Story of Impact - NYAS

In a new book, the Harvard evolutionary psychologist argues that all humans share an innate sense of right and wrong.

Published March 1, 2007

By Laura Buchholz

Image courtesy of Who Is Danny via stock.adobe.com.

You are in control of a switch at a railroad station. An empty out-of-control train is racing toward five people walking on the tracks. It will hit and kill them unless you pull a lever to switch the train to another track—but there it will kill one person standing on the track. Do you pull the lever? Why? Or why not?

You are an emergency room doctor. Five of your patients urgently need organ transplants in order to live. In the waiting room is a healthy young man with all of the organs necessary to save these five people. Would you sacrifice the life of the man to save your five patients? Why? Or why not?

If you answered “yes” in one case and “no” in the other, what is the difference between the two cases?

Marc D. Hauser, professor of psychology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and biological anthropology at Harvard University, explores how we answer questions like these in his new book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. On January 11, 2007, as part of The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) Readers & Writers series, Hauser explained that moral decision-making may not flow entirely from experience and education, but instead may have a significant biological aspect that has been shaped, like all human traits, by the forces of evolution.

Instinctive Morality

“We are endowed with a moral faculty evolved to generate intuitive judgments of right and wrong,” says Hauser, adding that the principles underlying those intuitive judgments are unconscious, and therefore, may be immune to cultural influence. In other words, Hauser suggests that the influence of Sunday school may pale in comparison to the effect of thousands of years of genetic programming.

Hauser, who directs the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory at Harvard, collects some of his evidence from the Moral Sense Test—a Web site his lab developed, presenting visitors with “artificial dilemmas” designed to test their moral instincts. Working with a data set of responses from 250,000 subjects from 120 different countries, with ages ranging between 13 and 70, and inclusive of all varieties of religion, Hauser’s lab finds some patterns emerging.

Hauser identifies three principles of automatic moral reasoning that transcend religion, geography, age, and culture. The first is the Intention Principle: That is, most people judge it morally worse when harm is intended as a means to an end as compared with when an equivalent harm is foreseen but as a side effect. When Joe intentionally hits John we tend to hold him more responsible than when Joe strikes an object with the foreseen consequence that this object will fall and hit John. According to Hauser, the Intention Principle operates at an unconscious level: When people judge based on this principle, they are not able to say why they made the judgment.

The second principle Hauser calls the Action Principle, and it states that harm caused by action is worse than exactly the same harm caused by omission.

Consider Two Scenarios:

#1: A man intends to kill his young nephew, who stands to inherit all the family wealth. The uncle goes up to the bathroom where the boy is taking a bath, and drowns the boy in the tub.

#2: A man intends to kill his young nephew, who stands to inherit all the family wealth. The uncle goes up to the bathroom where the boy is taking a bath, and finds the nephew drowning face-down in the tub. The man does not intervene, and lets the boy drown.

The effect is the same, but would a jury find the uncle guilty of murder in the second scenario? Probably not. This principle is available at a conscious level, says Hauser, and may explain why societies generally find active euthanasia more morally troubling than passive euthanasia.

Third is the Contact Principle, which states that harm caused by contact is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by non-contact (e.g., when we hit someone vs. seeing an object fly across a room and hit somebody—or the difference between the two introductory scenarios). This third principle is partially available to human consciousness—about half and half, says Hauser.

Remarkably, Hauser notes that subjects who described themselves as highly religious delivered the same judgments as those who said they were not at all religious. These observations suggest that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine. But what does this have to do with biology? Hauser draws a parallel between what he calls our “universal moral grammar” and Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of universal grammar.

Judgment and Emotions

In Chomsky’s concept, a child knows, in an unconscious sense, the set of principles for all the world’s languages, and the environment feeds her the sound patterns of the native language. Hauser contends that morality is similarly innate. But what are the neural underpinnings of moral judgment? Is there a dissociation between how we judge and how we act? And how did this system evolve?

Hauser points out that people with brain damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) have some problems with moral judgments, suggesting that this area may play a part in our evolved moral machinery. People with damage in this area, says Hauser, tended to judge in a more utilitarian manner when faced with personal moral dilemmas involving conflict between aversive actions (hitting someone) and positive gains (saving the lives of many). When faced with less personal or nonmoral dilemmas, their judgments are similar to those of people in control groups.

This suggests that people with damage to the vmPFC have largely preserved capacities to judge in both non-moral and moral situations, but for a selective class of moral dilemmas, they are strict utilitarians. As this region of prefrontal cortex is known to be involved in mediating the relationship between emotional processing and decision making, it seems possible that morality may have evolved in tandem with the emotions, perhaps a fortuitous advance for those who would reap the protective benefits of life in a group.

We Can’t Help It

“Understanding the biology of moral judgment will not dictate what we ought to do,” concedes Hauser, pointing to a split between a description of our judgments and a prescription of how we should act or how we actually act. (Go ahead, have another cookie, says a small invisible voice. And your hand reaches out …) But what it can do is to help societies craft policies that do not violate this universal, intuitive code. “If a law is not sensitive to our intuitive psychology,” says Hauser, “it will never go anywhere.”

How different societies deal with euthanasia illustrates how our intuitive principles interact—and sometimes conflict—with policy. In the case of euthanasia, most medical boards agree that it is better simply to withhold treatment than to be an active participant in the death of a patient. However, says Hauser, Belgium and the Netherlands no longer support a distinction between active and passive euthanasia. Nevertheless, there still exists in those countries a bias towards passive rather than active euthanasia.

In this case, says Hauser, “the law does not penetrate intuitive psychology, even though permission is explicit in the culture.” Hauser is hopeful that his findings will do more than help us craft better laws. “Appreciating the fact that we share a universal moral grammar, and that at birth we could have acquired any of the world’s moral systems, should provide us with a sense of comfort, a sense that perhaps we can understand each other. Deep in our past we might find some hints to our moral state and perhaps to our future.”

About Marc D. Hauser

Marc D. Hauser is professor of psychology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and biological anthropology at Harvard University, and is co-director of Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior program. His previous books include The Evolution of Communication (MIT); Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (Henry Holt); and The Design of Animal Communication (with Mark Konishi) (MIT). His new book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, is published by HarperCollins.

Also read: National Security, Neuroscience and Bioethics

National Security, Neuroscience and Bioethics

In his book Mind Wars, bioethicist Jonathan Moreno tells why the defense industry is interested in new discoveries in neuroscience. He explores why the defense department funds brain research, and what scientists should do about it.

Published November 27, 2006

By Adrienne J. Burke

Image courtesy of metamorworks via stock.adobe.com.

