In this Starbucks era where coffee is frequently a dessert-like confection full of caramel, chocolate syrup, or other exotic flavors, people may have lost their ability to enjoy a plain cup of coffee. But great coffee doesn’t need adulteration. On December 6, learn how the bean, the roast, the water, and other ingredients combine to create a cup of the good stuff at a lecture by Andrea Illy, Chairman of illycafe, S.p.A. and coauthor and publisher of Espresso Coffee: the Chemistry of Quality. At this first event in the Science & the City Food Series, discuss the science of coffee and enjoy an espresso or cappuccino at the post-event reception.

Click here for more information about the event.

In their new book, Lois Gresh and her coauthor Robert Weinberg use the stories of horror master Stephen King as a jumping-off point to share principles of science. The mayhem caused by psychic abilities in Carrie, Firestarter, and The Dead Zone paves the way for a discussion of human consciousness and modern neuroscience; The Stand provokes a look at fictional and real plagues; while the parallel worlds and alternate histories at the heart of The Dark Tower bring up theoretical physics from relativity to wormholes.

Gresh will sign copies of her book and talk about the “science” in science fiction at a Science & the City @ NYAS event on November 29.

Click here for more information about the event.

A paper just published in The Lancet reports on an encouraging result in a clinical trial of an experimental malaria vaccine called RTS,S. Previous trials had shown that the vaccine provides protection for children aged 1-4, but this new trial showed that it is both safe and effective in very young infants. Although further investigation remains to be done, the result is heartening because these babies are among the most vulnerable to infection with malaria. According to Nature magazine, “The latest trial raises hopes that the malaria vaccine riddle has been cracked, and that babies can now be protected for the first two years of their lives: a strategy that could prevent millions of deaths.”

On Wednesday October 24, the New York Academy of Sciences will host a symposium organized in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health titled Progress Against Malaria: Developments on the Horizon. Among presentations by nearly a dozen top malaria researchers, the event will feature a talk by Christian Loucq, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which sponsored the successful trial of RTS,S. The meeting will also include discussion of new diagnostic tests, prevention and treatment strategies, and malaria-resistant mosquitoes, as well as recent work in Macha, Zambia, where malaria research is conducted in a unique rural setting. To register or to learn more about the event, visit the NYAS Web site.

Click here to listen to a Science & the City podcast with Angelique Corthals, a biological anthropologist who—in addition to her work on the genetics of ancient mummies—studies the social and landscape processes underlying endemism of malaria in the peruvian Amazon.

Have you ever been plagued by an earworm—an insidiously catchy tune trapped in your head? The pervasive and distracting way that the Jeopardy theme song can permeate consciousness demonstrates the powerful influence of music on the human brain. In his new book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, neurologist Oliver Sacks, the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, shares his patients’ experiences with music. From the man who was suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two after being struck by lightning, to the way in which music can calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia, Sacks will discuss how music can be both a neurological symptom and a tool for healing.

Listen to Science & the City’s podcast interview with Oliver Sacks or read an interview with him in the current edition of the New York Academy of Sciences Member Magazine.

Sacks will speak Tuesday, October 16, at 6 pm at The New York Academy of Sciences, 250 Greenwich St., 7 World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan. The event is part of the Science & the City Author Series.

For the past three summers, the rich, the powerful, and the just plain curious have converged on the former mining town of Aspen, Colorado for a weeklong bit of intellectual prospecting. In between informal conversations with celebrities like Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Karl Rove, Lance Armstrong, and Jessye Norman, this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival featured a special program track focusing on some exciting recent developments in neuroscience.

Invited by the William A. Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts, prominent researchers explained why technologies like positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have not only revolutionized how scientists gather information about how the brain works, but also call into question some very fundamental ways in which we understand ourselves and organize our society. The New York Academy of Sciences was there, and has just published an online eBriefing documenting the event.

