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CapoCaccia 2014
It has being more than a month since
two extraordinary things happened, one of these things that when
experienced you know they will stick into your memories forever. The
first one took place in the island of Sardinia, Italy, from the 28th
of April until the 10th of May and it is being
extraordinary since 2007. The second one happened to me on that same
period, and I cannot but smile when I recall it. In order to describe
the former, one has to understand first the previous, so the curious
reader should wait until the final lines of this post for it to be
unraveled.
What happened first is the following
event: the 2014 CapoCaccia Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop. Sounds
like science fiction right? Well, it almost is. Neuromorphic
Engineering is a field born in the 80’s focused in developing new
computing technologies inspired in how the brain works. The systems
developed operate in an analogous mode, in contrast of the digital
computers used today, and are able to overcome many of the current
challenges of computing, such as pattern recognition, inference or
sensory integration, all with very little power consumption. More
than a hundred experts in the field got together in a remote hotel,
in a cape of the island, to work in collaboration and discuss the
challenges of this exciting new discipline.
One of the most impressive aspects of
the workshop is its own structure. Instead of having a fixed set of
defined talks and workgroups, the program evolves itself according to
the interest of the participants. During the morning, experts of all
areas of neuroscience, from neuroanatomy to artificial intelligence,
give an overview of their field. However, no power point is allowed
and they are forced to write everything on a board. This favors both
a more didactic-oriented lecture and the interaction of the
participants. During the afternoon and evening -always accompanied by
an amazing degustation of local Sardinian gastronomy- the workgroups
take place. The disco of the hotel gets converted into what it looks
like a NASA station: full of cables, computers and all sorts of chips
and robots. In there, scientist work closer together to accomplish
different projects, sharing their technology, knowledge and vision.
This last point brings me into the
second extraordinary fact that I mentioned at the beginning. During
one of the workgroups some of the participants were trying to
overcome a certain problem with one of the neuromorphic chips. While
trying to fix it, they came up with an idea about how they could
build that chip in the future in order to solve that problem and
other related issues. Later on, in a discussion together with
another group they mentioned this again. And here comes the beauty of
the story: right after they mentioned this, one of the participants
went to talk to them. He had already thought about something similar
a few months ago and was trying to implement it with his research
group, planning to publish it once it worked. I thought that there
would be disappointment, because the nice idea was already being
implemented. Instead, the other scientists were happy about it:
somebody else was testing it already and they would all have the
benefits sooner than expected.
It was right
there, while I witnessed this situation, when the extraordinary thing
happened. I was flashed back many years in time, when I used to see
the world with more innocent eyes. Science entailed for me this
romantic concept about people cooperating, sharing ideas and working
together towards the goal of solving the unanswered questions of our
nature. This romantic view of science got lost somehow during the
past years, merely because I saw that the ultimate goal is very
frequently prostituted, and the path towards it thus corrupted. The
view I had in the past came back to my mind after seeing those
scientists interact, and that is why I smiled.
CappoCaccia left into my memories many
things, but there is one that dominates my thoughts every time I
recall those days: it reminded me how science should be, and more
important, why I want to be part of it.
- S. Soldado Magraner
Why Scientific Research Needs A Strong Political Lobby
Earlier this month, Swiss voters caused a small political
earthquake by accepting the Swiss People’s Party’s initiative (SVP) “Stop Mass
Immigration”. The initiative demands the reintroduction of immigration quotas, thereby
threatening the continuation of the bilateral treaties with the European Union
and openly calling into question the concept of free movement of people. The long-term
consequences of this ballot cannot yet be assessed, but for research and
education the immediate outcomes seem already painful enough: The EU stopped
negotiations on Erasmus+, a pan-European student exchange programme [1], and temporarily
suspended Switzerland’s participation in the 8th European Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon 2020 [2]. Because of this, Swiss
universities are not only at risk of losing access to European research
funding, but might also face unnecessary hindrances with regard to country-spanning
collaborations.
This should not come as a surprise, however. The EU repeatedly
warned Switzerland that imposing restrictions on the free movement of people –
one of the Union’s four fundamental freedoms – would not be taken lightly and
might put ongoing negotiations in jeopardy. One can be of different opinions
whether the EU’s political retaliations in the aftermath of the ballot were
prudent, but it certainly cannot be said that Swiss voters were not being informed
about the possible consequences of accepting the initiative.
