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Quirks and Quacks: Bernard Shaw and Medical Ethics

A 19th century scientists scribbles notes in his notebook.

Reflecting on ethical considerations posed by the famous Irish-born satirist nearly a century after his play critiqued aspects of the medical profession.

Published April 19, 2004

By Jennifer Tang

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve invented a “miracle cure” for tuberculosis. Unfortunately, you have limited supplies of the drug and have room for only one more patient. You must choose between saving the life of a penniless doctor dedicated to helping the poor or a talented but dissipated artist whose neglected wife attracts your eye. Who would you save?

That’s the “dilemma” facing the protagonist of The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw’s 1906 satire on the medical community and the conflict between the arts and sciences. To examine the play’s treatment of medical ethics and its relevance to today’s physicians, The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) co-sponsored a panel discussion and play at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on March 30, 2004. The event, The Doctor’s Dilemma: Quirks and Quacks, was co-sponsored by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Bernard Shaw Society, and the City University’s Science and the Arts Program.

After actors from the Juilliard School of Drama read three scenes from Shaw’s play, a panel discussion was held with Mark Horn, MD, MPH, director of medical alliances at Pfizer’s Alliance Development; Howard Kissel, senior theatre critic for the New York Daily News, and John T. Truman, MD, MPH, Professor and Deputy Chairman of the department of pediatrics, Columbia University/Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. Rhonda Nathan served as moderator.

A Lifelong Skeptic

Kissel opened the discussion by stating that Shaw’s portrayal of doctors was too harsh. “Shaw was cantankerous and his plays were often designed to provoke controversy,” he said. The first scene, in which a group of doctors congratulate a colleague on his knighthood, rapidly turns into a debate over which medical procedure is superior. While the lead character believes that germs must be coated with a chemical in order for the body’s immune system to fight them, a surgeon believes that nearly all diseases are caused by blood poisoning, and yet a third says diseases can be avoided by cutting out everyone’s nuciform sac.

Shaw’s implication is that doctors promote their procedures to gratify their ego or their wallet rather than the needs of the patient. “Shaw counted doctors among his friends, but also remained a lifelong skeptic toward the medical profession,” Kissel said.

While Horn agreed that Shaw had “a contemptuous attitude toward doctors,” he thought the play was a parody that remains timely and contains some uncomfortable truths about medicine. For example, the play’s premise—how a doctor decides whom to treat when there is a limited supply of medicine—echoes the “health care rationing” of medical services offered by today’s HMOs.

The Poor Doctor versus the Brilliant Artist/Scoundrel

Truman noted that Shaw presented the conflict in terms of class and profession—the “poor doctor” versus the “brilliant artist/scoundrel.” But Shaw’s play harks back to an era when health care decision-making was influenced by the idea of ‘social utility.’

“In those days, if you wanted to get a kidney transplant, there was a ‘scorecard’ determining whether or not you would get it. You were rated according to what you had to offer to society, and that determined whether or not you got a kidney transplant,” he said. Such reasoning (based on Social Darwinism) is obsolete today, he felt, although the wealthy continue to have more options to receive better treatment than the poor.

In addition, the play’s satire on “medical fads” (the doctors each promoting their new procedures like salesmen), still holds up well today, according to Horn. He pointed out how “current styles of intervention” are a fact of health care and how medicine is constantly changing. For example, there has been a radical reassessment of coronary disease in recent years, and such once-heralded procedures as hormonal replacement therapy have been scrutinized.

Truman observed that the doctors in the play represent different schools of thought. “In the field of ethics, these doctors favor their own procedures because they may have an ‘unconscious bias’ toward their own specialty,” he said. He told an amusing anecdote about Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly visited several doctors during his treatment for prostate cancer. When he went to a radiation therapist, the doctor suggested radiation therapy; when he went to a surgeon, the doctor suggested surgery. “That does not mean doctors are bad; they do believe they have the correct solution,” he said.

What Does it Mean to be a Human Being?

Kissel cautioned, however, that we should remember when the play was written. “In the last 50 years, medicine has been miraculous,” he said. Shaw’s play was written at a time when many medical procedures were still unsafe, and it was not uncommon for people to die from them. Hence, the debate over vaccines in the play did not involve big companies like Pfizer, but vaccines that had been manufactured by farmers.

The panelists also questioned whether Shaw’s delineation of the line separating the arts and sciences remains true today. Are there irreconcilable differences between these two branches of human thought? Will they remain forever at odds?

Horn commented that artists and scientists are different in terms of temperament and this difference creates a barrier in communication. When human beings speak another language, he said, they might resort to “contempt, which would serve as a camouflage to hide feelings of fear over what they don’t understand,” he said.

“Nowadays, the arts have gone off in so many weird directions that the gap between art and science is much less than it was in Shaw’s time,” Kissel added. To him, the issue appeared to be more about humanity. “I think the more important question posed by the play is, what does it mean to be a human being?”

Also read: Avoiding Bias and Conflict of Interest in Science

Tapping into Ancient Urges for Food and Love?

A young woman plays a ukulele.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

Published March 1, 2004

By Linda Hotchkiss Mehta

Image courtesy of offsuperphoto via stock.adobe.com.

Can music be reduced to mere brain anatomy and electrochemical interactions within the neural templates through which we experience it? Or will what we learn from science simply reinforce a reality the poets have intuited all along?

A group of scientists came together in Venice in October 2002 to take a look at what is known about music through the neurosciences. This area of study is providing insights into higher cognitive function through the mechanisms of musical perception and processing in the human brain. These scientists, many of whom are musicians themselves, approach their work well aware of the incredibly complex process that results in artistic expression and perception.

One broad question that has been explored is a perennial one about intelligence and musical ability – is musical aptitude an integral part of a person’s general cognitive potential or does it exist on its own, a separable and different type of intelligence?

Obviously, general intelligence alone is insufficient – plenty of demonstrably intelligent people never develop into excellent musicians, even when provided with an early music education. But must one be intelligent to be an accomplished musician? Evidence suggests that high general mental aptitude is necessary if special aptitudes (dare we say talent?) are to be fully developed.