Perhaps the most startling presentation on the program came from Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian neurophysiologist now based at Duke University. He and his team are developing brain–machine interfaces consisting of electrodes implanted in the brain connected to sophisticated computer programs that can analyze firing patterns of individual neurons. In one series of experiments, Nicolelis used this approach to teach monkeys to play a video game purely by thinking. His work won’t just benefit couch potatoes, though. Nicolelis hopes one day that such a technology could enable people with paralysis to move and to physically manipulate their environments.

Jeffrey Rosen, a legal scholar at George Washington University, and Michael Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara both focused on the approaching collision between neuroscience and the law. They pointed out that lawyers are already invoking information from brain scans in defense of criminal behavior, arguing in effect that abnormalities like brain lesions can cause certain antisocial behaviors. Although juries have been skeptical, it is clear that new knowledge about how the brain works could have important implications for basic concepts of free will and responsibility upon which American legal practice relies. Gazzaniga is now helping to direct the Law and Neuroscience Project, a new initiative sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation that is bringing neuroscientists, judges, philosophers, and other scholars together to explore when neuroscience belongs in the courtroom, and when it doesn’t.

The conference also included a personal talk by Bob Woodruff of ABC News, who suffered traumatic brain injury when he was struck by a bomb while covering the war in Iraq in January 2006. He described the experience in harrowing detail, including his long recovery and how the experience has changed him. Other participants included National Medal of Science award-winner Nancy Andreasen on what imaging technologies tell us about individual differences, PET pioneer Marcus Raichle on some vast unexplored areas of brain activity, and former Disney Imagineer Eric Haseltine on some experiments you can do to catch your brain tricking you.

In addition to a meeting summary, the eBriefing also includes complete audio/slides/video of the speakers’ talks, a video introduction with interviews, and a printable e-book consisting of edited transcripts.

While going green is sometimes seen as an economic inconvenience, many companies are thriving and making hefty profits while helping the environment. Each year Inc. magazine names the Green 50—a group of entrepreneurial companies that have committed to green initiatives and environmental sustainability.

Five of the 50 companies named on the 2006 list are based in New York. One company, Verdant Power, was in the news this week because of the underwater turbines they installed to convert currents in the East River to household electricity last December. The New York Times reported that after preliminary maintenance, the company has great expectations for the new technology that allows Verdant to foresee exactly when the turbines will generate power by monitoring current activity.

Another New York company on Inc.’s list, Voltaic Systems, has transformed environmentalism into a fashion accessory with the creation of solar powered backpacks made from recycled plastic products that are capable of charging electronics on the go.

Josh Dorfman, author of The Lazy Environmentalist and producer of a nationally broadcast radio show of the same name, also made the list with his Brooklyn-based company, Vivavi, which offers modern, eco-friendly home furnishings and a way for consumers to use the web to find green homes to rent or buy. Other New York area Green 50 companies are IceStone building products and Green Order sustainability consulting.

Just how much impact can one green idea have? CNN reported financial group Credit Suisse’s cooling system that uses blocks of ice to channel cool air throughout their Manhattan office building reduces greenhouse gases equivalent to “taking 223 cars off the streets and planting 1.9 million acres of trees.”

These companies demonstrate business savvy can turn green ideas into greenbacks. To help translate ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace, the New York Science Alliance is hosting a 12 week Technology Venture Course at the New York Academy of Sciences beginning September 4.

More advice for aspiring tech entrepreneurs is on offer at Financial Research Associates’ Green Building & Technology- Finance, Construction and Investment summit on September 24-25.

To learn more about Trey Taylor, the president and co-founder of Verdant Power visit the archives of the New York Academy of Sciences Magazine. To sign up for the Technology Venture Course visit Science & the City.

*Image above of Vivavi’s tonecoon chair

Image courtesy of John Pazmino

If you’ve received an e-mail touting the appearance of two moons in the August sky, you have been deceived.