Now, Switzerland in general and Swiss research in
particular is caught between a rock and a hard place: On one hand, the voters’
will to curb immigration must be respected – anything else would erode trust in
our democratic institutions and could eventually lead to even more extreme initiatives
in the future. On the other hand, international exchange and collaboration are
essential for science and must not be sacrificed. I do not dare to make any
suggestions on how Switzerland might find its way out of this dire situation,
but I trust in the skills of our diplomats to come up with suitable solutions that
prevent the worst.
Meanwhile, we should think about what we could do
ourselves to prevent future political decisions that whittle away at the core elements
of scientific success in this country. To this end, a revision of many scientists’
and students’ attitudes towards political engagement might be indicated. In a
recent radio report about the termination of Erasmus+, one of the interviewed
students literally demanded that “students should not be directly afflicted by
political decisions” [3]. And I am pretty sure that not few scientists take quite
a similar stance when it comes to their interests. To me, this bears witness of
a disturbing negligence towards politics and it is simply wishful thinking to
believe that political decisions would stop at universities’ doorsteps.
Politics will always have an influence on science and research, whether we like
it or not.
So why was there no fierce opposition of universities,
research institutions or individual scientists against the SVP’s initiative,
even though the danger emanating from it was evident? For me, it is hard to
understand that academia did not speak up in the run-up to the ballot – especially
since the involvement of academic voices in the political discussion could
actually have been enough to tip the scale: The initiative got accepted by a
tiny margin of barely 20000 votes. Swaying the opinion of only 10000 voters
would have been enough to make a difference. In such a situation, even the fiercest defender of rational choice theory
would need to admit that every single vote matters.
Nevertheless, academia remained silent. Neither the
State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation nor the Swiss Academy of
Sciences nor the Swiss National Science Foundation nor the Rectors’ Conference
of the Swiss Universities nor any other organisation in the area of science and
education appeared to be willing to throw its whole political weight into the
balance in order to convince Swiss voters to reject the initiative.
To be fair, they did publish an open letter two weeks
before the ballot [4]. But this was
hardly more than a feeble attempt to remind people of the general importance of
international cooperation and it found very little resonance in the media.
The reluctance to openly engage in the political
debate was often explained by emphasising that science should remain
apolitical. I agree with that. Science indeed must not be politicised. But
there’s a crucial difference between introducing politics into science and
taking a stand for the interests of science in politics. By abstaining from any
real argument prior to the ballot, those urging science to remain neutral actually
achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted: The outcome of the vote sucked
Swiss research directly into the maelstrom of domestic politics and
Swiss-European diplomacy. For better or worse, the reintroduction of
immigration quotas is going to make Swiss universities dependent on the whims
of politicians and bureaucrats when it comes to hiring foreign researchers. At
the same time, the EU is using Erasmus+ and Horizon2020 as pawns in the unfolding
game of foreign politics chess. I can hardly think of any scenario in which
science could have been more politicised than now.
Interestingly, research representatives’ polite
restraint has vanished all of sudden, now that even the most hardened sceptics have
to admit that Switzerland’s decision would not remain unanswered by the EU. Newspapers
have been flooded with interviews of university rectors, research pundits and
science officials, all of them bemoaning the terrible consequences of the vote’s
outcome and demanding a sensible adaptation of the initiative. A perfectly
reasonable reaction in my opinion, but why wait until the die is cast? Why not
show the same level of activism when it could actually have helped to prevent
the whole muddle in the first place?
This ballot was not the first one at which scientific freedoms
were at stake; nor will it be the last for that matter. Between 1985 and 1993, Swiss
citizens had to decide a total of three times whether they wanted to abolish
animal experimenting on Swiss soil (fortunately, they didn’t). Yet, the protection of the dignity of animals
got incorporated into the constitution in 1992, making it harder for
researchers to justify animal testing, as this institute had to make the
painful experience a few years ago [5].
