Graduation day

Today the Fellows had a small "graduation" ceremony in the office of MIT president Susan Hockfield (in the center of the pics). Boyce described one way that Fellows are different from other students: students are all anxious to graduate and leave, while Fellows would love to fail and be forced to stay another year. I'd have to agree with that!

Meeting Noam

Sometimes, for example on the rare occasion when you get to meet and coverse with Noam Chomsky, you only get one shot at a picture. Sometimes you have to entrust your half-blind friend with taking that shot. And sometimes you forget to set the camera up in advance to ensure a good photo. Sometimes all of these circumstances converge ...and this is what you get. A blurry under-exposed picture of Keith and Noam Chomsky shaking hands.

Keith's award

Forgot to post that on Feb.15, in the spectacular Boston Museum of Fine Art, Keith was presented with an award for excellence in science reporting from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

There was no flash photography allowed due to the artwork in the room, so I couldn't get any decent shots.

Costa Rican memories

One of the secret perks of this fellowship is a “field-trip” to Costa Rica. Such hardship! It’s frequently described as a working trip, and indeed, it was heavily scheduled. But this is the kind of work anyone could get used to. We spent a full-day learning about Costa Rica’s national health-care system, which, as they say, allows a 3rd-world economy to achieve 1st-world health standards. It’s not perfect, and not directly applicable to the U.S. But it was pretty interesting to see what a strict public-health focus can achieve. They still have lots of grumbling about the taxes, and those who are healthy feel they shouldn’t have to pay so much.

The more glamorous part of the trip took us first to an active volcano, called Arenal. It's one of the most active in the world, erupting pretty steadily since the late 1960's. We hiked in as far as you are allowed to go, and with binoculars, you can watch boulders tumbling down the flanks, in little bursts all day, every day. At night, if the cloud lifts, it looks like little campfire ashes floating in the blackness. And at any hour, you can hear the crashing thuds.

In the rain forest, highlights included the amazing leaf-cutter ants (yes, bugs – but they have an incredible ecological niche. They fan out, cut off swatches of leaves, and carry them home, where, like farmers, they are harvesting a giant underground fungus, which is the sustenance for the colony. True symbiosis: The fungus only grows when the ants care for it; the ants depend on the fungus. Okay, I’ll stop now.) We went out with a researcher who captures bats at night (we saw four fruit bats and one vampire). They were pretty traumatized by our flashlights, as she held them for us.

And we got a few hours at the beach, the last day, where I rode a surf-board for the first time. Managed to stand up for about two seconds. The rest of the time was spent on marathon bus rides, along the winding mountain highways of Central America.

Do you know the way to San Jose...?

This was Keith at 4AM today heading out for the week-long fellowship field trip to Costa Rica. Look at what he's missing out on:

We just refer to him as "the award-winning Keith Seinfeld"

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just named their 2007 Science Journalism Award winners and Keith was the winner in the radio category for his "Electric Brain" series. I know I may be partial, but that series was really one of the most memorable things I ever heard on public radio.

About the awards (from their site):

Independent panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which honor excellence in science reporting for print, radio, television and online categories. The awards, established in 1945, also include a prize for coverage of science news for children that is open to journalists worldwide...

Here is their blurb about Keith's series (from their site):

In a thematic series, Seinfeld of KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma described the electrical properties of the human brain and how scientists are finding new ways to use those properties to treat diseases and injuries.

The judges were impressed by his clear, concise language and great use of sound in telling about important research in neuroscience. "While a drill whines in the background, cutting a hole in the top of a patient's skull, Keith Seinfeld carries his listeners into the story," said Jeff Nesmith, a Washington-based science writer for Cox Newspapers. "This kind of radio journalism seizes a listener's attention while it delivers an understandable account of complicated science."

David Baron, global development editor for Public Radio International's "The World" program, praised the "vividness of the writing, the clarity of the scientific explanations, the superb use of sound, the dramatic storytelling." He said Seinfeld's work "hangs together beautifully as a series, with each story building upon those that came before. Well conceived and brilliantly executed, 'The Electric Brain' is radio science journalism of the highest order."

The awards announcement is an interesting read because all of the journalism awarded is quite compelling.

