From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., we’ll be back in their mellow private upstairs space—close to Union Square, at 77 Irving Place, between 17th & 18th Sts.

See old friends, meet new ones…..good cheer, good networking, great nibbles….. cool door prizes…..and a special gift for the first 40 arrivals.

Admission (covers food and first beverage):

• 2012 Paid Members: $25 in advance/$30 at the door
• Nonmembers: $35 in advance/$40 at the door
• Students: $15 in advance/$20 at the door
• Join/renew your 2012 annual membership ($25) by PayPal or check (details at http://www.swiny.org/join-swiny/) and pay members’ rate.

RSVP:  http://www.swiny.org/2012/02/leap-day-registration/

Directions

• Subways: the N,R,Q,W, 3,4,5,6, & L trains stop just a few blocks away at the Union Square station. The F & M stop at 14th St (use the 16th St exit, or transfer to the L to Union Square).
• Bus: the M 14 along 14th St.

We look forward to seeing you!                                                            

Leap Year: Facts & Factoids

The Earth takes 365.24219 days to orbit around the sun, but until 45 BC the year was figured at 355 days. The year ended on February 23. Nothing happened at the right time for long. In 45 BC Emperor Julius Caesar devised the Julian Calendar, adding an extra 24 hours to February—creating February 24th—every 4 years. The solution was imperfect because a year isn’t quite 365.25 days, but it kept the seasons from running behind for extended periods. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII and his Gregorian calendar eliminated the Julian calendar’s slight seasonal drift. He moved the year’s end to December 31st, skipped a bunch of days to accommodate all the unnoted Leap Days since Caesar’s time, and calculated that three Leap Days have to be omitted every 400 years. So any year divisible by 100 (i.e., a century year) but not by 400—e.g., 1900—isn’t a Leap Year.

•  The official record for number of children in one family born consecutively on February 29
• The Henriksens from Andenes, Norway. On consecutive February 29ths, Mrs. Karin Henriksen gave birth to her daughter Heidi (1960), then her son Olav (1964), then her son Leif-Martin (1968).
• Some famous people born on February 29
• 1468 – Pope Paul III
• 1792 – Gioacchino Rossini (William Tell, The Barber of Seville)
• 1916 – Dinah Shore, American singer
• 1976 – Ja Rule, American rapper and actor
• Some cool events that happened on February 29:
• 1504 – Christopher Columbus used his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies
• 1936 – Baby Snooks, played by Fanny Brice, debuted on the radio program The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air
• 1940 – For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award
• 1980 – Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers made NHL history as he scores his 800th goal
• There’s even a website dedicated to all things Leap Year: http://leapyearday.com/

Funded by a grant from the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), the Bootcamp will be held at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, 219 West 40th Street. Bioethics Bootcamp was developed because today’s science writers have to understand and communicate advances in science and technology that frequently raise immediate or potential ethical concerns for individuals, institutions, families, and society.

Throughout the day, a series of panel discussions and question-answer opportunities will feature leading bioethicists, journalists, scholars and scientists exploring a specific, sensitive issue, ranging from conflicts of interest to genetics, human life from beginning to end, and emerging biotechnology. In the Bootcamp’s closing panel, editors from scientific, business, and consumer media will share their criteria and considerations for health or medical topics with a bioethical aspect. Attendees and panelists are invited to mingle from 4:30 onward at a wine and cheese reception.

Register now! SWINY and NASW members are eligible for an early-bird rate of $70 for the day. But hurry: this offer expires on March 1!or more information about the program and to register, visit http://bootcamp.swiny.org.

“Insight must precede application.” – Max Planck (image courtesy Smithsonian Institution)

Of 80 Max Planck Society scientific institutes across the globe, Max Planck Florida Institute is the first established in North America. MPFI brings together the field’s leading senior neuroscientists and best young researchers, representing a diversity of scientific disciplines and approaches, to seek fundamental answers about brain function and neural circuits.  These circuits form the complex synaptic networks of the brain, which determine who we are, how we think, and how we behave.Understanding the functional organization of the nervous system, its capacity to produce perception, thought, language, memory, emotion, and action, remains the ultimate challenge for biology.  These circuits hold the key to understanding how to ameliorate the effects of devastating neurological, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders such as autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.

