January 2003 - Division of Medical Sciences Bulletin - Harvard ...

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Volume VII, Number 1 - January 2003 

More Courses Coming Soon 

By: Jennifer Weaver 

Many BBS Students, myself included, were quite surprised to 

open their course information packets last semester and find 

that there were only three quarter courses being offered, one of 

which was subsequently cancelled. This prompted some discussion 

regarding the number of courses offered to students, and the course 

requirements in general. 

Money Matters: DMS Finances and Fellowships 

By James Cha 

With the numerous faculty at Harvard Medical School, the 

opportunity exists to train many qualified graduate students. But 

resources are limited, and with the recent increases in class sizes, 

the financial burden on the Division of Medical Sciences has been 

increasing. A graduate student costs about $50,000 a year, and the 

costs of graduate students in their first two years are generally 

defrayed by DMS, which also pays for tuition in the third and fourth 

years. 

42 Million and Counting - Michael Dukakis 

Speaks on Universal Health Care 

By Peggy Stolt 

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"The singular inability of this great country of ours to provide 

health care to all people is an embarrassment!" declared 

Michael Dukakis during a very animated presentation on universal 

health care given this fall. The current state of health care in the U. 

S. is bordering on disaster. As Dukakis cited, health care costs are 

currently increasing at 10-15% annually. While the U.S. spends 

twice as much per capita on health care than any other country, we 

have poorer health outcomes. Emergency rooms now serve as 

primary care facilities for those with no insurance. However, the 

topic of universal health care has been virtually unaddressed since 

the ill-fated Clinton plan in 1999. Although Dukakis presented no 

magic solution for this crisis, it was a pleasant surprise to hear 

someone speak with such sincerity on a topic to which more 

politicians should be paying attention. 

Science Policy as an Alternative Career: 

It's Not Just for Politicians Any More! 

By Joseph F. Arboleda-Velasquez 

Science is no longer a topic that matters only to those of us 

researchers working long hours at the bench in order to steal 

from nature some of its secrets. Knowledge is not encrypted 

anymore into undecipherable codes meaningful only to tight circles 

of selected individuals. In contrast, it seems that now, at the start of 

the 21st century, science - and, in particular, biology - pervades 

nearly every aspect of society. Thus, from street benches to the 

Oval Office, people meet to discuss a range of scientific issues 

related to such topics as cloning, stem cell research, genetically 

modified food and atomic fission. 

Book Review: The Blank Slate 

By Allan M. Gurtan 

In his newest book, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker offers an 

analysis of the "Nature versus Nurture" debate. Pinker, a Professor 

of Psychology at MIT, is known for his research in linguistics and 

visual perception. He has written several books on cognition, 

including How the Mind Works and Learnability and Cognition. 

Faculty Profiles: 

Randy King | Anne Church Hart 



Bulletin Announcements 

Recent BBS Student Publications: 

Edwards MC, Tutter AV, Cvetic C (G4), Gilbert CH, Prokhorova TA, 

Walter JC. MCM2-7 complexes bind chromatin in a distributed 

pattern surrounding the origin recognition complex in Xenopus egg 

extracts. J Biol Chem. 2002 Sep 6;277(36):33049-57. 

An Ig Noble Speech 

By Anne Hart 

Assistant Professor of Pathology Anne Hart gave a speech at the 

recent Ig Noble Awards held at the Sanders Theatre at Harvard 

University on October 2, 2002. The speech that she gave was 

known as a 24/7 speech, where the speaker is given twenty four 

seconds to explain "neuroscience" with the most jargon possible, 

and then 7 words to explain "neuroscience" so anyone would 

understand it. She was invited to speak at the awards ceremony 

after being recommended by a former laboratory technician. Her 

speech can be read below. 

Out and About 

By Stephanie Wai 

I took ice skating lessons for six years. 

All of us taking these lessons thought we were really special. We 

had expensive custom-fitted ice skates. We bought special cotton 

laces (to replace the ordinary nylon laces) to ensure a tight lacing of 

the skate. We used skate covers to protect the leather upper of the 

skates and blade guards to protect the blades from dulling when we 

were off the ice. Those who were skilled enough to compete had the 

glory of wearing flashy costumes, skating to their choice of music, 

and performing in front of an audience. 

