AAAS Annual Meeting - Day 1

This weekend I was at the AAAS Annual Meeting 2008 in Boston. It was a great conference. It primarily consists of various panels and lectures all day from 8:30am-5pm. There are about 10 choices of lecture at any given time. At 5pm there are usually a few receptions to got to, and then usually one big lecture or other event in the evening. I went to some really interesting lectures, so I'm going to write about all of it!

Friday, February 15 - Day 1

Food Security and Climate Change in Africa
I started out my first day at the conference with a 10:30am-noon panel on "Food Security and Climate Change in Africa". The speakers talked about how remote sensing satellite data is used to monitor rain fall, climate, and crop growth. They then use models to incorporate this data with information about institutions in the country to help predict if there will be famines or other food shortages. The program is called FEWS NET. It seemed like a really interesting system. NASA, USGS, and USAID are all involved. One of the speakers talked about the difficulties of affecting change, even after a problem is identified. He said that the first impression of donors is just to want to send food aid. However, often people are not suffering primarily due to malnutrition, but rather from diseases associated with famine conditions. He said its very difficult to get the right balance of understanding and communicating the complexity of the situation, but also trying to accomplish change in a timely manner.
My thoughts: The FEWS NET project seemed very interesting. I thought it was especially cool that they incorporate not only data on climate and crops, but also on the intstitutions in the country. I've heard before that famines do not occur simply because of a lack of food, but rather because of food shortages combined with difficulties in transportation, market failures, or other institutional problems in a country. I was also very interested in the dilema faced in communicating the results of these models. I think this problem is found in many areas of science, where scientists want to get better data and talk about complexity and uncertainties, but this results in decision makers being less able to act decisively on the issue. A similar situation is seen in space weather where uncertainty in the prediction ability makes incorporation of the predictions into operating procedures very difficult.

Science and Innovation through International Cooperation
The second lecture I attended was on how to spur innovation through international cooperation. One speaker talked primarily about universities as research and development incubators and student talent magnets. They discussed the movement from a U.S. and Europe dominated system, where people came from all over to universities in these places, and often stayed after graduating, to a situation where more high-quality regional universities are found in other parts of the world. Speakers recommended connections among American and foreign universities to help improve both universities. They believed that the globalization of universities could play a role in capacity building in developing countries. One of the speakers was from a university that was planning on implementing a requirement that all undergraduates have an international experience. This could be accomplished through study abroad or through an internship or other program in a foreign country.
My thoughts: I am very interested in collaboration among universities around the world, and I do think its very important for people to have an international experience. I love the idea of making it a requirement for part of an undergraduate program. However, I wonder what exactly "collaborations" means at times - is it just an information network? I would like to help create international collaborations between my program - International Science and Technology Policy - and other S&T policy programs around the world. However, the details of how to do this are net yet clear to me. I remember that at MIT, Amy Smith had started a program called U to U (short for University to University) which aimed at connecting students at MIT with students in universities in developing countries to work on development projects. For example, when I went to Zambia, I worked on a team with students from the university there.

Toward a New Climate Economics: Can we Afford the Future?
This lecture was put on by Economics for Equity and Environment, and focused on various economic analyses of the climate change issue. The talked a number of times about the Stern Review, and debate surrounding that. That was a report done in the UK that showed an economic argument for taking action on climate change now. However, it was very different than past economic papers, and has created much controversy. (Here's a link to a wikipedia summary of the contraversy.) The speakers talked about the confusion between the messages sent by scientists vs. economists. Scientists, they said, talk about climate change as a dramatic and immediate problem facing the entire world that needs to be dealt with. Economists, on the other hand, often see it as a second order problem, as something that is not a pressing issue based on cost-benefit analysis. Their studies show it is not worth investing a lot of money now into stopping climate change. So, the scientists on the panel gave two main reasons for inaction on the issue of climate change, one was "fake science" and the other was conventional economics. They had looked at the popular economic papers on the issue and had done some economic analyses of their own, showing what basic economic assumptions were causing the difference in results from what scientists were saying. There were three main things they talked about that caused differences: the discount rate, the use of average vs. worst case data, and the incorporation of technology improvements. The discount rate is important because it provides a measure of how much people value something now versus some time in the future given their current preferences. This affects the analysis because many of the effects of climate change happen over long time periods. The scientists felt the discount rate used by the economists was too high - at about 6%. This means that a $1000 today is only worth $3 in 2108. The scientists on the panel believed the discount rate should be closer to 1.5%, so that $1000 today is worth $226 in 2108. The panelists argued that the lower discount rate makes sense because people today want the quality of life to be the same of their children, grand children or great grandchildren, even though the great grandchildren are growing up many years later. The second issue the discussed was that economists tended to use average numbers to predict climate change, rather than worst-case numbers. They argued that this is not representative, because there is so much uncertainty, and the high level of uncertainty could have a large effect. They gave an example that houses have a 1 in 250 chance of catching fire (less than 1%), but most home-owners buy fire insurance. Also, people under 40 years old have a .2% chance of dying, but most young parents get life insurance. There is a greater than 1% chance that the ice sheet in Greenland will melt in the next 100 years, causing catastrophic changes and effects in coastal cities. Shouldn't the world "buy insurance" against this risk? The also argued there were large costs associated with clean-up if these events did occur, making it more reasonable to spend the money in advance in preventative measures. They said that preventing damage from climate change provided jobs and also helped secure property. Spending money on clean-up does not provide these same benefits. They also felt that economic papers should take account of the lowered costs of affecting climate change over time as technology improvements are made. We should expect to have more fuel efficient technologies and renewable energy as time goes on. They offered this quote by John Maynard Keynes: "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones."
My thoughts: Well, I think its clear I was interested in this talk, since I've put so many of the details in. I am fascinated with the economics of climate change, and also see a clear link to the issue of space exploration. It is very difficult to do a favorable economic analysis of space exploration, even though most people will agree that the space program is valuable. At first, both communities resisted trying to make an economic argument - the reasons for stopping climate change or supporting the space program are obvious - why should we have to show it in numbers? However, now both are trying to make the point in the arena of economics, but finding that the numbers don't really come out in their favor. A common reaction, as was the one with these scientists, is to assume something is wrong with the economic analysis and try and "fix it". (This is actually pretty close to my feeling about economic arguments for space programs.) However, I think that sounds an awful lot like advocacy. For scientists, who are supposed to be satisfied with facts and numbers, to push back on an analysis because you don't like the result seems odd. It seems like there is an agenda to show that there is economic benefit to fighting global climate change, regardless of the outcome of the economic analysis. How is this different from the scientists working for oil companies that go out of their way to do analysis showing that climate change is not a serious problem? I don't really have any answers for this, but I think it's a really interesting question, and looks at what it means to have scientific integrity. It's important to make sure analysis are done correctly and incorporate all the relevant facts, but there can always be debate over exactly what that means. I guess in the end, you have to do what you believe is right.