In other words, the answer is yes: General intelligence and musical aptitude probably are linked. Furthermore, children who participate in musical activities show a higher degree of “mental speed” (a measure of mental aptitude) than their peers. So these findings have wide implications: Questions about how musical training can enhance general mental aptitude and what neuroscience can tell us about the effectiveness of various pedagogical techniques for musical training are of vital interest.

A Developmental Approach

Only a developmental approach could illuminate these questions, and The Neurosciences and Music, a volume in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences resulting from the meeting in Venice, focuses on neural development in both musicians and non-musicians, seeking to clarify questions about the development of higher cognitive function, in general, through the lens of the development of musical abilities, specifically.

Contributing scientists explore the mechanisms of human perception of the components of music (pitch, timbre, rhythm and harmony), the development of musical abilities, and the fate of musical abilities within the contexts of cognitive disorders in children and of dementia in the aged.

Scientists studying visual imagery have developed techniques for identifying and quantifying the perception of a visual experience, including mental image-making during the act of reading. Because the image a subject observes while reading is black marks on a page, bearing no resemblance to the image conjured up in the brain by the written words, the scientist/observer cannot “see” the mental image of the subject, and this process can only be observed through the traces of brain-imaging techniques.

Using the same brain-imaging tools, scientists can watch what happens neurologically while a person processes music. In one experiment, subjects listened to music while electroencephalography was used to trace brain responses. Musical phrases with syntactically inappropriate endings elicit early right anterior negativity. Shakespeare understood this intuitively: “How sour sweet music is,/When time is broke, and no proportion kept!/So is it in the music of men’s lives.”

Musicians vs Nonmusicians

A group of skilled musicians showed no significant differences from nonmusicians when presented with tasks designed to assess perception of melody, structuring of harmony, and more complex musical presentations. The subjects were asked to judge the similarity of musical selections and the degree of completeness of a piece of music and to identify the musical emotion expressed. Non-musicians demonstrated an ability to use the same principles as musical experts as they listened to music, which suggests that the capacity to enjoy music is universal and not dependent on training.

Even young children with no musical training demonstrate innate musical knowledge when tested with “inappropriate” chord progressions (not dominant-tonic, which is experienced as a normal, or authentic, cadence) through electric brain potential responses. The brain structure in which this response occurs is also involved in processing the syntax of language, which suggests that this aspect of musical ability is something that the human brain is already structured to do.

Cultural Differences

We are also led to wonder about cultural differences in music perception. Interestingly, when the rhythmic differences between French and English were compared to French and English classical musical themes, rhythmic patterns similar to those of the spoken language were found in the music of each culture. When language perception is tested independently, listening to one’s native language elicits a different neurological response than does listening to an unfamiliar language.

But music perception is dramatically different. In spite of the apparent link between a culture’s language and its musical rhythms, studies that compared the responses of subjects to music of their native culture with their responses to unfamiliar music found that differences depended more on the subjects’ musical expertise than on their familiarity with the music. This is good news for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, because it suggests that appreciation of another culture’s music should not be out of reach for most people.

More Grey Matter

The neuroanatomical differences that do exist between musicians and non-musicians may instead reflect the complex motor and auditory skills required for performance on an instrument and learning musical repertoire, as well as the processing feedback necessary to monitor a performance. Musicians have more grey-matter volume in several brain areas compared with non-musicians and even compared with amateur musicians, probably because intensity of practice affects these differences.

Another means of elucidating the neural events underlying imagery and perception is to study the function of persons with brain injuries in precise locations. It turns out that both perception (of music as it is played) and the capacity to form a mental image (in the absence of audible music) are damaged when the associated brain structure is damaged, which demonstrates that both processes depend on the same neural territory.

Wordsworth alludes to this human capacity in his poetry: “The music in my heart I bore,/Long after it was heard no more.” Without this capacity to imagine musical tone and timbre accurately and vividly enough to use them in new arrangements, after all, Beethoven would have lost the ability to compose when he lost his ability to hear.

As scientifically defined by Ian Cross of Cambridge, “music embodies, entrains, and transposably intentionalizes time in sound and action.” Most of us, however, think first of the emotional response music engenders. Poets have described music as the language of angels and the food of love, a medium with “charms to soothe a savage breast.” Many people experience “chills” or “shivers” when certain musical phrases are played and describe this experience as euphoric. These responses can be elicited fairly reliably even in a laboratory, where the associated psychophysiological responses can be measured.

The Pleasure of Music

It appears as though the pleasure we derive from music occurs because our neocortex can reach ancient neural systems involved with basic biological stimuli linked to survival. Perhaps the capacity to make and enjoy music is the happy accident of skills acquired and refined for more basic needs: nourishment and reproduction. The poets anticipated the scientists by centuries, in linking music with the ancient urges of love and food.

The poets also speak of music’s power to help us reduce stress: “Music alone with sudden charms can bind/The wand’ring senses, and calm the troubled mind,” wrote William Congreve. As scientists discover more about the links between the immune system and stress, the stress-reducing mechanisms of music might be a fruitful area for research.

The contemporary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen observed that “sonic vibrations do not only penetrate ears and skin. They penetrate the entire body, reaching the soul, the psychic center of perception.”

Stockhausen believed that the ratio between the unknown and the known has remained pretty much the same over time: The discoveries of science may explain much, but new questions are perpetually raised. Thus wonder will never die, and the poets may have the last word. What better words than these from Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Let knowledge grow from more to more,/ But more of reverence in us dwell;/That mind and soul, according well,/May make one music as before.”

Also read: Music on the Mind: A Neurologist’s Take

An Entertaining Approach to Science Education

A shot of a microphone in the foreground with stage lights in the background.

Who said that science can’t be fun? These scientists let lose for the night to both entertain and educate their audience.

Published June 1, 2003

By Dennis Gaffney

Image courtesy of Chalabala via stock.adobe.com.