Jonathan Moreno was first exposed to brain research as a child. He was 10 when two dozen subjects arrived at the 20-acre sanitorium run by his father, a distinguished psychiatrist, who would observe the effects of LSD on the group.

Little wonder that Moreno has spent a career thinking about the ethics of medical research. As a Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics there, Moreno has penned books including In the Wake of Terror: Medicine and Morality in a Time of Crisis; Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans; Ethical and Regulatory Aspects of Clinical Research; and Deciding Together: Bioethics and Moral Consensus.

Lately, his curiosity has been piqued by the attention that the defense department pays to brain research. His new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense, explores the possible national security implications that stem from high-tech neuroscience, and reveals how much of it is funded by defense dollars.

Moreno urges neuroscientists to consider all of the possible applications and misapplications of their work, and to engage in the policymaking process.

The Academy spoke with Moreno in advance of his November 28, 2006 lecture.

You say that in 2006, most Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding has gone to brain-related work.

Much, I wouldn’t say most, but much. It’s clear that DARPA has an interest in neuroscience, which they should.

As you point out, DARPA funding has resulted in great technologies for the public good. What are the problems, risks, or ethical dilemmas with having neuroscience research funded by a defense agency?

One of the biggest problems is that there is so much anxiety—and in many cases paranoia—about the whole notion of mind-control or mind-reading. And I can tell you from this work and from previous work that I’ve done that there are a lot of people who think that they are the victims of mind-control experiments by the CIA. And this is actually cross-cultural; it is not confined to the United States. I was in Pakistan last year and I had a long conversation with the chairman of the Clinical Research department at Karachi University and I asked if he encountered patients who believed that [they were victims of mind control experiments]. He said, “oh yeah, it’s everywhere.”

So one problem of talking about this is just the conspiracy theory that so many people have already—which I want to disassociate myself from. But, if we put aside those conspiracy theories, there are nonetheless reasons to be interested in how information about the brain is going to be used in the future.

For example, evidence suggests that certain chemicals are released by the brain when people are in trusting relationships with one another. So, think now about interrogating detainees in Guantanamo. What if it were feasible to introduce this chemical, this neurotransmitter, artificially, so that instead of waterboarding people or playing good cop/ bad cop, you could chemically induce trusting feelings on the part of the subject of an interrogation? Some people will obviously say that that is a good thing, particularly if innocent people are at risk and this individual might have some information. Other people will say, well, this is a slippery slope here.

What might happen if the same chemical is used against our security agents, for example?

Precisely, or even domestically. If it becomes a useful intervention, then will domestic authorities be given the opportunity to use the stuff? And how does this rub up against our constitutional rights? So, that’s just one example of why we need to be concerned.

[And yet] so many of [the technologies discovered by defense-funded neuroscience] are good for people, which makes them much harder to talk about than nuclear weapons technology or biological weapons.

For example, there’s evidence that beta blockers, which are used for people with heart disease, can be used to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder. There are some people who believe that not only are they useful after someone has been in a stressful situation, but it might even be plausible to give somebody a beta blocker before they go into a stressful situation, because the drug seems to inhibit the association of experiences with emotions and their consolidation into long-term memory.

Imagine if you were to give a beta blocker to a soldier before he or she went into a combat situation. On the one hand you might prevent or at least ameliorate the terrible emotional feelings that could come from what they see and do in combat, but, to put it in a single phrase, do we want an army of guilt-free soldiers?

So again the more we learn about the possibility of managing if not reading the brain, the more we’ll have to confront these questions. And because they are dual-use, they can be used in both military and civilian contexts, and they can be used both to heal and to harm they become all the more complicated.

All of the issues I talk about in Mind Wars about national security and the brain are part of a bigger conversation, which I think is maybe the most important thing we will talk about in the 21st century: How are we going to enter into changing what we are? What ought the limits be?

But in the end, you don’t advocate separating military from civilian science.

That’s right. Generally if you prohibit scientific research on what could ultimately be important national security technologies, you’re just going to force them underground. Especially in a society like ours, we need to maintain and enhance the relationships between our academic science institutions and the military, because if we tell our government that they can’t give grants to university scientists because we’re afraid that it will be bad for the university, we’re just going to force government to do it on its own, and secretly.

So I advocate continued and even increased funding for DARPA and finding ways to ensure that academia and the security establishment remain in contact with one another. I think it’s bad for democracy to do it any other way.

About the Author

Dr. Moreno is the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia; Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics; and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.

He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and serves on the Institute’s Board on Health Sciences Policy. Moreno is also a member of the Council on Accreditation of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He is a bioethics advisor for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Faculty Affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the New York Academy of Medicine.

Also read: What Near-Death and Psychedelic Experiences Reveal about Human Consciousness

The Dire Climate Change Wakeup Call

British climate change expert James Lovelock says Earth is under a more dire threat than even most environmentalists imagine.

Published September 6, 2006

By Adrienne J. Burke

Image courtesy of Leonid via stock.adobe.com.

British climate change expert James Lovelock says Earth is under a more dire threat than even most environmentalists imagine. He spoke with the Academy prior to his lecture on September 7, 2005, where he’ll discuss his new book, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity.

*some quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity*

You’ve got a gloomy view of our future here on Earth!

You’re right, but it’s primarily a wake-up call. When I spoke to a whole group of climate scientists here in the UK, it was amazing how almost all of them viewed [climate change] almost as an academic exercise — not something that would affect our lives immediately.

And each of them was looking at more or less a single picture of the earth: some were looking at the melting ice in the arctic and others were looking at the disappearance of the forests in the tropical regions. They knew about each other’s work, but they didn’t seem to make it up into one single view of the planet. This worried me a lot, and since I had a kind of top-down view of the Earth as a result of Gaia theory, it seemed a lot worse than any of them were saying. That’s why I wrote the book.

You say that even the people who are talking about sustainable development right now are not even going far enough. You talk about sustainable retreat instead.

Exactly. I think — and so do many of my colleagues — that we may have passed the point of no return and that sustainable development as a program is probably too late. This means that change will take place more or less whatever we do, and therefore our prime tasks are both amelioration, if we can do it, and defense and preparing for the climate damage that will be inevitable.

How hopeful or optimistic are you that technologically developed nations will start to initiate a retreat like that?

Well, I have a feeling that when you in the US really start noticing or believing in climate change — I think it’s been denied for quite a while — you’ll almost certainly say, “but we can fix it,” and try to think of technological solutions.

