46th Annual

NEW HORIZONS IN SCIENCE ^®

Sunday, Oct. 26 -- Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008

Final Program Sunday, October 26
9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

SOCIOLOGY.

Revealing unconscious prejudice
Mahzarin Banaji, Ph.D., professor of psychology/neuroscience, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

How do thoughts and emotions shape social judgments? Banaji has worked to reveal people's unconscious judgments and preferences, demonstrating that they can contradict values people think they hold dear. She will demonstrate the phenomenon using the audience and herself as subjects. She will also present her latest findings using this test with different social groups, including data on whether these unconscious thoughts and behaviors can be changed.

MEDICINE

Fighting deadly infections with genomics
Joseph L. DeRisi, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

I A 28-year-old otherwise healthy woman was near death from an unidentifiable infection. The costs of her care reached hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days. A quarter of that went to failed diagnostic tests, including a lung biopsy that itself had a mortality rate of 10-15 percent. In 24 hours, a new viral chip made the diagnosis and saved her life. DeRisi will discuss his latest work on diagnosis of infections of unknown origin, and a project on malaria.

SEISMOLOGY

An earthquake clock is ticking
Thomas Brocher, Ph.D., seismologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.

The Hayward fault runs through Berkeley, Oakland, the Oakland zoo, Hayward and Fremont. For nearly a millennium, researchers have now determined, it has been the site of severe earthquakes every 140 years. The last one was in 1868. (Do the math.) Brocher will walk us along the fault with new data from an airborne laser, and show us a "shake map" of damage from the 1868 quake, when the population of the Bay Area was 260,000. It is now 7 million.

12:30 p.m. Lunch provided

2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

COMPUTERS

How talking machines can manipulate our brains for good or ill.
Clifford Nass, Ph.D. professor of communication and computer science, Stanford.

The human brain was wired for speech, and now machines are being built to take advantage of that. Nass has discovered that even crude computer speech can trigger a profound human response we so want to believe those voices are real. Can we use that response to improve machine-human communication? Would a female-sounding computerized physics tutor encourage more women to become physicists? Can a car's navigation system encourage you to drive more safely? Or might it irritate you enough to provide a dangerous distraction? Nass has the data.

CRIMINOLOGY

Scanning psychopaths: Who will kill again?
Kent Kiehl, Ph.D., director of mobile imaging care and clinical cognitive neuroscience, The Mind Research Network, and Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.

Prosecutors, judges, and police would like to know which psychopathic criminals are likely to repeat their crimes if released and which are not. Kiehl has wheeled his tractor-trailer sized mobile MRI scanner to prisons, where he has done more than 1,000 scans of inmates in the past year that's 10 times the number of such scans of psychopaths ever done. Kiehl will share with us what he's learned.

COMPUTERS

Research and journalism in virtual worlds.
Robert J. Bloomfield, Ph.D., professor of management, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y

The nature of the metaverse' of virtual worlds, what we can learn from them, and how they will change the nature of work, e-commerce, social life and politics those are the things Bloomfield thinks about when doing economics research in virtual worlds or interviewing guests on his virtual weekly television show, Metanomics. The study of markets in virtual worlds can teach us about economics in the real world, and is raising serious questions for real-world policy makers.

Monday, October 27

8 a.m.
Buses begin leaving for Stanford Campus

9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Plenary session (McCaw Hall):

BIOLOGY

Stress, parasites, and human behavior
Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., professor of biology and neurology and neurological sciences, Stanford.

Sapolsky is a neuroscientist and field biologist who studies, among other things, the effects of stress on the brain, and its relation to depression, brain aging, and PTSD. He is also interested in how parasites manipulate the behavior of their hosts. He's looking in particular at toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a parasite that causes rats to lose their fear of cats. Humans can become infected with the parasite, called Toxoplasma gondii. Sapolsky will report on how it might affect human behavior.

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Session A, McCaw Hall:

DECISION-MAKING

Watching the brain make choices

Brian D. Knutson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, Stanford.

Why do we say one thing but do something else? We announce we're on a diet and gobble down a burger. Knutson does brain scans as people make decisions, and he's beginning to sort out where and when decisions are made and what can affect them. He's observed brain activity that correlates with anticipatory emotions or what people feel just before they choose. And he believes that some psychiatric disorders, such as phobias and schizophrenia, could result from imbalances in decision-making circuits.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Mining the oceans for historical temperature records what corals can tell us

Robert B. Dunbar, Ph.D., professor of earth sciences, Stanford.

