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Reflections on a First Semester

December 31, 2009 in Guest blogger by Katie Kadue | No comments

Photo by John-Morgan

Photo by John-Morgan

Since I’ve been home after my first semester as a Comparative Literature graduate student at Berkeley, I’ve spent a lot of time fielding questions from friends and relatives about what, exactly, I’ve been doing. My usual response – “Oh, you know; comparing the literatures, to see which one is the best” – tends to elicit nervous, confused laughter, and only thinly veils what I’ve actually spent all semester doing: wondering what, exactly, I’m doing.

As an undergraduate, I regarded graduate students with a certain baffled admiration. Their language was both idiosyncratic and predictable, as if codified in some dictionary whose existence it was their duty to deny. They all talked with the same calculated haltingness, in the contained cadence of seminar-speak. Where did they all learn to discreetly smirk at Lacan, question whether violence was being effaced on the level of the text, and wonder about the role of “affect”? Where did they learn to speak as if everything was in quotation marks (and/or parentheses)? And where could I learn to do that too? (This is a good place to start.)

As much as I rolled my eyes at this kind of academic posturing, I had an overwhelming desire to crack the code and join the ranks of this secret society. I also really liked reading things and writing about them. So I applied to graduate school, struggling to frame my questions of purpose as statements, awkwardly incorporating snippets of that foreign grad student language and hoping that by the time I got there, I would be problematizing, historicizing, and reifying with the fluency of a native.

Berkeley’s Comp Lit students, however, turned out not to be the jargon-spouting aliens I had feared. Worse: they were human, and spoke English, and were perfectly nice and friendly, and I still didn’t understand what was going on half the time. I felt like there were certain unsaid assumptions shared by everyone else about how to approach texts, assumptions too obvious to put into words and thus impossible to ask about. I became quite sure I didn’t know how to read, and wondered what it was I had been doing to books all these years, since it certainly couldn’t be called reading. The areas I thought I was interested in now seemed like they weren’t “areas” at all. I realized I didn’t know what “area,” or any other remotely abstract word, even meant. After stumbling through my first few seminars, never sure if I was saying what the professor wanted to hear or exactly the opposite, I took some solace in the fact that the rest of my cohort seemed as lost as I was. Second-years, third-years, and even seasoned dissertators assured me that they still didn’t know what they were doing, but I didn’t believe them; their claims of confusion were suspiciously coherent. They dutifully asked me if I had any questions about the program, and if they could offer any guidance, but I was too confused to even know what questions to ask.

Sitting around wallowing in a vortex of self-doubt, and dragging my peers in with me, turned out not to be much help in figuring out what I was doing in graduate school. What did help was actually doing stuff: immersing myself in texts, trying to work through them, tentatively venturing ideas about them. A professor’s advice to consider seminar papers as works in progress, potential springboards for further exploration on a topic, helped quell my anxieties about my general lack of direction. It also reminded me why I wanted to go to graduate school in the first place: I think literary analysis is really fun.

Starting graduate school at Berkeley just as the university was hit with budget cuts and their fallout both amplified and helped refine my existential woes. I started to wonder more and more about the economic value of intellectual labor, especially in the ostensibly insolvent humanities. How do we assign a monetary value to the pricelessness of literature, and why should I be getting paid to study it? (That last one I didn’t want to question too rigorously.) These questions ended up informing my academic interests, and both of my seminar papers touched on the relationship between literature and money. Graduate school, for better or for worse, turned out not to be as isolated from the “real world” as I had imagined.

Though I’ve tried not to think too much about school since I turned in those seminar papers, I do feel like I have a little bit of a better idea of what I’m doing than when I started. I’m starting to understand how my more-experienced peers could express their confusion with such calm countenances, and that a lot of graduate school is realizing that we don’t know what, exactly, we’re doing, but that trying to figure it out – by reading, by writing, by exploring, by interacting – is a worthy and rewarding goal in itself. And if all else fails, I can always say that I’m engendering the linguistic construction of the specular economy with an eye to the historicization of desire.

