrapped up Scifoo ’08 and we all headed back to the hotel or scattered to some other destination (like Spielberg’s manse). ON the bus back, I had an interesting conversation with Sebastian Seung, a Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT. He’d shown a very interesting 3D model of a brain slice in the closing ceremonies. I told him he should look into mitochondrial migration as a potential neuronal mechanism. Maybe the most intelligent thing I did all weekend.
Just when you thought it was all over. I was lounging in the atrium at the hotel to see who was still around, to say good bye to Attila & Chris (head for San Francisco for the night) and chatting with Shelley, who was waiting for her friend Aaron to come pick her up. He’s a Grad student and part-time writer for Wired. I met and decided to go have a drink next door with Eric, NINDS Director of the Brain Stimulation Unit. It turns out the bar next door was desperate need of ambiance, so we grabbed a quick drink and then slinked out before one of the other patrons noticed that we were definitely out of place and not looking for a fight.
Back to the hotel, the famous Jaron Lanier shows up with an entourage. I had no idea who he was, but he was obviously someone important. Aaron the Wired writer had arrived, too. He’d just finished submitting a piece on Fruit Fly Semen Proteomics. “In the 1960s researchers noticed that female fruit flies would refuse to mate once they had come into contact with seminal fluid. That observation has tremendously important evolutionary implications. If a male fly can keep his girlfriends loyal by ejaculating in them, he will ensure that his genes are passed on to the next generation.”
That seems like a fitting story to end my Long Strange Trip at Scifoo on. First time I had been to California since 1972. It was a fascinating experience. So many stories, so many “Rock Star Scientists”, but there’s no place like home.
Day 2, Saturday, began with a bus ride to Google. On the bus, I evesdropped on Andrew Hessel (fellow BioBarCamper) having an interesting conversation with Stewart Brand. I actually didn’t know who Stewart was, but I could just tell he was someone famous. I should have recognized him from reading the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as he was the organizer of the original Trips Festival, but know is known as an author and Futurist.
Had interesting conversations over breakfast in a camp circle with people including Chris Uhlik, Director of Engineering at Google. I was fascinated with stories he told about being the first American engineer hired by Toyota and his stories of spending two years living at Toyota City.
Then it was off to sessions.
The first Session, presented by Chris Uhlik, was about Google’s “Big Solar” project. Yes, Google appears poised and ready to jump feet first into the Energy business. Other than that, I am not sure how much I am supposed to talk about. Suffice to say that they have a plan, a big plan and the Engineering and funds to back it (or at least get it off the ground).
The next session I attended was on Agin & Life Extension, a joint presentation by BioBarCampers Chris Patil, Attila Csordas and Aubrey de Gray. Attila got me into this whole adventure and for that I am truly grateful. Thank you, my friend. And Chris is just a freaking bundle of positive energy, smart as snap and a terrific person. We had a great time at BarCamp and I hope we get together again soon. In the mean time, I can follow his blog, Ouroboros.
From there, the sessions I attended get foggy. In honesty, that’s when I stopped talking notes and started listening.
I attended on session hosted by Joseph Jackson and Lars Bo Jeppesen about business models for Open Science companies which featured the web site Innocentive.com. The web site is pretty unique. Companies (or individuals) post problems and leave it to the general public to solve for them. Check out some of the Life Science problems and become a solver to earn big $$.
Another session hosted by renown physicists Lee Smolin, Garrett Lisi and Max Tegmark presumably about science Incubators, but it ended up being more about the FQ(x)i foundation as a model of intellectual incubation.
Between sessions I talked with Dan Janzen about his bug collection. Perhaps I impressed him by identifying a moth that he’s collected in Costa Rica, but I thought I had seen in Maryland. I also brought up the topic of tomato Horn Worm parasitic wasps, which he delightfully told me was the topic of a recent publication about the genetic diversity. His demonstration was on “Bar Coding” insects. I had a nice lunch with Christine Borgman and fellow Marylander Ken Beutow from the NCI (in Bethesda, not Frederick).