The Mars Hoax reappears every summer in a pesky e-mail chain letter designed to mislead gullible readers and stargazers. The spam missive claims that the red planet will come abnormally close to Earth on August 27 and appear the size of the moon in the night sky. As a result, astronomers throughout the country find themselves explaining how this event is utterly impossible to those who have fallen for the scam.

These are the facts: When Mars is closest to Earth, it is 56 million kilometers away. On August 27, 2003, when the red planet came as close to the earth as it will for another several thousand years, it appeared six times larger and 85 times brighter than usual—although nowhere near the size and brilliance of the moon.

Even when the moon is farthest from the Earth—some 405,503 kilometers away—Mars is still too far away to appear the size of the moon to the naked eye.

The hoax stirred up in 2003 may be especially compelling this year, says John Pazmino of NYSkies Astronomy, because a lunar eclipse will occur at 4:51 AM on August 28. If observers go out that night they may actually see the large red ball they expect.

“They are bamboozled by the eclipsed moon, believing it is Mars!” he said.

In reality, the red planet will appear low in the northeast sky during the eclipse, says Pazmino. “Look at the moon, then do an about-face. You’ll be looking right at Mars.”

However, contrary to what you may have heard, Mars will actually be closest to Earth in December this year.

Join NYSkies on August 16 for the next lecture in their seminar series which is held the first and third Thursday of every month.

Next Friday, August 17, the Columbia Department of Astronomy will open its roof for a stargazing session at the Rutherford Observatory. Stargazers will be able to see the craters on the moon and Saturn’s rings through an assortment of telescopes, and volunteers will be available to offer insight on the night sky.

According to a study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, students in the U.S. lose on average approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math computation over the summer months, while loss in reading varies depending on family income.

The study also found that students who attend summer camps and enrichment programs displayed increased self-esteem, leadership skills, and improved peer relationships. Luckily, you can fight the summertime learning lull by bringing your child to some of the many science-related activities happening this month.

Rather than hire a babysitter, working parents can enroll their child in drop-off programs this August at the New York Hall of Science, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and many more.

Week-long camps are still open for registration, including two at the New York Aquarium that start August 13: Aquatic Adventures for ages 6 to 8 and Marine Explorers for ages 9 to 12.

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden offers children’s summer classes that look at nature through poetry, painting, and even culinary arts.

This Saturday, children as young as pre-K and kindergarten can learn about animals and their adaptations at the Staten Island Zoo’s Kids and Critters program, which explores a new topic each month.

Or, families can join the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for nature walks, environmental games, crafts, and cake in celebration of Smokey Bear’s 63rd birthday this Saturday.

Check out more science events for kids going on this week including Family Science Workshop: Volcanoes Rock!, Greenhouse Exploration, and Larry Cat in Space by searching for “Kids & Families” events in the Science and the City Events Calendar.

New innovations in technology and communication have sparked a generation-defining activist movement — mostly advertised in the color green. While the “going green” revolution often focuses on what we can individually do to narrow our ecological footprint, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has taken a responsible statewide approach with the Leading the Way in Energy Innovation initiative released in June.

The initiative was developed to address three main themes: climate change, economic development, and energy infrastructure reliability. Among many goals, by 2010 NYSERDA hopes to lessen the environmental impacts of energy use by “encouraging the development of support services for renewable energy resources and optimizing the energy performance of buildings and products.”

The New York legislature hopes to create a framework to encourage environmentally efficient technology and education to its residents and businesses. Next month, construction will be complete on the Saratoga Technology and Energy Park (STEP), a 280-acre complex of office and manufacturing space for the new energy industry. STEP will also house the new Department of Environmental Conservation’s Alternative Fuel Vehicle Research Lab to promote the transition away from petroleum-based transportation.

In Albany this week, The New York Academy of Sciences and New Energy New York, a consortium of energy-related technology organizations including NYSERDA, will organize the 2nd Annual New Energy Symposium. Due to increased interest in green energy, this year the conference has added an extra day devoted to a hydrogen expo at which participants will have the chance to present and discuss the latest research and technology.