Already several have been proposed. Perhaps the most intriguing is the idea of sun shades in space. Other ones, much simpler and probably more practical, like putting an aerosol in the stratosphere, are well worth considering because they may buy us time. But, they are not a long-term answer to the problem any more than going on dialysis is a long term solution for one of us if one of our kidneys fail.

A lot of environmentalists might be surprised to read your position on things like wind energy, biofuel, and organic farming: they are not necessarily solutions let alone good directions to be headed, according to your book.

Well I’m afraid you’re right. My reason for that is that, by and large, environmentalists are not scientists; they’re well-intentioned people, usually fairly wealthy, who think of remedies to get back to what they would think of as a natural world. I’m very sympathetic with their desires for things like organic food and so on, but I think we’ve reached such a state now that they’re not very practical.

… I am concerned about waking them up from their very strange objection to nuclear energy, which is one of the very useful ways that we can get energy for our needs — and we do need it to keep civilization going — without adding all these greenhouse gasses or doing anything in particular to the climate. That was my purpose really, in, if you like, chasing the environmentalists.

[Nuclear power] is one of the most useful answers we have — not the only one, but one of the many — whereas the things the environmentalists suggest, like biofuels, could be even more dangerous than doing nothing. If you think about it, the average car produces 10 times as much carbon dioxide as its driver. Now, we’re having trouble getting enough land to feed all the people in the world, how on Earth could we possibly feed all the cars?

And not only that, but the land surface that would be used to produce the food also exists as part of the greater system that regulates the climate and keeps it comfortable. We’ve taken about 40 percent [of the land] for food and forestry products for ourselves, and that’s a big loss of ability of the planet to keep things as comfortable as we’d like.

For the background of our readers, would you describe in a nutshell Gaia Theory, which you originated?

That’s always one of the most difficult questions. There are lots of ways of looking at it. The one I prefer, really, is … try to look at the earth as an evolving system, on which it isn’t just the organisms that evolve by natural selection, but the whole planet. The organisms and the world around them are so tightly coupled that they evolve as a single system.

In other words, organisms don’t just adapt to a geology which is described in another building in the university. They adapt to, what is in effect, the blood and the breath and the bones of their ancestors. The whole thing is tied together so tightly that it is ridiculous to try to separate the earth from the organisms that are on it, in systems terms.

You’ve merged Darwinian evolution with geological evolution?

Exactly. You couldn’t have put it better.

About James Lovelock

James Lovelock, PhD, Dsc, is the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory), on which he has written several books. He is also the author of more than two hundred scientific papers. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and has received numerous awards, including the American Chemical Society’s award for Chromatography, the Norbert Gerbier Prize of the World Meteorological Organization, and in the Amsterdam Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, he received the Wollaston medal from the Geological Society of the United Kingdom.

He has received honorary Doctorates in Science from seven universities in England, Sweden and the United States. He was made a Commander of Order of the British Empire in 1990, and in 2003 a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Also read: Our Iceland Adventure Turned into a Climate Crisis Wake-Up Call

5 Tips for an Eco-Friendly Lifestyle

The author of The Big Green Apple Guide gives his advice on what New Yorkers can do to promote a more environmentally friendly lifestyle in the concrete jungle.

Published September 1, 2006

By Adelle Caravanos

Image courtesy of ZoomTeam via stock.adobe.com.

Ben Jervey says it’s easy being green in New York City.

Upon moving to Brooklyn from Vermont five years ago, Jervey searched for a comprehensive source of environmentally friendly organizations in his new neighborhood. When he didn’t find one, he decided to write one.

The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City is a compilation of tips, resources, and information about all aspects of the NYC green scene. In it Jervey describes the various ways New Yorkers can contribute to making their urban environment sustainable for years to come. Many of his tips are applicable beyond New York as well.

Jervey offered Science & the City these five tips from his new book:

1. Change Your Lightbulbs

Switching from ordinary lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) “is a really simple action that can make a big difference,” says Jervey. CFLs use 25 percent of the electricity of incandescent lightbulbs, and the $4 to $5 that you will spend for each replacement will pay itself off in a month or two on your electric bill, Jervey says.

“In a society that places such value on the newest technology, TVs and iPods, I find it strange that we are still using bulbs that haven’t changed much since Thomas Edison’s time,” Jervey says. CFLs come in many varieties, can simulate the light of an incandescent bulb, and can last for more than five years.

2. Order a Home Water Conservation Kit from the DEP

New Yorkers know hot summers sprinkled with drought warnings. But you might not know that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is providing a free home water conservation kit for house and apartment owners—complete with a faucet aerator, a showerhead that reduces water flow without compromising pressure, and other pieces of water-saving equipment, says Jervey.

3. Join a Community-Sponsored Agriculture Group

Through community-sponsored agriculture (available in many places around the U.S.), you can buy a share of a local farmer’s harvest, and each week receive delivery of a portion of the farm’s seasonal vegetables and fruits. The average weekly cost is $15, and there are about 40 programs in NYC’s five boroughs, serviced by farms within a 150-mile radius of the city, according to Jervey. One share is meant for a family of four, and options such as half-shares or shared shares are also available.

“It’s remarkably affordable, and you get a collection of good, organic food,” Jervey says. “It’s turned me on to a lot of foods that I wouldn’t normally have tried,” because the assortment varies with the time of year. Community-sponsored agriculture is also making quality produce available in neighborhoods not served by green markets or grocery stores, where financial and transportation constraints can result in nutritional problems.

4. Choose Your Own Energy Source

Through the Con Ed Solutions program, you can opt for electricity produced by wind power, instead of by coal or other means.

Con Ed determines your actual energy demand, and then purchases that amount of power from renewable energy providers such as wind farms, with no change to your bill, Jervey says. Many other energy companies around the U.S. have similar programs.

5. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle-In That Order!

“What people don’t realize is that the classic phrase—reduce, reuse, recycle—is actually prioritized,” says Jervey. Reducing waste is the most important thing New Yorkers can do, as far as waste management, because the city now ships 100 percent of its waste out of the state.

Second comes reuse, and Jervey emphasizes the need to find alternative uses for items we would normally throw away. Besides reusing things in your own home, Jervey suggests organizations like Freecycle, a global group of more than two million people who freely give away their “garbage”—unwanted items from furniture to junk car parts—to others looking for just those items.

Then, of course, recycle. According to Jervey, the city’s recycling system is improving every year, and more citizens are participating. In fact, New Yorkers are already living some of the more sustainable lifestyles in the world, he says.