[ back to top ] 



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Bulletin Announcements 

Recent BBS Student Publications: 

Edwards MC, Tutter AV, Cvetic C (G4), Gilbert CH, Prokhorova TA, 

Walter JC. MCM2-7 complexes bind chromatin in a distributed 

pattern surrounding the origin recognition complex in Xenopus egg 

extracts. J Biol Chem. 2002 Sep 6;277(36):33049-57. 

Littlepage LE (G6), Wu H, Andresson T, Deanehan JK, 

Amundadottir LT, Ruderman JV. Identification of phosphorylated 

residues that affect the activity of the mitotic kinase Aurora-A. Proc 

Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Nov 26;99(24):15440-5. 

Kau, T. (G4) and Silver, PA. Nuclear transport as a target of growth 

control. 2002, Drug Discovery Today, in press. 

Elissa P. Lei (G6), Charlene A. Stern, Birthe Fahrenkrog, Heike 

Krebber, Terence I. Moy (recent grad), Ueli Aebi, and Pamela A. 

Silver. Sac3 is an mRNA export factor that localizes to the 

cytoplasmic fibrils of the nuclear pore complex. Mol Biol Cell, in 

Press, published November 18, 2002 

Ellisen, LW, Ramsayer,, KD, Johannessen, CM, Yang, A (G2), 

Beppu, H, Minda, K, Oliner, JD, McKeon, F, Haber, DA. REDD1, a 

Developmentally Regulated Transcriptional Target of p63 and p53, 

Links p63 to Regulation of Reactive Oxygen Species. Molecular 

Cell. Nov 2002. 10, 995-1005. 

Serber Z, Lai HC, Yang A (G2), Ou HD, Sigal MS, Kelly AE, 

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Darimont BD, Duijf PH, Van Bokhoven H, McKeon F, Dotsch V. A C- 

Terminal Inhibitory Domain Controls the Activity of p63 by an 

Intramolecular Mechanism. Mol Cell Biol. 2002 Dec 15;22(24):8601- 

8611. 

Announcements: 

Dayalan Srinivasan (G7) ran his first NYC marathon on Sunday, 

Nov 3, 2002. (A long) way to go, Dayalan! Congrats! 

Donald Ingber, Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, 

Senior Research Associate at Children's Hospital and HST faculty 

member has been selected for inclusion in Esquire Magazine's 

"Best and Brightest of 2002" issue (Dec. 2002) based on his work 

on cell structure. 




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Book Review: The Blank Slate 

By Allan M. Gurtan 

In his newest book, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker offers an 

analysis of the "Nature versus Nurture" debate. Pinker, a Professor 

of Psychology at MIT, is known for his research in linguistics and 

visual perception. He has written several books on cognition, 

including How the Mind Works and Learnability and Cognition. 

The book begins with a broad historical overview. The Blank Slate is 

framed by a discussion of three conceptually related doctrines that, 

according to Pinker, have been particularly influential on the nature/ 

nurture debate. The doctrine of "The Blank Slate" was formulated by 

the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and states that every 

individual is shaped entirely by experience. The second doctrine, 

that of the "noble savage", came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

(1712-1778) who perceived humans as inherently selfless and 

benevolent creatures better fit to nature than to civilization. The 

"Ghost in the Machine", attributed to Rene Descartes (1596-1650), 

is the third doctrine and states that the mind exists independently of 

the body. The book traces the development of these concepts and 

presents the subsequent challenges posed to them by a modern 

understanding of human behavior as influenced by psychological, 

sociological, and biological studies. In so doing, Pinker presents a 

picture in which current data support the role of both the 

environment and genetics in determining human behavior. 

Pinker then proceeds to explore the moral, social, and political 

ramifications of such a conclusion. According to the book, four fears 

emerge upon suggestion that genes influence behavior: (a) Genetic 

arguments may be used to rationalize social inequality; (b) Social 

reform may not be possible if genes "hard-wire" behavior into each 

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individual; (c) The role of heredity in behavior suggests a loss of 

free will and subsequently implies genetic determinism; and (d) 

Purely biological explanations of human behavior and the mind may 

lead to nihilistic amorality. For each of these concerns, acceptance 

of "nature" in human behavior is accompanied by the fear that social 

injustice will be rationalized through biological arguments. Pinker 

addresses each of these fears, offering the counterargument that, in 

fact, denial of the importance of genetics may lead to greater 

injustice. 

