Science Cheerleader

Wrote this post calling for the White House, National Academy of Engineering, and others, to create an Emergency Response 2.0 system to pre-wire the nation so we can rapidly and effectively respond to the next natural disaster.

As of this evening, it’s been Tweeted out, Facebooked, and Dug over at Digg nearly 400 times already. Looks like we’re rattling some cages. Let’s hope this attention and excitement results in action. I’ll continue to keep you posted.

Read the post that got this party started.

Just wrote this for DiscoverMagazine.com

Who get the credit for the BP container cap? YOU do.

Do you have thoughts on how we can pre-wire our nation for a better–more rapid–response to the next catastrophe? Share them via the Discover “comments” section, following the post.

Excerpted from a piece I just posted on DiscoverMagazine.com:

Prizes: This old idea is making a sweeping comeback and it is changing the way government, industry and foundations help revolutionize future discovery. It’s high time we offer prizes to motivate and galvanize the public to come up with creative, real-time solutions to major disasters, such as the BP oil spill.

Approximately one-and-a-half weeks ago, I received an email from Andrew Revkin (who writes the DotEarth blog at The New York Times) in which he challenged researchers and others to think creatively about substantive approaches to stanching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“There’s a lot of talk about sweeping Grand Engineering Challenges this year. But one is unfolding in real-time in the Gulf. Waiting months for a relief well seems pretty in the box,” he wrote in the email (reprinted with Revkin’s permission), and reiterated in this blog post.

While it’s true that BP is accepting public suggestions about ideas to mitigate the oil spill, the process needs some tweaking. From the Deepwater Horizon Response website: “Once a formal suggestion has been filed, BP technical personnel will carefully evaluate each and every one for technical feasibility and proof of application. If the engineering group finds the suggestion feasible, the person submitting the suggestion will be contacted if and when their support is needed.”

BP technical personnel will evaluate the suggestions? Seems a little too cozy to me.

For the same reasons President Obama wants to divide the Minerals Management Service into two agencies–one charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, and another to oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties–perhaps we should consider a third-party administrator to solicit and evaluate proposed solutions from the public.

I suspect the White House would agree. Earlier this week, Beth Noveck, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Director of the White House Open Government Initiative, summarized on the White House blog the highlights of a  recent Prize Summit organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and some of the major players in the world of big prizes. “Leaders from over thirty Federal agencies have come to learn about how to incorporate prizes and incentive-backed challenges into their work of addressing complex policy problems,” Noveck reported.  The summit helped agencies learn more about the benefits of prizes while setting forth guidelines, like this one from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB): “A prize should not be an end in itself, but one means within a broader strategy for spurring private innovation and change.”

Hold the phone. What if one IS looking for an end in itself, such as an immediate solution to the oil spill? Read full post.

Here’s a short piece I wrote for DiscoverMagazine.com, yesterday, about a promising new use for Pokeberry weeds. Their berries’  highly absorbent dye is being used to coat fiber solar cells. Turns out their dye can trap lots of the sun’s energy in these lightweight, plastic storage devices. This solar energy is then converted to power/electricity.  Check it out!

Here’s a piece I recently wrote for DiscoverMagazine.com about research that suggests infants have rhythm. (I love the dancing baby in the closing video.)

Here’s a piece I wrote for Discover Magazine.com yesterday about a pharmaceutical ice cream–called ReCharge–New Zealand is producing to counter side effects of chemotherapy. I learned about this in The Scientist. The most important ingredient: Lactoferrin, a protein found in milk that possesses the power to impede tumor growth and improve intestinal immune response. Wow.

Here’s a quirky (and sad) science news item I wrote for DiscoverMagazine.com this week: Booming Music May Have Triggered Club Goers Heart Attack:

ABC News reports on an unusual and tragic case of a heart attack triggered by blasting music. A British teenager died shortly after complaining of loud music at a London nightclub, according to reports. Details are sketchy but U.S. doctors suspect a genetic condition may be to blame. Read more.

Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Stories of 2009 #69: Science Sets Its Eyes on the Prize
Big money awaits innovators who can build rockets, sequence genomes, predict people’s movie preferences, harvest energy from the tides, or explore the Moon.
by Darlene Cavalier
From the January-February special issue; published online December 25, 2009

Last night, I was reading through the January edition of Discover Magazine, which chronicles the 100 Top Science Stories of 2009, when I made quite a discovery (pun intended): a story written by our very own Darlene Cavalier placed #69! Darlene’s piece, “Prize-Driven Research Takes Off,” focuses on the growing number of organizations offering prizes for successful science and technology innovations. The article should be released online in the next few weeks, and we’ll make sure to post it here.

Congratulations Darlene! What an honor!

Here’s a quirky piece I wrote for DiscoverMagazine.com this morning about a guy who got a bit too ambitious in his search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Citizen Scientist Gone Wild.

Happy Friday!