Among MPFI’s top scientists is internationally known neurobiologist David Fitzpatrick, PhD. Dr. Fitzpatrick joined the Institute last year from Duke University, where he was founding director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, to lead the new institute as CEO and Scientific Director, as well as leading the research group studying functional development of the visual cortex.

Research began at MPFI late in 2009.  Currently working in temporary facilities on the campus of Florida Atlantic University, the Institute will move into a state-of-the-art research building on campus this summer.

On January 31, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at German House, 871 U.N. Plaza, join David Fitzpatrick, PhD, CEO & Scientific Director of Max Planck Florida Institute, and Joshua Sanes, PhD, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Paul J. Finnegan Family Director, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, for a public dialogue entitled, “Which Way Did It Go? New Insights into the Organization and Development of Brain Circuits that Compute Motion Direction.”  The two experts will discuss their research in this area and its significance for understanding brain function and development. The free program is sponsored by the German Center for Research and Innovation and Max Planck Florida Institute. A reception follows. For more information on this program, click here.

On February 1, from 9:30 from 11:00 a.m., also at German House, 871 U.N. Plaza, science journalists will have coffee with Dr. Fitzpatrick and colleagues and  get an inside look at the new Institute, its recent research findings, its unique approach to research, and its leading edge scientific agenda.

In the February 1 program, Dr. Fitzpatrick will discuss the scientific questions each of the Institute’s six research groups hopes to answer, including his lab, which examines visual experience and perception in development of the cortex. This research has implications for understanding neurodevelopmental disorders.  Nobel laureate Dr. Bert Sakmann will participate via Skype to discuss new research findings from his lab, in which his team described their creation of the first realistic representation of a neural circuit.  This research is part of a major project of Dr. Sakmann’s lab, in which scientists are working to create a complete 3D map of the rodent brain. This map will increase understanding of how the brain computes, and lay the groundwork for future studies of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Please RSVP to Dennis Tartaglia for both events, info@tartagliacommunications.com, (732) 545-1848, indicating which event(s) you will attend. Please include your name, media affiliation, address, business and cell numbers.

NOTE: PRE-REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID ARE REQUIRED FOR BOTH EVENTS.  PLEASE REGISTER NO LATER THAN TWO DAYS BEFORE EACH RESPECTIVE PROGRAM.  REGISTRATION FOR BOTH EVENTS IS FREE.

Imagine…. when you smell a rose, you always taste maple syrup. Or taste cake whenever you say “table.” Or see red every time someone says “Tuesday.” This is synesthesia, a neurologic condition affecting millions of people in which stimulation of one sense automatically and consistently stimulates another. The ancient Greeks named it. Psychophysicist Gustav Fechner and scientist Sir Francis Galton documented it in the late 19th century. Synesthesia research fell out of favor by 1930—then was forgotten until the 1980s.

Author/journalist/synesthete Maureen Seaberg discusses her journey to recognize and understand her expanded sensory wiring—the science, and the impact on thinking and creativity of this fascinating phenomenon.

In her quest to understand why, for example, the letter A is always A for her, Maureen talked with top neuroscientists and quantum physicists, with the co-inventor of the World Wide Web, with a savant, and a Tibetan lama. She collaborated with Dr. William Bushell—a biological/medical anthropologist who is a visiting scholar at MIT and directs the Science of Yoga Project at Tibet House. Synesthetes are often found in the arts—examples include Itzhak Perlman, Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Tilda Swinton, Marilyn Monroe—and Maureen spoke with rock stars, rappers, actors, violinists. The result is Tasting the Universe, published last March. Her book features a raft of first-time interviews with synesthetes that include Itzhak Perlman, Billy Joel, and Marian McPartland.

Maureen has become an expert in this mingling of the senses. She moderated international synesthesia workshops in 2010 and 2011 organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She has presented at the American Synesthesia Association Conference at Vanderbilt University, and at New York University. (Maureen’s earlier work has appeared in The New York Times, the Daily News, PBS, and MSNBC among others.)

WHO:
Maureen Seaberg and Dr. William Bushell will speak, followed by a Q&A.

Books will be available for purchase, and the author will sign them.

WHEN:
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 6–8pm

WHERE:
ASME Headquarters Conference Room, 3 Park Ave. at 34th St. (22nd Floor)

ADMISSION:
SWINY member–$5, nonmember–$10, student–$5.