Having confronted these issues, Pinker then discusses the 

biological foundations of several behavioral components, including 

perception, linguistics, reasoning, social interaction, and morality. 

The book concludes with a discussion of several social and political 

issues, such as violence, within the context of the nature/nurture 

debate. 

The Blank Slate is most convincing when the author builds his 

arguments on scientific evidence. Pinker draws his conclusions from 

a broad range of fields, including economics, sociology, psychology, 

evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience. He therefore 

succeeds in placing his discussions of human behavior within a 

complete social and biological context. His arguments are usually 

well-presented and he makes an effort to offer evidence from both 

sides of the debate. 

The tone of the book becomes occasionally defensive, however, as 

Pinker launches into aggressive attacks on those squarely on the 

side of "nurture". Understandably, the question of nature versus 

nurture is socially and politically charged. Scientists such as E.O. 

Wilson, author of Sociobiology, who have proposed a role for 

genetics in behavior, have been condemned by scientists and 

political activists alike for the moral implications of suggesting these 

kinds of correlations. Pinker, therefore, is probably trying to 

anticipate such disagreements. Even so, the attitude conveyed in 

some of the particularly critical passages tends to detract from the 

arguments Pinker is trying to advance. 

Nevertheless, several interesting criticisms emerge in The Blank 

Slate. Throughout the book, Pinker suggests that scientists in the 

nature/nurture debate frequently allow their personal social and 

political beliefs to influence their scientific hypotheses regarding 

human behavior. For example, Pinker points out that geneticist 

Richard Lewontin and biologist Richard Levins declare in their book, 

The Dialectical Biologist, that "As working scientists in the field of 

evolutionary genetics and ecology, we have been attempting with 

some success to guide our research by a conscious application of 



[socioeconomic theory]". 

Although Pinker's discussions about the morality and ethics of 

accepting the role of genetics in behavior lacks the persuasive 

power that underlines his scientific arguments, The Blank Slate is 

principally a thoughtful book that provides a thorough overview of 

the debate regarding the environmental and genetic components of 

behavior. 






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More Courses Coming Soon 

By: Jennifer Weaver 

Many BBS Students, myself included, were quite surprised to 

open their course information packets last semester and find 

that there were only three quarter courses being offered, one of 

which was subsequently cancelled. This prompted some discussion 

regarding the number of courses offered to students, and the course 

requirements in general. 

The good news is that changes are on the way for the course 

catalog, with several new courses being offered in the near future, 

and plans to develop additional courses in the coming years. I 

spoke with one of our program heads, Connie Cepko, about the 

shortage of courses. Cepko said that the program is aware of the 

need, and is working on developing additional courses. Initial steps 

included informing faculty members of this need, and encouraging 

them to teach new courses. Cepko is also planning to meet with 

new faculty members and suggest teaching quarter courses as a 

great way to become a part of the BBS community. These steps 

seem to be working, as one new quarter course, "Replication 

Checkpoints and the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle," will be offered this 

spring by Johannes Walter and Alan D'Andrea. 

New full semester courses are also coming soon to a classroom 

near you, and will be developed mainly on a department by 

department basis. The Genetics department discovered the need 

for more upper level Genetics courses when they observed that 

their current courses were oversubscribed. They plan to meet this 

need by offering two new full semester courses. One is a 

Mammalian Genetics course being taught by David Beier that will 

have some lecture and discussion, and will be mouse centric. The 

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other will be a Developmental Genetics and Genomics course, 

taught by Gary Ruvkin, Mark Vidal and Norbert Perrimon, which will 

discuss using classical genetic approaches and genomics to answer 

developmental questions. Other departments will hopefully find 

similar ways to develop courses to fill students' needs. Additionally, 

we may see more upper level semester-long discussion courses 

offered. These courses will take less planning on the part of faculty 

members, as there will be few if any lectures to plan, and will also 

be satisfying for students, many of whom enjoy learning in this type 

of structured discussion setting. 

