Astronaut food has been a hot topic since its earliest days, when the tangerine-flavored drink Tang was the astronaut's beverage of choice. The Apollo crews had hot water, a luxury they could only dream about on the Mercury missions, when astronauts had to squeeze food from tubes, or the Gemini missions, when they ate bite-sized, gel-covered cubes of food.

The Apollo 11 astronauts would be the first to eat on another planetary body. A breathless headline in the Benton Harbour, Michigan News-Palladium declared that "Moon Spacemen Won't Eat Green Cheese." The article explained that local industry was providing the first Moon meal:

"Their first scheduled meal to be eaten on the moon will consist of bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit drink and coffee. The second meal will contain beef stew, cream of chicken soup, date fruitcake, grape punch and orange drink. In addition to the meals, other snack items such as dried fruit, candy, extra beverages, wet packs, sandwich spread, and bread will be included.

Unlike other missions, Apollo 11 will carry pre-planned menus for only the first five days of the flight. For the duration of the flight, the astronauts may select individual food items from a pantry. Pantry items are foods which are not assembled by means but merely packaged in categories such as Desserts, Beverages, Breakfast Items, Bite-size Cubes and Salads and Meats. The pantry system enables the astronaut to select at random whatever food item they desire. Other pantry items include: Rehydratable dessert items: banana pudding, butterscotch pudding, applesauce and chocolate pudding. Rehydratable beverages: orange drink, orange grapefruit drink, pineapple grapefruit drink, grapefruit drink, grape drink, grape punch, cocoa and coffee."

Here's a summary of the history of space food from NASA.

Or check out a more pop-culture-savvy take at RetroFuture or a photo-rich website aimed at kids at Spacekids.co.uk.

Photo: Spacekids.co.uk

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 30, 2009
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The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was a US Air Force initiative to build a space station in Earth orbit for surveillance and research purposes.

It would have used Gemini capsules to deliver pairs of Air Force astronauts for missions lasting up to 4 weeks, but funding problems, particularly competition from the Apollo programme and the Vietnam war, eventually scuttled the programme.

Deeper background:

"The Best Laid Plans: A History of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory" a history provided by the Aerospace Corporation.

Some of the equipment is on display at the Air Force Museum.

Photo: US Air Force

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 30, 2009
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Welcome welcome one and all to London where the sun is shining and the buffet is, hmm, entirely fish. The event, at the Science Museum, was sponsored by The Norwegian Seafood Export Council. The rollmops were delicious and the company was fantastic - so exciting to see an international array of familiar faces all in one room.

Although the speeches were slightly extended the acoustic in the Making of the Modern World gallery is such that it's hard to hear a great deal so many moved away from the mics and enjoyed catching up with old friends and making new ones.

There's a buzz to the London based World Conference of Science Journalism already. The wine flowed, the seafood was eaten and all agreed we were looking forward to an exciting conference. What a great beginning!

Posted by Ruth Francis on June 30, 2009
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Anthony Turkevich was a University of Chicago chemist who studied the composition of the lunar soil during the 1960s. Using measurements made on the robotic Surveyor lunar missions, he found oxygen trapped in some of the soil.

Turkevich told UPI that extracting the oxygen to use by astronauts on the Moon, which would have been useful if NASA had established a long-term manned presence. For the Apollo missions, oxygen came from fuel cells aboard the spacecraft.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 30, 2009
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The space race gave federal science funding new impetus. According to a 1970 Library of Congress document [pdf]:

"Professional scientific and technical personnel in Federal Government numbered 204,200 in October 1967- 5% increase over October 1966. Engineers, numbering 81,200, were largest of [the] three major groups-scientists, engineers, and health professionals- comprising 40% of 1967 total. DOD [Department of Defence] continued as major Government employer, with 76,900 scientific and technical employees, of which 9392 were engineers and scientists."

A 2009 National Science Foundation report covering the period from 2003-2005 found about 200,000 scientists and engineers in federal employment (Federal Employment of Scientists and Engineers Remained Steady from 2003 to 2005).

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 30, 2009
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“Actions that were taken billions of years ago in setting up the relationships of the moon and the earth and the sun,” was Apollo 11 mission director George Hage's answer to press queries about why the first Moon landing would appear in black and white television instead of colour.

