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Secret Science Alert: This month, the Secret Science Club meets at the Bell House , the all-new all-awesome venue in Gowanus, Brooklyn, created by the owners of Union Hall (our lovely hosts). Make like a bathysphere and submerge, because the Secret Science Club is going down . Intrepid neurobiologist (and scuba diver) Vincent Pieribone lures us into the depths—where ocean research and brain science collide. Dr. Pieribone uncovers the secrets of the seas and technicolor reefs in his quest for biofluorescent creatures —and then shows how they can be used to create glowing proteins that make cells and neurons light up in the lab. A cellular and molecular biologist at Yale University’s School of Medicine and the co-author of Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence , Dr. Pieribone asks: --What do jellyfish and coral reefs have to do with the human brain and quest for medical cures? --What makes undersea animals glow? --How can biofluorescent technology link t...

Step into the great glass elevator . . . the Secret Science Club is heading skyward with microbiologist and ecologist Dickson Despommier , whose ambitious project to create vertical farms in urban skyscrapers could radically re-vision the way we live—and eat. A professor of environmental science and public health at Columbia University, Dr. Despommier asks: --How might urban sky farms reduce global warming , and give “eating local” a whole new meaning? --What technologies and architectural designs are appropriate for vertical farms? --How did studying parasites in underdeveloped countries lead to his concept for living skyscrapers? Dr. Despommier’s provocative ideas for re-thinking agriculture and land use have been the subject of recent articles in the New York Times , Time , New York Magazine , and Scientific American . Don’t miss this tall tale . . . Before & After -- Groove to towering tunes and vaulting video -- Stick around for the lofty Q&A -- And try our stratosp...

Leslie Madsen-Brooks, University of California, Davis (An essay in the " What's American About the History of Science in America? " series) Earlier this year, I was undertaking research in the archives of a science museum when a fellow researcher, a senior professor, asked what I was working on. I told him I was looking into the ways a particular woman scientist worked with amateur scientists and botanical enthusiasts. He asked if I had been to the History of Science Society annual meetings. I said I wasn’t interested because I hadn’t seen sufficient evidence in paper titles that panels at the conference were engaging with gender issues in a substantive way. Since I’m a historian of women in science, there were other meetings on which I’d rather spend my lean conference-going budget. He pointed out there have been women on the executive committee of the HSS, and I explained that was great, but that if a critical mass of participants weren’t going to be talking about w...

Kimberly A. Hamlin, Miami University (An essay in the " What's American About the History of Science in America? " series) Unlike many historians of science, few of us in American studies come from a background in science. We are trained to analyze culture from an interdisciplinary perspective and to connect the past to the present, often explicitly. Our research reflects this training as does our overriding concern for issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and access. Like the history of science, most American studies research on science and technology currently focuses on twentieth century developments and it is increasingly transnational in scope, again begging the question of “what’s American about the history of science in America.” I should also note that, to-date, American studies scholars have been more engaged with technology than with science, though in the last couple of years work on science has increased as well. Indeed, more and more scholars of scie...

John Burnham,Ohio State University (An essay in the " What's American About the History of Science in America? " series) To the best of my knowledge, I was only the second person to offer a regular course in the history of American science in a major graduate school, in this case, Ohio State University. That was in 1963-64. The first to offer such a course was Hunter Dupree, at the University of California, Berkeley. It is a matter of great satisfaction to me that the History of Science Society finally a few years ago honored Dupree’s landmark contributions to the field of the history of American science. When I started my teaching, there were only rudimentary materials available. Fortunately, I had been trained to teach from primary sources, and so I developed a reasonably coherent course. Almost immediately, in 1964, Nathan Reingold published a collection of nineteenth-century documents, which was a great help for that part of the course. Brooke Hindle had already...