Another session was about detection of pandemic disease before it becomes a pandemic disease (my paraphrase) and hosted a who’s who of Virology & Infectious diseases: Ian Lipkin (see below), Joel Selanikio, Eric Rasmussen, Scott Layne, Tom Kalil (I think) and someone else I thought was a former (or current) Director at the CDC. I remember the conversation being lively, only itterupted by my dumb ass comment about how Influenza may be a good model system for this. Glad someone else has already thought of this….
Here’s a side with Ian Lipkin (?) presenting Akonni’s microarray platform in another session which I did not attend. Wanted to get the plug in for another FredCoBio alum.
I got a free copy of his book, Mycelium Running. I am looking forward to reading it. He also gave me some valuable advice on my own, unsuccessful mushroom farming adventure as well as how to cultivate my morrel farm, for which I am eternally grateful.
The last session of the evening was another favorite: Brian Malow, Science Comedian. better to watch than have me describe it. This is not the science geeky comedy, but funny none the less:
Brian is a great guy. We talked and laughed quite a bit over the weekend. So here’s another YouTube, more geeky, with some interviews:
After a more successful jams session, running late into the night and featuring Nat Torkington‘s beautiful Gibson banjo. Here’s me holding it:
And Nat actually playing it:
The Hotel had the bar open this night (the only time I saw it open for the entire week) and I enjoyed lively conversation with Myles Axton (23andMe guinea pig and Nature Genetics publisher), Oanh Dang, Razi Naqvi and Jonathan Kuniholm (Co-Founderof the Open Prothesis Project).
Day 2 ended at about 2:30 AM, but I was ready to go Sunday morning.
Just thinking about a couple of neat things on Day 1 I had forgot to mention.
When we pulled up to Google the first thing we saw was a flying car, or rather a “drivable aircraft”, as the maker Terrafugia prefer to call it. That’s my friend John Gilbey (Welsh science writer & photographer) in the foreground with the back pack.
And then after registration, there were two electric cars in front of Google (for most of the weekend, actually):
In recent track testing, on street tires, it achieved the following performance:
0-30 mph: 1.35 sec
0-60 mph: 3.07 sec in 117 ft
0-100 mph: 6.87 sec
0-100-0 mph 11.2 sec
Lateral g: 1.3
Braking g: 1.2
A Friend and collaborator of mine asked if I could post this:
PART TIME BIOTECH RESEARCH TECHNICIAN
Early-stage biotechnology Company located in Walkersville, Maryland seeks a part time Research Technician for its cell culture operations. Responsibilities include media preparation, cell culture preparation and maintenance and general lab support services. Qualified candidates should be Biology/Chemistry majors with biotechnology industry laboratory experience. Strong organizational skills and the ability to work independently are essential.
The position is available immediately. Hours approximate 20 per week payable biweekly at a rate commensurate with experience. Scheduling is flexible.
The whole SciFoo adventure begins, in earnest, in the Lobby of the Wild Palms Hotel at about 5 PM Friday, as all of the campers gather from their respective corners of the universe and mingle in the atrium awaiting the first bus to Google.
In the forefront is Jim Olds, Director of GMU Krasnow Institute. With his back to the camera is
Brian Cox, who is working with the Large Hadron Super Collider at CERN, a fascinating guy to talk to, a “Rock Star Physicist”, so to speak. He’s talking to Brian Malow, Science Comic. I’ll talk more about Brian later, but here’s Brian’s TED talk in Feb ’08, very similar to what he presented at SciFoo:
This was Day 1, in summary (borrowed from Sabine’s blog, whom sadly I didn’t meet at SciFoo but obviously a much more witty and clever writer than me):
Shuttle buses bring us to the “Googleplex” and I feel like visiting Disneyland, just that the people welcoming us wear Google-shirts instead of Mickey-Mouse ears. Welcome to Google! We all get name tags, are photographed, are handed a SciFoo T-shirt and a SciFoo bag, and some other nice things. Everywhere there’s security personnel. I look at the schedule, which says 5:30 pm: Socializing. Gee, what am I supposed to do? I hold on to a glass of red wine (a good one) and talk to somebody about climate change models who to my irritation constantly looks past me, then suddenly he goes “Hey! Did you see that guy? That’s Neal Stephenson.” I’m not blind and I can read, so I nod, “He’s REALLY famous!” the guy goes. I nod.
