STEM-Talk

On March 11, 2005, President George W. Bush announced his intention to nominate Griffin to serve as the 11th Administrator of NASA. He was confirmed by the Senate on April 13, 2005 and served until January 20, 2009. Griffin knew NASA well. He had been NASA’s associate administrator for exploration in the early 1990s, as well as its chief engineer. Griffin holds seven academic degrees—a BA in physics from Johns Hopkins University, a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, and a handful of Master’s degrees. He previously served as deputy for technology at the strategic defense initiative organization (SDIO) in the Pentagon.  Griffin’s career has also included academic and corporate positions. He was an eminent scholar and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and space department head at the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins. Griffin was also president and chief operating officer at In-Q-Tel, a private, nonprofit enterprise funded by the Central Intelligence Agency to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. Griffin held leadership positions in as well as the Orbital Sciences Corp and technical positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Computer Sciences Corporation. Time magazine named Griffin one of its 100 most influential people in 2008. In his spare time, Griffin enjoys flying and is a certified flight instructor. He’s also a voracious reader and an avid golfer. On August 14, 2012, the Schafer Corporation announced that Griffin would assume the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at the company. Griffin has also been a guest lecturer at IHMC in Pensacola, where in 2009, he delivered a lecture entitled “What the Hubble Space Telescope Teaches Us About Ourselves:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMdORG8OyU. In this episode, STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis monitors an interview conducted by co-hosts Ken Ford and Tom Jones, both of whom have a long-standing professional relationship with Griffin. 1:09: Ford calls Mike Griffin “a remarkable fellow.” Griffin’s work has spanned academia, government and industry. He holds six graduate degrees and was working on his seventh when President George W. Bush selected him to serve as the eleventh NASA administrator. 2:35: Dawn reads a five-star iTunes review from “Meatballs Mom” entitled “Thumbs up.” “I downloaded this in order to feel intellectually superior to my peers. It’s totally working.” 3:00: Dawn describes Griffin’s career and educational accomplishments. 5:13: Dawn introduces Mike Griffin, along with hosts Ford and Jones. 6:03: Griffin’ interest in science was sparked by the first book, called “A Child’s Book of Stars,” that his mother gave him for Christmas in 1954, when he was five years old. 7:50: “I was already fully committed to a career in math and science and space long before I got to high school,” Griffin recalls, also noting an influential physics teacher in high school who encouraged him on that path. 8:25: “My career has gone back and forth between and among DOD space, civil space, robotic scientific space craft and missions and human space flight.” 8:50: Griffin notes that one of the highlights of his career was being chief engineer for the first space intercept mission accomplished against a booster in powered flight as part of early missile defense program under President Ronald Reagan. 12:08: “Possibly the coolest job that I’ve ever had,” Griffin says, was as President of In-Q-Tel, which he loosely categorizes as the CIA’s venture capital company. “The CIA didn’t have access to the hi-tech of Silicon Valley, so the non-profit was chartered by Congress to allow that access. It was an extraordinarily eye-opening and exciting adventure,” he says, adding that they helped create Google Earth. 14:22: Griffin had an early hunch that he would work for NASA, which he did four different times during his career. “NASA formed in 1958, and I was nine years old. I was already interested in space, and from that time forward, I believed that I would eventually work there.” 15:20: “When I was very young, I thought that being an engineer/scientist was the highest goal anyone could aspire to.” 16:10: Early in his career, Griffin was also spotted for managerial talent, becoming the youngest group supervisor at the jet propulsion laboratory. 17:04: Griffin says that he managed NASA, a 20-billion-dollar organization, just as he would a much smaller organization. “What you are doing is trying very carefully to select a great team of people who can complement your own skills, but who are not the same as you,” he says, adding that managing a large organization is not substantially different than a small one—only there are more layers. 19:50: “Dealing with official Washington” was also challenging during his tenure at NASA; in other words, the organizations that have a stake in what NASA does. And dealing with Congress. 20:20: Space exploration is one area that can elevate a nation’s profile in history. “I contend that a nation that does not explore frontiers of time is consigning itself to the backwaters of history.” 