While the number of courses offered is increasing, why are eight 

courses required in the first place? According to Cepko, this is not 

the way the program was originally designed. When the BBS 

program began, the original requirement was for six courses. The 

thought process was that students could complete their work in the 

core courses, and still have one elective they could use to take an 

upper level course. With only one elective to "spend" however, there 

were only a limited number of students available to fill the large 

number of available spaces in upper level courses. Many wonderful 

upper level courses offered were eventually lost because they were 

not populated with students. In order to counter this problem, the 

program had to up the course requirement to find a steady state 

between the number of students available to take upper level 

courses and the number of different courses offered. The number 

that worked best was to require eight courses. This provides 

students with an education that has both breadth and depth, which 

the faculty believes is the best possible training. 

There is much that students can do to help this process along. In 

the spring, there are feedback meetings for G1 and G2 students to 

discuss ways to improve current courses, and suggest new courses 

to faculty members. Attendance at the meeting will ensure that your 

voice will be heard! In addition, any student who has a course 

suggestion can email Connie Cepko or Bob Kingston, who head up 

the curriculum committee. Cepko said that there are many faculty 

members who are interested in teaching, but they don't know what 

students are interested in learning about. Knowing what students 

want will make it easier to fill that need. All suggestions of courses 

will be heard, however suggestions most likely to become a reality 

will be those supported by several students. 








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42 Million and Counting - Michael Dukakis 

Speaks on Universal Health Care 

By Peggy Stolt 

"The singular inability of this great country of ours to provide 

health care to all people is an embarrassment!" declared 

Michael Dukakis during a very animated presentation on universal 

health care given this fall. The current state of health care in the U. 

S. is bordering on disaster. As Dukakis cited, health care costs are 

currently increasing at 10-15% annually. While the U.S. spends 

twice as much per capita on health care than any other country, we 

have poorer health outcomes. Emergency rooms now serve as 

primary care facilities for those with no insurance. However, the 

topic of universal health care has been virtually unaddressed since 

the ill-fated Clinton plan in 1999. Although Dukakis presented no 

magic solution for this crisis, it was a pleasant surprise to hear 

someone speak with such sincerity on a topic to which more 

politicians should be paying attention. 

Dukakis' interest in health care began at an early age, as he 

observed his father, an HMS graduate, at work in his clinic. Dukakis 

himself had no medical aspirations, and instead attended Harvard 

Law School and launched a political career. Dukakis is of course 

best known as a former governor of Massachusetts, serving 

from1974 to 1978 and 1982 to 1990, and as the 1988 democratic 

candidate for president. While governor of Massachusetts he was 

able to sign a bill for universal state health care, although full 

implementation of this bill was inhibited by subsequent 

administrations. 

Dukakis began his talk by tracing the history of efforts towards 

universal health care coverage in the U.S., from Truman's attempts 

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to pass such a plan in 1945 to its most recent incarnation under the 

Clinton administration in 1999. The most significant advance was 

made in the 1960s, with the passage of Medicare, which guarantees 

coverage to those over 65, and Medicaid, which does the same for 

many of the poor. 

The main questions Dukakis addressed were how to solve the 

problem of rising costs and rising numbers of the uninsured. 

Dukakis feels that letting the free market economy dictate health 

costs has been a failure, and health care is one area where cost 

regulations need to be instituted. In addition, a universal health care 

plan should save money, since insurance premiums would no 

longer need to be inflated to pay for emergency care for the 

uninsured, and administrative costs would be lower. 

While Dukakis thinks that a government-administered universal 

health care system such as those in Europe and Canada would be 

best, it would be too complicated to introduce such a plan in the U. 

S. Instead, he suggested two steps to ensure coverage for all. The 

first is to expand Medicare, to be paid for by increasing the payroll 

tax. The second is to expand employer responsibility by requiring all 

employers with more than 25 employees to provide health 

insurance, including part-time employees. People who are 

unemployed or not covered by this plan would be covered by a 

federal program, which would be paid for by a small surcharge 

added to the unemployment tax. In addition, Dukakis suggests 

limiting the number of insurers, requiring all insurers to accept 

anyone despite any pre-existing conditions, putting reasonable 

limits on charges for medical procedures, and developing a defined 

benefits package. Obviously, achieving these goals will be a long 

and arduous process, and more detailed questions surrounding how 

to pay for and administer such a plan still remain. Dukakis 

emphasized that for any bill to pass, the plan will need to be simple 

and straightforward, and will need broad support to build a strong 

coalition to take on the powerful insurance companies and other 

agencies opposed to this. 