It’s about an hour before Helen Davies is scheduled to sing in the basement grotto at the Cornelia Street Café in New York’s Greenwich Village. The crowd hasn’t yet filtered into the long and narrow bohemian space, with its low ceilings, candle lighting, and tables the size of pizza pies.

By day, Davies is a professor of microbiology. Performing, though, as her stomach reminds her, is not the same as teaching. “I guess you’d say I have butterflies,” admits the professor, who is 77 years old. “That’s a gastro-entomological term.”

Davies is part of the February edition of the monthly “Entertaining Science” series, which aspires to mix a little science, the spoken word and some music in a café setting. Tonight, Davies does all three when she steps onto a stage not much larger than a hospital gurney and sings “Leprosy,” written to the tune of the Beatles hit “Yesterday:”

Leprosy…
Bits and pieces falling off of me.
But it isn’t the toxicity
It’s just neglect of injury.
Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be
Can’t feel anything peripherally…

Davies, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, usually uses such songs – “I have about 40, but I’m happiest with 12,” she says – to provide mnemonic devices to medical students who must memorize mountains of minutiae about infectious diseases.

Song as a Mnemonic Device for Medical Students

From left: Nobelist Roald Hoffman, Professor Helen Davies, and filmmaker Daniel Conrad.

A good example is “Gonococci,” a homage to bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Davies wrote the lyrics to the tune “She’ll be Comin Round the Mountain When She Comes.” This evening, Davies asks just the men in the audience to sing the second stanza from the song sheets she has distributed:

Let’s not clap for gonococcus named for Neisser
Which infects when to your life you add some spice sir.
Prostatitis, urethritis,
And Epididymitis
You can get it many times, not once or twice sir.

The audience breaks into laughter as often as it breaks into song. It’s just the kind of performance that Roald Hoffmann, the playful master of ceremonies for “Entertaining Science,” loves to schedule. “We’re not trying to teach science as much as we’re trying to have fun with science,” explains Hoffmann, who is a poet and a popularizer of science – as well as a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. “For me, the arts are a complementary way to understand this beautiful and terrible world around us.” Robin Hirsch, one of the café’s owners, has compared the combinations of art and science that Hoffmann has scheduled to “atomic particles colliding together.”

Benoit Mandelbrot, largely responsible for fractal geometry, told stories about fractals at the evening titled “The Smooth and the Wildly Rough,” held last September. “I discussed the eternal fight between the rough and the smooth,” says Mandelbrot, who is in attendance this evening. “There’s no good story without conflict.”

Poetry, Music, Film, and More

Food, wine, and…all that jazz.

Sharing the stage with him that September night was poet Emily Grosholz, who read poems sparked by high-level mathematics. Experimental musician Elliott Sharp played fractal-inspired music on his electric guitar. A program last December included a Columbia University chemist who described his research on the biochemistry of vision. A colleague then joined him on stage and the two each dazzled the crowd with magic tricks – hence the evening’s title, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t.”

“The evening must have two elements,” Hoffmann says. “It has to have a theme and then two or three performers who are loosely connected.” The connection this February evening is familial. The warm-up act to Davies is Daniel Conrad, a one-time molecular immunologist who has become an experimental filmmaker. He also happens to be Davies’ son.

The filmmaker began the evening by discussing how films are structured like organisms – pretty academic stuff. Then he showed two of his films, which featured the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a classical music soundtrack, the buildings of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, views of Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands, and super-imposed dancers who moved more like organisms than humans.

A Free Meal

Clearly, the films are more art than science. All the performers, regardless of their fame, are paid with only a free meal, which they eat upstairs in Cornelia Street Cafe’s restaurant after the show. While waiting for dinner, Mandelbrot explains why he regularly attends the series. “All my work is between fields, so the people I feel most at ease with don’t have a devotion to just one field,” he says. He’s referring to the dozen people at the dinner table, who, lubricated by a few complimentary bottles of wine, converse about the pianist Glenn Gould, Lyme disease, grandmothering, Tourette’s syndrome, and choreographer George Balanchine.

“People have told me we could fill Carnegie Hall with this series,” says Hirsch. “But there wouldn’t be the same sense of play. There would be too much at stake. Besides, Helen would have to worry about singing perfectly in tune.”

Also read: Neural Harmony: When Arts Meets Neuroscience

Healthy Approaches to Dealing with Stress

A woman jogs on a running path while exercising outside on a sunny day.

Neuroscientists say that a “healthy lifestyle” is perhaps the most effective prescriptions for dealing with chronic stress.

Published June 1, 2003

By Jeffrey Penn

Image courtesy of Farknot Architect via stock.adobe.com.

Feeling stressed out? Anxious? Frustrated and angry? Looking for a way out?

Some significant advances in the neurosciences are revealing that stress is actually a complex relationship of internal and external factors, and that some relatively simple lifestyle changes can contribute to a sense of well being and improve health.

“A healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce stress,” according to Bruce S. McEwen, head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller University in New York and co-author of the recently published The End of Stress As We Know It (Joseph Henry Press).

The notion that stress is the result of external pressures is incomplete, said McEwen, who summarized his book during a March 18 lecture at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy). Research now reveals how the body’s defense mechanisms are involved in keeping stress at bay, as well as how the body’s defense system breaks down from time to time.

When the body is working properly, a process known as “allostasis” helps individuals adapt to and survive the real or imagined threats that confront them in the course of everyday life. McEwen explained that the allostasis process is maintained by a complex network – including hormones, the autonomic nervous system, neurotransmitters in the brain, and chemicals in the immune system – in the body.

“When this network is working efficiently, its activity helps to mobilize energy reserves, promote efficient cardiovascular function, enhance memory of important events and enhance the immune defense towards pathogens,” McEwen said. Normally, the body is able to self-regulate the proper responses to external pressures, but occasionally it reaches a limit known as “allostatic overload.”