The long answer is that the crew needed shadows to distinguish surface features for their landing, so the landing was scheduled for the lunar morning when the contrast between lit and shadowed regions was high (a full lunar day lasts 710 hours). While the crew did have a colour television camera small enough for use inside the spacecraft, it was not robust enough to operate in the extreme temperatures and vacuum of the lunar surface and handle the high-contrast light and shadows outside the Eagle. By the time of the Apollo 12 mission such a camera was ready, but an error disabled it from sending colour, and Apollo 13 never landed, so it was Apollo 14 which sent the first colour television transmissions from the Moon.

You can read a pair of contemporary news stories about the problem: "Color TV Not Ready For Landing on Moon" in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and "Moon Step at Early Hour" in the San Antonio Express.

More on TV from the Moon:
A pretty comprehensive NASA roundup on the Lunar Surface Journal site.
How the live TV signal was sent around the Earth once it arrived, from the Parkes Observatory in Australia
How early Moon TV cameras worked, from the Hawes Mechanical Television Archive
How Westinghouse engineers decided which type of TV camera to send to the Moon, from American Heritage
And now there's even a TV documentary about the original Apollo TV transmissions: Live From The Moon

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 29, 2009
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Bonnie didn't know it, but he was brave to fly on the third Biosatellite in 1969. The programme had a mixed record of success: the first Biosatellite, which contained insects, frog eggs and microorganisms, failed to return from orbit because its retrorockets would not respond to NASA's commands.

Biosatellite II, launched 7 September 1967, was successfully recovered on 9 September 1967, and demonstrated that "plants required gravity to maintain orientation and showed effect of radiation on living organisms" according to a NASA release.

The goals for Biosatellite III included studying Bonnie's brain wave patterns, circulatory and urinary systems and his memory and hand-eye coordination. Photos here: http://bit.ly/18NFtP

The plan was to recover him near Hawaii after a month in orbit and then launch three more Biosatellite missions with other non-human crews...stay tuned to ApolloPlus40 on Twitter to learn how his mission went!

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 29, 2009
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Laws reached into space very soon after humans did, beginning with a United Nations resolution in 1963. The first major landmark may have been the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which established the use of space for peaceful purposes and forbade sovereign territory claims and nuclear weapons in space.

On 27 June 1969 a subcommittee of the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space concluded that international law would govern liability for damage to property caused by spacecraft. While most launch sites were near the sea or in remote areas, failed or old satellites and parts of manned spacecraft could fall from orbit anywhere on Earth.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 27, 2009
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In the cramped quarters of the Lunar Module, astronauts would not have much space to argue over who got out first. But that didn't stop journalists and Apollo fans from debating whether commander Neil Armstrong would pull rank on lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin or whether NASA would make the decision for the astronauts.

Apollo Spacecraft Program Office manager George M. Low wrote a rather vague letter in response to press inquiries on 27 June 1969:

"Some time during the middle of the night, I had a call from Associated Press informing me that they had a story that Neil Armstrong had pulled rank on Buzz Aldrin to be the first man on the surface of the moon. They wanted to know whether it was true and how the decision was reached concerning who would get out of the LM first.

To the best of my recollection, I gave the following information:

a. There had been many informal plans developed during the past several years concerning the lunar timeline. These probably included all combinations of one man out versus two men out, who gets out first, etc.

b. There was only one approved plan and that was established 2 to 4 weeks prior to our public announcement of this planning. I believe that this was in April 1969.

c. The basic decision was made by my Configuration Control Board. It was based on a recommendation by the Flight Crew Operations Directorate. I am sure that Armstrong had made an input to this recommendation, but he, by no means, had the final say. The CCB decision was final."

Andrew Chaikin wrote in his book A Man on the Moon that the location of the hatch and the astronauts after they put on their bulky spacesuits might have factored in the decision to let Armstrong out first, though it is hard to imagine Armstrong giving up the chance to go first.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 26, 2009
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NASA relied on 3 stations scattered around the world to communicate with its spacecraft. It used a station near Madrid, Spain to track the Apollo 11 launch, and continued to follow the mission from the other 2 deep space tracking stations, Honeysuckle Creek (also known as Tidbinbilla) in Australia and Goldstone, California.