21:15: “I believe the values of Westerners are superior to those which have evolved previously or elsewhere. Space is a human frontier, and some humans somewhere at sometime will open it up and settle it; and we will use the resources of the solar system to our benefit. Decisions will be made by nations that show up. I want my nation to be in the vanguard of those efforts.” 22:25: Griffin explains the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster that occurred in 2003, in which all seven crew members were lost. “It was brought about by the unintended release of a large piece of foam… which impacted a wing at high speed; and broke a hole in the thermal insulation tiles that protect the shuttle on entry, and because of that the vehicle and the crew were lost.” 22:54: “There was never supposed to be any foam release,” Griffins says, adding that there were continual foam release events that were not understood. “When I took over, I chartered a group of people to study that issue.” 24:00: The mentality changed from “always three months from flight” to “We’ll fly when we understand why this is happening and can fix it.” They realized they were never going to completely mitigate foam release, but they could have some control over the size of the pieces and when they came off, as well as the damage statistics to the orbiter. Jim Peters of NASA Johnson Space Center was influential in reading statistical properties of foam release and damage. 26:50: President George W. Bush and Congress supported finishing the space station, but there were “deep divisions of opinion within Washington bureaucracy on whether to do that…. I took it as my most important mission a plan by which we would finish the station.” 28:04: “We went to our European and Russian partners and outlined a plan by which we would finish the station (by minimizing the number of utilization flights—for scientific experiments—and maximizing assembly flights.) The goal was to get the project finished and utilize it later.” 29:49: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 30:46: “In the immediate aftermath of Columbia, only shuttle flights would go to the space station. If there was another Columbia-like incident, you could park the crew at the station until a rescue shuttle could be used to get them off. Other missions were deemed too risky.” 31:32: Griffin disagreed with that pronouncement, arguing that there are only a small percentage of things that can go wrong with an orbiter on ascent for which space station is the answer to the problem. The other thing was that there were ways around having a rescue mission (without having an available space station). 32:40: After joining NASA, Griffin says he “got smart folks from the Johnson Space Center” looking at how we could arrange a safe Hubble repair mission. 34:00: When the Columbia shuttle was lost, any use of another orbiter for a Hubble-type mission put a delay in the space station completion schedule. 34:53: Ford recalls the “STS-125 as the highlight of the shuttle program. The afternoon of launch, looking at two shuttles gleaming in the sun, sitting at the ready on their pads…that was an awesome sight.” 36:10: Jones asks about the inability to launch astronauts to the space station since the shuttles retired in 2011. 36:50: “The plan was to return the shuttle to flight, finish the space station and construct a new system capable of going to the station and to the moon. It was a U.S.-led international effort to develop a lunar base.” 38:56: During the [George W.] Bush administration, we opened up a gap between the last shuttle flight and the first flight of a new system. That gap was supposed to have been two years, and it became four. 39:30: The space station was a 75-billion-dollar endeavor. “I thought we should be doing everything in our power to make sure that it was sustained and used properly. And to do that, you needed to be able to visit the station at least a couple times a year.” 40:45: Griffin talks about the U.S. government’s increased reliance on commercial space companies, which he says was misguided. 43:27: Companies developing these capabilities on government funding are saying 2018 is the earliest successful crew deployment from U.S. shores. 45:18: Griffin calls exploration and science “closely allied enterprises.” “Many explorations in history also yielded important scientific results. But the careful planning of scientific experiments, their conduct, is quite substantially different.” He adds that science is critical to good exploration. 47:37: “Human space flight is replete with opportunities for life science to advance itself. The two enterprises are synergistic.” 48:33: “When I took over NASA, the advisory council seemed to have no really useful end. We had a host of individual advisory committees on specific topics.” 51:40: Griffin organized a NASA advisory council first under Harrison Schmitt and then Ken Ford. All advisory committees reported up through the principals on the NASA Advisory Council who were selected for their expertise in different specialties. “That brought order to discussions/allowed the advisory council to come forward with actionable requests of the NASA career staff; and to shape the budget in ordered/intelligent ways to make better use of the science budget from Congress.” 