Keith visits the Media Lab

As one of the Knight program’s twice-weekly seminars, we had a fun tour of a program at MIT called the Media Lab. It’s kind of a misleading name, since most of the research underway there has very little connection with what you might think of as media. Instead, it’s all about the intersection of technology and humans. Our group met with four of the researchers there (out of 25 on the faculty).

One interesting project is by Deb Roy, who has been recording every second of his baby’s life. Actually, the baby is now almost 2-1/2, and the recording phase is winding down. He’s hoping to to shed light on childhood language acquisition. His specialty is interactive robots, and he wired his suburban hosue with a ceiling camera in every room. They can be switched off, but he basically has recorded nearly every moment of family life with his son over the past couple years. There’s a whole room at MIT holding the computers that have all that data. His wife is a speech pathologist, so it’s a team effort. In the meantime, he’s developing creative computer techniques to sort and analyze massive amounts of video and audio. The project is titled, "The Human Speechome."

The whole Media Lab is self-consciously promoting itself as “creative,” which is annoying at first, and using the image to solicit corporate contributions. But after talking to the people there, it really does feel like an incredibly creative place, where people are living up to their principles, to work collaboratively across fields and define problems in new ways.

More details on Keith's classes

Since several friends have asked what I ended up studying, here's a list of the actual classes.

I've been doing the textbook reading for the first two of these, while the rest are more like lecture series for me (and I do read bits and pieces of the readings for them, if it looks interesting):

- Intro to Biology (MIT)
- Intro to Neuroscience (MIT)
- Neurobiology (Harvard Med School) ... this conflicts with MIT Biology, so I'm attending about half the lectures (it's 3 hours every Mon, Wed, Fri), and it's been great for deepening what I'm getting from the Neuroscience class
- Human Physiology (Harvard)
- Madness and Medicine (Harvard) ...It's a history of the psychiatric profession and of asylums
- Paleobiology ... Ecology and Evolution (Harvard ) (this is mostly about the fossil record)

I guess you could say I'm studying biology and neurobiology, and learning about the rest. I'm happy to say that the classes are comlementing each other ... with the vocabulary I build in one class helping me understand the next.

I'm learning SO much science ...

I can't believe how much science I've learned in just 5-6 weeks. If I had to leave now, it already would be an incredibly productive year.

I'm attending six classes, but not all of them full-time. And I'm doing the readings for two or three of them. Of course, I have no tests or papers or grades, so it's low stress. My focus is on the fundamentals of life itself, and the brain specifically. So, I have two biology classes, two introductory neuroscience classes, a history of psychiatry class called Madness and Medicine, and a class that focuses on fossils and how changing ecosystems have affected evolution.

Plus, we have our own series of twice-weekly seminars, organized by the Knight program director, and that’s been outstanding. (Here’s the agenda, if you’re interested http://web.mit.edu/knight-science/seminars/current.html)

I’m just about at the point where I can have a conversation with a scientist and understand all the vocabulary!

Understanding neurons - a Eureka moment

Finally, a Eureka moment in my pursuit of how the neuron works. Much of what I’ve been studying, through lectures and reading, is actually pretty straightforward, and pretty much anyone who has time to sit in class and read textbooks could get the gist of it. But I’ve always been stumped by the electrical part. Electricity is what kicked my butt out of physics back in my freshman year, and it’s been befuddling me this fall. I could always see the logic in the equations that represent current and voltage. But it’s so hard to visualize what’s actually happening. Neurons function by creating an “electrical potential.” And tonight I finally can see how and why that happens. I’ve re-read the textbook chapter several times, and I’ve even taken to reading other textbooks on the topic, to see if they explain more clearly, and one of them did, by going into greater depth (instead of trying to simplify and gloss over the details).

Basically, the complexity of neurons (and all biology, really) comes from a series of chemical reactions that happen in chain-reaction form, cascading one after another. For example, you end up with: the 12 steps to transform molecule-A into molecule B; or the seven steps in moving K ions and N ions. I’m not attempting to memorize all of these, or any of them really. But it is exciting and rewarding to understand what’s involved. It’s sort of like learning how a car’s engine works: If you don’t work on it regularly, you won’t remember the details, or even all of the vocabulary, but you’ll retain a general sense of how it works, and an appreciation of what’s most critical and what can go wrong. And if something does go wrong or needs to be changed, you have a context to at least discuss it. That’s how I’m starting to feel now about neurons and synapses.