Grand Challenges and Opportunities for Engineering in the 21st Century
I think this was my favorite panel of the weekend. There were three speakers, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Langer, and Calestous Juma. The talk was generally about where engineering is going to bring us in the next 100 years. Some could argue that the predictions are not all likely to be true, but they were pretty exciting either way. I'll briefly describe what each of them discussed.
Ray Kurzweil is famous for making a lot of predictions about how technology was going to evolve. For example, in the early 70's when only DARPA had the internet, and only about 10,000 computer were connected, he predicted that by the 1990's most Americans would have a computer and access to the internet. He uses logarithmic scales to look at the exponential growth in technologies. He also showed how, though one technology may hit a wall in its exponential growth, new technologies are developed that continue the path. For example, vacuum tubes for TVs were getting smaller and cheaper, but as that was hitting a wall, transistors were invented and were used. These became smaller at an exponential rate. He believes that the medical and biological community was experiencing only linear growth (seen in the linear increase in life expectancy), but now that medical and biological sciences are information technologies, he expects exponential growth. He predicts that as of 2029, we will be adding about 12 months per year onto our life expectancy.
Robert Langer is a professor at MIT in chemical engineering and biotechnology. His group has been creating polymers that can be used to control the release of medicines. This allows people with certain diseases to take monthly shots and for these to be safe and effective. He is also doing some amazing work on growth of organs. He noted that one of the difficult medical problems is tissue deficiency (liver failure, heart failure, etc.) where medicines can't help and there is a donor shortage. He works on taking cells from the patient and growing them on polymers to create organs for transplant. These should be even safer than donor organs, because they originate from the patients own cells. They can already re-grow cartilage, and have repaired injuries in humans. They can also regrow skin, which is currently used for burn victims. Their lab recently grew an ear, and were able to attach it to a rabit. However, this type of research is still in animal study stages. Another very exciting experiment they are doing right now deals with spinal cord injuries. They use mice with spinal cord injuries causing them to be paraplegic, and then grow a new section of spinal cord using this cell-polymer method. They then transplant the newly grown spinal cord segment into the mice, and the mice regain most control of their hind legs.
Calestous Juma is a professor at Harvard, and he talked about the potential for technology to assist in the development of African countries. He works with African presidents to incorporate science and technology policy into the countries' plans. He said there has been a big change in the way African presidents view technology, from believing it wasn't feasible to incorporate it, and may pose a risk, to understanding its potential. Advanced technology can be used to meet people's basic needs, assist in the ability to compete in the global economy, help protect the environment, and enhance government transparency. He said the example of cell phones has been very powerful. At one time, people thought cell phones would be of no use to people in Africa, but now they are used ubiquitously in Africa. Presidents often ask question like "what is the equivalent of the cell phone for automobiles?" or things like that. Africa is able to more easily leapfrog technologies, because they are not locked into existing infrastructure. He believes that three important areas of policy are partnerships with developed countries, the building of human capital through universities, and the application of universities to solving the problems in local areas, helping with technology transfer, as well as bringing Africa into the knowledge economy.
My Thoughts: As I said earlier, this was one of my favorite lectures. It was inspiring to look at some of the amazing advances being made by science and engineering. It spanned all areas of the world, and how technology is changing the way we live. Also, this was especially interesting for me, because I had met Professor Juma before, and now had the opportunity to reconnect with him.

Facebook Reception
On Friday evening, Chloe, Vid, and I went to the AAAS Facebook group reception. I was able to meet many other students and attendees who were at the conference. There were such a wide variety of backgrounds and interests, discussion was very interesting. Also, it was fun to talk to people who had gone to other lectures and hear how they went. We ended up going out to dinner with a bunch of people we met at this event. We just had fast food in the food court at the Prudential Center, which was attached to both our hotel and the convention center. The Facebook group is open to everyone, so if you're on facebook, consider joining!

RE: Design
After dinner, Chloe, Vid, Devan (who we had met earlier), and I went to see a play called "RE: Design" which was based on correspondence between Charles Darwin and Asa Gray. It was interesting and well done, consisting of only the two actors writing and reading letters. They showed how Darwin thought of his home life, his family, and his work. Asa Gray was a devout Christian, and after Darwin's book was published, in their letters they discussed the meaning of Darwin's work and how it fits with religion. Check out the script here.

After the play we went out with new friends to Cactus Club and to Hennesseys - Boston is a great city with lots to do!