However, as an example of a successful policy, Dukakis cited the 

state system in Hawaii. In 1974, Hawaii enacted a plan in which all 

employers are required to pay for health care for their employees. 

As a result, health outcomes in Hawaii are among the best in the 

country. However, as one audience member pointed out, this plan 

has raised other problems, as in Hawaii it is very difficult to find a 

full-time or even part-time position, since employers are loathe to 

take on health insurance costs. In addition, as discussed in another 

audience question, many other countries with universal health care 

plans see the development of a two-tier system, where those with 



enough resources to pay extra for medical care receive treatment 

quickly, and those who cannot afford to do so are resigned to long 

waiting lists. 

Dukakis did not have many precise ways to address these 

concerns, and indeed there are no simple solutions for these or 

other unanticipated problems. Nevertheless, based on the present 

untenable situation it seems that any effort to provide reliable health 

care for the millions of people who are without it is a step in the right 

direction. As Dukakis said, solving the health care crisis is "the 

single most important domestic challenge we face in this country." 

Let us hope that our current elected officials feel the same way. 






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Anne Church Hart 



Anne Church Hart 

Assistant Professor of Pathology 

By: Emily Bates 

Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms 

of neurodegeneration and sensory signaling. 

Beginnings: Hart's father said of her that all he saw of his daughter 

after she learned to read was the top of a head of dark hair framing 

a book. Her parents pried her away from books by giving her a 

microscope for her birthday. The scientist in Hart was born in that 

moment. Anyone who has seen her eating her habitual favorite 

lunch of vegetarian sushi might be surprised to learn that she 

worked at McDonalds during high school. Other jobs included 

selling jewelry and perfume in a department store, and building trails 

for parks. 

Education: Hart attended Michigan State University in Lansing, 

where she studied Biochemistry. Her first job in a lab involved 

studying protein denaturation, using an autoclave and a 

spectrometer. She then moved from Michigan to Boston to work as 

a lab technician in Jonas Galper's lab at Brigham and Women's 

Hospital, where she studied muscarinic receptors. She then moved 

to sunny California to join Larry Zipursky's lab at UCLA as a 

graduate student. There, she and a fellow graduate student, David 

Van Vactor (also BBS faculty), cloned and characterized Bride of 

Sevenless, a gene required for Drosophila eye development. 

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Despite her declaration that she would "never live in Boston again," 

she returned for her post-doc in Joshua Kaplan's lab in the MGH 

Department of Molecular Biology. There she studied sensory 

signaling in C. elegans. Life as a postdoctoral fellow must have 

proved better than her previous experience in Boston, because she 

accepted a position as an assistant professor at the MGH Cancer 

Center in Charlestown in 1996 and has been living across the street 

from her lab ever since. 

Hobbies: Hart is still an avid reader of fiction, fantasy, and science 

fiction, but now her library includes children books as well, which 

she enjoys reading with her young daughter. Outside, she is known 

as a terror on the ice during MGH pick up hockey games. Recently, 

she was given the honor of speaking at the Ignoble awards in 

Sanders Theater in Cambridge, where she was given two tasks: 1) 

to fill 24 seconds with science jargon explaining neurobiology that 

no one could understand, and 2) to distill it down to seven words: 

"The brain still fails to understand itself". 




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Randy King 

and cell division. 



Randy King 

Assistant Professor of Cell Biology 

By: Yu Shao 

Research Interests: Applying chemical 

approaches to study chromosome segregation 

Beginnings: King was raised in the city of Rochester, Minnesota. 

Growing up in the country, he learned to how to train and ride 

horses and how to build fences. He recalls one time when he got 

bucked off of a horse. Seeing the horse running back home without 

the rider and the saddle flipped underneath, his mother was 

convinced that King had been killed, and was relieved when she 

spotted him running after the horse. King started playing trumpet at 

twelve, and he played in orchestras, jazz ensembles, and brass 

quintets. He was also an athlete in high school, where he was a 

football player (though the smallest on the team) and in the winter 

he learned to downhill ski at night after school (though the hills in 

Minnesota are very small). King's initial research experience also 

started in high school, when he began working at the Mayo clinic, 

work that he continued during the summers of his freshman and 

sophomore years in college. In his first project, he isolated oviducts 

from chickens to understand how hormones interact in a steroid 

responsive tissue. For his second project, he injected macaque 

monkeys with opiates and examined the effects in pain threshold 

tests. This was a rather difficult project, as the monkeys would bite 

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him, spit on him, and run away from him. After these bitter 