But it could have turned out much worse: In 1998, an
initiative demanding the complete prohibition of the use of transgenic
organisms was put to the vote. Its acceptance would have crippled biomedical research
in this country beyond repair, leading to a mass exodus of scientific talent. Luckily,
the initiative failed clearly – not least thanks to strident political protests
from researchers.
However, seven years later a majority of the population
was in favour of a GM crop-ban which was primarily targeted at agriculture, but
also hindered scientific research considerably. Originally intended to last for
only five years, the ban has already been extended twice and will (at least) be
in effect until 2017.
There are three things we can learn from these
referenda: Firstly, Swiss voters usually decide in the interest of science and
research, being aware of the paramount importance of the knowledge industry in
this otherwise resource-poor country. Only in very few cases citizens decided
to restrict scientific freedom. This is their legitimate right and it is
fruitless to complain about the outcome of a democratic decision, however
painful it might be for the scientific community. It is much more important –
and this is the second point I would like to emphasise – that one’s arguments
are heard at the proper time, i.e. before the vote is cast.
Democracy can only work if there is a well-balanced and
thorough public discussion prior to any ballot. During the lively debates on
GMOs in 2005, the supporters of a ban used hair-raising and sometimes even
plainly wrong arguments in the course of their referendum campaign. Scientists
bravely tried to refute unjustified fears of biotechnology, but by then it was
already too late. They had failed to build up trust in the years before, when
biotechnology was still in its infancy and the public’s opinion was not yet
influenced by the distorting propaganda of ardent biotech opponents. At least,
the outcome of the ballot served as a wake-up call, showing that scientific
lobbying must be done consistently and over the course of an extended
time-period.
In this way, the engagement of researchers and science
pundits in political debates can indeed make a difference, as could be seen
from the clear verdict against the initiative demanding the abolition of
transgenic research in Switzerland. This is the third and most important lesson
that we can draw from this short excursion into Swiss politics: Scientists do
have political influence – as long as they are willing to go out on the ground
and inform society about their point of view.
Of course, not all researchers in this country are
Swiss citizens and are allowed to vote. In fact, the majority of them are not
[6]. Nevertheless, their voice matters! Let us not forget that academia generally
enjoys tremendous support within the population. Scientists should thus go
public more often in order to present their work – and themselves. The more our
fellow citizens know about the importance and the relevance of the research
being conducted at universities and other institutions, the more accessible they
will be for arguments coming from the scientific community.
In the realm of animal experimentation, the Basel
Declaration Society formed in 2010 is aiming into this direction. By pointing
out the importance of animal testing for scientific and medical progress, they
try to raise society’s awareness of this delicate topic [7]. Another
organisation – “Forschung für Leben” – also pursues the important goal of
providing the public with information about biomedical research [8]. These are
great initiatives and together with the efforts of state-run organisations such
as the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences or the Swiss National Science
Foundation they make a considerable contribution to boosting support for
science and research.
Nevertheless, an overarching framework to promote the interests of science in politics has not been established yet – a careless omission in my opinion. Science needs a strong, reliable and trustworthy lobby in order to defend its principles; something that is particularly important in a semi-direct democracy like Switzerland. Here, it does not simply suffice to convince politicians and bureaucrats. One needs to be heard by the population as a whole.
Nevertheless, an overarching framework to promote the interests of science in politics has not been established yet – a careless omission in my opinion. Science needs a strong, reliable and trustworthy lobby in order to defend its principles; something that is particularly important in a semi-direct democracy like Switzerland. Here, it does not simply suffice to convince politicians and bureaucrats. One needs to be heard by the population as a whole.
Hence, a joint and decisive communication strategy of
researchers, politicians and scientific lobbies could have convinced more
people to reject the SVP’s populist initiative– and it might even have be
sufficient to prevent the unpleasant situation Swiss research is currently
stuck in.
The ballot’s outcome is not a complete disaster, but
it certainly administered a detrimental blow to Switzerland’s longstanding
relations with the European Union. The country is now forced to redefine and
rethink its relationship with the EU – something neither political nor economic
leaders dared to do in the course of the previous decade. It is going to be a journey
into the unknown in which everybody needs to be pulling in the same direction
in order to succeed. Thus, it is time for scientists to speak up and make
themselves heard as well – among peers, in the political arena and – most importantly
– in society. And there is not much time to waste: An even more radical
initiative on immigration is waiting right around the corner and already
foreshadows fierce political debates. When the time comes, science should not
stay absent again.