Bruce S. McEwen

External Stress Factors

Many external pressures can contribute to allostatic overload, according to McEwen, such as conflicts at work or home, fears about war and terrorism, overworking, lack of sleep, economic difficulties, lack of exercise, excessive drinking and bad eating habits. Genetic risk factors, such as a predisposition for cardiovascular disease or diabetes, can also contribute to allostatic overload.

“If the imbalances in the body’s regulatory network persist over long periods of time, the result can lead to disease,” McEwen said. “Hardening of the arteries, arthritis, diabetes, obesity, depressive illness and certain types of memory loss are among the disorders that are accelerated by allostatic overload,” he added. He cited research indicating that long-term stress also affects the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions of the brain that regulate fear, emotions and memory.

According to McEwen, “genes, early development, and life experiences all contribute to determining how the brain responds to environmental stresses.” Research has revealed that external factors in society also can influence health and disease commonly related to stress.

“In industrialized societies, allostatic overload occurs with increasing frequency at lower levels of education and income,” McEwen noted. He pointed out that mortality rates and levels of diseases associated with allostatic load are much higher among people in lower socioeconomic status. “A combination of lifestyle, perceptions of inequality and stressful life experiences appear to play a role,” he said.

Best Antidote: Healthy Lifestyle

What can be done to reduce allostatic load and the stress associated with it? Changes in lifestyle are the best remedy, according to McEwen. “Maintaining social ties with friends and family is one of the most important factors in reducing stress,” he said. “In addition, restorative sleep, and regular, moderate exercise are all important,” he added. “Regular, moderate exercise not only increases muscle utilization of energy, but also enhances formation of new nerve cells in areas of the brain that support memory.”

McEwen said that, in addition to individual responses to counteract allostatic overload and reduce stress, the private sector and policy makers also can contribute to well-being. “Government policies that recognize the impact of inequality, promote comprehensive health care and reduce smoking, and provide housing and community services are also very important,” he said.

Stress reduction is not only critical for individuals, he added, but for the health and welfare of the wider society as well. “By 2020, depression will be the second-leading cause of disease in this country,” he concluded.

Also read: Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

Studying Mental Health: Categories or Dimensions?

A medical professional holds the hand of a patient to comfort them.

Experts say that elements of both psychiatry and psychology should be considered when studying mental health.

Published June 1, 2003

By Vida Foubiste

Image courtesy of wutzkoh via stock.adobe.com.

One of the dichotomies between basic and clinical research into childhood mental illness has been the nomenclature of classification. Psychiatrists have historically used “categories” to classify neurological disorders; psychologists have turned to “dimensions.”

Thus, the Roots of Mental Illness in Children and Adolescents conference organizers set out to find a keynote speaker who could bridge this sometimes “cavernous gap,” said Doreen S. Koretz, chief of the Developmental Psychopathology and Prevention Research Branch, Division of Mental Disorders, Behavioral Research and AIDS, at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda. The conference was supported by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy).

They turned to Sir Michael Rutter, MD, F.R.S., professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, in London, and a leading expert in child psychiatric research.

By his own admission, Sir Michael took a rather “British approach” and, one by one, challenged “meta-theoretical claims” behind the two approaches. “The battle, as it has sometimes been, between dimensional and categorical approaches is rather futile,” he admitted. Ultimately, both are necessary.

Among the claims he challenged to reach that conclusion were:

Sir Michael Rutter, MD, F.R.S.

Dimensional analyses have greater statistical power. But, says Sir Michael, odds ratios can sometimes be preferable. A recent study using Canadian data, for example, found no difference between maternal care and group day care on physical aggression in children ages two and three — except when the children came from families at high psychosocial risk. “Where there was high family risk, the rates of aggression were substantially higher among those receiving family home care,” he said.

Another assumes that the most important environmental influences are outside the family and only extreme environments have any effects of functional importance. “Both are demonstrably false,” said Sir Michael. A French study has shown that children removed from their parents because of abuse or neglect and then adopted between the ages of four and six-and-a-half have a rise in IQ at adolescence, the degree of which is systematically related to the socio-educational level of the adoptive homes. “These are differences within the relatively narrow range of adoptive homes,” he explained.

A further wrong assumption is that causal inferences can be partitioned into those that are genetically or environmentally mediated, with their summation amounting to 100 percent of effects. One example of the shortcoming of this claim is the role that people themselves play in selecting and shaping their environment. A longitudinal study of girls at age 10 with anti-social behavior found that, in the absence of marital support, there is a high degree of persistence 18 years later. “But, given marital support, there is a huge improvement in social functioning,” said Sir Michael.

“There’s an American saying, which says something like, ‘It ain’t ignorance that does the harm, it’s knowing too many things that ain’t true,’” Sir Michael said. “I’m a great believer in that.”

Also read: Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

A Scientific Explanation to the Demise of Dinosaurs

Partially dug up bones of a dinosaur.

You may know that a meteoric collision likely led to the demise of dinosaurs, but did you know earth’s had at least five mass extinctions during its history?

Published March 1, 2003

By Jeffrey Penn

Image courtesy of Panupong via stock.adobe.com.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the history of life on earth has been significantly affected by the collision of comets, meteorites and asteroids, resulting in global catastrophe and mass extinctions.

“Prehistoric mass extinctions of life were much more affected by extraterrestrial events than had ever been thought,” Michael Rampino, PhD, of New York University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told a Nov. 4, 2002, gathering at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy). “Earth’s history has been marked by periodic mass extinctions of life.”

Although scientists who first theorized that explosive collisions had significantly altered life on earth were not always taken seriously, Rampino said the theory is now not only accepted, but is considered among the most exciting fields in the sciences. “Astronomers and paleontologists formerly didn’t have cause to engage in conversations,” he said. “Now they have come to understand that their worlds are intimately connected.”

Five Mass Extinctions

More than 99 percent of species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct, according to Rampino. Paleontologists have identified five major mass extinctions and 20 minor mass extinctions on the planet earth. “The largest mass extinction was approximately 250 million years ago,” he said, “when 95 percent of marine species were wiped out.”