Conference Dispatch: The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS)

December 5, 2009 in Conference dispatches, Guest blogger by Graham Bullock | No comments

Photo by robbyb on Flickr

Photo by robbyb on Flickr

Most academic conferences we attend are actually the annual meetings of particular academic associations – the American Political Science Association, American Chemical Society (ACS), etc.—and most of these have been meeting for decades (the ACS was founded in 1876).  So it is a rare opportunity to be able to attend the founding meeting of an academic association, which I was able to do back in October.  The University of Wisconsin, Madison hosted the first annual conference of the Association of Environmental Studies and Science (AESS), which was started in 2008 to “serve the faculty, students and staff of the 1000+ interdisciplinary ‘environmental’ programs in North America and around the world.”  One of the goals of the new association is to build bridges between the different social science, natural science, and humanities disciplines that study the environment, and the conference was their first major attempt to do so.

As I learned during the main conference dinner, Wisconsin has a fascinating environmental history and rich legacy in environmental research (Aldo Leopold’s shack, for example, is near Madison), and so it was a fitting place for the first AESS meeting.  But the campus is not the easiest to get to – I ended up flying through Milwaukee and taking a two hour bus ride because there was no reasonably priced direct flight available.  But once I arrived, I found the town of Madison to be very nice – quiet and quaint, although also quite cold.  On the third day of the conference, we woke up to find it snowing, and this was the beginning of October!  It will be hard indeed to take a job back East… :)

The conference’s morning keynote speaker was none other than Jane Goodall, the legendary chimpanzee researcher, speaking to the group via a web-based videophone from a research camp in Costa Rica.  After a few technical glitches, she spoke eloquently about environmental issues and the need for continued strong environmental research.   It was a nice beginning of the conference, and reminded us of the urgency of ecological conservation.

The conference itself was organized into 9-10 concurrent panel sessions, which included topics such as environmental education, measuring environmental quality, religion and the environment, marketing and the environment, and environmental risk (click here to see the full schedule).  A good percentage of the panels dealt with the nature and development of interdisciplinary environmental studies and science programs, and the best ways to prepare students for a “green economy.”  But others were more focused on specific environmental topics, and there was a good mix of disciplines represented, from ecologists to economists to sociologists to business scholars to critical theorists.   This range demonstrated the diversity of ways of studying environmental issues, and the challenge of effectively bringing them together.

I presented a paper as part of a panel on “environmental law and policy,” which was a sort of microcosm of this dual challenge and opportunity.  The other panelists included a professor of law who spoke on the history of environmental law, a professor of international relations who talked about the intercontinental transport of air pollutants, and a graduate student in public policy who presented on the diffusion of automobile emissions standards internationally.  My own presentations was on eco-labels and environmental ratings of products and companies.  On the surface, it is difficult to see a common theme in these talks, but as the panel progressed, we identified several interesting connections that provided valuable perspectives on each of our areas of interest.  I had long and helpful conversations with two of the other panelists afterwards, and I look forward to staying in touch with them in the future.

In terms of my own presentation, the biggest challenge was cutting it down to a reasonable length for 15 minutes.  I had a lot of preliminary data and ideas I wanted to discuss, and it was like pulling teeth to take things out.  But ultimately I was able to find a couple key points to focus on, and I think that very much helped the presentation.  My advice to anyone having similar difficulty – try to identify the most interesting complexity to present, but don’t present all of the complexity.  And getting feedback from colleagues on campus before you go can also be a huge help.

In addition to meeting my fellow panelists, I also connected with several other interesting people at the conference.  They included professors from other UC schools and from around the country, including both large universities and small colleges that I had never heard of, but that have some very innovative environmental programs.  They also included other graduate students, including four from the University of Wisconsin, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Princeton who were working on topics closely related to my own interests.

All in all, it was a great opportunity to meet people in this diverse field, and hopefully make connections that will last far into the future.  I certainly felt like the conference was a success, and hope that the Association is able to build on the momentum.  The next meeting is in Portland; for anyone who is interested, you can check out the association’s website at http://aess.info.

The Complexities of Biology

November 29, 2009 in Guest blogger by Felix Moser | No comments

cellComplexity“Biology is hard.” These underwhelming but wise words were told to me two years ago by a sixth-year grad student who had given up the frustrations of biological bench work in favor of computational biology. At the time, I had some inkling of what he meant. I had spent many long evenings in college working in a biochemistry lab, bent over the lab bench trying to figure out why my most recent experiment had failed. Often, the failure of an experiment meant some mistake on my part: a forgotten reagent, a botched procedure, a badly designed primer; these are all lessons that most biological researchers learn the hard way and make us better scientists. The rest of the time, there were no answers as to why experiments failed. They just did. A gene wouldn’t clone or express, a protein would aggregate or refuse to crystallize, or an antibody wouldn’t blot the correct protein. These failures were the most frustrating because there was little to learn from them. One had to either try something fundamentally different or give up.