If the trip from NYC to Albany seems too long — or you’d just like to lessen your carbon footprint by minimizing travel — you can enjoy two free lectures on energy and the environment close to home: New York City’s Renewable Energy Future by Tria Case of Bronx Community College and the Secret Science Club event called “It’s Hot, Hot, Hot” at which William Schlesinger, Professor Emeritus of Biogeochemistry at Duke, and co-principal investigator for the Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) Experiment, will explain how CO2 emissions affect a forest’s ecosystem and what we can do to reduce our impact on climate.

After almost two years and $109 million of renovations, the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City will reopen Thursday, debuting new exhibits, refurbished old favorites, and the unprecedented Jennifer A. Chalsty Center for Science Learning and Teaching.

The new exhibit Skyscrapers! allows guests to explore a model skyline revealing the careful planning of these giant buildings, while kids and adults alike can join the action in a video game battle between invading germs and the immune system in Infection Connection. Just next door, Eat and Be Eaten houses some of the latest additions to the center’s family—leaf-tailed geckos, snapping turtles, mantids and many more exotic reptiles and insects.

The Communications exhibit features “The Eye Gaze,” a motion tracking device that allows visitors to use a computer without their hands. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the users direct their eyes at an onscreen control to play music or turn on a light. The exhibit also looks at the history of writing. Guests can engrave clay, explore calligraphy, and even take the journey of a text message through fiber optic cable and radio waves.

Visitors should prepare to spend at least four hours if they want to catch most exhibits but should still save time for an IMAX show. The museum’s Dome Theater hasn’t changed and is still the largest in the world. Opening week will feature daily showings of Hurricane on the Bayou, Roving Mars, and Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, which features the first scientists to extract DNA from ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

The Chalsty Center invites students and teachers from around the area to take part in hands-on labs. The popular Live From… lab will continue in the new center so that 7-12 grade students can once again watch live cardiac, neuro, or robotic surgeries while participating in on-site discussions with the surgeons and nurses as they work! As part of the museum’s refurbishment, handheld keypads were integrated into the exhibit so that students can respond to questions from the instructors and see how their answers compare to those of other students.

Also new to the center is the sophisticated Global Microscope, which shows digital images of global warming indicators, atmospheric changes, and other occurrences on earth’s surface as well as other planets in our solar system.

Best of all, the Liberty Science experience doesn’t end when you walk out the door. The Center has developed the Science Now, Science Everywhere program which allows guests to use their cell phones to download exhibit information not only while they’re in the Center but also long after they leave. To check out more information on exhibits, IMAX show times, and Learning Center activities, visit www.lsc.org and the Science & the City events calendar.

— Graphic contributed by John Pazmino, author of the SpaceWalk column for the New York Space Society.

Look to the western sky this Saturday or Sunday evening just after dusk and you will see Venus and Saturn getting cozy. For the last month, the two planets have been approaching one another in the night sky; each night getting closer to this weekend’s convergence.

On Saturday evening, Venus — the planet that is switching next month from its role as Evening Star to that of Morning star — will appear directly underneath Saturn. By Sunday evening, skywatchers will see Venus on Saturn’s lower left.

After this weekend, Venus and Saturn will pull apart and appear closer to the horizon at sunset each night.

According to Space.com, if you compare Venus and Saturn with a telescope, it is easy to see a difference in brilliance between the two planets. Venus appears much brighter than the mellower yellower Saturn.

An author on the eponymous Science Blog explains the reason for Venus’ shining appearance and offers a word of caution for people dreaming of visiting the planet named for the goddess of love, writing:

Venus is so bright because the planet’s clouds are wonderful reflectors of sunlight. Unlike clouds on Earth, which are made of water, clouds on Venus are made of sulfuric acid. They float atop an atmosphere where the pressure reaches 90 times the air pressure on Earth. If you went to Venus, you’d be crushed, smothered, dissolved and melted–not necessarily in that order. Don’t go.