The sites were built in the early 1960s to replace a mobile radio network first deployed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1958 to track Explorer 1, the first US satellite. NASA has a history of the entire deep space tracking network here and a photo album here.

More photos from the Deep Space Network's early years are available on the website honeysucklecreek.net.

Photo: NASA

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 25, 2009
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18 July 1969: The Apollo 11 astronauts were woken up this morning and asked to practice their flight checklist by their doctors, 8 hours after they took Seconal to go to sleep.

"We want to know how alert they are after taking Seconal. Later in the week we'll give them another pill and wake them up after one hour. Later we'll give them another test after a 4-hour sleep," the astronauts' chief physician Charles A. Berry told the Associated Press. The astronauts would be expected to use sleeping pills during their mission to ensure they had enough sleep for critical stages such as the lunar landing.

Check out the front page of the 18 June 1969 Daily Capital News of Jefferson City, Missouri, which carried the AP story on the astronauts' training regime.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 18, 2009
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17 June 1969: NASA completed a 7-day simulation of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, about a month before the Apollo 11 mission put humans on the Moon.

"The test simulated processing of lunar samples, operation of the mobile quarantine facility and crew reception area, and biolab activities. Action was under way to overcome procedural and equipment difficulties encountered in the vacuum laboratory." (Manned Space Flight Weekly Report - June 23, 1969)

Now you can read a 1975 NASA report on the biomedical results of the entire Apollo quarantine programme here, and check out an image of the astronauts' quarantine digs below.

Photo: NASA

Post reformatted after original posting.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 17, 2009
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Nature News twitters the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened -- 40 years on. Followers can read about technical milestones, political challenges, and related events in the space race starting today, just over a month before the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing.

The Tweets, located at http://twitter.com/ApolloPlus40, will follow Apollo 11’s crew to the moon and back, and taper off during the weeks following the mission to give followers the context surrounding the moon mission and its fallout for science and the wider world. Accompanying information will also be available on this blog.

Photo: NASA

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 17, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

And so it ends. The second World Science Festival successfully closed in much the same vein as it began, with a celebration of the work and creativity inspired by E.O.Wilson. At the start of the BioBlitzing session — which was attended by an equal number of excited kids as giddy adults — Mark Moffett (right) declared that “adventure was the process of finding a story.”

Apt words proving that Moffett has indeed learned well from Wilson, his old doctorate advisor. While an animated Moffett narrated his adventures, with the help of amazing photographs, it was Wilson’s calm but engaging persona that inspired. With a lifetime of adventures and an always inquisitive mind, Wilson epitomizes a never-ending love for science.

He spoke to the adults, he spoke to the children, and inarguably, he spoke for the 1.8 million known species of animals on our wondrous planet Earth.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

After a few days of gloom and rain, Sunday was an appropriately gorgeous day in New York City, welcoming families in a street fair to enjoy the last day of the World Science Festival. Washington Square Park and the adjacent streets were packed with all sorts of magic shows, interactive games, educational demonstrations, and of course, Discovery Labs where kids could participate in hands-on science experiments. From what I saw, the kids loved it!

Image: A bottle of water, a few tablespoons of oil, red food coloring, and Alka-seltzer and Voila!: nifty little lava lamp (well, minus the lamp).

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

In a symposium on traffic, I was mesmerized by what the speakers said about present-day innovations, and about what possibilities are still in store when traffic design and engineering look towards the interactive collaborations of insects and the mathematical basis of our social behavior. It was an entertaining panel with many lessons, including...

Insects follow simple rules of science:
Iain Couzin talked about how blind army ants quickly travel about without crashing into each other or getting lost (it’s because each one lays a pheromone that others can detect and follow).

We are all selfish:
Anna Nagurney added immediate relevance by describing how she utilized mathematical modeling to social behavior when working with New York City officials to partially alleviate traffic jams in Manhattan by blocking off part of Broadway to cars.

Sci-fi is a good barometer for what is possible in the future:
Mitchell Joachim (aka Dr. J) opened the door to a futuristic world of possibilities with images of “smart” cars fabricated from huge air bubbles that could easy glide past another air-bubble car or car wheels that could communicate about road conditions to other cars, or better yet, to City Hall.