After six years of working in the life sciences, I have come to learn that this experience is widely shared among biological researchers. It is simply the nature of the work. But being a scientist, I had to ask: Why is that? What makes biology so hard to predict, parse, and engineer? The answer, left unspoken but widely acknowledged by biologists, is that living systems are simply too complex to be fully understood.

The failures that absorb so much of a biology grad student’s career are usually ascribed to the complexities within the cells they work with. Even biologists sometimes forget that cells, though stunningly well-tuned and elegantly functional machines, are much more complicated than a microchip and much less predictable. Despite over a century of research effort, cells are still “black boxes” full of mysterious chemical mechanisms and machinery that we are just beginning to understand. The magnitude of the complexity of a single cell is truly overwhelming. Even a relatively simple genetic system, such as that of a bacterial virus, can be so complex as to be beyond the supercomputer’s computational capacity to model. It’s not hard to understand why: Imagine a tiny “bag of chemicals” with a menagerie of millions of molecules shoving around inside it like concert goers in a rave, each going about highly specific tasks, together maintaining the delicate balance of life. Since we cannot model such a machine, we can rarely predict what removing or adding a gear to the mechanism will do to it. But this is how we study life: by breaking or introducing gears in the machines and observing how they behave. Yet these approaches are crude and often fail, the reasons why getting lost in noise of millions of molecules.

Genome sequencing promised to shine light into the “black boxes” of life. It was hoped that a researcher would be able to read the genetic code it like an engineer reads a blueprint. This hope has proven naïve. Even with an annotated genetic code in hand, it is often impossible to predict what gene is expressed when, why, and what it does. Each year, science peels away layers of complexity of how the cell controls its myriad functions, usually revealing even more complexity beyond it. Companies that hedged their bets on genomics revealing the intricacies of disease, such as the recently bankrupt DeCode Genetics based in Iceland, are learning the hard way that life and its diseases are far more complex than anyone thought. To grad students like myself who work in the life sciences, though the complexity of life offers much frustration, it nonetheless instills a deep sense of awe and respect for nature, as we realize that we are just beginning to understand it.

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Conference dispatch: The 34th annual Society for Social Studies of Science meeting

November 18, 2009 in Conference dispatches, Guest blogger by Graham Bullock | 3 comments

Washington, D.C. autumn by ehpien

Washington, D.C. autumn by ehpien

Last month I attended the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, or “4S” for short.  This was the 34th annual meeting of the Society, and was held right outside Washington, DC, at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City.  There was no overarching theme of the meeting, and so it had a wide range of panel topics.  It lasted for three days, had almost 1000 participants, and included nearly 200 panels.

But, what you may be asking, were all these panels about?  What are “social studies of science” anyway?  Also known as “science and technology studies” (or STS), this field probably has as many definitions as scholars, but in essence, it is focused on critically investigating the ways in which politics, culture, and the institutions we call “science” intersect and influence each other.  Rather than assuming that scientists and the technologies they create are politically neutral, STS scholars study the ways in which ideologies and values motivate scientists and become embedded in the things they create.

I was first exposed to STS in a seminar I took in my master’s program that was led by one of the field’s leading scholars, Sheila Jasanoff, and it has had a big effect on my own thinking.  My undergraduate degree was in ecology and evolutionary biology, and I have always had a strong faith that science and reason can help us rise above our partisan politics and collectively solve society’s problems. But the STS literature, from Bruno Latour’s work on laboratories to Donna Haraway’s writing on museum exhibits, showed me how science and politics actively “co-produce” each other, to borrow a term from Professor Jasanoff.  While I still believe that science is a unique human institution that can and has greatly benefited humanity, I have come to appreciate its limitations and the need to look critically at its claims.

So panels at the conference discussed the politics of water knowledge and expertise, sustainability and climate science, medical information and ethics, internet cultures, computer code, food technology, chemical regulation, nano-technology, Asian bio-politics, genomics, and more.  More theoretical topics included the philosophy of science and technology studies, subjectivities, actor network theory, citizen participation, peer review and expertise, and the privatization of science.

