judyhalper | June 26, 2014The last lecture of the last session was by Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is one of the architects of "nudge" thinking. He is a law professor, but he works with behavioral economists to develop his ideas and policy proposals. He has worked with the Obama government to develop "nudge" policies and his ideas are being copied all over the world, especially in the UK, which has a nudge unit.
Sunstein thinks of the policies he develops as "paternalistic libertarianism," a label that could ruffle more than a few feathers. I think one needs to approach Sunstein and his fellow nudgers with an open mind.…
judyhalper | June 26, 2014Yesterday was policy day, as far as keynote speakers were concerned. Lidia Brito is the UNESCO director of science policy and capacity building. Among the usual points about the need to change, building capacity and recognizing stakeholders, here is what I believe is her take home message: Science is changing, and that's a good thing. We need to keep going in this direction, but change it even more.
Collaborations across countries and continents, the rise of science in China and India, and yes, MOOCs. In other words, we need to actively help create equality in science education and science…
judyhalper | June 25, 2014Peter Krause, the ever-friendly and patient press officer for ESOF, says the best thing about the organization is that it began ten years ago as a grass-roots idea: scientists who wondered why Europe had no equivalent of the AAAS and decided to create one. Since then, it has grown in all directions, but it still retains the flavor of scientists creating spaces for scientific exchange on a pan-academic level.
That feeling was certainly present yesterday evening, at a session on science communication. The speakers were three communicators in very different fields. The first, Angel Rodriguez…
judyhalper | June 24, 2014I have definitely reached information overload, which is unfortunate because I am missing Brian Schmidt's talk. However, of all the things I have heard and seen today, there is one talk I need to write about: Ice cores in Greenland.
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is one of the most cited scientific authors. period.
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
That is probably why she can get away with lecturing in this wonderful T shirt.
Dahl-Jensen goes to Greenland with a large team to drill ice cores. And those cores, of course, contain precise records of the climate going back tens and hundreds of thousands of years. From…
judyhalper | June 24, 2014The sun came out and I was called out of a session, so I took advantage of the sunshine, after three days of grey and drizzle, to see the outdoor booths set up all around the buildings in the Carlsberg complex, here. In fact, in conjunction with this main festival of science, the city of Copenhagen is hosting a "Science in the City" fair here and all over the city. Here's what I saw:
The point of this 3-D printed head is to create better devices -- eg. hearing aids. Several 3-D printers on display.
Here's my favorite:
They are working on a "family" solar car. Not sure how a family will fit…
judyhalper | June 23, 2014Aside from the actual science, I am learning that 1) Copenhagen can be quite cold in the summer and 2) that the natives here are quite friendly. More than once people on the street have stopped to help me find my way. And the streets are full of people -- walking, riding bikes, taking buses. It seems to be a fitting place to have sessions on urban planning. From what I can see, Copenhagen has adopted some of the better ideas.
After a morning of biology, I went for physics and aerospace in the afternoon. The subject was the Google LunarX prize. To get the $20 million, the winning team will…
judyhalper | June 23, 2014Today we get to the science and the issues surrounding it. Karl Deisseroth gave the first keynote lecture. For anyone who's been asleep the past few years, Deisseroth's lab at Stanford is at the cutting edge of a new kind of brain research. They invented optogenetics -- turning brain circuits on and off (in mice, at present) with fiberoptic lasers. Their lab is putting out new methodology at an astounding rate. Their latest is Clarity: a way of making the brain tissue clear, so you can see all the neurons at once. In other words, you can get an image of the whole brain. I know I am not the…
judyhalper | June 22, 2014 Fabiola Gianotti
I should start with the ESOF 2014 opening ceremony, but instead, I need to go back to the rest of the journalists conference. Specifically to the prize - yes there was a prize. It went to a guy with dreadlocks down past his waist who stages science events in Christiania -- the still-existent hippie/anarchist community in the middle of Copenhagen. Among other things, he could talk about deconstructing academic while listing things that suck. Instead of describing, I'll tell you to visit his website: Science and Cocktails (scienceandcocktails.org). (Sorry, the iPad idea has…
judyhalper | June 22, 2014Today is the "First" European Science Journalists' Conference. So far, we are in the midst of the usual: Is there a crisis in science journalism? Clearly the business is changing, and those who work for the print media feel the pinch, and yet people have access to more reporting on science than before. Kathryn O'Hara says that we are contracting in a funny way. Again, this blog is a good example. I expect people who already interested in science in some way to be reading it.
The speaker before O'Hara, Jan-Olov Johansson, pointed out that in Sweden, at least, science is rated very high in the…
judyhalper | June 20, 2014In less than 24 hours I'll be going through security checks, hoping my stopover in Warsaw will go smoothly. Nothing is packed yet, but the credit card that was eaten by a voracious ATM at the beginning of the week has been replaced, gifts have been purchased for various people, included the couple who will be hosting me for three nights, pants have been hemmed. Still not convinced that the new card will work in Danish machines. My cell phone company has just replaced my trusty old "dumb" phone with a brand new "smart" one in hopes I'll use lots of apps and internet services. That smart…
judyhalper | June 14, 2014What can I say about an event that counts both Carlsberg (as in the brewery) and Nature (the scientific journal) amongst its sponsors? That event will be the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2014. In just a week, I’ll be stepping out of my little bubble in the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, on my way to ESOF 2014, held this year in the big city of Copenhagen. There, I’ll be joining several thousand others, from Nobel laureates to mere journalists in a week-long marathon of science-related events.
I’ll be blogging daily from the week-long science fest. Not to name-drop, but…