“A person’s ecological footprint is made much smaller by living in the city— it’s an amazingly efficient way to live, by sharing a lot of resources, sharing small places,” Jervey says. “New Yorkers need to understand that there is a real unconscious level of environmentalism here, and while there are still enormous battles to be fought, it’s one of the ‘greenest’ places in the world.”

Also read: Finding New, Sustainable Uses for Food Waste

About the Author

Adelle Caravanos is assistant editor of Science & the City.

The Molecular Science of Making Babies

Nobel Laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard talks about embryology at the molecular level, connecting the development of fruit flies to that of vertebrates.

Published August 2, 2006

By Alan Dove, PhD

Sponsored by: Readers & Writers and Women Investigators Network
Cosponsored by: Goethe-Institut, Kales Press, and the German Book Office

Image courtesy of Destina via stock.adobe.com.

Where do Babies Come From?

The question has unnerved parents for millennia. Even if you are completely comfortable discussing sex with someone barely out of potty training, there is a more fundamental pedagogical problem: you probably don’t really know the answer. Don’t feel bad. Until very recently, nobody did. Indeed, the problem of animal development—how an egg becomes a chicken, or a person, or a frog—has bedeviled scientists at least since Aristotle.

In the early 1970s, the molecular biology revolution finally started to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of heredity and physiology, but theories to explain development remained rudimentary.

“When you asked a chemist what they thought, they thought that in the egg there are molecules that are arranged in the pattern of the future mouse or whatever, and then this would somehow be … preformed in the egg, and then you asked how does this prepattern get into the egg, and they’d say ‘oh, yeah, there is a problem,'” says Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. Unsatisfied with this answer thirty years ago, she decided to move developmental biology beyond this primitive understanding.

Nüsslein-Volhard spoke to a sellout crowd of more than 100 at the Goethe-Institut in New York City on June 8, 2006, as part of the Academy’s Readers & Writers seminar series. The event launched the English translation of her new book Coming to Life, which summarizes the astonishing progress scientists have made in understanding how genes drive development. Nüsslein-Volhard’s work, which earned her a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, is at the core of both the book and modern developmental biology.

Designing on the Fly

The first hint that molecules drive development came from another German, Hans Spemann, whose brilliant microsurgical manipulations of frog embryos demonstrated that special “organizing centers” in the embryo are capable of directing the development of specific structures. Grafting an organizer from the anterior end of one embryo onto another, for example, could produce a frog with two heads. After Spemann’s reports in the 1920s and ’30s, though, scientists were stumped for almost half a century. The organizer was obviously producing some kind of molecular signal that told how to build part of a frog, but nobody could isolate that signal biochemically.

Inspired by the success of fly geneticists in mapping traits to specific genes, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues decided to use genetics to search for the organizing factors. Fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, have become such a fixture of developmental biology today that it is difficult to appreciate how revolutionary this idea was. Fly eggs are minuscule, and nobody thinks about looking for mutations that affect the developmental pattern.

Because the mutations they sought are rare, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues had to screen vast numbers of eggs and larvae from mutagenized flies, looking for the tiniest differences between them. As an oblong fly egg develops into a maggot, it divides itself into segments lengthwise. Segments at one end will eventually develop into the structures of the head, and segments at the other become the abdomen. Something akin to Spemann’s organizers must direct this pattern.

Genome Mutations Lead to Defects

Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues eventually found that mutations in the fly genome can cause specific types of defects in this process. A mutant called knirps, for example, derailed the pattern in a specific zone of segments, while another, called even-skipped, affected alternating segments along the whole length of the larva, and a third, called hedgehog, affected all of the segments.

The researchers eventually determined that the fly body builds itself by following a programmed sequence of molecular signals encoded in the genome. In the early stage, a set of signals establishes general zones of the larva, corresponding to the future head, thorax, and abdomen. Then, each zone receives signals that subdivide it into more complex structures, like the mouthparts and eyes in the head.

To determine what types of structures to build, the cells of the embryo rely on gradients of the signals. For example, a signaling protein produced by cells at the anterior end will diffuse back toward the posterior end, fading like the signal of a radio station as one drives away from the transmitter tower. Cells of the future head will receive the signal clearly, triggering them to start building a head.

Where the anterior signal is weaker, cells will instead begin a thorax, and where the anterior signal is completely unreadable, the cells execute the abdomen-building procedure. A counter-gradient of signals from the posterior end has the opposite set of effects. Later in development, sub-gradients within each zone build the sub-structures within each major body segment.

Social Development

The fly work has become a cornerstone of modern developmental biology, and the book’s summary of it should make sense to most scientifically literate readers—with effort.

“It is complicated, I cannot help it,” Nüsslein-Volhard concedes, adding that “it is even simpler than you might have imagined, but there are some rules and there are genes and you have to … learn some vocabulary.” She points out that even a simple fly is far more complex than a computer or a car, so non-biologists hoping to understand development will have to brace themselves for a tough subject.

Many readers will undoubtedly skip directly to the final chapter of the book, which deals with current social controversies involving developmental biology. Though these subjects interest Nüsslein-Volhard far less than her laboratory work, she hopes to elevate the level of public discussion about issues like cloning, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and designer babies. The final chapter stems in part from her experience on the National Ethics Council of Germany, which she joined in 2001.

Though it is not mentioned in the book, Nüsslein-Volhard, one of only 12 women to receive a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, has another important project outside the lab. The Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation aims its money directly at one of the biggest problems facing women in science: child care.

Women qualify for the Foundation’s grants primarily on the quality of their scientific work, but the money can be used for a range of household expenses, addressing what some studies euphemistically call the “work-family balance.”

Fishing for Answers

Meanwhile, Nüsslein-Volhard still heads a large, productive laboratory that remains on the leading edge of developmental biology. Having worked out the fundamental processes of fly development in the 1970s and ’80s, the group next began to explore vertebrate development, using the common aquarium zebrafish Danio rerio as a model organism.

“I started working with fish because I thought … it’s nice to know how flies develop, but can we deduce anything for other organisms from it? Maybe it’s totally different in frogs or in fishes,” says Nüsslein-Volhard. The small, fast-breeding zebrafish develop inside transparent eggs, making them ideal for the same type of analysis that had worked so well in flies: a large-scale genetic screen for developmental signals.

There were reasons to hope that flies and fish might share at least some of the basic mechanisms of development. Besides the general tendency of evolution to conserve useful functions, there were also some old observations from comparative anatomy and taxonomy that suggested strong parallels between vertebrate and invertebrate body plans.

Very early in the development of any animal, the ball of dividing embryonic cells undergoes gastrulation, forming the initial opening of the gut. In protostomes, a large and diverse category of animals that includes arthropods, this initial opening becomes the mouth. In deuterostomes, the group that includes vertebrates, the initial opening becomes the anus. This head-to-tail mirroring prefigures the rest of the developmental plan.