Moderator Robert Krulwich was possibly the most impressive part of this lecture; he proficiently weaved a free form lecture into a cohesive and entertaining dialogue. But somewhere in the midst of it all my brain started woke up and I realized there was something missing from the lecture.

Couzin’s stories were great, but there was a simple lack of how his work is being used or could be specifically used when organizing or re-designing traffic in cities. Nagurney referenced the use of math in understanding traffic flows, but didn’t give the audience any taste of this math or the different types of computer models that she may use in her work. And Dr. J had the creative ideas, but did not talk about the engineering or technological difficulties that would arise. His tag line was, “vehicles need to be created for a specific context.” His context was and could only be New York City since cars that can only reach 30 mph or personal jet packs with two-hours worth of fuel life would fail if you’re commuting in Los Angeles or trying to travel through America’s farmlands.

I wanted more of the scientific groundwork in the lecture. But admittedly, I am being overly critical because it was thought-provoking; the questions unanswered did sparked lively conversations between my friends and I. What I appreciated about this lecture, versus the Transparent Brains lecture the night before, was that time was allocated for audience questions. The best question, appropriately enough the last one asked: Since people are selfish and prone to causing traffic jams, how do you recommend the audience leave so to cause the least amount of chaos and time delays? There was more laughter than response.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh

“This moment, this now, is a construction. How does the brain bring the past and the future together to create the now?” It was a daunting introduction that moderator Harold Evans put forth at the start of his talk here. I don’t think the question was answered, or that it could even be answered with what we presently (no pun intended) know.

I liked the flow of the lecture—it was more relaxed and (for better and worse) followed a non-linear format. Oliver Sacks, true to the great storyteller that he is, related what he had learned from years of work with patients who have “time” problems. I was familiar with his Parkinson’s and epilepsy stories (I have been a fan for a while …), but what stood out was his “two-timed” patient: one side of the patient’s body moved at a abnormally slow tempo while the other moved at an atypically fast tempo; the only time the two sides of the body followed the same speed was when the patient played the organ.

Contrasting the years of patient work was the laboratory experience presented by Warren Meck and Daniel Gilbert. Meck even ran a little time “experiment” on the audience. Though I enjoyed hearing about the lab work and what it tells us, I undoubtedly showed up to listen to Sacks. I would even venture to say that Gilbert presented a more philosophical perspective than the hard science.

In fact, much of the talk had a philosophical tone. Gilbert and Sacks could not agree if children see time differently or if our perception of time changes as we get older. And there were frequent references to the power of our imagination, how it distorts time and how this allows us to make the grand plans for the future. It reminded me of Alan Lightman’s little book Einstein’s Dreams, which imagines different worlds with different perceptions of time—for the old, the young, and everyone in between.

It was a bit of science and a bit of philosophy discussed by a well versed panel which consisted of two middle-aged men and two older men. And really, what could have been more appropriate when talking about our perception of the passage of time than a young and old panel?

Posted by Alex Witze on June 15, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Richard Van Noorden

Two years ago, psychologist Daniel Wegner received surgery to remove a brain tumour. Surgeons drilled into the left side of his skull. Six weeks after the successful operation, he says, he found his right hand moving without him seeming to will it. It did what he wanted - as he would have decided in ordinary circumstances. “But I did not feel I was the author of the movement. I didn’t need to be there for my hand to move; I had lost the feeling that I was doing it.”

At an entrancing World Science Festival discussion on fate and free will, Wegner, together with Nobel laureate Paul Nurse, philosopher Al Mele and neuroscientist Patrick Haggard discussed what science is adding to the debate on whether we have control over our actions - whether simply moving our limbs, or making a choice about wider moral actions.

Wegner’s tale - and neuroscience research discussed at the session - suggested that our conscious experience of having ‘willed’ an action may be an add-on, something that the brain reports alongside or after an action but not that action’s direct cause, or necessary for it to take place. (Haggard added a directly contrasting tale to Wegner's first-hand account - describing paralysed patients who had the feeling that they could control their limbs, and told researchers that they had moved them, even though the limb remained limp.)

To what extent then, are we in control of (‘will’) our non-reflex actions? Haggard said that many of the actions generated by neurons firing in the motor cortex depend on our laid-down memories - we take the action we did last time, and we rely on previous experience.