RSVP HERE

(Join SWINY or renew your lapsed membership for just $25 and pay the member’s fee.)

Courtesy of NIMH.

Millions in the U.S. suffer from psychological disorders including depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Millions more endure chronic pain. Although drugs are typically used to control symptoms, questionable efficacy and negative side effects have spurred the search for alternative treatment methodologies.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)—which noninvasively administers brief, magnetic pulses to the brain—is one approach. Done in the doctor’s office, pulses are administered by passing high currents through an electromagnetic coil adjacent to a patient’s scalp. They induce an electric field in underlying brain tissue that activates neurons in the relevant brain structure.

Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) involves a small, imperceptible electric current pulsed across the patient’s head in a device that can be used at home. One is the Fisher Wallace Stimulator, a portable, battery-powered micro-electric pulse generator cleared by the FDA for symptomatic relief of insomnia, anxiety, and depression, and for treating chronic pain.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) uses a surgically implanted, battery-operated medical device. This neurostimulator—similar to a heart pacemaker—is approximately the size of a stopwatch. It is now used to treat a variety of disabling neurological symptoms for patients whose symptoms cannot be adequately controlled with drugs.

Do They Work? Are They Safe? What is the Science Behind Them?

OUR PANEL:

Dan Iosifescu, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience and head of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is experienced with both TMS and DBS, and his prolific research program focuses on biological markers of treatment outcome in mood disorders. After Dr. Iosifescu received his M.D. in Bucharest, Romania, he spent substantial time at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital in specialized training and practice and has been among the “Top Doctors in Boston” (Boston Magazine 2006 and 2008) and the “Best Doctors in America” (in all editions since 2005).

Charles Avery (Chip) Fisher is the president of Fisher Wallace Laboratories, which manufactures the handheld Fisher Wallace Cranial Stimulator. It generates micro-currents of electricity using patented radio frequencies for gently stimulating the brain’s production of serotonin and dopamine. The many peer-reviewed studies and pilot programs—including a successful 399-patient pilot program at Phoenix House—are documented on the company website.

Kelly Brogan, M.D., is a psychiatrist specializing in general adult psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and psychotherapy, and has clinical experience working with the Fisher Wallace Cranial Stimulator.

Abraham Zangen, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, is one of the two key inventors of the deep TMS coils used by Brainsway, which has developed a TMS system that uses direct non-invasive activation of deep brain structure through a patented coil design to produce directed electromagnetic fields that can induce excitation or inhibition of neurons deep inside the brain.

Joshua Berman, M.D. Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and Director, Program in Experimental Brain Stimulation in the Division of Experimental Therapeutics, at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He is currently doing work with deep transcranial magnetic stimulation.

When:
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
6 pm – 8 pm

Where:
ASME Headquarters,
3 Park Avenue (22^nd Floor Conference Room)

Admission:
SWINY member: $5, nonmembers: $10, students: $5.
Join SWINY or renew your lapsed membership—valid through December 2012—for just $25, and pay the member’s fee.

RSVP Here

• What if the ancient Israelites were polytheistic and worshipped many gods?
• Imagine if Israel’s God, Yahweh, was the god of Israel’s mortal enemies, the Edomites?
• Suppose the First Commandment — Have no other gods before me — meant that there were other gods, but Yahweh came first?
• How did this outsider deity work through the pantheon of regional gods to become Israel’s sole deity?

These are just some of the provocative questions raised by Mark Smith, the Skirball Professor of Bible and a Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

Smith’s research draws on new archeological discoveries and a growing library of ancient inscriptions and icons from surrounding civilizations. They have changed our understanding of some Biblical passages, and suggest how the ancient Israelite culture emerged from the Canaanite world around it.

While our picture of the ancient world is far from complete, Smith’s research shows how modern archeology, an improved understanding of ancient civilizations, and critical readings of sacred texts can help us deepen our understanding of our heritage.

Join us on Wednesday, December 7, for an enlightening view of a story more than 3,000 years in the making.

When:
Wednesday, December 7
6 to 8 pm

Where:
ASME Headquarters, 22nd Floor
3 Park Avenue (Park & 34th St.)

Cost:
$5 for 2011 dues-paid SWINY Members*
$10 for nonmembers

RSVP here.