For example, a lobster’s heart is dorsal, up in its shoulders, while a cat’s heart is ventral, down in its chest. Though it seems like a major anatomical difference, this is simply the outcome of switching gastrulation from one end to the other. The adult forms are very different, but in the earliest stages of development, a cat is just an upside-down lobster.

Anatomic Inversions at the Molecular Level

By screening thousands of mutagenized fish for developmental defects, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues found that this anatomic inversion also holds true at the molecular level. The signals that mark the dorsal side of a fly embryo have homologues in fish, but the fish versions mark the ventral side of the embryo. The evolutionary recycling continues in later stages of development, with vertebrates and invertebrates using the same genes and signaling strategies to produce radically different forms and structures.

Besides covering Nüsslein-Volhard’s own work, Coming to Life puts the results into the general context of molecular biology and embryology. Helpful introductory chapters guide a general reader through basic genetics, cell biology, and biochemistry, and the findings from flies and fish accompany related results from other organisms, including humans. Throughout this thin but thorough volume, the author’s own line drawings provide clear illustrations of the main concepts. Sections on the burgeoning field of evolutionary development and exciting recent results on human origins round out the story.

For biologists, the book is a useful refresher of concepts they forgot or missed in a basic embryology course, and for students and the scientifically curious, it is a solid introduction to the topic. Parents of inquisitive preschoolers may still want to invoke storks, baskets, or Sears to explain where babies come from, but at least scientists now have much more detailed answers about embryonic origins and development. We’ve certainly been asking long enough.

About Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, PhD, is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and also leads its genetics department. She graduated from Tübingen University with a degree in biochemistry in 1968 and earned her PhD there in 1973. Nüsslein-Volhard then began her investigation of Drosophila and conducted a large-scale mutagenesis study of embryonic development of the fruit fly that provided insights into genes involved in development. The findings also showed that protostomes and deuterostomes probably have a common ancestor with a complex body plan. Moreover, the results of the study were helpful in understanding the regulation of transcription and cell fate during development.

Together with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis, Nüsslein-Volhard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for research on the genetic control of embryonic development. Nüsslein-Volhard has also been honored with the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. She became a member of the Nationaler Ethikrat (National Ethics Council of Germany) for the ethical assessment of new developments in the life sciences and their influence on the individual and society.

Also read: Portrait of a Scientist and Mentor

About the Author

Alan Dove is a science writer based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Academy Inspires Future with Young Einsteins Program

This summer, the program tackled the energy crisis, terrorism, and how pigeon waste can be used as a biological weapon.

Published July 28, 2006

By Jennifer Tang

Image courtesy of Sensay via stock.adobe.com.

Can pigeon waste be used to spread a dangerous fungus affecting millions of people? How can carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas linked to global warming, be used to extract a natural gas, methane, to help curb our energy crisis? How can we protect New Yorks computers from hackers and terrorism?

These are just some of the cutting-edge scientific topics being tackled by 55 students in the Academy’s Science Research Training Program (SRTP). Now in its 30th year, the eight-week summer program has prepared thousands of high school students for careers in the sciences by training them to do hands-on, scientific research with leading scientists from institutions such as Columbia University, Burke Rehabilitation Center, New York Medical College, NYU School of Medicine, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Each spring, hundreds of students from public and private schools located in New York City, Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut apply to get into this competitive program, which is open only to newcomers. Students choose their favorite category (i.e., biology, chemistry, computer science) and are assigned a mentor. After working Monday to Thursday, students supplement their lab experiences by attending special Friday workshops held at the Academy.

The workshops examine the responsibilities of a scientist from a multiplicity of perspectives and discuss issues such as writing and presenting scientific papers. Last week, the Academy held a panel discussion on alterative science careers featuring The New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, astrophysicist Garret Schneider and lawyer and chemist Mary Jane O’Connell.

Cell Phones and Pigeons

Working with her mentor, Dr. Jason Nieh from Columbia University, Janice Escobar, a fifteen-year-old student from Manhattan’s Chapin School, has embarked on a project not likely to be found in a typical high school science textbook – mapping cell phone networks in order to prevent new acts of terrorism. “Recently, terrorists in Iraq have been using cell phones to detonate bombs,” she observed. “Perhaps our research could ultimately help prevent events like that from happening in Manhattan. We’re also mapping out the number of open access points in the city. Where there is an open access point, Internet hackers could do a number of harmful things: break into private files, download illegal programs, and create viruses.”

Another student, Steven Mieses from the Bronx’s High School of American Studies at Lehman College, is spending his summer studying pigeons but from the perspective of a lab bench rather than that of a park. “Cryptoccoccus neoformansis a fungus commonly found in pigeon waste and affects people who are immunocompromised,” he says. “New York City is heavily populated with pigeons, putting people with HIV, or people who have undergone immuno-suppressive therapy such as chemotherapy, at risk of contracting this deadly pathogenic fungus.”

Working with his mentor, Dr. Arturo Casadevall at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Steven studies Crypotoccoccus neoformans cells under a microscope and tests for antibodies. “By helping to make these antibodies for GalXM, we can possibly eliminate one of the many opportunistic infections in the world and save thousands of lives,” he says. “This is why science is my favorite subject – in the lab, I never know if the day will end in failure or success. What I do know is that the day is going to have many surprises.”

Excitement of the Unknown

Unexpected discoveries and surprising results are true to the experience of real scientists, says Matthew Kelly, the Program’s Coordinator. “The purpose of the program is to give students a taste of what real-life scientific research is all about,” he says.

Students thrive on satisfying their curiosity. Yena Jun, a student from New Jersey’s Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, stresses that’s why she became a SRTP student.

“At my school, the results of the lab experiments are often known before the experiments actually take place,” she says. “In the SRTP, we don’t know what the results will be.”

Yena and Zeke Miller, a student from Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere, New York, are studying how methane gas might be extracted and used as an alterative fuel, a project that would help today’s energy crisis.

“Gas hydrates, which are found in huge quantities in marine and Arctic sediments, contain twice the amount of carbon found in all other fossil fuels and make them a significant energy source in the future,” she observes. “However, extracting methane hydrates from sediments in the ocean floor may cause landslides or lead to further climate change. We’re looking at how carbon dioxide might be used to replace methane, an intriguing concept that would kill two birds with one stone – use methane as a fuel and reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a cause of global warming.”