Are we morally responsible for the more complex actions we take? “The will is very susceptible to instruction,” Haggard said, pointing out that society spends 20 (or 30) years teaching children what kind of intention leads to what kind of consequence. Mele suggested that a future question for neuroscientists to investigate, probably in consultation with lawyers, would be under what conditions people are accountable for what they do - and when we feel their actions are excusable.

Fate, determinism, and quantum mechanics didn’t get much of a look-in during the evening, which was probably a wise decision. “Using quantum mechanics to explain free will is taking one unknown to explain another,” said Wegner, and the panel left it at that. A thought-provoking evening played, again, to a packed crowd.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 14, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Richard Van Noorden

What happens when seven people, in 90 minutes of unscripted conversation, try to explore the nature of time?

At Saturday’s World Science Festival ‘Time Since Einstein’ event a confusing but inspirational mess emerged: a verbal Jackson Pollock. Which - when explaining the nature of spacetime, the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, reconciling the two, time’s arrow, entropy, non-locality, the big bang, and our personal conceptions of past, present and future - was probably as much as the organisers could hope for.

The whole smorgasbord was loosely coordinated by journalist John Heckenberry. Dealing with his affable non-sequiturs were philosophers David Albert and Michael Heller; physicists Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose; and cosmologist Sean Carroll. “That is absolute nonsense,” Carroll replied to one of his host’s particularly off-the-wall pieces of pseudo-science.

My neighbour fell asleep, but the panellists got plenty of eager follow-up questions and autograph requests. “Do you want to go for another hour?” asked Hockenberry at the close of conversation. “You crazy World Science Festival audiences,” he said as yes’s buzzed through the room.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 14, 2009
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Happy hour starts early in New York, at least it does when you're hanging out with scientists. At 5 pm on Friday an eager audience took their seats at the 92Y-Tribeca for a cabaret-style presentation of science, comedy and, the biggest surprise, a singing Nobel Prize physicist.

The comedy was provided by Emily Levine, stand-up comedian and MC for the night, who introduced the event as "a scientific experiment to see if people like science better if we ply them with alcohol". She kept the tone light between speakers and came up with more scientific one-liners than I had thought was possible. Did the experiment work?

A family I met who had travelled to NY from Syracuse, 250 miles away, found plenty to like. The mother enjoyed the talk by Dominic Johnson, an evolutionary biologist and political scientist from Edinburgh University, who spoke about borrowing ideas from biology to help respond to terrorist threats. The father warmed to NASA's Chris McKay and his search for life on other planets and moons in our Solar System, and the daughter was fascinated by Kristin Baldwin's talk about cloning mice from their own nose cells and making embryonic stem cells that might be used to treat disease. So there was something to please everyone.

Kristin probably had the toughest, or most controversial subject, to tackle. She won the audience over with a mix of movie excerpts (Woody Allen's Sleeper movie beat her to the idea of cloning someone from their nose) and self-deprecating humour: "I can't really see you [the audience] but I feel like I'm in a bar, which makes me happy." She's also clearly excited about some of the recent advances in her field, including work on iPS cells, which allows scientists to reprogram adult cells without the controversial use of embryos.

Cosmologist Sean Carroll, from CalTech, possibly delivered the most memorable take-away fact: the Universe is 100 billion dog years old. But the bravest man in science, and showbiz, was definitely Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek. After a short talk about shepherding Schrodinger cats Frank launched into a song (and dance) about an oxygen molecule that fell in love with a human being. If you don't believe me I'm told a video should be available on the WSF website.

After that we all stumbled back out into the light of a warm New York evening - it's still early in the city and there's plenty more science to go see.

Posted by Sarah Tomlin on June 13, 2009
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The title for the session Transparent Brain: Visible Thoughts was inevitably misleading: each speaker fully acknowledged that their research has made only a small step towards the ambitious goal of understanding the thoughts brewing in the crevices of the brain.

John-Dylan Haynes said it best when he described his work as not quite mind reading. The take home message: the brain is not transparent yet (nor will it ever be), and we need to learn the rules that neurons use to communicate. What was apparent though is that neuroscientists have made leaps in this endeavor.

