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| Volume 49, Number 2, Summer 2000 |
by Suzanne Clancy
At a dinner in June, NCSWA members heard Baruch Blumberg, head of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, talk about life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. While there's no definitive proof life exists anywhere but Earth, Blumberg says there are tantalizing hints it could. He discussed "extremophiles," bacteria that thrive in extremely harsh earthly environments, and the infamous Martian meteorites, both of which suggest life could survive in other planetary environments. Blumberg, a Nobel Prize winner (in Physiology and Medicine, for work on the hepatits B vaccine), also discussed upcoming space missions designed to help search for planets around other stars and detect chemical signatures of life in their atmospheres. He also described the recently chartered NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, CA. The Institute takes an interdisciplinary approach to its subject, with 440 members spread out among 12 institutions around the world.
Members of SanDSWA visited the San Diego Supercomputer Center in June and heard an overview by computational biologist Shankar Subramaniam on the burgeoning field of bioinformatics. A ramp-up of high-performance computing and data analysis tools are needed to cope with the flood of data produced by genomics and proteomics, according to Subramaniam, professor of bioengineering, chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego. Subramaniam, who has a joint appointment at the Supercomputer Center, described The Biology Workbench, a biology analysis environment on the Web (http://biology.ncsa.uiuc.edu), designed by his laboratory to provide access to multiple databases and analytical tools. Following the talk, NASW hosts Kim McDonald and Merry Maisel led tours of the supercomputer facility and visualization laboratory.
At an April gathering, five experts in the field of biometrics described the future for DCSWAns, explaining how technologies that identify individuals by their unique physical characteristics are already widely used by the US government, state governments, and increasingly by the private sector. Speakers included Peter Higgins, of Higgins & Associates International, a biometrics consulting practice; Fernando Podio, co-chair of the National Biometrics Consortium; John Woodward, Jr., Esq., an attorney and consultant for the RAND Corporation; Erik Bowman, director of emerging markets for Identicator, a fingerprint technology manufacturer; and Gerald Byrnes, vice president of marketing for Lau Technologies, a maker of face recognition software. On a lighter note, DCSWA celebrated the arrival of summer, in mid-May, with a happy hour at Madam's Organ Blues Bar in the Adams Morgan district. A rooftop bar and pool tables were big draws. In June, DCSWA learned about the science and politics behind the Senate's decision last Fall to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Speakers included Marshall Billingslea, senior professional staff member for national security affairs on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers; Gregory van der Vink, seismologist and director of planning for IRIS, a seismological research consortium representing 95 universities; and Frank von Hippel, theoretical physicist and professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University.
Suzanne Clancy is science writer at The Salk Institute, in La Jolla, CA. Send information on regional meetings and events to clancy@salk.edu.