My own panel was entitled “Agents of Sustainable Innovation and Design,” and included talks on actor networks behind geothermal heating and cooling, bioplastics, engineering consulting firms, and the electric car.  My own talk discussed actors driving the growth in environmental certifications and ratings of products and companies – the subject of my dissertation.  My goal for attending the conference was to articulate and get feedback on ways to apply to STS theories to my dissertation topic, and so it was nice that several people had some positive and insightful comments afterwards.

One of the truths about conferences is that it is the informal times between events that are the most rewarding, and this was no less true for me at this meeting. It is in these interstitial periods that you can make connections that can help you with your research or your career path, or just make new friends.  They can also help you deepen existing relationships as well.  For example, on the last night of the conference, I went out to dinner with a group of grad students from the Bay Area  — 1 UCSF student, and several Berkeley students from my department, sociology, and history (some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn’t) — and we had a great time sharing our research interests and swapping stories from the conference.

I also connected with some interesting people from other places that were doing research relevant to my own (on environmental standards, regulations, etc.), and I hope to stay in touch with them as well.  One of the great things about 4S is that it is very international – one of these people was from the Netherlands, and another was from Japan.

This experience underscores the underlying value of these types of conferences – of course they are great opportunities to present your work, get feedback, provide deadlines to push your research forward, etc., but I think they are primarily about building and maintaining a lifetime of relationships.  Whether or not you go into academia or not, you can be a member of these communities and share in their growth and development.

The value and dynamism of the 4S community of scholars was particularly apparent in the plenary session, where both young and old researchers discussed their hopes for the future of science and technology studies – how to become more institutionalized on college campuses, how to more effectively reach policymakers, etc.  I realized that you don’t feel this energy from just reading journal articles – you really do have to attend these gatherings to understand the intellectual life of these communities.  And so I am grateful for having the opportunity to experience the vibrancy of the STS community, and hope to stay connected to it in the future.

Operational Excellence project discussed at November delegate assembly

November 16, 2009 in Graduate Assembly, Guest blogger by Philippe Marchand

On November 5th, UCB Vice Chancellor Frank Yeary along with a representative from the external consulting firm Bain & Company were invited to speak to delegates of the Graduate Assembly (GA) about the University’s “Operational Excellence” (OE) project.

Launched on October 1st, the project to improve the efficiency of campus operations is currently in an initial six-month “diagnostic phase.” Bain & Company was hired at a cost of $3 million to conduct the project, which is supervised by a steering committee made up of administrators, faculty and two student representatives (the ASUC and GA presidents).

Answering a question from the assembly, the Bain & Company representative said that they measure efficiency from three types of criteria: cost, time and quality. According to Yeary, “Ideally, there’s tens of millions in saving we could achieve.” The Vice Chancellor added that these savings must be measured against the consequences for service and quality.

Most of the OE project seems to focus on administrative services with which students might have limited interaction (human resources, procurement, etc.). Nevertheless, graduate students present at the meeting made a number of suggestions to the speakers, many of them motivated by environmental concerns, such as energy-efficiency and waste reduction. One such idea was to create a “lab equipment library” to share resources across research groups and departments, and increase the use of equipment that would otherwise be idle most of the time.

One student at the meeting mentioned that in their previous work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Bain & Company had recommended the centralization of libraries. This led to concerns about the academic impacts of the project. The Berkeley OE website states that “direct aspects of teaching and research that are under faculty governance, as well as options to increase revenue such as registration or education student fees” are out of the project’s scope, a point reiterated by Vice Chancellor Yeary, who said, “Our primary area of focus in on these activities that support teaching or research. [...] The goal is that the maximum resources go directly to teaching and research.”

Graduate students are invited to attend a brainstorming session with Bain & Company representatives on Tuesday, December 1st to share their ideas. It will be held from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in the Graduate Student Lounge in Stephens Hall.

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Cross-campus collaboration

November 9, 2009 in Guest blogger by Felix Moser | No comments

Photo from Thomas Hawk on Flickr

Photo from Thomas Hawk on Flickr

One of the great traditions and strengths of the UC system is cross-campus collaboration. As a second year graduate student of the UCSF/UC-Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering (JGGB), I witness on a daily basis the teamwork and synergy that occurs between these two great UC campuses. The JGGB is one of very few programs in the US that connects a first-rate medical institution with a university that exemplifies the highest standards of engineering and science. This program presents its graduate students with unparalleled opportunities, not only in the form of a substantially enlarged program faculty (since both UCSF and Berkeley faculty are available to us) and the resources of both campuses, but the unique ability to work with and learn from both doctors and engineers of the highest caliber.

