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Greetings!
This is the August 2004 issue of the Fulbright Academy of Science &
Technology's bulletin.
If you are a first-time recipient, please note that our publication is
sent to educational innovators and leaders in scientific and technical
fields in the US and around the world. Please refer to the end of this
bulletin for additional information about the Academy and our mission. We
can be reached at info@fulbrighter.org
If you are not a member, please consider joining. We look forward to
your involvement in the Academy.
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Program At Harvard University on 9/1/04 |
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| The Academy is hosting a reception on
Wednesday, September 1 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to recognize
local Fulbrighters and local hosts of visiting scholars.
Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of Fulbrighters,
and for years Harvard has been the leading institution worldwide for
hosting Fulbrighters.
The program is in the Agassiz Room at Harvard's Museum of
Comparative Zoology, 26 Oxford St. At 3:00 there will be a
roundtable discussion with a group of Fulbrighters, followed by a
reception at 4:30. The topic is the impacts of Fulbright
scholarships on scientific innovation and on public perception of
science. Panelists include:
- Mr. Eric Howard, Director, The Fulbright Academy, Maine
- Dr. Robert George, Professor Emeritus, UNC- Wilmington
- Dr. Frances Jeffries, Director of the Office of Grants and
Sponsored Programs, Bridgewater State College, Mass.
- Mr. Michael Lytton, General Partner, Oxford Bioscience
Partners, Mass.
- Dr. Medge Owen, Wake Forest University Medical Center, North
Carolina
- Dr. Paul Robilliard, Director, World Water Watch, Mass.
As of mid-August, registered attendees come from institutions
such as Harvard University, Tufts University, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Boston University, Boston College, Lasell
College, Salem State College, Bridgewater State College, U-Mass
Boston, University of New Hampshire, Byrant College, World Water
Watch, The George Institute, Brigham & Womens Hospital, Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Science Curriculum Inc., Velocity
Equity Partners, and Oxford Bioscience Partners.
We also have some foreign attendees who are doing research in the
Boston area (mostly in medical fields). They are from Goteburg
University, Tel-Aviv University, the University of Bergen, Rand
Afrikaans University (South Africa), University of Alcala de Henares
(Spain) and Tenshi College (Japan).
The Harvard program was made possible through the generousity of
two donors and our contacts at Harvard, Dr. E.O. Wilson and Dr.
Edward Cutler. If you plan to attend either part of the program,
please call Eric Howard at the Academy's office: 207-799-3098.
More
Information & Directions »
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Paleoparasitology - linking archeology and public
health |
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Dr. Karl J. Reinhard, from the
School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska, had a
Fulbright to Brazil in 2000-2001. While there, he taught and
researched the topic of ancient parasitic diseases with his
Brazilian colleagues and taught the methods of dietary
reconstruction from archaeological sites. The first topic relates to
the understanding of the origins and emergence of parasitism and the
second relates to the evolutionary basis of diet-related diseases in
modern Native Americans, particularly type II diabetes.
His stay was at the Escola Nacional de Sáude Pública, Fundação
Oswaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro and the Universidade de São Paulo,
and results if the work were published in several journals including
the Journal of Parasitology, Experimental Parasitology, and the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
He and his colleagues also published a special volume of the
Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz available in pdf format (link
below). This has 29 papers covering a variety of topics ranging from
parasite evolution to parasitism of specific cultures in Peru,
Chile, Japan, Korea, and other parts of the world.
The teaching in Sao Paolo evolved into a formal course on
Archaeobotany and Native American Health which will be offered
yearly, initially taught by USP faculty Sabine Eggers and Gregório
Ceccantini and Dr. Reinhard. Archaeologists and botanists from all
over Brazil will come with samples from archaeological sites to
learn the methods for dietary reconstruction. A section of the
course will address the Native American health problems that
resulted from modernization of traditional diets. The course is
funded by a small CNPq/Fulbright award to Eggers and Ceccantini.
Reinhard writes, "I am looking forward to teaching this new course
with my Brazilian colleagues and to conducting more research into
the emergence of parasitic diseases."