A mass extinction about 65 million years ago has long been widely recognized by scientists, since it represents the time when dinosaurs became extinct. “Dinosaurs were successful for a period of nearly 135 million years and suddenly became extinct about 65 million years ago,” Rampino said. “As many as 50 theories have been offered to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs, but none of those theories was supported by physical evidence.”

In the past 20 years, however, physical evidence gathered from sites as far apart as Italy and Colorado revealed that a thin layer of clay separated the geological record into two distinct eras. Analysis of the clay revealed “elevated levels of the kind of metals that are rare in terrestrial settings, but abundant in asteroids and meteorites,” Rampino said. “A similar review of geological samples from more than 150 sites around the world revealed that there is a global layer of this clay.”

In addition, scientists discovered a “shock layer” of quartz crystals in the clay, indicating high-pressure shocks. “Meteorite craters are the only places on earth that show these quartz crystals,” Rampino said. Scientists also discovered tiny spheres of glass in the clay. They are thought to have formed by intense heat from the impact and then dispersed into the atmosphere, where they cooled into their spherical shapes and dropped back to the ground.

Where is the Crater?

Despite the mounting evidence that a meteoric collision had eliminated the dinosaurs, scientists initially could not identify any crater on the earth that would explain the mass extinctions. In 1990, however, the giant Chicxulub Crater – nearly 200 kilometers in diameter – was discovered buried in the shallow sea just off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Additional exploration in Mexico indicated a thick bed of course sand, likely washed to shore by a giant wave (tsunami), in the precise layer of the geological record thought to indicate the mass extinction 65 million years ago.

What happened when the meteor collided with the earth? According to Rampino, scientists have estimated the object was nearly 10 kilometers long, causing the crater nearly 200 kilometers in diameter.

Environmental Catastrophe

“Dust and shock material were thrown out of the impact site into the atmosphere, causing heat and fires all over the world,” Rampino said. “The impact would have a tremendous, catastrophic effect on the environment. A high level of dust and ash would have clouded the sky, leading to a cooling and darkening that may have prevented photosynthesis.”

The geologist said such an event could have resulted in an “impact winter” lasting six months or longer. “Such an abrupt impact would lead to nothing less than a world-ending destruction of life,” Rampino said. “Food chains in the ocean and on land were broken, and plants and animals died out.”

Whatever life survived the calamity would continue to evolve, but the earth would see major changes in the dominant forms of life that remained. “The impact would provide opportunities for survivors to expand into empty niches, so that they dominate the earth during the next geological period,” Rampino added.

Prior Mass Extinctions?

Now that scientific consensus has accepted an impact collision as the most likely explanation for the extinction of dinosaurs, geologists are trying to determine if such collisions can be linked to other major and minor mass extinctions identified in the geological record.

Scientists have identified approximately 150 large impact craters on the earth. A statistical analysis reveals that about every 100,000 years a 1-kilometer object collides with earth, creating a crater of about 20 kilometers in diameter. “Only about once every 100 million years is there an impact of the magnitude that is capable of causing the dust storms and global fires believed to have eliminated the dinosaurs,” Rampino said.

Final proof of a connection between the largest mass extinction on earth – about 200-250 million years ago – and an impact collision has yet to be found. Evidence of such a crater may have eroded, he said, or remain hidden, perhaps below deep ocean water.

Future Extinctions?

If past evidence is also prologue, an impact collision that might cause mass extinctions on earth is likely in the next 40 million years or so, Rampino pointed out. “Earth exists in a zone of many earth-crossing asteroids and comets,” he noted.

While such projections appear far removed from the present, Rampino left his audience with a sobering fact. Concerning the potentially dangerous approach of comets, asteroids and meteorites, he pointed out, “there are no stop signs in outer space.”

Also read: Prehistoric Sloth-Like Creatures May Have Roamed the US

Exploring Movement in Time and Space

An artsy, black and white photo of a woman doing a dance.

Many of the dances choreographed by this MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner brings in elements of science, such as the physics of kinetic sound.

Published March 1, 2003

By Garry D. Reigenborn

Image courtesy of Pixel-Shot via stock.adobe.com.

Elizabeth Streb is a genius. She has been certified as such by the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award she received in 1997. If “genius” implies exceptional intellectual or creative power, however, Streb didn’t require any certification to qualify for such an appellation.

A choreographer with an intense curiosity and willingness – no, need – to experiment and test the boundaries of movement, Streb’s passion has resulted in a body of work that takes “dance” into a new dimension. As The New York Times said in a recent article, “Streb’s rough and tumble dances are about velocity, physical stamina and an unwillingness to bow to gravity without a fight.”

For the past 20 years her work has been centered on challenging the laws of gravity, informed by a scientific inquiry into the physics of kinetic energy.

“I’d love to defy the laws of Newton, but I’m told that’s not possible,” she says. “But my battle cry is to at least try, and to keep asking questions about movement without being satisfied with first answers.”

Streb is currently the Dean’s Special Scholar at New York University, where she’s studying physics, mathematics, and philosophy and working toward a M.A. in Time and Space. She graduated from the State University of New York at Brockport in 1972 with a degree in modern dance – and quickly transformed much of what she learned.

“I soon discovered that traditional dance was deeply married to music, borrowing its compositional forms rather than playing by its own rules,” she says. “If dance is an art of movement, then it’s not okay just to be on your feet, on a horizontal surface transferring weight. That’s like ignoring space.”

Pop Action

Among her early teachers was the great American choreographer Merce Cunningham, from whom she learned the importance of timing, removing dance from music but retaining those rhythmic forces needed to get a dancer from here to there. She developed her own language to describe her work, “Pop Action.” In a sense, that’s what happens during performances, as the dancers’ bodies expand and contract.

“The muscles ‘pop,’ and this muscular action combines with aspects of time, space and precision to create multi-directional theatrical images,” she explains.