Graduate students in the JGGB routinely take advantage of these opportunities. For example, 2nd-year JGGB student, Dan Cohen, recently organized the “Clinical Applied Science and Engineering” program to facilitate graduate students shadowing surgeries at UCSF. During the program, I witnessed Dr. Maxwell Meng perform a prostatectomy with the Da Vinci robotic system, which allows the surgeon to remotely manipulate laparoscopic tools placed inside the patient via hand-held controllers and a 3D camera viewer. This system allows for much more precise manipulation of surgical instruments, which often improves patient outcome for sensitive, difficult procedures such as prostatectomies. To me, this robotic system served as a powerful example of how smart engineering can improve treatments.

Another great example of cross-campus educational collaboration is the BioE298P024 “Anti-medical” seminar that invites UCSF physicians to Berkeley once a week to give talks on the unaddressed technical needs within medicine. Dr. Sigurd Bevern, one guest speaker, discussed the need for physically quantifying pain as a means to more accurately diagnose and treat chronic back pain. Another speaker asked the engineers whether anything could be done to prevent hip replacement joints from squeaking, as this is a problem for some patients with ceramic hip replacements. The “Anti-med” seminar is well attended by Bioengineering faculty and students who hope to bring their expertise to bear on the needs presented by the physicians. Several collaborations have grown out of these seminars, although they are still in the development phases. The hope embedded in both these programs and in the JGGB more generally is that active conversations between physicians and engineering graduate students and faculty will lead to productive collaborations and ultimately bold innovations. Bold innovation, after all, is another of UC’s great traditions.

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Dan Cohen for fruitful discussions and information.

The exegesis of rap

October 14, 2009 in Guest blogger by Katie Kadue

Have you ever wondered what it meant to “do like a toaster put your bread down,” or what Bone Thugs-n-Harmony is even saying half the time? Have you then questioned why a serious scholar such as yourself would waste time Googling hip-hop lyrics instead of reviewing your conference notes? A visit to RapGenius.com might just convince you that it’s okay to pursue a love of gangsta rap along with an advanced degree at a prestigious institution.  In fact, the two interests may even go together like models and bottles.

Don’t tell Harold Bloom, but the lyrical feats of rappers like Raekwon have proven eminently worthy of literary analysis. A successful career in hip-hop requires more than an affinity for girls, cash, and cars. Rappers must employ a sharp wit, an acute sense of rhythm, and a highly developed allusive structure. Lil Wayne’s enigmatic “Who dat one dat do dat boy?” has left many a listener rhythmically entranced but utterly unsure of the question, much less the answer. And Cam’ron’s “But la de da de / We like to party” sounds achingly familiar…but is that elusive allusion just an illusion? Read the rest of this entry »

From walking out to studying in: Berkeley students bring extended hours to the Anthropology Library

October 14, 2009 in Guest blogger by Philippe Marchand | No comments

Banners outside Kroeber Hall during the study-in. The "cemetery" refers to a comment made by UC President Yudof in a New York Times interview

Banners outside Kroeber Hall during the study-in. The "cemetery" refers to a comment made by UC President Yudof in a New York Times interview

”We have an announcement … This is now our library,” said UC Berkeley senior Andi Walden to more than one hundred students, as well as a few professors and staff members, who gathered at the anthropology library in Kroeber Hall on Friday, October 9th, shortly before the usual 5 pm closure time. During the next 24 hours, they would study for their midterms, participate in various ”teach-ins”, and even sleep over in the reclaimed space.

The principle of this action, organized in less than a week by an informal student group, was to respond to the University’s decision to close nearly all campus libraries on Saturdays. The library closures are the ”undeniable symptom of a dying university,” Walden said, reminding the attendees of the other impacts of this year’s budget cuts, including the unprecedented 32% tuition fee hike and the pay cuts imposed on UC workers across the board, even those already living under the poverty line.