Hooked on Science

It’s challenging subjects like these and their potential to make an impact on today’s society that has SRTP students hooked on science. “I hope that my research will help speed up progress in curbing dependence upon foreign oil – with methane in such abundant supply, this would be a potential solution to the world’s energy problems,” Zeke says.

Despite the hot weather, most SRTP students say they don’t regret spending their summers in labs or libraries rather than tossing volleyballs on the beach. “Being in the program makes you more aware of the roles politics, economics, ethics and society play in scientific findings, and overall you become aware of the issues that we are faced with now,” says Janice.

Steven adds, “Unlike a vacation that ends once the summer is over, the information I learn here will be with me forever, and I can take it wherever I go.”

Do you know a young, inspiring scientist? Encourage them to check out the Academy’s educational programming.

High Temps Call for High-Tech Edutainment

From clunky kinetoscopes to cutting-edge video games, communication is cool at the Sony Wonder Technology lab.

Published July 24, 2006

By Adelle Caravanos

Image courtesy of miglagoa via stock.adobe.com.

Sidewalks that sizzle, subway seats that stick to your skin, and smells that are, well, unsavory at best. Summertime in New York City can be a drag. But on a sweltering day, students of all ages can ease their overheating heads — and feed their minds — on a visit to the Sony Wonder Technology Lab.

Swarms of day campers, families, and technophiles find solace at the four-story, 14,000-square foot center, located at the corner of 56th Street and Madison Avenue. The Lab’s exhibitions and programs explore the technology and history of media and communication, from the development of television and telephones, to computer processors, programs, and video games. Touch-screen monitors and personalized learning stations, designed for kids aged 8 to 14, allow visitors to experience, first-hand, the technology that enables us to talk to each other, to record and preserve the moments that are important to us, and to make life easier and more enjoyable.

On any given weekday, expect to see small scientists and emerging engineers — many in matching camp couture — as 1,000 or more visitors explore the Lab each day. From Harlem to Park Slope, Flushing to Riverdale, campers, kids, and parents (yes, they’re invited, too) flock from all areas to explore this free expo of hands-on science and technology, opened in 1994 and funded by the Sony Corporation of America.

The first-stop at the Lab: a log-in station that records your name, photo, and voice sample to connect with a bar-coded ID card. Swiping the card at various stations as you wander throughout the Lab lets you log in as the “media trainee” and projects your image onto exhibit screens as you pass by.

Learning the History of Communications

Visitors begin their tour of the Lab with a lesson on the history of communications, taught via video monitors along the Communications Bridge, a walkway to the hands-on stations. Images from the clunky kinetoscopes of the 1890s lead into those of the early days of silent films; these give way to the iconic scenes of movies such as From Here to Eternity, and end at high-definition television shots so crisp it appears that the screen is the only thing keeping the picture inside the monitor.

The Communications Bridge leads visitors into the modern age, and into the Technology Workshop, a set of exhibits that allow trainees to explore basic mechanisms of communication — creating audio and visual samples, and transmitting and receiving these samples as signals via satellites. Kids can view and magnify the inner electronics of computers, video recorders, monitors, and other pieces of equipment.

In one exhibit, trainees must record representative samples of American music for a NASA capsule that will be sent into space. While choosing which music to send may seem difficult (Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, and Billie Holiday are among the choices), the real challenge is deciding the correct sampling rate so the music stays withing the 100 megabyte limit, while being careful to preserve sound quality.

The next series of exhibits focuses on the abundant ways communication technology is used in professional settings — from operating rooms to factories, from the National Weather Service to the sound stage of a children’s TV show.

Entertain Your Brain

At one station, visitors learn about the technology behind the ultrasound instruments that doctors use to examine pregnant women; nearby, you can program a robotic arm to pick up a metal ball and move it to its destination. At the Environmental Research Command Center, trainees track the progress of a hurricane approaching the East coast, and make recommendations to local governments about the deployment of the National Guard. And at the movie studio, aspiring directors, producers, and editors use a full size television camera to tape and edit a broadcast.

For gamers in your group, the Lab has an entire section devoted to how video game developers create the challenging trials for Playstation and other systems. Trainees can make their own car racing game, and then play out the results — a very popular area of the Lab.

In addition to the exhibits, the Lab also screens high-definition films all day, and hosts free or low-cost classes and special events for kids of all ages. So before you let the heat halt your family’s learning for the summer, stop in to the Sony Wonder Technology Lab and entertain your brains.

Do you know a young, inspiring scientist? Encourage them to check out the Academy’s educational programming.

Efforts of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

Two gloved hands hold up a syringe and a vaccine vile.

Despite a promising career advancing health research at Rockefeller University, Seth Berkley made a surprising mid-career move when he went all-in to develop an AIDS vaccine.

Published July 1, 2006

By Alan Dove, PhD

Image courtesy of PhotobyTawat via stock.adobe.com.

In 1996, Seth Berkley, MD, threw away a promising career. The Ivy-League-trained physician was the Associate Director of the Health Sciences Division at the Rockefeller Foundation, a rising star in infectious disease and epidemiology, when he hatched a plan that many experts considered absurd. He wanted to establish an unprecedented public-private collaboration, then gamble its money on an impossible long shot: an AIDS vaccine.

“There certainly was a lot of skepticism” that a non-governmental organization would have a role to play, says Berkley. Nonetheless, his nascent not-for-profit, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), persisted.

It’s too early for gloating—there is still no effective vaccine against HIV, the cause of AIDS. But there also is no doubt that IAVI has redefined the discussion about AIDS vaccines.

Rather than placing the burden of vaccine development entirely on pharmaceutical companies, IAVI helped pioneer the use of public-private partnerships and collaboration between rich and poor countries. In hindsight, the advantages of its strategy seem obvious.

IAVI’s approach is to take promising preclinical leads into small-scale human trials in developed countries first, then move the successful candidates to large-scale trials in developing countries. That keeps the tests for human safety under the watchful eyes of first-world regulators, but ensures that efficacy trials take place in third-world populations who need the vaccine most.

For a group that runs complex scientific collaborations around the world, New York was an obvious place to settle. “We are a global organization, and you need a city that is global in its nature,” says Berkley, citing New York’s position as an international scientific, transportation, media, and finance hub.

Based in NYC, Global Impact

After setting up in borrowed space at Rockefeller University, IAVI soon moved to a shared office for nonprofit groups in Midtown. Its move to Lower Manhattan was driven by a factor New Yorkers know all too well: expensive real estate.

“The rates in Midtown were $60 a square foot, and as a nonprofit we couldn’t really justify that,” says Berkley. A new office in a renovated building on William Street had the needed transportation options and high-speed Internet service, so IAVI moved downtown in 2001.