Photo: Were parasites involved in the death of this 4-year old
child? For more information, visit the website below.
Internet
Publication on Paleoparasitology »
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Achieving our 2004 Goals |
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| We are pleased to announce that our membership
program is well on track. We had a successful membership campaign
last month - despite the fact that it was summer and many people
were on vacation. We also are pleased to note that 15-20% of our
members are "sustaining members" or "charter members" -- meaning
they are making additional voluntary donations to support our
programs.
The Academy has several goals for this year, including producing
this newsletter and organizing meetings, such as the ones described
above. For example, the Harvard program was possible because of
generous donations from several members, and over 30 people are
expected at that meeting.
Other Meetings: * Fulbright alumni and friends from
around the world at a gathering on October 8-10 in Athens, Greece,
as part of the Fulbright International Interdisciplinary
Conference. * Fulbright Association (US) will hold its
27th Annual Conference in Athens, just prior to the Greek
Conference on October 7-8. * The Fulbright Academy is again
organizing a meeting of members during the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. The
Conference is on February 17-21, 2005 in Washington, DC.
Please contact Eric Howard at 1-207-799-3098 (email)
if you have questions or would like to see our wish list and learn
more about how we would invest your donation in growing the Academy.
Academy
Programs »
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News from Members & Affiliated Organizations |
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Mr. Philip Yeo (see photo) and his
work at the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research
(A*STAR) and the Singapore Economic Development Board was
highlighted in a one-page profile in the business section of The
Economist (Aug. 14 issue). The article does not mention his
Fulbright to Harvard, where he earned his MBA in the 1970s, but it
does describe his role in bringing high-tech manufacturing and
innovation to his small country. For example, he led the initiative
to build Jurong Island, a 3,200 hectare site used for chemical
manufacturing that produced $22 billion in goods in 2003. Revenues
from biomedical products are now at $7 billion, or about 8% of their
manufacturing output. A new initiative is investing nearly $2
billion to make Singapore a global center of excellence in fields
such as cancer, genomics, and nanotechnology.
The United Nations Foundation has a new electronic
newsletter, providing weekly international updates and perspectives.
Each issue contains articles on the Foundation's four focus areas:
Energy & Environment; Children's Health; Women & Population;
and Peace, Security & Human Rights. It also carries reprints
from AP and other news services, such as a recent The Boston
Globe Editorial (8/11/04), which said that the US should give
the UN more credit for the UN's work to alleviate problems brought
on by natural disasters in developing countries.
The Fulbright Commission in Portugal bulletin reported on
the results of Dr. Matt Kondolf's Fulbright sabbatical in that
country. As a geologist and geographer by training, he teaches
environmental science and planning, hydrology, and river restoration
at UC Berkeley, and he went to Portugal because California and
Portugal face similar water issues. Since his sabbatical in 2001, he
has returned three times to work with Portuguese colleagues on
research topics, most recently to lead a workshop on the Aqueduto
das Aguas Livres involving students in urban planning, landscape
architecture, and architecture. Back in California, he has been
active in administering an endowment to support students of
Portuguese descent at Berkeley, hosting a California-Portuguese
conference on Mediterranean- climate rivers, and in establishing
exchange agreements with universities in Portugal and the Azores.
Dr. Flynn Picardal of Indiana Univeristy has teamed up
with the Academy and others on a grant proposal to the National
Science Foundation for research on the role of bacteria in the
cycling of iron and nitrogen in soils and sediments. If the proposal
is funded, the Academy will work with the principal investigators on
a particular area in the grant criteria - disseminating the results
of the research. At the same time, the Academy also will be
increasing science literacy among the public and showing the public
the value of basic and applied research.
Dr. Cliff Hoelsher of Texas A&M University proudly
announces that on August 16, he will receive a grant of $4,292,000
to establish a Food Science Center at the leading agricultural
university in Indonesia, the Institute Pertanian Bagor, where he
worked as a Fulbrighter in 1988. We will provide more details in the
next issue of the newsletter.