While various actions were discussed to follow up on the September 24th walkout against budget cuts, organizers of the “study-in” mentioned the importance of direct actions that create change by themselves — in this case, keeping a library open that should have been closed — in addition to putting pressure on legislators and administrators. For Daniel Nemser, a graduate student in Spanish and Portuguese and one of the organizers of the event, the goal was ”not only to demonstrate the problems” caused by the budget cuts, ”but also establish a place for public dialogue.” Some speakers pointed out that at a deeper level, keeping the library open was a symbol of the need for more openness (i.e., transparency and accessibility) on the public campus.

Anthropology Professor Paul Rabinow was one of the guest speakers on Friday evening.

Anthropology Professor Paul Rabinow was one of the guest speakers on Friday evening.

Some of the lively discussions that took place in one half of the library – the other was reserved for quiet studying – covered such topics as non-violent resistance, the history of public education since the New Deal, and power and privilege within the student movement. On Saturday afternoon, Professor Bob Meister from UC Santa Cruz delivered a much-anticipated talk on his analysis of the UC budget and how tuition fee increases were used by the University of California to receive cheap credit for its building projects.

In the end, with the volunteer participation of dedicated library staff, students were able to remain in the space for the entire 24-hour period. That the University police were ordered not to intervene by the Chancellor, and remained outside the library as the result of negotiation with the organizers was also seen as a success, according to Nemser.

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Finding free food in Berkeley

September 21, 2009 in Guest blogger by Katie Kadue | No comments

berkeleyvictorygarden

Victory Garden at UC Berkeley

Berkeley is known as a culinary paradise: the food here is not only delicious, but also driven in large part by local, organic, and sustainably-grown ingredients.  In addition to the famous restaurants of the Gourmet Ghetto, the city boasts bustling thrice-weekly farmers’ markets that run the gamut of fresh produce, grass-fed hot dogs, and vegan enchiladas.  But on a graduate student budget, a prix-fixe dinner at Chez Panisse might be a bit out of reach.  Even at the markets, despite the undeniable value of supporting local farmers, a $4/pound price tag can sour even the sweetest organic peach.

So how are we starving students to take a seat at the smorgasbord of Berkeleyan bounty without breaking the bank?  There are plenty of budget-friendly options for grocery shopping and eating out: Berkeley Bowl’s produce is a great value, especially for organic items, and many vendors at the farmers’ markets offer attractive deals near closing time or on less cosmetically perfect specimens.  Vik’s Chaat House is a good bet for quality Indian on the cheap, and The Cheeseboard’s $2.50/slice gourmet pizza is worth the wait in line.  But what kind of fare, dare I ask, can be had for free?

As it turns out, Berkeley abounds in opportunities for free food, and I’m not referring to the stale donuts sitting in your departmental lounge.  One option is to gorge yourself on the free samples of those farmers’ market peaches, though you risk dirty looks and the ensuing guilt-driven purchases that effectively negate your entire free-sample strategy.  (Or, I suppose, you could just endure the dirty looks.)  Instead, I recommend heading over to Memorial Glade and checking out the campus Victory Garden.  It’s a small plot and won’t be feeding any armies, but on most days this time of year you can find a few ripe tomatoes, summer squash complete with their blossoms, and, if you’re lucky, a late-season strawberry or two.  Anyone is welcome to help themselves to the produce; if you don’t eat it, the worms will.  And if you’d like to return the favor to the garden, you can help out with maintenance.

tomatocontainerOr, even better, heed Voltaire’s advice and cultivate your own garden.  It’s basically free, beyond the minimal initial overhead, and offers the reward of self-reliance.  Herbs are probably the easiest to grow; put a pot of basil in a sunny window, water regularly, and you’re halfway to pesto.  You can get herbs and pots at farmers markets or any nursery, and at some grocery stores. If you feel like branching out, try dwarf trees (Meyer lemons, sweeter than conventional ones, seem to love the Berkeley climate and produce like mad).  Lettuces and other greens also grow well in pots – and can provide a welcome incentive to eat more salad.

Even if you can’t seem to keep your plants alive, super-local produce isn’t necessarily out of reach.  On my way home from class, I walk by rampant rosemary bushes, grapevines, lemon trees, and aloe plants (useful not only as a skin salve but also as a digestive tea; the brave can drink the sticky juice straight).  Of course, make sure you check with the residents before sampling any fare growing on private property, but chances are they’re having trouble keeping up with all the yield themselves.  Or, if your neighbors weren’t planning on eating the fruits of their labor at all, they might appreciate your help: you’re saving them a messy treefull of rotten fallen apples.