- S. Grüninger
[4] https://www.ethz.ch/de/news-und-veranstaltungen/eth-news/news/2014/01/manifest-wissensplatz.html
[8] http://www.forschung-leben.ch/dienstleistungen/aktuell/
Encounter with J. Lisman
Last
Tuesday, I had the opportunity to attend a seminar by Prof. John Lisman, one of
the most acknowledged experts in long-term synaptic plasticity and certainly
one of the most influential neuroscientists of our times. I was fascinated by
the content of his talk but his words went deeper then expected, eliciting a
broad range of thoughts that I'd like to share.
As a
romantic, Italian scientist, I couldn't avoid recognizing in Prof. Lisman one
of the most beautiful stories in Academics. Though his appearance resembles the
one of a senior researcher, nothing could arise more evidently than his
childlike enthusiasm for every bit and piece of his life-long research. It was
like watching my son when at his young age of 2 tries to tell me the story that
mum bit the moon and now the moon is not rounded, with a contour of
unimaginable surprise. So after flying over the myriad of impressive results
that he and his collaborators have collected during the last decades, he
finally landed on the Atlantis of his research, or the "Holy Grail"
of his life, as he himself called it. The Holy Grail is a picture that shows
that using CaMKII inhibitors, CN21 and CN19, it is possible to reverse LTP
without destroying synapses (Lisman and Yasuda and Raghavachari, Nature, 2012).
Because of this evergreen enthusiastic scientist, we are now able to understand
some of the most intricate mechanisms of synaptic potentiation that links
single proteins to synaptic plasticity and probably, but most certainly,
behavior. We are closer-than-ever to the identification of the fundamental
building blocks of memory formation through LTP, though such conclusive
evidences on the link between CaMKII and memory are yet to be found. For that,
Prof. Lisman hopes that the next experiment is going to be the "cherry on
top".
I felt
positive after his talk because several times I have experienced the same
enthusiasm. I remember running home one day, after a long discussion with a
colleague of mine, just for the fact that I couldn't contain the emotion
deriving from our conclusions. However,
I am aware of the fact that emotion, passion, enthusiasm, these feelings can't
make the whole story. They are the fuel of our life but whether the energy will
ever be translated into practical outcomes or not, this is only up to us and
our engines. Obviously a good amount of hard work is needed, so engines should
work for long time at a good pace, but if one wants to win the race you also
need good engines, good engineers to put them together, good maintenance, good
practice and so on. For my own race, instead, what if some of the pieces above
is missing and I can't do anything about it? What if my engines are just not
powerful enough? Do I still have a chance to win the race? To me, winning the
race means moving forward human knowledge, inspire new generations of
researchers, have a real impact on people's life out of the lab. To be clear,
John Lisman won his race. So to stay on the safe side, I will assume that some
of the pieces are already missing. I probably don't have the best engine or
perhaps there hasn't been perfect maintenance throughout the years. However my
conclusion is that, fortunately, it doesn't matter and in fact there probably
isn't any race to win in the first place. The race model is probably not a good
model for a scientific career. Instead, the advance of human knowledge is
determined by a coalesced stack of scientific contributions and our role of
scientists, irrespective of the engine, is to keep the stack coalesced and
bring it forward.
So, here
is my model. As scientists, we are given a certain amount of dominoes, you know
the ones with a number on one end and an other on the other end. Some of us is
given tons of them, some just a few. While some have various ones, covering all
different combinations of numbers, some have a just a bunch of equal pieces.
Some can even acquire new ones every now and then during the game, and some
don't. Some start with marble dominoes, some with wooden ones, some with shiny
handcrafted dominoes made of crystal. Some scientists know the rules of the
game, i.e., to stack dominoes if they have the same number on one side. Some misbehave
at times and don't follow the rule but others can spot the blunder and can cut
parts of the chain if the flaws are found. You know where this is going. Human
knowledge is the Domino. Connecting more tiles makes the chain longer but this
can be realized only if the right combinations of dominoes can be obtained with
the available pieces. The chain cannot proceed any longer if the right
combinations can't be satisfied. Though some scientists put tons of crystal
tiles on the table, sometimes they need single marble or wooden tiles to stitch
the parts together or even to just start their branch in the first place.