Not long after, Berkley saw the jets fly into the Twin Towers. After the attacks, IAVI operated temporarily out of its original home, Rockefeller University, and it was nearly a month before the team’s Internet servers were back online. Much of the organization’s work could be done from any office with a broadband connection, but the group decided to stay in the city.

“There’s only so much you can do virtually,” says Berkley. “In the end, there has to be the pressing of flesh.” IAVI has already expanded its office space in Lower Manhattan. It is also participating in on-going discussions with the Mayor’s Office about the fate of Governors Island, the former U.S. Army and Coast Guard base in New York Harbor. Berkley advocates turning part of the island into a campus for global health research and meetings.

As much as IAVI loves New York, most of the Initiative’s work takes place away from headquarters at sites scattered around the world. IAVI currently has no laboratory space of its own. Instead, it funds research in established academic laboratories and clinics.

Searching for the “Holy Grail”

At the preclinical end of the pipeline, IAVI now runs two research consortia focused on different HIV vaccine strategies. The Neutralizing Antibody Consortium is searching for what Berkley calls the “Holy Grail” of AIDS vaccines: antibodies that can neutralize multiple strains of the rapidly mutating virus.

The Live Attenuated Consortium is taking an entirely different approach, trying to identify the biological markers that correlate with HIV immunity in monkeys vaccinated with a live, weakened strain of the virus. A live attenuated vaccine works well in monkeys, but without a clear understanding of how it works, researchers are reluctant to try it in humans.

Preclinical projects like the consortia are critical, but comparatively cheap. The bulk of IAVI’s budget funds clinical trials, ranging from small phase 1 safety tests to large-scale phase 3 efficacy trials, the latter often involving thousands of volunteers and hundreds of medical professionals. To fund its research and trials, the organization has raised nearly $500 million to date, from a combination of philanthropic foundations, governments, and pharmaceutical companies.

Several IAVI-sponsored vaccine trials have already failed, underscoring the high risks that have kept many pharmaceutical companies from trying to develop an AIDS vaccine on their own. Undeterred, the Initiative is now conducting 20 clinical trials worldwide on newer vaccine candidates, and more await at the preclinical stage.

Today, the 49-year-old Berkley says IAVI’s persistence continues to rest on the same reasoning he used on donors in 1996: There’s no guarantee that giving will result in a vaccine, but it’s guaranteed that there will be no vaccine without giving.

Also read: A Public Good: Accelerating AIDS Vaccine Development

How Are Skyscrapers Able to Withstand High Winds?

A shot taken from ground level, looking up at the Freedom Tower and lower Manhattan.

While building codes do not require wind tunnel testing for new skyscrapers, engineers and architects conduct the testing anyway to ensure precision and efficiency during construction.

Published July 1, 2006

By Deborah Snoonian

Image courtesy of demerzel21 via stock.adobe.com.

Before glass, steel, and concrete, there were plastic, plywood, and pressure sensors. And even in this age of computer-aided design and analysis, engineers still build scale models of buildings to see if the full-sized real ones can withstand strong winds.

That explains why in 2002, researchers at the Alan G. Davenport Wind Engineering Group at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) built a 1-to-500 scale replica of 7 World Trade Center and the surrounding neighborhood, measuring about a foot and a half tall. They placed the model carefully inside a boundary-layer wind tunnel, a 128-foot long, 11-foot wide, and 8-foot high apparatus equipped with a wind machine that can simulate everything from gentle breezes to gusts of hurricane intensity. Then, as the wind blew, sensors attached to and around the model logged thousands of readings of pressures, speeds, and deflections. Later, researchers analyzed the data to spot potential wind-related problems, and compared them to computer-model predictions.

Such a study is a common practice in the design of a tall building to ensure its safety and the comfort of occupants and pedestrians. The studies guarantee that skyscrapers are flexible enough to withstand high winds without toppling over (all tall buildings are designed to sway slightly), and that strong gusts won’t rip off or break the cladding (I.M. Pei’s John Hancock Tower in Boston notoriously suffered falling and broken windows during its construction in the 1970s). As for comfort, engineers aim to prevent occupants from detecting the building’s motion by making sure it moves slowly and gently. Wind speeds at the base of the building are monitored so that pedestrians won’t have to endure strong gusts.

Wind Tunnel Testing Not Required

Although building codes don’t require wind tunnel testing, they usually permit architects and engineers to base their designs on test conclusions. This typically results in buildings that are engineered precisely and efficiently—and therefore less expensively—than what is mandated by conservative building codes.

The architects and engineers for 7 WTC, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and WSP Cantor Seinuk, respectively, had access to data on many similar tall, existing buildings. But the timing presented a challenge, because there was then no master plan yet in place for Ground Zero. Researchers tested three models: one of 7 WTC with no structures at Ground Zero (which is what exists today), and two that included surrounding buildings at various heights and orientations, which affect the wind speed and direction around 7 WTC. “We had to make some assumptions about what might get built there, so we made them conservatively,” says Silvian Marcus, chief executive officer of WSP Cantor Seinuk.

In the last decade or so, emerging analytical methods such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have allowed designers to study the complex behavior of air movement around buildings without the use of scale models or wind tunnels. But by all accounts, it will be years before computer-only wind studies become the norm.

Immensely Complicated and Computationally Intensive

One reason is that wind tunnel facilities—there are just a few in North America—have given designers the ability to look not only at the effects of wind, but also at other weather-related effects like snow and at the perfomance of other systems such as air in-takes and exhaust fans. These are “all things that are critical to building performance,” says SOM partner Carl Galioto.

More fundamentally, calculating airflow around buildings is both immensely complicated and computationally intensive. At this stage, CFD software for buildings requires a high level of expertise, produces results that are highly dependent on assumptions, and tends to be used only by wind-tunnel facilities themselves.

Change will come when the software and processing power improve. “I’d like to be able to use CFD analysis to spot check parts of buildings that tend to be problem areas for wind pressure, like corners and parapets, and then confirm the CFD predictions with a physical test prior to construction,” says Nicholas Holt, SOM’s senior technical architect for the project. “Eventually, with enough data corroborated by physical models, codes will likely begin to accept CFD analysis in lieu of wind tunnel testing.”

In the meantime, though, engineers will keep the plastic, plywood, and pressure sensors handy.

Also read: Green Buildings and Water Infrastructure

What’s Old Is New: A Revitalized Downtown NYC

A shot taken from a NYC building, looking downtown toward the Freedom Tower.