53:38: “If we have our wits about us, we will be using robots to augment human exploration and humans to augment robotic exploration in every reasonable way that we can do.” 55:04: “No one wants people on Mars more than I do, and I believe the best path to do that is through the Moon, which will in and of itself be fascinating.” 55:45: The vast majority (70 percent) of the U.S. pop supports NASA and its goals. What is missing, Griffin says, is the translation of public approval into coherent policy that can go from one administration to another. 57:15: Griffin calls space exploration “hobby entertainment for newly elected political leaders.” Their stance towards the Marines, or Air Force, for example, is vastly different. 1:00:22: Deep space exploration beyond Mars is very difficult without nuclear propulsion systems. 1:08: Maintaining crew health in closed environments is going to be very difficult. “When we can put a crew on an international space station for 6-7 months and let them de-condition and send them to the moon for a year, back to the space station and then bring them home—then we’ll know we’re ready to go to Mars, and not before.” 1:02:47: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 1:03:30: “We must have a long-term, carefully structured, coherent policy on what the U.S. will do in space, why we will do it, who we will do it with; and how that will be consistent with the funding that we supply.” 1:06:00:  Griffin looks back at Apollo, which “barely succeeded in the political sense.” The White House was cutting the NASA budget during Apollo 11. “’While success was being had, cancellation was occurring,” he says, adding this was “a huge lost opportunity.” 1:07:27: The success of Apollo was partly due to President John F. Kennedy’s succinct declaration of what was to be done: “Land a man on the moon, return him safely to the earth, do it before decade is up.” 1:08:00: The U.S. at that time was also in a battle with the USSR for the hearts and minds of the non-aligning nations of the world, he adds. “We felt it was important to be ahead in space.” 1:08:35: “Apollo probably benefitted from Kennedy’s assassination. It is unlikely we would have been able to go forward had not a martyred president stood behind it.” 1:12:50: One of the problems across the aerospace industry is that people are not entering the profession. The average age of the NASA work force is in fifties. During Apollo the average age was the twenties. “We need a combination.” 1:15:12: Griffin wrote a lengthy paper for the 50th anniversary of Sputnik saying that it would have been better to use the hardware infrastructure they had developed during Apollo and repurpose it for other things. 1:18:12: Griffin paraphrases Wayne Hale, a former shuttle program manager, and space shuttle flight director, in a speech last October in which Hale said that he was tired of the controversy about whether or not we should build a heavy lifter (versus an orbital assembly of smaller pay loads.) “You cannot prove that you would not have been able to do the Berlin airlift with a large number of piper cups, but the logistics would be forbidding… The laws of physics don’t prevent an in-orbit assembly of very large machines to go to Mars by using many smaller launch vehicles. But it is logistically forbidding. It is likely to be much more expensive and time-consuming.” 1:19:28: “To believe otherwise—that we would not want the largest transportation capability that we could put together—is to single space flight out from all other modes of transportation that humans have ever used.” 1:21:10: “If we are serious about space exploration, we need a heavy lifter.” 1:22:22: Griffin says that during the next trip to the moon, we should mine the lunar crust for oxygen. “The lunar surface is a good source of oxygen, and extractable for solar energy. As an industrial process, I believe that’s one of the first things we’ll do.” 1:23:45: Griffin elaborates on his views regarding the possibility of a commercially-developed space transportation system capable of Mars missions. 1:29:56: The U.S. partnership in space with Russia and other European nations has been a really good thing. We’ve learned a lot from Russians in space, and they’ve learned a lot from us. 1:33:38: Ford asks Griffin about his passion for flying. “I’ve been flying for decades, as a general aviation pilot. Flying is consuming. When you’re departing/arriving other concerns don’t weigh on you in that moment. I enjoy that feeling of commitment.” 1:37:06: Griffin is also a voracious reader. During the period in which the interview was conducted, he was reading “The Innovators” (about the development of the computer industry), as well as “Into the Black,” about the development of the space shuttle. He also likes “junk fiction,” science fiction, The Economist and Science News. 1:38:30: Another hobby: “I do love golf. It appeals to people with an analytical mind set.” 1:39:00:  Ken and Tom thank Mike for the terrific interview on STEM-Talk. 1:39:50 Dawn and Ken talk about the interview, direct the listener to the episode’s show-notes, and sign off.