Hence, irrespective of their nature, all dominoes are in fact fundamental
pieces of the chain. Though the chain is mostly made of crystal, at a finer
resolution we would notice that fewer marble and even fewer wooden tiles keep
the chain all together.
I don't
know if the above is a good model of science but is one that for the moment is
helping me in defining my future career with more clarity. I like the Domino
model because it resembles other interesting models of random growth where the
mechanisms that rule the connections between particles are stochastic and their
probabilities depend on some changing factors. In fact it is common in Physics
to find situations where it is not important what the particles are or how they
are built. What's more relevant, instead, is how they interact, just as single
proteins bind in the synapse and lead to LTP.
F.
Stefanini (Published with the kind permission of Prof. John Lisman.)
On the wiring of female and male brains
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/27/1316909110
The data in the study concerned are derived from a technique called
diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which estimates how water diffuses along
white matter tracts in the brain. The big advantage of DTI is that it
can be used in living humans. Its big disadvantage is that even at best
it gives only a very low resolution and thus partial picture of possible
connections in the brain, and DTI is also rather poorly validated
against 'gold standard' anatomical tracing methods that are routinely
used in animal experiments. Thus, of the billions of connections made
via the white matter of the human brain, DTI detects a tiny fraction of
a percent and the method only indicates hypothetical anatomical
connections and not any function. As a reality check one should take the
example of the nematode worm, C elegans, which is the only animal for
which we have a complete map of every connection in its nervous system.
It has 302 neurons, compared to 85 billion in the human brain, yet no
neuroscientist (or journalist) can tell you what is in the mind of this
worm. Our knowledge of the connections in the human brain is
poverty-stricken by comparison, yet this has not stopped some
neuroscientists from linking their hypothetical structures of human
neural networks, derived from techniques like DTI, directly to complex
psychological process, as in the paper under discussion. Worse still,
the media reinterpret and amplify the scientists conjectures to build
their own confection of irresponsible speculation that bears little
relation to the original data, as the present case so ably illustrates.
- K. Martin
Please believe my results!
»I
don’t believe a word of what you say.«
My
supervisor shook his head. »This effect is minimal. How do you want to argue it
is relevant at all?«
I
stared at him in surprise. Couldn’t he see that my data were
significant, even if only marginally? Should all my efforts count for nothing?
Was he seriously suggesting that there was a flaw in my reasoning? Did I need
to reconsider my basic assumptions? Could it really be that my scientific investigations
led to a deceptive conclusion?
So I
went and pondered over my research. Research – what was I searching for?
Knowledge? Wisdom? Truth? Solutions to overcome our human weaknesses and
limitations? Fame? Recognition? Self-affirmation? Power? Progress?
Obviously
my current results could not satisfy my thirst for knowledge. In the end, it
didn’t matter if there were more excitatory than inhibitory neurons, which were
the names of the many proteins involved in the presynaptic machinery and what
fraction of brain connections could be called long-range rather than local.
Or
could these findings point to more important answers? Could they help us
understand who we are, why we can rightly assume that we are able to think
logically, why we strive to make sense of our lives and the universe we find
ourselves in?
After
all, science influences our perception. The more we learn about the incredible
dimensions of space, the more we fall silent in awe. The Earth – an isle
teeming with life – seems so infinitely insignificant. On the other hand, we
find similar orders of magnitude when we replace the telescope with the
microscope. So physical size may be the wrong indicator of relevance. Studying
biological systems at different scales has been a inexhaustible source of inspiration
for technical achievements – or should we call them imitations?
Smiling
again, I leaned back. Surely my investigations promised to remain interesting;
they might even reveal new secrets. At least they would have an impact on me.
And
hopefully my next findings would be convincing, so that others didn’t have to
believe in my results, but would only believe in the (well-founded) conclusions
they drew from them.
- F. Sägesser
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