Skywatching material provided to S&C by NYSkies Astronomy Inc. Click here for information about the next NYSkies event.

For 200 years Governors Island, a 172 acre piece of land in New York Harbor, at the mouth of the East River, was a military outpost. In 2003 the island was sold to New York State for the token sum of $1 — with the stipulation that there be no residential development on the property.

The planning and redevelopment of Governors Island is the responsibility of The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation which recently shared with the public the five proposals they commissioned for the 40-acre park area at the southern half of the island.

You can see the five visions for Governors Island online here and in person at an exhibition on Governors Island entitled The Park at the Center of the World. The organizers of the exhibit write:

The title “pays homage to Russell Shorto’s book, The Island at the Center of the World, a history of the Dutch in Manhattan, and references not only Governors Island’s location at the center of New York Harbor but its potential role in future waterfront access and recreation in the region.”

In an analysis of the designs, the New York Times voiced the city’s high hopes for the site, writing:

Its history and location give the island the potential to become one of the great civic undertakings in New York City, a rival in beauty, if not in scale, to Central Park and Prospect Park.

Yet realizing that potential is not without its challenges. According to a recent New York magazine article about the options for the island’s development, the island is a “remarkably difficult development conundrum, whose recent history is littered with failed plans.”

To maximize the site’s potential, designers have had to address the two major questions New Yorkers have been asking themselves when thinking about the island and its redevelopment: 1) How do I get out there? and 2) Why should I bother going?

Future development will offer new answers to those questions, but even now there are ways and reasons to go to Governors Island. Weekends in the summer a free ferry service departs from the Battery Maritime Building located adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry in Lower Manhattan and CUNY is hosting an exhibit and lecture series on the historic island. The theme of this year’s second annual series is Stabilizing the Climate in the 21st century and Energy Solutions for the 21st century.

This Saturday William Solecki of Hunter College will give a lecture entitled Environmental Change and Urban Sustainability — The Case of New York City.

More information on the event can be found here.

For more about urban development and design check out these podcasts from Science & the City:

• Urban Sustainability — Albert Appleton.
• Skyscraper Science — Carol Willis, founder, director, and curator of the Skyscraper Museum.
• Is Sustainable Development Feasible? — Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute

— Graphic contributed by John Pazmino, author of the SpaceWalk column for the New York Space Society.

Venus, the second-closest planet to the Sun, appears brighter than the brightest stars in our night sky. Because she orbits the Sun every 224.7 days — faster than the Earth’s 365.2 day orbit — Venus overtakes the Earth every 584 days, at which time the planet changes from being the Evening Star, visible after sunset, to being the Morning Star, visible before sunrise.

The ancient Greeks identified a morning star and an evening star which they called Eosphoros and Hesperos. But after noticing the stars would appear and disappear at intervals and could never be seen in the sky at the same time of year, they concluded the stars were a single celestial body. The planet was later named Venus in honor of the Roman goddess of love.

After shining brilliantly in the evening sky all through the spring, this month Venus starts fading from the view of nocturnal skywatchers. By late July she’s lost in strong twilight and by mid August she will have shifted to the dawn sky. Venus will remain the morning star for the rest of 2007.

In her endgame as evening star, Venus puts on two final shows. On June 18th she convenes with Regulus, Saturn, Moon, and Beehive star cluster, lining up with them in a slanted row in the west. You may need binoculars to make out the Beehive cluster in strong twilight or misty summer air.

For the rest of June, watch Venus and Saturn converge, night by night, until on July 1st, they almost touch.

This skywatching material is provided by NYSkies Astronomy Inc.