*Not a member? Pay $25 for 2012 membership and attend this event at the members’ price.

• How he chose a dynamic blog topic, i.e. one that draws interactions from professional and amateur scholars worldwide?
• What signs he saw indicating that he had a book project on his hands, and how he turned that idea into a reality.
• How his blogging changed once he had a formal agreement with a publisher.

But wait; there’s more! Blair will also discuss the origin of speech, the fascinating content of Babel’s Dawn! So, bring your own questions as well as your friends who blog and those who work in the publishing business.

Following the presentation, we’ll have light snacks and heavy networking. Blair will be signing books provided by the publisher, Counterpoint Press, at a selling facilitated by Mobile Libris.
Date:
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Time:
6:00 PM (Blair’s talk starts at 6:15)
Place:
3 Park Avenue at 34th Street, 22nd Floor
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Cost:
Free for all. But remember, SWINY charges for most events, and typically the fee is lower for members than nonmembers. To learn about the benefits of membership, and to join SWINY now, go here.

Join us on Monday, September 26 for a provocative and lively evening to hear a distinguished panel of science and medical writers debate the pros and cons of science embargoes.

OUR PANEL:

Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health, edits the Embargo Watch blog, “keeping an eye on how scientific information embargoes affect news coverage.” He has been managing editor, online, of Scientific American, deputy editor of The Scientist, and editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Praxis Post. He was on the faculty of the health and medicine track at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, and he currently teaches medical journalism at New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program.

Steve Sternberg recently joined US News & World Report as deputy editor of health rankings. He was medical writer at USA Today for more than 15 years, covering public health, heart disease and global health, including bioterror-related issues. Steve has also written for the the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, Medical Economics, Science, The Scientist, Bioworld Today and numerous other publications.

When:
Monday, September 26, 2011
6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Where:
305 Weiss Research Building
The Rockefeller University
1230 York Ave (at East 66th Street)

Admission:
Free for 2011 dues-paid SWINY members, $10 for non-members, $5 for students. Join SWINY — valid through 2012 — or renew your lapsed membership for 2012 for just $25, and attend this event at no charge.

RSVP here.

Please join Science Writers in New York (SWINY) for an evening of networking/socializing/fun on Monday, June 13, from 6 – 8 PM at Windfall Bar and Restaurant at 23 W. 39th St. (between 5th & 6th Aves).

Chat with other writers, editors and PIOs. Reconnect with your colleagues and meet new ones. There is no cover charge, but we ask that you buy at least one drink to support our friends at Windfall. Everyone is welcome.

Questions? Email David Levine, davidlevine51@gmail.com

How do you get there? Windfall is right next to Times Square, one block south of Bryant Park between 5th and 6th Aves. Take the 7/B/D/F/V to 42nd St./6th Ave.

Science Writers in New York (SWINY) and American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are pleased to present Professor Iris Shai, a world renowned researcher at the S. Daniel Abraham International Center for Health and Nutrition, Department of Epidemiology, who will discuss a breakthrough diet and the latest in nutrition research.

When:
Thursday, May 19, 2011
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Where:
The Conference Center
130 East 59th Street — Room 653
http://tinyurl.com/3wro9ut
Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails will be served

The focus of Dr. Shai’s research is in the field of nutrition and the epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity. She is currently leading several long-term, large-scale dietary intervention studies using novel techniques to address the effect of different dietary strategies and moderate alcohol intake on several emerging aspects of human health.

She works with a broad international collaboration that includes Harvard as well as distinguished Canadian and European universities.

Dr. Shai has published extensively on dietary strategies, weight loss, and its consequences for metabolic and cardiovascular health. Her scientific findings have received worldwide interest from the medical community and the media. She just published “Adolescent BMI Trajectory and Risk of Diabetes vs. Coronary Disease” in the New England Journal of Medicine. Her NEJM paper regarding the effectiveness of different types of diets was one of the “Top 10 Important U.S. Studies” on cardiovascular diseases in 2008. In Israel, Dr. Shai was recently included among the Top 10 Young Promising Researchers and was named to the list of the country’s 50 most influential women.

For security reasons you must register in advance. Although admission is free, we cannot guarantee you will be admitted without prior registration.

RSVP to Andrew Lavin – 516-944-4486 or alc@alavin.com