Bowties and brainiacs at the AAAS meeting.

Abstract

When I told my sister I'd be coming to Boston for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in February, her response was predictable. “These people have their convention on Valentine's Day? What, are they all single? Don't they have lives?” My response: “I just told you they were scientists.” Billed as the scene “where all of science meets,” it was held over 5 days at a sprawling convention center-hotel complex now filled with an avalanche of intellect (if by avalanche we mean predominantly white and gray). There were various lively symposiums such as “The new biology of rocks,” “Mathematics and science of origami,” and “Rethinking the role of affiliation and aggression in primate groups.” “Humans may not be as aggressive and competitive as thought,” the Washington University press release for this last session noted, which made me wonder if their researchers had observed and experienced the cunning attacks, jealous rages, and biting of backs commonly associated with top primates engaged in academic peer review. I next checked out a well-attended seminar on nanotechnology but was disappointed that it didn't really involve any big ideas. I suppose I could have rushed through a lot more sessions like “Animal parts for humans? Xenotransplantation science, ethics, policy and publics,” but I didn't want to make a pig of myself. I did make it to a session on Science in Cuba, which started half an hour late, or, as they'd say in Havana, two hours early, companiero. The first press briefing I attended was titled “Avian cognition: When being called ‘bird brain’ is a compliment.” Alan Kamil of the University of Nebraska told us how the Clarke's nutcracker can store 25,000 pine seeds every fall and later use spatial memory and landmarks to recover them. He found that one of his graduate students could only recall multiple hiding places with 50% of the accuracy of a Clarke's nutcracker. Of course, the nutcrackers are more highly motivated than grad students, since they can actually live on birdseed. On Friday morning the President's science adviser, John Marburger, gave a well-attended speech. During follow-up questioning, he agreed that the bulk of the scientific community has reached consensus on human-enhanced global warming. “Everyone understands we have to go to a zero world carbon economy,” he explained. Expected White House response, “The President totally agrees with Dr. Marburger that in order to achieve energy independence we have to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” Climate-related panels warned of increased droughts and floods, more rapid sea-level rise, faster glacial melting, and a boom in shark populations around Alaska (which could create competitive pressure on members of the State Bar). The good news? Urban smog and pollution may be slowing the rate of heating by contributing to reflective cloud formation. Between that and the bioterrorism ballroom event, I was glad to see NASA sponsoring an alternative panel, “Interstellar travel and multi-generation space ships.” Later I attended a session where French physicist Maria Spiropulu explained her theory of the fourth dimension and how one couldn't literally be sucked into a black hole, which still left the unanswered question, so where did all those Enron billions go? Unfortunately, one great technological challenge continues to stymie America's top scientists. I was deeply moved by how many continue to struggle with overhead projectors that often delay, distort, or simply make a mockery of their carefully arranged transparencies. Although it's admittedly easy to ridicule science and its culture (and fun too), I still have to acknowledge a modest sense of awe as I learned about cutting-edge discoveries in human origins (monkeys you say?), astronomy, behavioral genetics, and brain structure (I think, therefore my prefrontal cortex neural mechanisms are functioning). I certainly experienced a sense of wonder staring at a picture of a transistor the width of a single electron. I wondered what kind of batteries it came with.