http://www.academicearth.org/

http://www.archive.org/index.php

http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php

http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/games.html

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/video/chat/

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/infonation/index.asp

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/index.html

That being said research funding is a subject where consensus is hard to come by. Even the source of funding incites heated debate as the spectrum of convictions stretches from absolutely no private funding, to no government or private funding for certain areas (ie. political science, public policy, stem cell research) to absolutely no government funding… Obviously some of these stances go hand in hand with the ideology and political beliefs of the individual. So if we cannot separate science from politics and policy making where does this leave the scientists and science policy? Here is one view on the subject.

elif

However, what makes Louis Kahn relevant for these pages is his experience with designing research buildings. His Richards Medical Laboratory in Pennsylvania seems to have gotten some negative reviews from the scientists who actually work in them, whereas the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA is praised by most everyone. The main difference between the two projects might be that on the latter he worked more closely with an engineer who had a better understanding of what scientists needed from these buildings in terms of functionality and who could perhaps better balance Louis Kahn’s, focus on form. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of Louis Kahn’s works’ often cold and austere exterior, but if it means a lot of natural light and an uninterrupted view of the ocean from my office window, why not? Despite some of his ideas which seemed unreasonable at the time, his use of natural light inside almost all of his buildings must have had some role, along with the green incentive, in the concept being adopted in many of the research spaces designed later on. 

As anyone who has worked in an office/cubicle/lab hours on end without seeing daylight can attest to, the sun is our friend (unless you are doing immunofluorescence). Similarly, to say that anyone will benefit from an aesthetically pleasing work environment might be stating the obvious.

However, the opposite is also easy to argue. Jon Cohen, in a decade old article for Science Magazine, summarizes the ideas thrown out in a panel discussion on the subject: it can be said that a good scientist is a good scientist and the color of the walls or the number of windows is irrelevant. Hence spending millions of dollars on designer buildings is an unnecessary expense. Then the question becomes are the good scientists more likely to go to work in places where color of the walls are to their liking? Here is a more fundamental question Jon Cohen poses: Can a good scientist become better, more creative and productive in a well-designed environment? For one I certainly agree that the quality of the workspace reflects positively on the work produced. Sure, quality work can be produced at any location where the necessary minimums are met, but unless the work in question is writing a heart-wrenching eulogy after a molecule, being in poorly designed labs won’t necessarily push the scientist over the edge for designing an elegant experiment. Judging from the push towards the designer research buildings of the last 15 years, there must be an economist out there who has already done the cost/benefit analysis for expensive buildings and decided it is worth the trouble.

Albeit a little dated like the previous, this article, also by Jon Cohen, nicely covers the ‘designer lab’ trend.

elif

SfN this year was in the beautiful city of Chicago; aka windy city, named after its number of corrupt politicians as much as it is after its infamous, freezing winds. For me though it is the city where electronic guitar from the north met the southern blues giving birth to the music of Muddy Waters whom than fathered Chicago blues and countless other musical legends to follow.

But I’m digressing, back to the legends of the neuro world… After 5 very busy days in this wonderful city here are a few highlights of the Society for Neuroscience conference. First of all, even though SfN has not put up the official numbers for this year, there seemed to be less people when compared to the Washington meeting in 2008. I’m guessing financial crisis.

The star topics of the year, as can be assessed by a glance at the titles of the presidential lectures and other featured talks, were memory/learning and non-neuronal aspects of neuroscience – especially astrocytes.

The star of the show or as the SfN President put it ‘Bono of the Neuroscience world’ was Kandel who addressed an approximate 10,000 people. He started with his research on explicit memory using Apylasia, suggesting that cytoplasmic polyadenylation element–binding protein (CPEB) is the “inhibitory contraint to memory”. Therefore, what is stored as memory depends on CBEP activation, which is the key to mRNA translation or delay in mRNA of other proteins resulting in memory maintenance as well as a role in synaptic growth. He also talked about research with mice where CPEB-3 was found, suggesting that CPEB’s role in explicit memory and its long-term storage is conserved across species. For a more broad perspective on biology of memory: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/29/41/12748

As for the posters: There was a definite departure from the central dogma of molecular biology towards the inclusion of miRNAs in the flow of information. Coming from a Neurosurgery Department, the aisles I spent the most time, ischemia, spinal cord, TBI, all featured plethora of miRNA studies. Though most of the studies are in the profiling stage and as yet away from the establishment of miRNAs as disease markers or actual therapeutics.