With the company she founded in 1985, STREB/Ringside, she devises what one writer called “essays on the human body’s interaction with Newton’s Laws.” In “Cannonball Drop,” for example, several cannonballs splash into tubs of water and then, in a reference to Galileo’s famous experiment, Streb casually walks onto the stage and drops a feather, watching it drift lazily downward.

In “Breakthru,” which Streb says is about the effect of action on substance, dancers wearing protective goggles dive headfirst through a panel of glass without hurting themselves. In “Fly,” described as her attempt to “destroy the tyranny of the floor,” a performer buckled into a 16-foot-long steel lever loaded with counterweights that can spin and soar through the air.

For one of her works, Streb collaborated with math and science professors at the University of California-Berkeley to develop a new piece of machinery, which she dubbed the “Catastrophic Realizer.” It looks like a seesaw that moves in circles as well as up and down, with one end that can touch the ground and another that can’t. Instead of seats at the ends of the beam, the machine features oval platforms attached by hinges, creating yet another element of instability.

Working Toward an Answer

Like Newton, who developed theories based on mathematics that made it possible for predictions to be confirmed by real-world experiments, Streb concocts possible scenarios for her actions and then devises ‘experiments’ that allow her to ratify the results. She acknowledges that her work is not a literal translation of her scientific studies, but that it reflects her efforts at reaching the core of a particular action problem.

“Studying math, physics and philosophy shows me the way, method-wise, to approach finding answers to my questions about movement,” she said. “It’s made me come back to my work and look at things like the fundamental theorems of calculus, or the application of the chain rule, and analyze the types of questions I’m asking about movement in a deeper way.”

She added that, in science “you work and work toward an answer, and then that moment comes when you master and understand it. I try to mimic that experience in the studio in order to solve the problem I’m encountering.”

An Obsession with Learning

Streb’s obsession with learning and searching for answers is reflected in her commitment to working with young people. She has long held classes for children and community residents and will extend that educational component in her new studio building, an old mustard factory in a working-class area of Brooklyn. She started teaching children from two local YMCA’s this year and has had discussions with the principals of 10 public and private schools in the area about classes for their students.

“Children are the ‘truth-sayers’ of movement,” she says. “They’re purely physical and unrestrained. That so often gets stripped away from them. I believe we shouldn’t censor movement but encourage it. Believe me, my dancers and I learn as much about energy and bravery and honesty of movement from the children as they learn from us.”

A local community leader supports Streb’s educational efforts because “physical activity helps kids mentally, physically and spiritually, and through dance they can express themselves, learn teamwork and increase their self-esteem.”

Einstein once said that Newton “combined the experimenter, the theorist, the mechanic and, not least, the artist, in exposition.” Much the same can be said for Elizabeth Streb.

Also read:The Intersection of Sports and STEM

About the Author

Garry Reigenborn is a choreographer and assistant professor of Dance at Bard College, New York. He has been affiliated with the Lucinda Childs Dance Company as a dancer and rehearsal director since 1982.

130 Years Later: Darwin’s Theories Stand

A baby primate is handled by a caretaker after getting a bath.

While Darwin theorized about it more than a century ago, scientists continue to study links between emotions in humans and in animals.

Published January 1, 2003

By Rosemarie Foster

Image courtesy of NPD stock via stocka.adobe.com.

Birds do it. Bees do it. Humans and chimpanzees do it. What do we have in common? Expressing our emotions, albeit in different ways. How we do it and why was the subject of a recent two-day conference called Emotions Inside Out, sponsored by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) in November and held at The Rockefeller University.

The topic is not new: In his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin recounted his observations of animals, his own children and other people, linking particular expressions with specific emotions. His book was “radical for his time and for today,” explained Paul Ekman, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and conference chair. “We all stand on the contributions this great man made in this extraordinary book.”

Face Value

The face is often our first encounter with another’s emotions. Frans B.M. de Waal, PhD, of Emory University’s Yerkes Primate Center, scrutinizes the facial expressions and gestures of chimpanzees and their cousins, the bonobos, and has found remarkable similarities with humans. They smile and laugh like we do. A chimp may even extend a hand to another chimp after having been fighting – as a sign of reconciliation.

Image courtesy of ballabeyla via stock.adobe.com.

At Yerkes, Lisa A. Parr, PhD, observes how chimpanzees respond to photographs and sound recordings of other chimps. She has found that they process both visual and auditory cues to interpret emotion, with certain facial expressions and sounds having more relevance than others.

The same goes for human infants. “The emotional signals of a mother influence her baby in very powerful ways, and some of those have long-lasting impact,” said Joseph J. Campos, PhD, of U.C., Berkeley. For example, a mother may use facial expressions and varying tones of voice to denote approval or disapproval of her young infant’s actions.

By 12 months, infants begin seeking out emotional information themselves as a means of interpreting what’s happening around them. Emotional sharing between the infant and the mother begins shortly thereafter.

Infants’ emotional expression also varies by culture. Linda A. Camras, PhD, of DePaul University, compares facial expressions and reactions among infants of different nationalities who are exposed to stimuli that elicit positive and negative emotions. She has found that European-American babies are more expressive than Chinese infants, with Japanese babies falling somewhere in between.

Liar, Liar?

“The face lies and the face leaks,” said Paul Ekman in his presentation on facial expressions and deception. He described the value of interpreting facial “micro-expressions,” which may only last 1/25th of a second but reveal a person’s true intent. Micro-expressions, and the messages they convey, become much more apparent when viewed using slow-motion video, though trained observers can spot them instantly. They are often involuntary muscular movements of which the speaker is unaware.

“Facial expressions that contain an involuntary movement that is difficult to make voluntarily are the most reliable,” added Ekman. Taken in context with the pitch of a person’s voice, micro-expressions are a “very real source of information.”

Such fleeting expressions were also addressed by Dacher Keltner, PhD, of U.C., Berkeley. In a study of the faces of women in Mills College yearbook photos taken more than 30 years ago, Keltner found that women who displayed strong, natural smiles in the photos later felt the happiest over the course of their lives, and had better marriages. “Very brief observations of the face can tell us a tremendous amount about life,” he concluded.