As Natalie Angier’s New York Times tribute to the splendiferous sperm attests, Father’s Day is a true celebration of basic science. Then there’s anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s essay today in Time Magazine, The Psychology of Fatherhood, which points out that “Father’s Day salutes the world’s greatest dads, but it takes science to explain why some aren’t so great.” With no disrespect to all the fellas who’ve heroically taken on parenting of another’s offspring with little concern for what Angier calls “the central verity of paternity — that it’s a lot more fun to become a father than to be one,” we think Sunday seems the perfect holiday for a science outing.

Here are some fun ways to spend time with Dad, in New York or elsewhere this weekend:

• Check out Dad’s Day Out at the Bronx Zoo, 10:00-5:30, Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy games, storytelling, and music while zookeepers demonstrate the toys that help animals stay as physically fit and mentally stimulated as dear old Dad.

• Stay up superlate Saturday night and greet the dawn on Father’s Day watching the sky with Dad and the New York Amateur Astronomers Association at Bear Mountain or at Great Kills in Staten Island

• If you’re in the Boston area, take in Father’s Day brunch at the Boston Museum of Science.

• In Avon, Ohio, a weekend-long fair pays tribute to Dad’s favorite quick fix tool. The Duct Tape Festival promises lots of low tech educational entertainment.

• In Oakland, Calif., Dads can take a mission to Mars at the Chabot Space Center.

• If Dad has more fun tinkering around the garage, check out Make Magazine’s guide to DIY gifts for Dad. If you happen to be a Dad yourself, you’ll find plenty of projects here you can rope the kids into.

This week is the International Conference on the Biology, Ecology, and Conservation of Horseshoe Crabs at Dowling College on Long Island.

Horseshoe crabs, so named because they resemble the shape of a horse hoof, are not crabs at all. One of the oldest species still alive today, horseshoe crabs evolved about 300 million years ago — predating dinosaurs by some 100 million years.

If you’re on the water this summer, you can participate in a horseshoe crab monitoring study organized by the Long Island Horseshoe Crab Network and headed by Dr. John T. Tanacredi. The group says:

Anyone sighting a horseshoe crab, along the coast of Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, is asked to make report through this form from May 1st. The information to be collected includes name, address, telephone number and e-mail of the reporter, date, time, location and condition of tide, number of Horseshoe Crabs, number living and dead, male, and female at sighting. Instructions are available for determining sex and measuring size by clicking this link.

This season will be the second year of data collection for this multi-year study. The data collected will be used to identify horseshoe crab population trends and to target sites for future research.

In honor of a creature who has evolved very little, check out Creatures of Accident, a Science & the City podcast with zoologist Wallace Arthur explaining how simple creatures evolved into complex ones via the accidental processes of duplication and divergence.

This week Nature reports that a trial run of the Large Hadron Collider planned for November of this year will likely be cancelled due to construction delays.

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and will be the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator. The LHC will help physicists in their search for the elusive Higgs boson particle — nicknamed the God Particle — a hypothetical elementary particle which is predicted by the Standard Model, a theory which describes all known fundamental interactions between the elementary particles and is consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity.

Construction setbacks — including the failure earlier this year of key ultra-cold magnets — may push back the date that the LHC becomes operational, Nature reports.

Until the LHC is complete, the Fermilab’s Tevatron, with a circumference of approximately 4 miles, remains the highest energy accelerator in the world. Last year, experimenters at Fermilab caught what they perceived to be a hint of the existence of the Higgs boson. While rumors that Tevatron has already confirmed the existence of the particle have recently gained traction, the evidence Fermilab has thus far shared has not fully convinced the scientific community.

Yet the delayed launch of the LHC might allow Fermilab to pip CERN at the post, suggests Nature, writing “there is a chance that a competing US instrument at Fermilab might spot the Higgs boson before the LHC turns on.”