Society for Neuroscience Meeting is not known to be a place where ground-breaking research is shared with the rest of the world. Still I expected more studies utilizing more recently (last 2 years) established techniques, especially in imaging aisles. Brainbow anyone?

The efforts of the EU/German Neuroscience programs to attract postdocs were noteworthy. Though this deserves a new post purely on the funding realities of the modern times as well as the future of NIH, a topic which Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, discussed during his presentation at the meeting.

Also having run into the JoVE booth at the vendor aisles, I thought I’d point out the link again. It’s the Journal of Visualized Experiments where they cover topics from doing cell cultures to running western blots to collecting tissue. Check it out, it will be worth your while.

elif

Finally in Chicago and at SfN!

This year, SfN celebrates its 40th anniversary with 40,000 members. It was released yesterday that the conference is housing 16,000 posters and more than 30,000 attendees. Only at such a place will neuro-enthusiasts truly feel at home. A true mecca for neuroscience.

The Windy City is beautiful and the weather has been very cooperative.

Some interesting posters from today’s session that caught my eye mostly focused on microRNAs and ischemia.

• Da-Zhi Liu and colleagues at UC-Davis profiled miRNAs in various injured brain models (ischemia, subarachnoid hemorrhage, kainate-induced seizures, and sham surgeries) to compare miRNAs in the brain and blood. A list of up-regulated and down-regulated miRNAs can be found in their recently published article.
• Buller and colleagues at Oakland University showed that miR-21 was up-regulated 3-fold in ischemic rat brains when compared to the contralateral hemisphere. Overexpressing miR-21 in vitro oxygen-glucose deprivation model suppressed apoptosis and reduced expression of p53, caspase 3, and TGF-β receptor II levels, suggesting its neuroprotective roles are via the TGF-β signaling pathway.
• PDK-1 and suicide? Catalytic activity of PDK-1, AKT and PTEN were determined from suicide subjects (post-mortem of course) by Deivedi and colleagues at the U of Illinois. They showed that in suicide subjects activity of AKT1 were decreased (at both phosphorylation site T308 and Ser473, but not for Akt3). PDK-1 activity also decreased but no chance in protein levels.

Tonight was also UTHSCSA’s Social. It was nice seeing some familiar faces.

There have been a few issues with SfN this year such as wifi problems and transportation, but other than that things are running smoothly.

View of the Windy City from John Hancock Observatory

]]> http://digineurolab.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/sfn-sunday/feed/ 0 digineurolab SfN 2009 logo view http://digineurolab.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/sfn-2009-neurobloggers/ http://digineurolab.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/sfn-2009-neurobloggers/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:59:44 +0000 digineurolab http://digineurolab.wordpress.com/?p=242 ]]> Bloggers for this year’s SfN Conference (Oct. 17-21st). Full list posted by DrugMonkey.

We will also be blogging from Chicago.

“…an intimate portrait of brain surgeon Henry Marsh as he wrestles with the dilemmas of the doctor patient relationship.”

More about the film. Now available online until October 9th.

We attended this year’s Center for Biomedical Neuroscience Retreat where we presented three posters. A very humble someone won first place for the Research Tech/Staff category (this was back in May).

In the  summer, a number of  bright medical students joined the lab for the Medical Research Program and their work will be presented on Medical Student Research Day scheduled for October 6, 2009.

Our PCR machine underwent a near death experience.

Upcoming conferences/poster sessions include Congress for Neurological Surgeons (New Orleans) and Society for Neuroscience (Chicago). More on this later…

Also, Happy Birthday to Lauren and Shane!

Until next time,

B