To sign up for the UN
Newswire »
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Other Educational Tools On-line |
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| As in previous issues, we are providing links
to selected internet sites -- sites that we find particularly
useful, interesting or fun.
WWW Virtual Library:
International Affairs Resources, part of the WWW Virtual Library
System, and now with over 2600 carefully selected, annotated links
in 37 international affairs categories. It is administered by Dr.
Wayne Selcher, a Fulbrighter at Elizabethtown College in PA, and
should be of use to travellers, journalists, researchers, diplomats,
businesspersons, teachers, professors, and students, among others.
www.ScienceNetLinks.com is
an outstanding website for science educators in grades K-12 that is
produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS), with funding from the MarcoPolo Education Foundation. The
CEO of AAAS is Dr. Alan Leshner, a Fulbrighter to Israel.
Misconceptions
in Science: The July 22 issue of ENC Focus has a quick
quiz along with some activities you can do with students and
colleagues to separate common misunderstandings and folklore from
facts.
Please continue to share your websites - send us an email at info@fulbrighter.org. Note
that we provide these links because they have information that may
be of interest to you. FAST does not necessarily endorse the views
expressed or the data and facts presented on the sites.
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Selected New Members |
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To promote growth in the Academy, we will be
giving a special gift to the 5th person to join each month for the
rest of the year. We have some very nice pens make of white birch
and some "first-day-of- issue" envelopes of the US Postal Service
stamp commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program,
issued on February 26, 1996.
Dr. Maurice Weinrobe is the winner of our gift for the
month of August. He is a professor and chair of the Department of
Economics at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He has been at Clark
since 1976, and his research focuses the economics of population,
particularly the impact of long term care insurance on the disabled
elderly. During his 2001 Fulbright, he lectured and conducted
research at the Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta in Indonesia,
and a diary of his time there is posted on his Clark University
website.
Dr. Robert Brent is Professor of Economics at Fordham
University. His area is Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) applied to
health and mental health, and his latest book is The CBA of
Health Care Expenditures. His 2003 Fulbright research award was
for CBAs of HIV-AIDS interventions in Tanzania, and his studies so
far show that: (a) the condom social marketing program just breaks
even, but would be beneficial if the current subsidy were halved;
and (b) in Tanzania female primary school enrollments have a
perverse, positive, direct effect on infection rates. But, via their
effect on raising incomes, which lowers infection rates, enrollments
have an indirect effect that offsets the direct effect making female
enrollments effective and highly beneficial.
Dr. James Clegg is a professor of molecular and cell
biology at the UC-Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, and previously
served as the director of the lab. The facility has 65 laboratories
and offices for resident and visiting scientists, students and
support staff, and large public aquaria and displays provide marine
education to 10-12,000 visitors each year. Dr. Clegg's current
research focuses on biochemical and biophysical adaptations to
environmental extremes, and the organization of enzymes and
metabolic activity in cells. His Fulbright in 1998 was to study
ancient DNA in encysted embryos of the crustacean Artemia at
the University of Ghent in Belgium.
Please join these
Fulbrighters as members of the Academy »
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Your Organization and Your Membership |
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| The Fulbright Academy is an independent
non-profit organization based in the United States. We receive
support from selected Fulbright alumni groups, businesses,
institutions, organizations, foundations, and individuals interested
in developing an international network of leaders in science and
technology. We are not affiliated with the (US) Fulbright
Association, the US State Department or the Board of Foreign
Scholars.
The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology uses the
expertise of our network of Fulbrighters and leaders in science to
address critical problems in education, scientific innovation and
economic development. Our database has over 10,000 Fulbrighters and
scientists around the world.
The Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research A*STAR sponsors this electronic
news bulletin (see story, above). We are seeking additional sponsors
for the newsletter and for our other programs. Call FAST for
information.
While projects may be funded by organizations and foundations
that share our mission, membership income is an important part of
our annual budget. If you or your institution are not yet a member,
please consider joining today.
Click here for a
partial listing of supporters »
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