Hugh Mason, right, assistant research scientist in plants and human health at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, shows Cornell emeritus trustee Robert Cowie a petri dish containing plant cells during the Hopkins Foundation Workshop for Science Journalists on June 20. BTI scientists are genetically engineering potatoes and bananas to contain vaccines and disease-resistant vectors. Charles Harrington/University Photography
Ruth Papazian softly plucked a flower bud off its stem and gingerly popped it into her mouth.
"Wow!" she said. "That is amazing!"
That flower caused her mouth to experience a full range of taste sensations, all within minutes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. From the Anamalao plant of Madagascar, the sunflowerlike buds are used in culinary dishes and as a palette cleanser, said Mary Alyce Kobler, a scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. (BTI) at Cornell.
It's just one example of plant biodiversity highlighted at BTI during a workshop last week at Cornell for science journalists and educators. About 50 participants attending the Fourth Annual Josephine Hopkins Foundation Workshop for Science Journalists were fed a steady diet of cutting-edge science -- and a few flowers -- during the program from June 19 to 21. Among news organizations represented were CNN, USA Today, the San Diego Union-Tribune, AAAS Radio and Time Warner Cable of Syracuse.
Papazian, a freelance journalist and contributor to Seasons magazine, was just one of the workshop participants to taste the unusual plant. But first, Charles Arntzen, BTI president, explained how he and his colleagues at the institute are genetically engineering bananas as an inexpensive, universal host to contain vaccines for children around the world and how plants are genetically engineered.
"Transgenic plants are now commonplace in agriculture in developed countries," he told the group on June 20. "In 1997, half the U.S. cotton crop will be genetically engineered. China is the second biggest user of Bt (bacillus thuringensis) cotton. This technology is not limited to the high-tech world."
In bananas, Arntzen and his colleagues inserted a vaccine against cholera into banana plants. "Bananas are perfect," he said. "They are cheap, produced around the world, you don't cook them and infants eat them."
Hugh Mason and Lizabeth Richter, BTI scientists, took the group on a tour of their laboratories and explained the process of engineering plants to benefit human health.
But the Hopkins Fellows heard about a different form of life the previous evening. Steve Squyres, professor of astronomy, described the possibility of life on Mars in discussing last year's announcement that a Martian meteorite found on Earth might contain evidence of fossilized microbial life. He is not sure that this fossil contains that evidence, he told the audience.
"The first opportunity to really address life on Mars begins in 2001," he said, pointing to a NASA mission to explore the Red Planet and return samples of well-chosen rocks from areas where water once flowed or hydrothermal vents or volcanic magma were plentiful. Finally, he said, it may take a human mission, in 2014, to really get an answer.
Also on Friday, workshop participants had an opportunity to interview Cornell faculty members in a variety of areas to learn about the latest news in their fields. On Saturday, they were treated to a morning at the Laboratory of Ornithology, where John Fitzpatrick, director, Rick Bonney, director of education, and Margaret Barker, support specialist, described "Citizen Science." These programs involve citizens, schoolchildren and the public at large in doing detailed bird surveys and scientific research.
Fitzpatrick, the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director of Ornithology, talked about bird species that have become or are becoming extinct and the laboratory's role in studying how humans and nature interact. Bonney explained Project FeederWatch, Project Pigeon Watch, Project Tanager, the Cornell Nest Box Network and, the newest, Classroom FeederWatch, which can be accessed via the World Wide Web.
The workshop, coordinated by Yervant Terzian, the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences and chair of the astronomy department, also took in some activities at the Cornell Theory Center, where Margaret Corbit, CTC science writer, walked the group through a tour of Virtual Reality Markup Language, used for three-dimensional images on the Web. Bruce Land, CTC research associate in the Scientific Visualization group, displayed a journey through a molecule in the Theory Center's CAVE for virtual reality, for which visitors donned 3-D glasses.
On Saturday afternoon, participants were treated to a discussion about cloning and genetics, and global change (see story), followed in the evening by a lecture by Terzian on the universe and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Henrik N. Dullea, Cornell vice president for university relations and one of the workshop sponsors, welcomed the group and urged the science writers to continue to learn as much about science as they can and to use Cornell as a resource.
The annual workshop is funded by the Hopkins Foundation of New York City. Lee Corbin, a New York attorney and Hopkins Foundation board member, said that the foundation seeks to educate the public in science through the media.
"Science plays a very valuable role in society, and we need you to get the message out," he told the group.
The workshop is also sponsored by the Division of Biological Sciences, the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University Relations and the Cornell News Service.
"One of the goals is to give science journalists exposure to cutting-edge science," said Bruce Lewenstein, associate professor of communication and one of the workshop organizers. "It's impressive to have reporters for these media organizations think it's important to keep up on science. The second goal is to give journalists and scientists a chance to interact. These professional communities have to get together to find out what each other is thinking. This workshop is a great opportunity for that in a productive context."