Calls of the Wild

Some animals rely more on auditory displays to express their emotions. Superb starlings, diana monkeys, and baboons of Botswana’s Okavango Delta all have a catalogue of alarm calls to differentiate airborne predators (such as an eagle) from those on the ground (such as a leopard), letting nearby animals know how to escape.

“These vocalizations are clearly emotional signals, given in highly emotionally charged situations,” explained Robert M. Seyfarth, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania. The characteristic “wahoo” sound of the baboons also differentiates high- from low-ranking males, as well as young from old.

Jo-Anne Bachorowski, PhD, of Vanderbilt University, might argue that humans use laughter in a similar way, to influence the response of those who hear it. Her studies have shown that men laugh most strongly with other male friends, while women’s laughs are stronger in the presence of other males (friends as well as strangers). “Laughter is a tool to elicit affect, and thereby shape the behavior of the listener toward the laugher,” she concluded.

Blood, Sweat, and Fears

When we laugh or cry – and when we try to stifle those feelings – our bodies respond with measurable responses in the heart and brain.

“There is no single emotion center in the brain,” said Richard J. Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin. Rather, the seat of emotion stretches across several regions.

Much of emotion is regulated by various areas in the prefrontal cortex, a finding supported by Davidson’s functional MRI studies. Those investigations also demonstrated contractility in the heart in response to the threat of shock, as well as activation of the brain’s amygdala.

David G. Amaral, PhD, of U.C., Davis, has done studies in monkeys confirming the role of the amygdala as the fear-processing center of the brain. “The amygdala is a protection device that not only instills a fear response,” he explained, “but controls behavior so that an individual can evaluate a situation.”

In response to fear, some of us turn white. Robert W. Levenson, PhD, of U.C., Berkeley, explained how that response is regulated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

In addition to making us blush with embarrassment or turn red with anger, the ANS governs the physiological responses that occur when we try to suppress an emotion we are feeling. Levenson’s studies demonstrate that such suppression can cause increased heart rate and skin conductance.

Emotion in the Golden Years

We know our bodies begin to slow down as we age. But our emotional perception actually gets better. “Emotional experience and regulation improve with age, despite the losses that occur with aging,” noted Laura L. Carstensen, PhD, of Stanford University.

In the second half of life, people reprioritize their lives in pursuit of emotional balance and well-being. Her research shows they’re more likely to recall positive images and messages, and desire more time with their families. Concluded Carstensen, “As we age, we begin to focus on the positive, forget about the negative, and find a way to successfully navigate through life in our later years.” And that’s good news.

Also read: 165 Years of ‘On the Origin of Species’

Science and Citizenship: ‘A Matter of Trust’

A woman writes math equations on a chalkboard.

Public trust in science is an issue as old as time, but experts are proposing new methods and approaches aim to change this.

Published January 1, 2003

By Jennifer Tang

Image courtesy of RomanR via stock.adobe.com.

Scientists and policymakers now insist that the public must understand science if people are to be useful citizens – capable of functioning as workers, community members and informed citizens in a technological age.

But what does public understanding mean? And what can we do to prepare the public, and particularly the young, for lives of citizenship and social responsibility – as well as success in workplaces that are increasingly shaped by science and technology?

These issues were the focus of the Willard Jacobson Lecture recently given by Dr. Judith A. Ramaley, assistant director, Education & Human Resources, National Science Foundation. Ramaley, the winner of this year’s Jacobson Award, was honored for her work in mathematics and science education projects.

Public Understanding?

How much do our citizens really “know” about science? According to Ramaley, approximately 20 percent of American adults think they are well informed about new scientific discoveries and technologies, while 25 percent say they understand enough about scientific inquiry to make informed judgments about scientific research reported in the media. About 14 percent admit they pay attention to science and technology policy issues only when a crisis compels their attention.

Ramaley defined what a public understanding of science would encompass: it means paying careful and thoughtful attention to science and technology issues while also recognizing the strengths and limitations of these fields. Scientific literacy involves understanding scientific and technical concepts and vocabulary as well as the use of various sources of such information.

But how well prepared is the public to distinguish valid sources of information from useless or even dangerous misrepresentations?

Developing Public Trust

Dr. Judith A. Ramaley

Surveys show that public trust in science and scientists is highest in times of peace, Ramaley noted. This confidence can waver, however, when a crisis emerges over such controversial subjects as nuclear power, genetic engineering or space exploration.

“People who think that science is a product rather than a messy process of inquiry can become profoundly uncomfortable when they are brought face-to-face with the uncertainties and arguments at the frontiers of science,” she observed. “When people are fearful, they want simple answers to emotionally laden questions, preferring the opinions of their friends or trusted advisors over the information provided by scientists.”

How, then, can we increase the public’s trust in the scientific community? The UK’s public outreach effort was cited as a model. The Citizen Foresight project, launched by the London Centre for Governance, Innovation and Science, offered citizens an opportunity to meet with scientists. British citizens, selected at random, met every week to explore not only the “facts,” but also the deeper ethical and emotional issues associated with questions about food supplies and agricultural technologies.

“The British have learned that public trust and confidence cannot be gained simply through providing information about science, but by direct dialogue and discussion about the issues,” she observed. “Scientific knowledge must be grounded in a moral and ethical foundation that is seen as legitimate by the public and is accepted as responsive to their needs and interests.”

Science for Everyone

How science is taught in the schools also is vital to promoting a public understanding of science. “Students can best learn how science is done by doing genuine scientific inquiry,” she said.

Science also can be made appealing to students if they view science as being connected to their own lives and interests. “When science is meaningfully connected to things that young people care about, it becomes an experience rather than a product to be memorized,” she added.

In addition, schools should integrate scientific exploration with other disciplines so that students can see how science contributes to understanding in any field, and how other fields contribute to science. “Science is for everybody,” Ramaley said. She recommends a curriculum in which disciplines that foster creative and critical thinking – such as language and literature, history, the arts and foreign languages – predominate.