After some dinner, we all gather in a room for the introduction. I didn’t really expect there to be so many people, I would estimate maybe 250 or so. I haven’t been at a conference that size for a long time. Tim O’Reilly and Timo Hannay make a brief introduction about the spirit of the meeting: Mingle and interact. Talk about what’s on your mind, even if it’s not a finished work or not your area of work altogether. We’re supposed to make at least a dozen new friends, he says. I don’t think I have acquired a dozen friends within my whole life.
Then we all have to introduce ourselves, name, institution and three words that describe our interests. It feels to me like one of these memory games, 250 faces and names, how many can you recall? What I recall one hour later is that almost everybody is a native English speaker, evidently the majority of participants is from North America or Great Britain, and even those who are not live there. I recognize two French accents, and there’s another German, living in London, who I meet later at the buffet fishing a Warsteiner out of the ice-water.
For those of you who don’t know how to unconference, here is what happens then: Boards with empty schedules are put up, people run to grab pens and occupy a slot, that’s supposedly fun. There are various rooms in different sizes and you have to guess are there 5 or maybe 120 people interested in the topic? Add what you’re planning on, a discussion, a presentation, a demonstration, a group therapy? I take a pen out of somebody’s hand and write “The Marketplace of Ideas” on a yellow post-it, then jump to the board and stick it onto a random slot. Turns out however, nobody knows what that’s supposed to be about. Heck, don’t these people read my blog? So I add a subtitle “Why the academic system sucks”.
Here is a picture of me and a Googler (I don’t recall his name) at the very end of Day 1 from Bob’s excellent Flickr show:
I caught the last bus back to the hotel Friday and was exhausted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep a wink. My mind was just racing with all the stuff I experienced and did on Day 1. I laid in bed and watched Lethal Weapon II and then most of The Patriot in HBO before finally nodding off somewhere around 3:30 AM PST.
I have been thinking about how to write a summary of my week away from Frederick County for the past three days. I guess the best way to do it is in words and pictures.
We arrived early to set-up and then the campers started showing up around noon for lunch, drinks and networking. It was the first time I had a chance to meet Attila and John Cumbers, whom I have been chatting with on-line for a long time. Since they’re both grad students and just a tad younger than me, they have seemingly uncontrollable energy for this kind of chaos.
You can find the complete list of attendees (although I think maybe a couple non-registered people showed up) as well as the entire schedule of events on the Wiki. At BioBarCamp, I made a presentation about “Afterbirth derived mesenchymal stem cells as a sustainable alternative to Bone-marrow stem cells”. Here’s what I presented:http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dt2zc5z_0d7kwz8c4
The Keynote on Thursday AM was by Aubrey de Gray. You can see his key note, which was streamed live by Cameron HERE (go to lower left of the flash screen and pick “on Demand”).
I was planning on knocking the whole week off today, but I am already tired and have enough links in here already. My summary of BioBarCamp was that it was increadibly fun, interesting, entertaining and tiring. I mer some very talented young people, and a couple older ones like me and heard some interesting sessions.
We concluded with a Panel discussion on Biotech Start-up’s and I was asked to sit on the panel. I thought it was entertaining, but not all that enlightening. We started by trying to define “Open Science”, which we didn’t actually do, so this lead to yet another session on Thursday (which I believe is in Cameron’s video collection).
Dinner on Wednesday at the Macaroni Grill was fine, but I like the more personal touch on Thursday at Bucca di Beppo. Maybe it was just the Chianti?
Today is the day of sessions. Thus far I have attended one about a large scale PV project 5 meters x 1300 meters along the Mexico Boarder. One on RegMedicince and life extension, one on Open Science and a few others. Great one on How Fungi will Save the world.
We’re going into dinner break now, then evening sessions. Here is the slide show from Day 1. I haven’t taken may pictures form Day 2, because they’d just look like Day 1.
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