experiences, he decided to stay away from animals that bite. King 

attended Carleton, a liberal arts college in Northfield, MN, where he 

was a chemistry major. King enjoyed the enthusiastic teaching of 

Paul Wellstone, a political science professor who taught at Carleton 

prior to becoming a Senator, and was saddened by the tragedy of 

Wellstone's recent death in a plane crash. Another inspirational 

teacher was his mentor Jerry Mohrig, a synthetic organic chemist. 

King's most memorable moment of his senior year in Mohrig's lab 

was when he flooded the science library downstairs; the result of a 

loose hose on the rotary evaporator he had set up to run overnight. 

Medical School and beyond: Following in the footsteps of his 

physician father, King attended the MD/PhD program at UCSF. 

During his first year in medical school, a seminar class given by 

Mike Bishop, Harold Varmus, and Bruce Alberts sparked his interest 

in molecular and cancer biology. As a graduate student in Marc 

Kirschner's lab, he and a postdoctoral fellow Jan Peters, identified 

the Anaphase Promoting Complex/Cyclosome (APC/C) as a 

component required for cyclin ubiquitination. After finishing graduate 

school, King went back to finish his medical training. Although he 

enjoyed some aspects of the clinical work, King decided to focus on 

research for his career. He spent three years as a fellow at the 

Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology, working with Tim Mitchison 

and Stuart Schreiber, and then joined the faculty here as a member 

of the Cell Biology Department. 

Outside Activities: King says, "If you have young children, young 

children become your hobby!" King has a four-year old and another 

baby on the way. King still enjoys skiing, and his favorite place to go 

is in the mountains of Whistler, British Columbia. He enjoys reading, 

and especially likes presidential biographies, and reading about the 

civil war. One of his favorites is April 1865, by Jay Winik. He also 

likes historical fiction from Ken Follett, for example, The Pillars Of 

The Earth and Jackdaws. A tip from King about the best place to 

hear good local folk music is the Homegrown Coffeehouse in 

Needham. 

Favorite Quote: "When conflict arises, character emerges." - from 

Jeff Probst, the host of "Survivor". 








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Money Matters: DMS Finances and Fellowships 

By James Cha 

With the numerous faculty at Harvard Medical School, the 

opportunity exists to train many qualified graduate students. But 

resources are limited, and with the recent increases in class sizes, 

the financial burden on the Division of Medical Sciences has been 

increasing. A graduate student costs about $50,000 a year, and the 

costs of graduate students in their first two years are generally 

defrayed by DMS, which also pays for tuition in the third and fourth 

years. 

DMS pays for grad students through funding raised by the Medical 

School, including private, corporate and foundation sources. Many 

students are paid for solely through this institutional funding. About 

one hundred first and second year students are supplemented 

through National Institutes of Health training grants, which DMS 

applies for every five years, with comprehensive progress reports 

filed on a yearly basis for continuance. But such funding is limited, 

and since DMS guarantees funding for every student while he or 

she continues to make satisfactory progress, offers of acceptance 

for future classes are constrained by the amount of funding 

available. 

Some students are partially supported by external fellowships, such 

as those provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the 

National Science Foundation. DMS provides an educational 

allowance to students on competitive external fellowships that can, 

for example, be used for purchasing computer equipment, software, 

books, journal subscriptions, and travel to conferences. This 

educational allowance consists of 10% of the awarded stipend, up 

to a maximum of $2,500. Educational allowances that are already 

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provided by fellowship organizations, such as the Howard Hughes 

Medical Institute, are not further supplemented by DMS. Other 

fellowship institutions include the Department of Defense, Ford 

Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. 