Can Keith handle med school?

Today in my Neurobiology class, I had my first episode in a long time of squeamishness over medical topics. The guest lecturer was a neurologist (who is currently working at a local biotech co.). He brought with him a man in his 40’s who has Multiple Sclerosis. And they walked through the man’s medical history, starting with the onset at age 38 of some mysterious symptoms – numbness on one half of his body. His primary care doc couldn’t make any sense of it and thought it was probably nothing, but sent him to a specialist. He went to three specialists, including an ophthalmologist, before seeing a neurologist. They ran him through an MRI and found signs that “might” be MS. He says he was in denial for about six months, hoping they just had it wrong. But the episodes kept recurring. I guess MS tends to flare up every few months. It’s a disease that hits certain spots in the nervous system, almost like a bruise. If the spot is in your neck, you get numbness below that point. If it’s in your brain, it may affect your vision. He’s been taking drugs that prevent new occurrences, although the existing ones keep getting worse. MS causes the insulating layer of cells around nerve connections to decay.

I had to leave before further discussion of his case, to make it on time to my Biology class. But I was ready for a break anyway. Why did this bother me in a visceral way? I think I was empathizing deeply, and imagining myself having a sudden and mysterious onset like that. Whenever I get squeamish, it's because I'm imagining myself being the victim.

Keith's first week of classes

The first week of classes (at MIT; Harvard starts two weeks later) had all the nervous excitement you may remember from being a freshman, except moderated (thankfully) by a little maturity. I was happily uncaring about all the social aspects that fight for your attention as an adolescent. And I really didn’t care much if anyone wondered what this old guy was doing in their classes. I could just sit back and purely enjoy learning. It’s like having a full-time job of going to City Arts and Lectures events. Already, the biology and neuroscience classes are filling gaps in my knowledge, even though they’re undergraduate and introductory. Part of me feels they could move a bit faster, that I’m more advanced than the undergraduates, and hey, I don’t have to worry about mastering all the equations and vocabulary. But I’ve met some resistance from the graduate neuroscience program at MIT; the course director (Earl Miller) doesn’t want any outsiders, since it’s meant for incoming doctoral students. I guess it’s their big bonding moment. Anyway, he was quite dismissive and that annoyed me. I am participating in a graduate course at Harvard Medical School. It’s an intro to neurobiology, where half the class is second-year med students and half is incoming PhD candidates through a different neuro program. Those lectures were great – very meaty, but I was able to follow. But the class meets for three hours, three times a week, and it overlaps with the Biology class that I think is really fundamental (since the only biology I got was as a 10th grader). So, I’m attempting to go to the first 40 minutes of the med school class, which is held on a different campus, across the river in Boston, and then hop a train-bus combo to get to MIT in time for the biology lectures.

Coast-to-coast Day 4 - Minn. to Chicago

We get a later start – too tired to be up at 6 again. Hit Twin Cities, and do our usual driving tour, but this is a bigger city (or cities). It’s Sat. morning, so things are quiet. We find the University of Minnesota across the river from downtown Minneapolis, thinking we’d find some restaurants, have a nice brunch. If it exists, we must have missed the street. We drive all around the campus, though, and end up back in downtown Minneapolis. The university is huge, with three campuses in the area. At one point, we're on an overpass and look down, and find ourselves right above the crumbled pieces of the I-35 bridge. Giant blocks of concrete, looking as if it had been deliberately demolished. Not finding any eateries, we head for St. Paul and find ourselves stuck in traffic, at the entrance to the Minnesota State Fair. The state capitol building is grandiose and impressive. This must have been a wealthy state in the mid 1800’s, trying to prove itself to the Eastern states. Lunch at the historic Mickey’s Diner (slow, but hey, it’s got character -- the guy at the info desk at the capitol told us it's where Jesse took Arnold for lunch).