Hurricanes are a leading source of insured losses, and a major cause of human and economics loss in the world. But from an insider’s view, they are also breathtakingly beautiful. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a leading hurricane expert, compares flying into the eye of a hurricane to being inside a white Coliseum, thirty to forty miles wide, with walls resembling “a cascade of ice crystals.” That’s just one of the fascinating tidbits from this episode of STEM-Talk, with Dr. Emanuel, whom Time Magazine named as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006. The following year, Dr. Emanuel was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor of meteorology at MIT, where he also completed his Ph.D. When he returned to teach there, he taught a course in meteorology of the tropics, and discovered that the existing theory of hurricanes was partly wrong. He’s spent the better part of his career disproving that theory and coming up with better theories of hurricane development and progression. Dr. Emanuel is also a book author of “What We Know About Climate Change,”<http://amzn.to/2cWYQ7O> and “Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes.”<http://amzn.to/2dPXrNb> His recent lecture at IHMC is entitled “Hurricane Risk: Past, Present and Future”:  http://www.ihmc.us/lectures/20160324/ STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis interviews Dr. Emanuel about his career, the future of climate change and its impact on hurricane development, and the future of hurricane projection and prediction. 1:11: Ken Ford mentions that he met Kerry in 2005-06 when Ford was on the National Science Board’s Hurricane Task Force, which he co-chaired with Kelvin Droegemeier (also a previous STEM-Talk guest: http://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-13/). That NSF report was entitled “Hurricane Warning: The Critical Need for a National Hurricane Research Initiative: http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/2007/hurricane/initiative.pdf 2:24: Ken reads a 5-star review from “Wheelsuker”: “I’m not always curious, but when I am, I love STEM-Talk, and the deeply learned folks at IHMC. Subjects range from human physiology to the exploration of space, with thoughtful and probing questions that simultaneously teach and entertain. Highly recommended subscription.” 4:53: Dawn introduces Kerry Emanuel. 5:05: Kerry says his older brother told him that as a toddler, Kerry would get excited about thunder storms at home in Ohio. 6:08: His academic interest in science, and weather, developed in high school: “I started reading more professional meteorology books in high school; I got interested in physics and math. By the time I went to MIT [as an undergraduate], I realized you could put those things together.” 6:33: Kerry describes his academic journey: “I was an undergraduate at MIT, and I also did my Ph.D. there in 1978. Then I went and taught at UCLA and was there for three years. I came back to MIT, and I’ve been there ever since.” 7:00: At MIT, he taught about hurricanes in a course called meteorology of the tropics. “Not only did I not understand the existing theory [about hurricanes], but the existing theory had to be wrong, so I had to go about setting it right.” 7:35: The existing theory didn’t pay any attention to transfer of energy from ocean to the atmosphere. “Ironically, earlier scientists thought that was the guiding principle.” He picked up where they left off. 9:43: “Hurricanes cannot arise out of small fluctuations in atmosphere like a thunderstorm or winter storm. Hurricanes are generated by a pretty big push.” He describes it as a giant engine that takes heat out of the ocean and transfers it to the atmosphere whenever water evaporates. 10:54: “The tropical atmosphere has a different temperature than the tropical ocean. What we don’t understand is how they [hurricanes] get started.” 11:30: In the Atlantic, African-Easterly waves flow from East to West. When they move out over the ocean, they will sometimes trigger hurricanes. 12:49: He describes the feedback loop that propels hurricane intensity: once you get the starter engine going, as the winds accelerate at the surface, the evaporation of sea water occurs faster. The stronger the wind blows the more heat is transferred to atmosphere—until you get up to peak intensity. 14:00: Kerry talks about his roughly 10 flights into the eye of hurricanes. “I think everyone should do it. It’s magnificent,” he says—especially the sight of the eye of the hurricane from the inside. 14:30: “When you’re flying in, it’s just like flying in bad weather in a commercial airline. It’s turbulent, but it’s never been as turbulent as I’ve experienced on commercial airliners. Hurricane pilots really know what they’re doing.” 15:52: The eye of the hurricane is actually calm. He compares it to being inside the Roman Coliseum, except it’s white, and instead of a few hundred feet across, it’s 30 or 40 miles across. Sometimes there’s a cascade of ice crystals on the inside of the eye wall. 16:17: “I have fantasized about starting a hurricane safari operation after I retire.” 