In a video interview at the New York Academy of Sciences Frank Wilczek, Nobel laureate in physics, shared his hope that the LHC will help physicists to understand dark matter — material which we know makes up the universe but which is not the quarks, gluons, photons, and electrons that we understand. He says:

Astronomers have told us there’s something else out there that interacts only very weakly with the kind of matter we know, sort of a shadow world that weighs five times as much as the world we know. It’s very mysterious what it is… One of the leading candidates for what it might be is a kind of particle called the WIMP, for weakly interacting massive particle, that, if it exists, there’s a fair chance it will be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider now in the last stages of construction in Geneva. If that’s the right idea, or part of the right idea, it will have enormous implications for the unification of all the forces and the deep structure of space and time.

To watch Wilczek’s video interview in its entirety and to see interviews from up-and-coming physicists Max Tegmark and Nima Arkani-Hamed, visit the Web site of the New York Academy of Sciences’ New Vista Series.

Last month the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative brokered an agreement with leading pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of 16 medicines critical to fighting HIV/AIDS. The deal represents major progress on the foundation’s goal of making high-quality treatment equally available to people in need and represents the kind of good that non-governmental humanitarian organizations can achieve.

In a panel discussion with Bill Gates at the XVI International AIDS Conference, Bill Clinton discussed the importance of public-private partnernships, saying:

I think one of the things we try to do is make sure that we are all working together because any other option is crazy, it’s ego over people’s lives. I mean, people will die insofar as we waste money rowing our own boat when we could be working together. People will stay alive, more likely, if we squeeze every last impact out of every last dollar we spend.

But the collaboration between governments and NGOs is not always easy. Several events taking place in New York this week highlight the recent successes and ongoing challenges faced by global humanitarian organizations.

Today, an event entitled Public Private Partnerships in HIV/AIDS: Are They Working? Lessons from Botswana and the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships offered a panel discussion on the lessons learned from The African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships, an organization that aims to achieve an AIDS-free generation in Botswanna by 2016 — a potentially daunting goal as recent estimates suggest 17.1% of Botswana’s 1.7 million people are HIV-positive.

Also this week, A Conversation With Doctors Without Borders: The Struggle for Humanitarian Space, a panel discussion with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières aid workers, will address the challenges of delivering humanitarian assistance to people caught in the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

For more on AIDS and public health, check out these podcasts:

• The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative — a Science & the City interview with public health expert Seth Berkley

• Doctors Without Borders Frontline Report for May 2006 — which includes a discussion of the struggle to improve access in developing countries to critical new AIDS drugs.

Also check out:

• A Long and Winding Road: A Search for the AIDS Vaccine — summaries and audio recordings of presentations from the 2005 conference sponsored by NYAS and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when two young bloggers can draw crowds on a national speaking tour about America’s crisis communicating about science. Are scientists and the public really so inept at understanding each other?

Journalist Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, and strategic communication expert Matthew Nisbet, a professor of communications at American University, offer help.

They’ve teamed up to give a presentation that aims to help scientists better communicate with the public. Drawing on case studies from the battles over stem cell research, evolution, global warming, hurricanes, and other subjects, and by exposing public opinion and media coverage of science issues, they coach scientists to frame old science stories in new ways, and to use the media to target specific audiences.

Mooney and Nisbet laid out the simple idea behind their speaking tour— “…scientists should package their research to resonate with specific segments of the public”—in a Washington Post article published in April. Perhaps more interesting than their essay is the stream of comments following it —evidence that the public is upholding their end of the conversation.

Catch Mooney and Nisbet live on Monday evening, June 4, at the Academy as they present Framing Science: The Road to 2008 and Beyond.

The end of May brings a phenomenon peculiar to Manhattan — the fabled Stonehenge sunset.

Since the vernal equinox in March, the Sun has gradually been setting farther and farther to the right of the West compass point. Today the concrete towers that line the city streets will catch the light like the stone plinths of Britain’s Stonehenge structure and the sun will line up perfectly with the East-West streets on the Manhattan grid.