Dunbar roams the world in search of sediments and coral skeletons that can help him track climate change over the past 50 to 12,000 years. These samples are crucial to understanding climate change, he says, because most of the planet's heat is stored in the oceans. Data collected from such projects as submersible dives in the Gulf of Alaska and an Antarctic drilling project suggest how much the Earth is being altered by increasing carbon dioxide independent of the effects of warming.

BIOTERRORISM

Making decisions amid uncertainty

Lawrence M. Wein, Ph.D., professor of management science, Stanford Graduate School of Business..

Wein uses advanced mathematics and operations research to address bioterrorism risks. He was praised and vilified in 2005 for a New York Times Op-Ed in which he explained how terrorists could poison the nation's milk supply. He calls himself "a probabalist." He has looked at the consequences of attacks using anthrax, smallpox, and botulinum. He's also used his techniques to study Alzheimer's disease, organ-transplant waiting lists, border-security issues, pandemic influenza, and port security.

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Session B, Fisher Conference Center:

MEDICINE

Pain is an illness, love is a cure

Sean Mackey, M.D., Ph.D. associate professor and chief, Division of Pain Management, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Researchers trying to attack pain are stymied by a fundamental lack of understanding of pain mechanisms. Pain management is trial-and-error. Mackey, who runs what he calls the "house of pain" at Stanford, is trying to understand pain by seeing how it can be derailed. In one recent study, he found that Stanford students who were madly in love were less susceptible to pain while looking at a picture of their beloved. Distraction is also about as effective as love at reducing pain. But Mackey is especially interested in the love-pain connection: Does the analgesic effect predict which couples will stay together?

PSYCHOLOGY

Money talks

Baba Shiv, Ph.D., professor of marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Shiv put volunteers into an MRI and told some they were drinking $45-a-bottle wine. The others got $5 wine. Those who got the high price tag liked the wine much more. In both cases, it was, of course, the same wine. What Shiv found was not just that the subjects thought they liked the expensive wine better their brain activity showed that they really did prefer it. His studies concern the emotional brain, and they apply to assemble-it-yourself furniture from Ikea, impossible-to-open bubble packages, coffee and tea, and whether we really want freedom of choice.

NEUROSCIENCE

Speaking the language of the brain

Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science and bioengineering, Stanford

Deisseroth can introduce into brain cells a gene sensitive to light, so it is activated only when a lab animal is exposed to a certain color light. By varying where he introduces this gene, he can turn different circuits on and off. He calls it "speaking the language of the brain." He is now using the technique in animals to create models of psychiatric diseases, which, he says, are "the paradigmatic engineering problem."

1 p.m.

Lunch provided STANFORD CAMPUS TOURS. (Pre-registration required.)

for more detailed info on Stanford tours

High energy physics. A behind-the-scenes look at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Limit 40).

Conservation biology. Touring the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (Limit 80).

Computer graphics. A tour of Stanford's Computer Graphics Laboratory, including the Virtual World Group and the Computational Photography lab. (Limit 30).

Fluid mechanics. Exploring the world of environmental fluid mechanics, and touring Stanford's most energy-efficient building (Limit 50).

Medical imaging and surgical simulation. A tour of the Goodman Simulation Center and of the Richard M. Lucas Center for Imaging (Limit 25).

Seismology. A visit to the San Andreas Fault at Los Trancos Open Space Preserve (Limit 20).

Science of music and art. A tour of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics and the Cantor Arts Center (Limit 30)

Tuesday, October 28

9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.

STEM CELLS

Why stem cells can't go home again
Bruce Lahn, Ph.D., professor of human genetics, University of Chicago; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

When stem cells differentiate into more specialized cells, what happens inside the cellular machinery? It's a problem that has defied easy explanation. Lahn has been looking into how genes are turned on and off during maturation of a stem cell to find out why it ordinarily cannot go back to its undifferentiated state. He will also discuss some controversial findings on brain evolution, a separate area of investigation.

EVOLUTION

Sticklebacks are in our bones.
David M. Kingsley, Ph.D., professor, developmental biology, Stanford; Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

In honor of the bicentenary next year of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Kingsley will share with us the latest findings from the nearly completed genome of the threespine stickleback, a fish that thrives in oceans and fresh water. Kingsley has found that alterations in a key developmental control gene can help explain how whales, snakes and some lizards lost their hind limbs. And he's studying a gene that affects the color of sticklebacks the same gene that helped humans develop lighter skin when they left Africa 50,000 years ago.

NATIONAL SECURITY

New technology for detecting explosives
David Atkinson, Ph.D., senior research scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash.

