The
Oklahoma Academy of Science held its 2014 Technical Meeting at Northeastern
Oklahoma State University (Broken Arrow campus) on November 7, preceded by the
Executive Council meeting on November 6.
As president, I am happy to report that your Executive Council will begin to address an important issue we have not taken seriously enough in the past: marketing. A lot of scientists and science educators in Oklahoma simply do not know that OAS exists, or that it is active. We are working on ideas to get the word out in Oklahoma, and will also be soliciting input from all members.
I enjoyed watching and
occasionally coordinating the good and enthusiastic work of so many students
and faculty from around the state at the meeting on November 7. Nobody had to be there. It was sheer
enthusiasm for science that made the meeting a success.
I
wanted to mention one paper that really got my attention. Lois Ablin, a chemist
at Oral Roberts University, talked about advances in “green chemistry,”
particularly in student organic chemistry laboratories. I took organic
chemistry in 1976 and it has been downhill from there. Back then, we poured
toxic chemicals all over the place (including benzene on our hands), and all of
them ended up down the drain and probably out in the ocean (I was at UC Santa
Barbara). Today, thankfully, we have many rules that preserve personal and
environmental safety. One of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of waste
produced by student labs is simply to use small-scale reactions. In my day we
used whole flasks and beakers of toxic chemicals. But in green chemistry, the same
reactions can be performed in small vials, heated in a microwave oven instead
of over a burner or in a hot glove. It saves time, too: you can microwave a
reaction for eight minutes with the same result that you would get with an
hour-and-a-half reflux. Some universities have even gone so far as to carry out
reactions on filter paper, rendering fume hoods unnecessary.
There
were lots of student posters. This is an time for faculty to see the excellent
work done by students at other universities. I barely had time to glance at
them and take a few grainy photos. I got to stop and look at a poster from a student
at Cameron who had studied the stomach contents of a mammoth that had lived in
what is now southern Oklahoma during the last ice age (in case you didn’t know
there were mammoths here). The mammoth had eaten horsetails.
Bruce
Carnes, from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, gave the
luncheon presentation about the evolution of aging. What an interesting topic,
especially for people who might have wondered what evolution has to do with
medicine. For those who might have thought that aging is simply a problem that
can be solved by some magic medical bullet, Bruce (who described himself as a
disappointed optimist) had some bad news. Natural selection has indeed produced
a human species that is guaranteed, in the absence of intrinsic and extrinsic
accidents, to live for about 55 years, which is enough time not only for nearly
all reproduction to be completed but for a person in tribal society to discharge
their grand-parental duties as well. Fifty-five years, then, is our “warranty
period.” After age 55, the body starts to break down in multiple ways. There’s
no way to stop it, even though we try very hard to prolong our lives as much as
possible. It makes more sense, Bruce indicated, to try to have a healthy old
age rather than simply a long one. Once the “expiration date” has passed, a car
or a person might keep running for a long time, but will require more and more
intervention. Old age is not a problem to be solved but a process to be
managed.
In
the next entry, I will write about the symposium about science-related issues in
the afternoon. It was one of the most exciting things the Oklahoma Academy of
Sciences has ever done, I think.
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