So please: do your patriotic part to harvest the Victory Garden, pick up some herbs (and maybe just a few free samples…) at the farmers market, and scope out your neighborhood flora.  With all the money you’ve saved up, maybe you can finally afford to eat at Chez Panisse.  All you need now is a reservation.

The 94th Ecological Society of America annual meeting: Impressions from Albuquerque

September 3, 2009 in Conference dispatches, Guest blogger by Wendy Yang | No comments

This past August I traveled to my first major week-long conference, the 94th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Over 3000 ecologists brought the otherwise deserted downtown Albuquerque to life, overwhelming the understaffed restaurants and filling the streets with an unusually high number of Hawaiian shirt-clad and beard-sporting men. Ecologists study nature from the organism level up to the ecosystem level and work on land, in freshwater, and in the oceans. I hadn’t realized before attending this meeting that, for some traditional reason, marine ecologists (those who work in the oceans) are not members of ESA but are included in geoscience professional societies. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society,” reflecting the concern among ecologists about the impact of human activity on organisms and the environment.

While the overall theme guided organized sessions, many sessions were filled with contributed talks and posters, meaning unsolicited presentations on any topic. The University of California, Berkeley participants gave over 100 presentations at the meeting. These included graduate student presentations on the biophysical constraints on the size of leaves, the need to take into account habitat complexity on different spatial scales when doing pest control, changes in the species composition of fungi due to increased nitrogen fertilizer inputs, and a new method for measuring nitrogen gas emissions from soil (my talk). Clearly ecology is a very broad scientific field!

This year ESA organizers made a greater effort to group talks and posters into sessions with cohesive mini-themes. However, it was unavoidable that there were still multiple rooms featuring simultaneous talks on the same areas of interest. This sometimes meant choosing between attending one talk to support a friend or another talk to learn about a new study. I tended to choose the latter, hoping that my friends would understand that I was supporting them in spirit. The overlapping sessions also meant getting quite a workout dashing up and down escalators and hallways to make it from one session to another during the short question and answer period between talks.

This was a great year to attend the ESA annual meeting for my field of biogeochemistry, the study of how biological, geological, chemical, and physical processes affect the environment. A special symposium sponsored by the National Science Foundation brought in high profile scientists to emphasize the importance of considering interactions in the cycling of elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and iron. There were also an unusually high number of contributed biogeochemistry presentations. This not only gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about topics related to my research, but it also allowed me to start networking.

I had looked forward to coffee and meal breaks as times to refuel and refresh, but it soon became apparent that those were prime times for introducing myself to new people and meeting up with old acquaintances to build collaborative relationships and sell myself for potential future jobs. As a graduate student, I was familiar with the work but not the faces of my colleagues. This proved to be an asset in calming my nerves before giving my talk—for all I knew my audience was filled with people who had wandered in from the street. However, this made networking much more difficult. Rather than using the awkward strategy of glancing not-so-slyly at the nametags of people passing by, I shadowed the well-connected members of my lab to angle for introductions.

I didn’t anticipate how tiring it would be to participate in a conference. Official meeting activities ran from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, including talks, posters, and mixers. By only the second day, I felt like a week had passed, and I wasn’t sure if my brain could absorb any new information. Though I didn’t plan to skip any of the sessions, I had to forgo one afternoon session filled with interesting talks to take a much-needed nap. I finally understood why conference attendees often ditch for a day to become tourists. The conference organizers also recognized the need for down time. My advisor dragged herself out of bed at five o’clock one morning to participate in an organized 5K run. Every evening one of my labmates joined an informal group of musicians and onlookers who gathered to unwind and release their creative energy.

One of my lasting impressions from attending the ESA annual meeting for the first time is the passion that ecologists have for science and for protecting nature for the sake of future generations. My flight to and from Albuquerque was filled with ecologists and the buzz of conversations rarely strayed from ecology. Even on the AirBART ride out of the Oakland airport, I eavesdropped on a USGS scientist introducing himself to two Berkeley faculty members who were discussing their research. Despite our overloaded minds, we couldn’t stop thinking about science. I feel lucky to be embarking on a career path in a field where my colleagues are so passionate about their work. I look forward to seeing them all again next August for the 95th ESA annual meeting in Pittsburg!

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