Internal fellowships provide a way for donors to contribute to the 

funds needed by DMS to meet its commitments of support. These 

fellowships all require nomination by the faculty. The Albert J. Ryan 

Foundation provides fellowships to graduate students in their third 

or fourth years at Dartmouth College, the University of Cincinnati, 

and Harvard University. Ryan Fellows receive a travel award, the 

opportunity to attend an annual symposium retreat, and permanent 

status as Ryan Fellows. The Manfred Karnovsky Fellowship is 

awarded to one or two graduate students who distinguish 

themselves in their first year of study. Others include the Starr and 

Fu Fellowships, the George Hauser Award, which provides funding 

for students to return to their undergraduate institutions to give 

seminars on graduate school, and the Harold Amos Award, in honor 

of the long-time Chairman of the Division of Medical Sciences, to 

microbiology students. 

More information on fellowship opportunities is available in the DMS 

office, and online through http://www.grantsnet.org. 




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An Ig Noble Speech 

By Anne Hart 

Assistant Professor of Pathology Anne Hart gave a speech at the 

recent Ig Noble Awards held at the Sanders Theatre at Harvard 

University on October 2, 2002. The speech that she gave was 

known as a 24/7 speech, where the speaker is given twenty four 

seconds to explain "neuroscience" with the most jargon possible, 

and then 7 words to explain "neuroscience" so anyone would 

understand it. She was invited to speak at the awards ceremony 

after being recommended by a former laboratory technician. Her 

speech can be read below. 

24 Words: 

To elucidate and explicate our ability to cogitate, with principles 

enumerated by Hebb, Cajal and Sherrington, intrepid 

neuroscientists study the cortex and the cerebellum, neurons, glial 

astrocytes and the corpus callosum, using immunohistology and 

neuroanatomy molecular biology and electrophysiology classical 

genetics and neuropharmacology augmented by double stranded 

RNA and protein mass spectrometry, ethology, behavior and 

electron microscopy biochemistry and more electrophysiology 

attempt to integrate the data from Homo sapiens to C. elegans to 

clarify the fundamental basis of our consciousness. 

7 Words: 

The brain still fails to understand itself. 

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Out and About 

By Stephanie Wai 

I took ice skating lessons for six years. 

All of us taking these lessons thought we were really special. We 

had expensive custom-fitted ice skates. We bought special cotton 

laces (to replace the ordinary nylon laces) to ensure a tight lacing of 

the skate. We used skate covers to protect the leather upper of the 

skates and blade guards to protect the blades from dulling when we 

were off the ice. Those who were skilled enough to compete had the 

glory of wearing flashy costumes, skating to their choice of music, 

and performing in front of an audience. 

Sounds glamorous. 

But really, it stinks. 

It literally. Over time, the accumulation of sweat and mildew at the 

ice rink had resulted in a characteristic slightly sour, salty smell. 

After skating for three hours every week, my gear had started to 

smell like the rink. 

There was not an alternative. I grew up in sunny San Diego. We did 

not have ponds, and more importantly, they were not frozen. There 

was no opportunity to ice skate outside in the crisp fresh air. In 

order to skate, we had to brave the stink of sweat and mildew. 

Fortunately (or unfortunately), we are not in San Diego. Instead, we 

are in the great city of Boston, in the cold Northeast, where water 

does freeze outside in the winter. Although skating on the Charles 

River is not recommended, there is a famous pond located only a 

short T ride from our campus. 

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The Frog Pond is located on the Boston Common, off the Park 

Street stop on the Red or Green line. During the summer, it is a 

wading pool, but during the winter, it is an outdoor ice skating rink. It 

boasts full facilities, with skate rentals, lockers, and a warm kiosk 

with a snack bar. 

The prime location of Frog Pond makes it easy to squeeze in just an 

hour or so of ice skating. Why not go skating while waiting for a 

movie at the Boston Common Loews Theater? Or go skating to 

relax after a crazy day of shopping in the nearby Downtown 

Crossing. And for the hopeless romantics out there, go skating 

under the starlit sky and finish it off with a stroll in the park. 

Not only is skating on Frog Pond stink-free and convenient, it is also 

cheap and perfectly priced for graduate students. Admission is only 

$3, skate rentals are $7, and locker rentals are $1. The rink is open 

daily (weather conditions permitting) through the middle of March. 

Skating hours are Mon 10am-5pm, Tue-Thu 10am-9pm, Fri-Sat 

10am-10pm, and Sun 10am-9pm. For more information, call 617- 

635-2121. 




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Science Policy as an Alternative Career: 

It's Not Just for Politicians Any More! 

