Lab Out Loud®

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Dr. Bonnie Bassler

With the upcoming 2009 HHMI Holiday Lecture on Science in December (Exploring Biodiversity), we decided to talk with one of the presenters – Dr. Bonnie Bassler.  The focus of Dr. Bassler’s research is on how bacteria communicate with each other in a process called quorum sensing.  This research has earned her a MacArthur fellowship in 2002, and her work is being carefully watched for the development of new antimicrobial drugs.  Dr. Bassler inspires us with her curiosity, her research, and science education.

Links:

• Profile from the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University
• The Bassler Lab at Princeton
• Wikipedia Entry
• HHMI Investigator Bio
• 2009 HHMI Holiday Lectures on Science: Exploring Biodiversity
• Request Past HHMI Holiday Lectures on DVD
• TED Talks Video, Profile
• NOVA Science Now Profile & Video
• NPR All Things Considered: A Biologist’s Listening Guide to Bacteria
• Review: “The languages of bacteria” (Genes & Development)
• iBioSeminars: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria
• Wikipedia entry for Lewis Thomas
• Appleton College Avenue Bridge Opens

Direct download: LOL36.mp3

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This week we talk with Steve Silberman, contributing editor for Wired Magazine. Steve talks to us about the demise of the chemistry set (as related to his article Don’t Try this at Home) and what that might mean for the future of scientific curiosity in our children.

Preview from the Show:
In the last few years, a kind of perfect storm of concerns and legislation has arisen that has had the unintended effect of discouraging amateur chemistry.

Kids really want to fall in love with science. And I know how much the teachers really want to communicate their own enthusiasm about science to their kids. But with fears of liability, and these restrictive laws, and just a kind of general paranoia, instead what’s being transmitted to kids is some kind of combination of boredom and fear.

I would say that one of the reasons that I became a science writer was that I had a well stocked chemistry set when I was in elementary school, that contained many things that I am sure are now illegal.

If we’re cutting off the possibility of future generations of being interested in science – at the same time that the performance of American kids in science starts to go down around 12th grade, the number of science and technology related jobs in the world are going continually up – so we’re creating a gap here where we need people in science and technology, but we’re no longer giving them the access to the things that could help them become interested in the subject.

Links:

• Articles by Steve Silberman from Wired Magazine
• United Nuclear
  • see them on Wired Science in Dangerous Science
• Federal Hazardous Substances Act
• Thames and Kosmos C500 Chemistry Set
• 12 Angry Men: “Endangered Species – the Chemistry Set
• NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers
• Books
  • The Boy Scientist
  • Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
• Julius B. Cohen’s 1910 Practical Organic Chemistry
• sciencemadness.org
• TED Talks Video
  • 5 Dangerous Things Things You Should Let Your Kids Do

Direct download: nstalol11.mp3