On to Madison, WI. It’s off the freeway. I can see why people love this town. It’s the perfect merger of capitol and university town. The city planning was fabulous, with a big capitol building on a knoll, and a spoke pattern, with boulevards radiating out, one of which heads straight to the Univ of Wisconsin. Lively pedestrian area between the two. We chew up a few more miles after dinner and decide to skip Chicago, but stay in a southern suburb called Harvey, IL, on the Tri-State Tollway. Comfort Inn.

Coast-to-coast Day 3

From Miles City we set our sights on North Dakota. We stop-off at Teddy Roosevelt National Park in the Dakota Badlands. It’s like a smaller scale Grand Canyon. Maybe it was bad for farming, and bad for trying to navigate on horseback. But amazing scenery. Prairie dogs, prickly-pear cactus, bison, and scoria (that’s a geology term we learned). The park is built around the historic western town of Medora (beware of the $5 coffee). On to Bismarck, ND – a sad capitol city, maybe the ugliest either of us has seen. DQ was the best we could manage for lunch. Then, dinner in Fargo, which seems to be the end of Western landscapes and Western style towns. It has a kind of nice, reviving downtown. Dinner at Sammy’s Pizza, which boasts “#2 Pizza in the U.S.A.” (as rated by some New York outfit). It’s been there for 50 years and has a unique crispy crust. Worth the stop. Onward to St. Cloud, MN, Days Inn, check in after 9 pm.

Jake really liked these kiosks in Fargo

Coast-to-coast Day 2 – Montana

Up at 6 am! No more tarrying. Breakfast in Missoula, at The Shack (boysenberry pancakes that sure sound good now). Drive around town looking for a decent bookstore, and find Birds Nest Books, where we pick up an old paperback copy of Moby Dick. Neither of us has read it. It’s perpetually on the list, but never makes it to the top. Theme one emerges – gotta check out the college campuses. We circle around the U of Montana. At Butte, we set another pattern for the rest of the drive. We exit the highway, find the main drag, spend 15 minutes getting a feel for the town and looking for a decent cup of coffee or lunch, and head out. Impression? A hard-scrabble mining town on a hillside. Next stop: Bozeman, home of Montana State (not much of a university area). Excellent coffee milkshake at the Leaf-and-Bean. And a drive-through of Livingston, MT – the old gateway to Yellowstone, a smaller version of Bozeman. At some point this afternoon, we start reading aloud Moby Dick. We discover it’s comedic! And it has something of a 20th century sensibility (published in 1851). Dinner in Billings, at a brew pub. Bigger town, but not much going on. End a long day at 8:45 pm in Miles City, MT, almost across the state, at the War Bonnet Inn.

A town named for Miles!

Coast-to-coast Journal, I-90 (with deviations)

My good friend and college housemate, Jake, aka Chris Madden, has signed up for the road-trip. There’s something about a road-trip that’s fundamentally attractive. And, I discovered when some people reacted to this with surprise and others with envy, it’s one of those things in life where either you get it or you don’t. I had several friends later tell me, “I wish I could have come, too.” That’s despite the fact that it’s long and there’s not much time to spare (sort of like a reality TV show: We have six days to make it to Boston, before Miles and my mom arrive by plane).



Day 1 – Wed., Aug. 22, 2007. -- We get a late start – there’s too much to do. Not just packing up the van, packing the house. The yard. By 11:30 am, we’re passing under Seattle’s “Portal to the Pacific,” heading East. Lunch in Ellensburg.
A pit stop at Gingko Petrified Forest (state park) – thought-provoking and memorable, every time I’ve been there. Giant trees made of stone. Jake’s never been to the region before and Grand Coulee is screaming to him from our map. Detour #1. We skirt Soap Lake (I summarize the story I did for NPR), and enter an incredible canyon country – the coulees. They’re remnants from ancient, monumental floods. Again, forces of nature so vast that you can't help but feel Awed. Grand Coulee Dam? No longer the “Mightiest thing ever built by a man,” but still a landmark. Dinner in Spokane, where we realize we’re desperately behind schedule. We had planned to get to Missoula. But it was already getting dark. We started calling ahead to hotels and found Missoula is totally booked. We settle for Wallace, Idaho, arriving at 9 pm. The only room left is the Presidential Suite – huge and overpriced (essentially like a room in a Days Inn with enough square footage for leg-wrestling) (which we did not attempt).

Sitting on a piece of petrified forest.