By Joseph F. Arboleda-Velasquez 

Science is no longer a topic that matters only to those of us 

researchers working long hours at the bench in order to steal 

from nature some of its secrets. Knowledge is not encrypted 

anymore into undecipherable codes meaningful only to tight circles 

of selected individuals. In contrast, it seems that now, at the start of 

the 21st century, science - and, in particular, biology - pervades 

nearly every aspect of society. Thus, from street benches to the 

Oval Office, people meet to discuss a range of scientific issues 

related to such topics as cloning, stem cell research, genetically 

modified food and atomic fission. 

As a result of its increasingly high profile, science today has a 

strong influence on public policy. Likewise, as our scientific 

capabilities grow, the government must now regulate the direction 

and limits of science. New technologies have given us the option of 

living longer and healthier; however, the same scientific 

developments have also been misused and turned into weapons for 

destruction and bioterrorism. Such progress modifies the way we 

live and creates a need to formulate policies that regulate the 

interaction of individuals and technology within society. 

As scientists, it is probably easiest for us to confine our attention to 

what we've been trained to do: designing experiments and 

publishing results. However, we also have the opportunity and the 

responsibility to get involved in science policy and help government 

officials in making the decisions that will define the way science is 

conducted. But what about taking this involvement a step further 

and making a career as a science policy advisor? 

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Although an increasing number of science policy issues are being 

dealt with in Congress, few politicians have any real training in the 

scientific arena. Thus, their offices often consult several advisory 

institutes before making any decision related to scientific issues. 

Christine Alfsen-Norodom, Director of the Columbia-Unesco 

Biosphere and Society Center, explained to me how her office 

advises national and international agencies on delicate issues 

related to policy on environment and biodiversity. One of her 

projects studies the behavior of particular "biodiversity reserves" 

located in such places around the globe as Cambodia and the New 

York metropolitan area. This study will provide clues to elaborate 

policies that facilitate how communities can live without destroying 

the natural resources they need for survival. 

For Dr. Liliana Botcheva-Andonova, a research fellow at Earth 

Institute at Columbia University (another policy advisory institute), 

the most exciting aspect of science policy is the freedom to interact 

with people from other disciplines. Dr. Botcheva-Andonova 

graduated with a Ph.D. from the John F. Kennedy School of 

Government and joined the Earth Institute at Columbia to continue 

with her research on environmental policy-making. As a government 

Ph.D. working on scientific issues, she is always interested in 

learning from her colleagues with biology training the technological 

details that are necessary to define proper guidelines in 

environmental policy. The downside for her, though, comes from 

dealing with politics, and Liliana pointed out that in the world of 

politics you have to be careful about what you say, how you word it, 

and where you publish it in order to effect the changes you seek. 

For BBSers who might be interested in learning more about science 

policy-making, Dr. David M. Hart, Associate Professor of Public 

Policy at Harvard, suggests taking one of the classes the Kennedy 

School offers on this area. Indeed, he noted that every year several 

Ph.D. students from the biology field take his course on Science 

Technology and Public Policy. For a more "hands-on" experience, 

Dr. Hart mentioned that many government institutions and 

international agencies offer internship programs. In particular, the 

American Association for the Advancement of Science and the 

National Academy of Science sponsor internships in Congress with 

salaries similar to those of a regular post-doc. There are also 

master programs on Science Technology at the Kennedy School, as 

well as at Columbia University. 

If you do choose to make a career in science policy, Dr. Hart 

concluded by saying that a Ph.D. in biology is an exceptional entrylevel 

credential. However, even if you pursue a more traditional 



academic position, there is still room to be involved in policymaking, 

and some academic professors even do freelance advising 

work in this area. 

It is clear that there are people out there with a Ph.D. in biological 

sciences working on science policy, but they are few far between. 

Thus, as science policy-making remains in the hands of those with 

little scientific knowledge, everyone I interviewed agreed on the 

increasing demand for people with backgrounds in biology to enter 

the field. So, if you are interested in putting your Ph.D. to work in a 

non-traditional career, there is definitely a place for you in the world 

of science policy. 





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Katie, Ross, and Andy 

perform. 

Katie Auld (G4), Ross Fredenberg (G3), and Andy Goodman (G3) (left to right), three 

members of the band Triggerfish, perform at a recent gig held at the Squealing Pig 

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