Photo by John Pazmino

Today, keep watch at dusk to see the Sun glide out of the towers on the left side of the street, then slant down and right to cross the street. You’ll see the solar disc balanced on the centerline, like a coin on edge. Then the sun will set a little to the right of the centerline a couple of minutes later.

A good vantage point for the sun show is the East end of a street that starts at a park or superblock and runs toward the Hudson. Or you might try watching from an accessible overpass where you can align yourself with the centerline of the street but be safely above vehicle traffic.

**If you miss today’s apparition, there is a second chance around July 10th when the Sun is migrating right to left, after the summer solstice of June.

This skywatching material is provided by NYSkies Astronomy Inc., the support group for home astronomy in New York. Click here for information about the NYSkies event tonight at 7:00 PM.

Stargazers might also enjoy these recent astronomy and cosmology podcasts from Science & the City:

• Paul Davies: Cosmic Jackpot
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: Death by Blackhole
• Carl Sagan’s Search for God: with Ann Druyan, Steve Soter, and Neil deGrasse Tyson

If theater is, as W. R. Inge said, a reflection of life, it stands to follow that practically every kind of person is likely to be represented on the stage. Yet even though theater audiences have embraced plays featuring pirates, trains, and African animals, there have been few plays about scientists.

Why are scientific themes — so important in this technology-driven modern era — rarely explored in drama? What barriers prevent producers from bringing science to the stage?

Chemist-turned-playwright, Carl Djerassi suggests in his essay, Contemporary “Science-in-Theatre”: A Rare Genre, that audiences might perceive a play about science as too educational. He writes :

The standard dictionary definition of didactic—“designed or intended to teach”—sounds harmless enough, and especially to a scientist, who after all is primed to write nothing but didactic prose. But listen to the literati say the word and the pejorative overtone is clear. “Didactic” is the sharpest stiletto in any dismissive review of a work of fiction or drama. People do not pick up a novel or go to the theatre to be educated, the professionals tell us — people go to be entertained.

Luckily, this summer’s spate of science-in-theater performances seem likely to entertain as as well as teach. Theater buffs with an interest in science might want to check out:

• Phallacy — a new play by Carl Djerassi, the chemist responsible for the birth control pill. The play, staged at the Cherry Lane Theater, tells the story of a struggle between an art historian and the chemist whose analysis casts doubt on the provenance of a Roman sculpture.
• Inherit the Wind — a new Broadway production starring Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s legendary 1955 drama about the Scopes “Monkey Trial.”
• Einstein’s Dreams — a workshop version of a new musical by Albert Innaurato, based on the novel by Alan Lightman.
• SeaChange: Reversing the Tide — a performance piece which combines the knowledge of science with the wisdom of poetry to argue compellingly that man an integral part of life’s complex web.

Learn more about science on the stage…

In this podcast, Carl Djerassi, “father” of the birth control pill and the playwright behind Phallacy, speaks to Science & the City about his journey from the lab to the theater and the difference between science fiction and science in fiction.

Einstein’s back in the news. He got more press than any other scientist in 2005 when the world celebrated the 100-year anniversary of his Annus Mirabilis Papers with lectures, concerts, performances and the World Year of Physics.

But Walter Isaacson’s newly released biography of history’s most famous geek, Einstein: His Life and Universe, is generating new media attention for the immortal genius.

Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute and former CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor, describes previously unrevealed detail about Einstein’s inner world, which he uncovered in papers that were only unsealed last year.

The author will speak on the evening of June 12 at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Listen to Science & the City’s podcast conversation with Isaacson, or read an abridged version of the interview online.

Or choose between these two Einstein events next week, both at 7:00 p.m. on May 30:

• At Brookhaven National Lab, famed physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve gives a lecture, Einstein’s Biggest Blunder? A Cosmic Mystery Story.
• At CUNY Graduate Center, a performance of Einstein’s Dreams, a workshop version of a new musical by Albert Innaurato.