A convergence of real estate development, infrastructure improvements, and diverse cultural offerings is redefining Lower Manhattan, harkening back to the city’s colonial days.

Published July 1, 2006

By Pamela Sherrid

Image courtesy of Alberto GV PHOTOGRAP via stock.adobe.com.

The block of Front Street just north of the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan was a sad sight for most of the last 30 years. Vintage commercial buildings built by prosperous merchants at the end of the 18^th century stood derelict and nearly empty.

But today, life is stirring on Front Street. Real estate developers, helped by low-cost public financing, recently renovated 11 old buildings and built three new ones, creating 96 chic apartments that were all quickly snapped up by renters. On a recent sunny spring afternoon, entrepreneur Sandra Tedesco was unpacking bottles at her new wine bar, Bin No. 220, the first retail business to open on the block. A coffee bar, a dry cleaner, a sushi place, and a gourmet grocer—those basic upscale urban amenities—are also on the way.

Sandra and her business partner, Calli Lerner, both pioneering residents in the Financial District, are engines of the change that is sweeping Lower Manhattan. “We had nowhere we could walk to have a nice glass of wine and relax,” says Tedesco. So, both experienced in the restaurant trade, the partners are remedying the situation by opening a cozy neighborhood place.

A Neighborhood on the Move

If all you know about downtown is the seemingly endless squabbling about what will be built at Ground Zero, you are missing the big picture. Lower Manhattan is not only being rebuilt, it is morphing into a much more diverse and lively neighborhood. No longer is finance the only employer, nor do the streets echo emptily at 7 p.m. “This is definitely not the Downtown we once knew,” says Mary Ann Tighe, CEO of the New York Tri-State Region at real estate firm CB Richard Ellis. Baby strollers roll right by bankers’ limousines and green parks are sprouting amidst the concrete canyons.

Two powerful forces—the free market and the government—are working in tandem to improve life downtown. Rentals and condos are less expensive below Chambers Street than in many spots elsewhere in Manhattan, luring singles and families. That relative value is even greater for office space, attracting many nonprofit organizations and firms in everything from biometrics to publishing.

As for the public sector, it is spending billions to make Downtown an architectural and cultural showplace as a moral victory over terrorism. “Despite wishing terribly that 9/11 never happened, it does present us with a chance to look at Lower Manhattan from top to bottom, to evaluate its assets and see how it can be improved,” says Stefan Pryor, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp (LMDC).

Transportation Projects

The really big-ticket items are transportation projects that will make Downtown easier and more pleasant to travel to and move around. A new Fulton Street Transit Center, with an expected completion in 2008, will untangle the maze of ramps and passageways that connect a dozen subway lines. Its dramatic glass- and-steel pavilion entry at the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, designed by prominent British architect Nicholas Grimshaw, will let natural light filter down to below street level.

The Port Authority hired an even better-known international “starchitect,” Santiago Calatrava, to design a new PATH Terminal at the World Trade Center, also currently under construction. A pedestrian underground concourse will be built to connect the Fulton Street Transit Center to the PATH terminal and to the World Financial Center further west. A proposed rail link to JFK airport, requiring a new tunnel under the East River, would make travel much faster between Downtown and anywhere on Long Island. It is not a done deal, but already funding is in place for more than half its $6 billion cost.

Arts and Leisure

Public spending is also revving up the cultural life Downtown. This spring 63 Lower Manhattan arts organizations and projects received a total of $27 million in grants that are expected to spur private donations of many times that sum. The Flea Theater, an award-winning Off-Off-Broadway theater known for nurturing innovative playwrights, is hoping to upgrade its building and create more rehearsal space.

The Poets House, which offers lectures and readings, and houses the nation’s largest collection of poetry books and media open to the public, will be moving next year to a beautiful river-view home in Battery Park City, just a short walk from The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy).

The River to River Festival presents over 500 performances downtown from June through September, including a diverse range of music that includes pioneering rappers, The Sugar Hill Gang, and the lush-sounding indie rockers, Belle & Sebastian. And music is just part of the happenings: On a Sunday afternoon, for instance, a family can see a tap dance demonstration and then take part in a marathon reading of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” aboard a tall ship.

Downtown nature lovers can celebrate, too. Government money is improving and creating more than a dozen parks and open spaces. At the foot of Broadway, Bowling Green, the nation’s oldest park, has been relandscaped, creating an oasis of green. Kiosks serving sandwiches and salads will open this summer in Battery Park; patrons can sit at café tables set amidst 57,000 square feet of newly planted perennial gardens and enjoy the views of New York harbor.

Governors Island

Governors Island, that 172-acre gem located just 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan, is a magnificent wildcard in the future of Lower Manhattan. In 2003, the federal government transferred control of most of the island to the State and City of New York. The public entity created to decide the island’s future has sketched out varied possibilities for redevelopment, ranging from entertainment park to innovation center. This spring more than two dozen proposals for development flooded in to meet a May deadline.

Live, Work, Visit, Enjoy

Meanwhile, the boom in residential population in Lower Manhattan—more than doubling in the past 15 years to 36,000—is also a boon for workers and visitors. As is the case with Bin No. 220 on Front Street, many of the businesses that are opening to serve residents also make it a nicer place to visit.

Lower Manhattan is now the fastest growing residential neighborhood in New York City, and not only in the traditional residential area of Battery Park City. Wall Street has been synonymous with finance for hundreds of years, but many of the older office buildings there can’t accommodate the high-tech wiring needed for modern trading.

So every building on the south side of that famous row from Broad Street to Water Street has been or is being converted to condos or rentals. “At 6 p.m. I now see people coming out of the sub- way on Wall Street on their way home,” says real estate broker Vanessa Low Mendelson, who not only sells luxury condos downtown, but also lives there with her husband and 18-month-old baby.

The Sound of Hope and Renewal

Of course, all these changes can’t happen without disruption. There’s a huge amount of construction going on downtown, bringing with it noise, blocked streets and sidewalks, and weekend subway station closures. “What’s going on in Lower Manhattan is like having open heart surgery while running a marathon,” says Eric Deutsch, president of the neighborhood business group Downtown Alliance.

But many people find in the commotion the sound of hope and renewal. In a 2002 speech, Mayor Bloomberg outlined his vision of Lower Manhattan as a bustling global hub of culture and commerce, and a live-work-and-visit community for the world. “If you study New York history,” he said, “you realize that it is often at the moments when New York has faced its greatest challenges that we’ve had our biggest achievements.”

Also read: 7WTC: A New Home, A Return to Downtown

About the Author

Guest Editor Pamela Sherrid is a veteran of U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, and Fortune magazines.

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