The four scientists gave brief presentations, frequently prodded by the moderator Brooke Gladstone, and this was followed by a free form discussion. Sadly, there was no time allocated to questions from the audience. With such a good opportunity to bring scientists and the interested public into one setting, it’s a wonder why the folks at WSF did not consider opening the floor to the audience.

The star of the night, in my humble opinion, was John Donoghue whose research bridges neuroscience and technology. Donoghue and colleagues recently inserted a small chip containing 100 electrodes into the motor cortex of a quadriplegic woman. After much training, she is able to move a cursor on a computer screen by “thinking” about how her arm and hand would move if she was in actuality moving the computer mouse. You could sense the audience’s awe and respect.

The immediate application of Donoghue’s research was contrasted with that of Haynes and Frank Tong who use fMRI technologies to try and understand how and when we make simple decisions. But real-world applications of fMRI are not too far off, according to the discussion, in lie detectors, airport scanners or interrogation tools.

And finally, bringing it all together, was the neuroethicist Paul Root Wolpe who aptly asked: shouldn’t your brain and all the thoughts it holds be absolutely private? If imaging technologies really do render the brain and its thoughts transparent, then this brings up all kinds of troubling questions about whether we would want our thoughts to be read, and whether they could be used against us in court. For instance, could you be prosecuted for simply thinking about committing a crime?

Last words: Gladstone won points for all the geeky comments (there may have been a reference to Star Trek: TNG as well as the X-Files). And as cerebrally scintillating as the talk was, it was equally impressive to see who showed up: a packed room filled with no apparent demographic, just as many college kids as senior citizens. And a testament to the diversity: I shamelessly did a not-so-subtle quintuple-take when I spotted Cameron Diaz in the audience!

Posted on behalf of Neda Afsarmanesh.

Posted by Helen Pearson on June 12, 2009
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So I spent the evening with E.O. Wilson and Jim Watson.

Well, OK, it was me and a few hundred others at a New York theatre. And it wasn’t actually them, it was the actress Anna Deavere Smith ‘being’ Wilson and Watson. But because she was so incredible at summing up their mannerisms and speech (an art she has perfected by interviewing her subjects and then using their own words) it felt like we were sitting in their living rooms having a chat about their scientifically rich, fascinating and interconnected lives.

Wilson and Watson were born just over a year apart, in 1929 and 1928 respectively, and they crossed at Harvard University when they were assistant professors together in the 1950s. The best part of Smith’s performance for me was hearing, through her mouth, the two of them talk about each other.

Wilson on Watson:
- “He really didn’t think there was anything important in biology except what he had inaugurated.”
- “I deeply regretted when I got tenure before he did. Jim was really steamed up.”
- “He wouldn’t even return my greeting in the hall.”
- “He called me a stamp-collector.”

Watson on Wilson:
- “I certainly judged him wrong and that’s all.”
- “Did I say he was a stamp-collector – doesn’t sound like me. [Very long pause] If I didn’t call him a stamp collector, someone did.”
- “It became possible for us to become friends when I started to hate the people that hated Ed.”

Smith’s performance was followed by a discussion between Harold Varmus, Jane Lubchenco and the journalist Charlie Rose, about the impact of Wilson and Watson. Needless to say they agreed that science would be a poorer place without sociobiology and molecular genetics. Or, as Watson worded it: “We’re a lot better off than we were in 1950.”

You had to wonder how Wilson and Watson would feel watching themselves characterized in this way. The ‘reveal’ in the final minute: they were both up in the balcony all along.

Posted by Helen Pearson on June 12, 2009
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"Bringing science to the cultural center" was how Tracy Day, co-founder of the World Science Festival put it. And given the contributions by Broadway musical stars (Jonathan Hadary and Danny Burstein), two outstanding classical musicians (Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell), celebrity actors (Alan Alda and Glenn Close), a full orchestra on stage playing music specially composed by Philip Glass, a Baptist choir, and a children's ballet group all appearing at the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, her claim was amply justified for the packed audience at least. This was a true razzamatazz science-festival launch that only New York could have delivered with such style!

Oh, and there were some scientists too. Posted by Helen Pearson on June 11, 2009
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Nature staff will be attending the World Science Festival in New York City from June 10-14, 2009. Check back here for postings from the wide-ranging celebration of science, culture and society.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 10, 2009
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