Understanding science, however, poses a mental challenge. “New knowledge can only be absorbed and put in context if the participant can uncover older, ‘untrue,’ knowledge and discard it,” she said. “If during our education, we are never required to examine those deeper assumptions, acquired early and applied without thought to the challenges of daily life, we will not be responsive to the insights and knowledge generated by any discipline, including the sciences and mathematics.”

Also read: Building Trust Through Transparency in Biorisk Management

Challenging Female Stereotypes in STEM

A colorized photo of a woman working with machinery as part of the war effort during WWII.

A new book explores the stereotypes that women overcame, as well as their accomplishments achieved, when contributing to the war effort in WWII.

Published January 1, 2003

By Jeffrey Penn

A colorized photo of real life “Rosie the Riveter.” Image courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Advertising and other visual images during the past century have helped shape and challenge prevailing stereotypes about the role of women at home and in society, according to a social historian who recently addressed a gathering at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) on the subject of “Woman and the Machine: Changing Images.”

“These contrasting images reveal signs of ambivalence in deeply felt social attitudes about women’s roles and technical abilities,” said Julie Wosk, professor of Art History, English, and Studio Painting at SUNY Maritime College and author of the recently published Women and the Machine: Representations From the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Breaking Old Frameworks

It was recognized soon after new machines and technologies became widespread following the Industrial Revolution that the breaking of old frameworks could have a disorienting effect on people. “In early images that anxiety was often expressed visually in people being confused or torn apart by exploding steam-powered machines,” Wosk said.

Commenting on a series of slides, Wosk noted that many of the early images portrayed machines as the tools that could liberate women from the drudgery associated with the manual labor of domestic life. “Machines and technology have often been sold as liberating to women,” she said, “but there also has been an enslaving of women.” New electrical appliances, for example, were supposed to emancipate women from housework. “But there were often heightened expectations about increased cleanliness,” Wosk said, “and a belief that the new appliances would permit women to do even more work.”

Although some images challenged stereotyped assumptions about the relationship of women to machines, just as many used women as mere decorations or sentimental and romantic adornments to whatever was being marketed. “Women were early portrayed as childlike and naive, requiring simple machines in contrast to men, whose sphere was assumed to be machines and technology,” Wosk said. “Women were often portrayed as aghast at machines, technologically challenged, forlorn and baffled.”

The “Rosie the Riveter” poster. Image courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

Riding Old Assumptions

In early advertisements and motion pictures associated with electricity and electrical devices, women often appeared as “daffy and fearful,” Wosk noted, “or, occasionally, as electrically created facsimiles of females compliant to men.” There were, however, some positive female images in early advertisements related to electricity. But the ambivalence was still there, Wosk suggested, seen in the notion that gas engine automobiles were masculine and electric automobiles were especially suited for women because they were clean and easy to operate.

More than in any other advertising genre, visual images related to transportation – particularly bicycles, automobiles and airplanes – have both supported and challenged conventional assumptions about the role of women, Wosk said.

Early bicycle advertising included images of women, but the invention of the safety bicycle in the 1890s “contributed most to the idea that women could be fully independent and mobile,” Wosk said. “A bicycle-riding craze began because bicycles were lighter, more stable, and the closed gears permitted women to ride bikes without their skirts getting caught. The invention of coaster brakes and a drop-frame bicycle for women also encouraged them to take up bike riding.”

Even though many images portrayed women on bicycles, they often contained a subtle suggestion. In satiric stereoscopic photos, she said, “You often see men in the background looking nervous that women might just ride away from their responsibilities at home.”

The advent of automobiles, however, helped women refute stereotypes that they were inept, she said. Female images were increasingly used to market the vehicles, and magazine photos included portrayals of so-called “flappers” displaying their sense of independence in cars.

A Cultural Ambivalence

Peggy Bridgeman at the left demonstrates to Ruth Harris the correct technique while their instructor, Lee Fiscus, looks on attentively, in the Gary plant of the Tubular Alloy Steel Corporation, United States Steel Corporation subsidiary. Peggy is acclaimed by her superiors to be one of the most skilled welders they have had working with them. Image courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain.

Again, however, many early images of women with autos revealed a cultural ambivalence. “You often find that women in advertising images are presented as being more interested in the color and upholstery of the interior of cars than in the mechanics of the internal combustion engine,” Wosk said. And she pointed out that artists’ images sometimes supported the notion that women “were harebrained, maniacal drivers.”

The invention of the airplane, Wosk believes, combined with rapid social change during both world wars to transform the image of women in visual and advertising images. “With airplanes there was a sense that women could transcend the earth and the confining cultural notions about women’s lack of technical abilities.” As one early female aviator wrote, “Flying is the only real freedom we are privileged to possess.”

Service During WWI

Although the shift in expectations regarding women during World War II is well documented, Wosk noted that women were recruited to serve as machine tool operators, automobile repairers and workers in airline manufacturing as early as World War I.

“During World War II, women began to redefine their roles and sense of patriotic duty as they learned new jobs vacated by men who entered the military,” Wosk said. Many new images portrayed women in jobs formerly held only by men, including famous renderings of “Rosie the Riveter.” Yet even in those images, “Rosie often was portrayed with a makeup compact in her pocket.” In many of the new images, Wosk said, “women were portrayed as changing their clothes – a practical requirement related to the new jobs they were doing, but also a symbol of transformation.”

After World War II, advertising images attempted to persuade women to revert to their former clothing styles and occupations. “Women were encouraged to become enamored of their home appliances again,” Wosk concluded.

Also read:Celebrating Girls and Women in Science

About Prof. Wosk

Professor Julie Wosk received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis (graduating magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), an M.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. She has twice been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in art history – at Princeton and Columbia University. She is also an artist whose oil paintings and large-format color photographs have been exhibited in New York and Connecticut galleries.

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