Effective explosives detection involves a combination of materials science, physics, and chemistry. But it's more than a scientific problem. Once a technology has been developed, researchers need to know how to implement it at airports, or in the hand of a soldier searching for explosive devices in Iraq. They also need to anticipate emerging threats. Atkinson says that aviation security checkpoints are effective--and the problem now is to transfer the technology to shopping malls, buses and subways. And to constantly update it: Explosive threats are changing all the time.

Lunch provided.

2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

COSMOLOGY

Dark energy's dark secrets
Saul Perlmutter, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley; and Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Almost a decade ago, Perlmutter discovered something that can't be seen or felt dark energy. Though unseen, the universe apparently consists mostly of this stuff --- and it is causing the universe to expand ever faster. Nobody has a clue as to what this stuff is (or if it is even a "stuff"). In fact, new theoretical papers attempting to explain dark energy have appeared an average of once every few days for the past 10 years. Perlmutter and his colleagues have been collecting the most detailed information ever on supernovas, and developing a new space telescope concept that can use several new methods to study the dark energy, including even better supernova measurements.

CLINICAL TRIALS

Faulty clinical trials and financial conflicts of interest.
Lisa Bero, Ph.D., professor of clinical pharmacy and health policy studies, University of California, San Francisco.

Which statin is best at lowering cholesterol? Drug companies do trials, and, happily for them, each company's trials usually show that its drug is best. In one study, she found that almost half of a group of statin trials were improperly blinded. Bero has data that shows profound problems with the way new drugs are approved. And she has ideas about how the system should be fixed.

SCIENTIFIC POLLING

Election preview: Polls, ballots, fraud, and misconceptions
Jon Krosnick, Ph.D., professor of communication, political science, and psychology, Stanford.

Krosnick is one of the principal investigators on a $10 million National Science Foundation study of American elections, and an expert on scientific polling. He will talk about how polls can correctly and incorrectly assess the public's views on global warming, elections, and presidential candidates. He'll discuss findings on how the gender of an interviewer can affect a poll, or how placement on a ballot can affect the outcome of a vote. Would Al Gore have won Florida if his name had been first on the ballot? Krosnick will also analyze presidential polls one week before the election.

Wednesday, October 29th

BONUS NASW/CASW FIELD TRIPS

Science and art in winemaking: The Ridge Winery in the Santa Cruz mountains

A coral atoll lurks in the mountains above the Stanford campus? Yes, the remnants of one, anyway. It rode here on a migrating tectonic plate from the southern hemisphere some 60 million years ago, mixed with local rocks, and was repeatedly sliced and diced by the San Andreas Fault system. It now supports world-class vintages.

We will visit the Ridge Vineyards, which will be just finishing its harvest. There we will learn about the geology, and how CEO Paul Draper combines science and tradition to create award-winning wines. And we will, of course, taste the results, from barrels and bottles.

We will break for a picnic lunch, accompanied by a selection of Ridge wines.

Departure from hotel 8:30 a.m. sharp! Return about 3:30 p.m.
Cost: $40 (includes lunch).

Limit: 36

Organizer: NASW member Harvey Leifert.

NASA Ames Research Center

Explore extrasolar planets, search for extraterrestrial life, and learn about some of the latest advances in aeronautics, robotics, air-traffic control at NASA's Ames Research Center.

We will visit NASA's Future Flight Central (an air-traffic-control research center); the Vertical Motion Simulator; an astrobiology lab's rooftop "microbial mat garden", and the mission control center for the Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite, scheduled to be launched the day before we arrive (Oct. 28).

Departure from hotel: 8:30 a.m. sharp! Return about 6 p.m..
Cost: $TK (not including lunch we'll stop at a NASA cafeteria).

Limit: TK

Organizers: NASW member Linda Billings, communications coordinator, NASA Astrobiology Program; and Kelly O. Humphries, director of public affairs (acting), NASA Ames Research Center.

Hopkins Marine Station and the Monterey Bay Aquarium

A Day at Monterey Bay

What's a trip to California without a visit to the ocean? We will travel to Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station on Monterey Bay, where we will watch researchers feed tagged tuna, part of a project to better understand the tuna's physiology and biology. We will hear from station director Stephen Palumbi, who studies the genetics and evolution of sea creatures, and George Somero, who studies the effects of environmental factors temperature, salinity, hydrostatic pressure, and oxygen availability on marine animals.

Then we will get a behind-the-scenes tour of the adjacent Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the nation's leading aquariums. The exhibits include tunas, sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and a spectacular jellyfish gallery.

Departure from hotel: 8 a.m. sharp! Return about 6 p.m.
Cost: $25 (Lunch included.)
Limit: 100
Organizer: ChiSook Hwang, Stanford University.