16:45: The physics of a hurricane is angular momentum conservation. “If you have a spinning body, when you take some part of the mass and move it towards the axis, the spin increases. The classic illustration for that is a spinning ice skater who draws in her arms; by that mechanism, her speed increases; that’s the conservation of angular momentum.” Likewise, in a hurricane, air spirals towards the center of the hurricane within a few thousand feet of the ocean’s surface; once it has moved in so far, it goes rocketing up, forming the wall of the eye. 19:35: The primary remaining challenge associated with hurricane forecasting is knowing the intensity of the hurricane right now. “For most storms, we don’t have aircraft. Just looking at a satellite image doesn’t show you wind speed.” 22:10: Two things prevent most hurricanes from moving up to potential: wind shear (a dampening force that imports dry air into the core of the hurricane—like throwing water on a fire). And the hurricane’s ability to churn up cold water from deeper in the ocean. 23:24: We don’t know much about temperature of the ocean beneath the surface; that limits our ability to forecast. 24:44: Kerry describes Argo robots that submerge more than a mile into the ocean recording temperature information, and then surface and transmit this newly collected data to satellites. 26:08: Kerry explains the difference between hurricane prediction: whereby you take an existing hurricane and predict where it will go; and hurricane projection, which projects a weak or strong hurricane season based on climate change. 27:00: Prediction of the track of path of hurricanes is a wonderful success story. Predicting intensity has been much less successful. 27:57: In forecasting anything at all, you have to know where you’re starting from. It’s a fine art. 30:32: The atmosphere is chaotic, and getting the initial condition right is the really hard part…we can’t computationally resolve all the things that are physically important in the atmosphere. 31:16: There’s an enormous amount of work that goes into computational modeling; the diversity of models gives you a better forecast/appreciation for how uncertain that forecast is likely to be. 31:46: To analyze the current state of the atmosphere, we start with an old forecast. You update it by incorporating measures in present, which is data assimilation. Every forecast has a little bit of history in it. 33:33: If I didn’t have computers/understanding of physics, I’d say, ‘Let’s look for some close analogies in the past.’  This is called analog forecasting.  We know from theoretical work this is not a promising approach. Chaos will always ensure there are differences. 34:25: Computational weather prediction has pulled far ahead of any analog forecasting. 34:32: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 35:07: “We’ve gotten steadily better by all metrics at predicting the track that hurricanes will take. On the other hand, we haven’t gotten much better at forecasting how strong a hurricane will be.” 36:13: “Hurricanes are creatures of warm, tropical ocean waters, and the Gulf of Mexico is a great example of that.” Hurricanes often form in the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean and then strengthen as they move into the warm Gulf waters. 37:15: “If we look at geological records … we think actually the region (Gulf Coast) has been pretty lucky over the last century compared to what’s been true over the last few thousand years.” 38:40: Dawn asks if the current trend of planetary warming is likely to have any effect on hurricane formation and intensity over the long run. 39:10:  Effect of planetary warming on hurricane formation and intensity: “It’s not a solved problem, but there is a kind of consensus developing about what we think will happen.  The key points of that consensus are this, we think the frequency of very high-category hurricanes will go up as you warm the climate; but at the same time, there’s a little bit more controversy about the frequency of weaker hurricanes. Most studies suggest that the frequency of these will go down.” 40:00: Eighty percent of the damage in the U.S. has been done by category-3 or greater hurricanes. The consensus is that there will be more of these strong storms in the future. They are associated with strong storm surges. In practice they kill a lot of people. There is also a very strong consensus that fresh water flooding from heavy rains is going to get worse, almost for sure as the climate warms. 42:43: “The theory of chaos is often described as a kind of practical limit on what you can forecast … but it’s much more profound than that, it’s not just a practical limit, it’s a theoretical limit that you cannot go beyond not matter what resources you throw at it.” 44:19: For all practical purposes, the system is not deterministic beyond two weeks.  Thus, we will never be able to make precise forecasts beyond that time horizon. 45:25: Discussing how good a forecast is likely to be: “We can forecast how skillful our forecasts are. That is a very profound thing to be able to do.  What we have not mastered is how to convey that to the public.  We struggle with that everyday.” 47:42: To improve forecasting, we need better measurements, better computer models, and better ways of assimilating improved measurements into the better models. High level research on this is taking place all over the world. 48:30: While this should be a cooperative international enterprise, European governments have monetized weather data. “The bad boys are the Europeans—their governments decided they could make money from selling weather data…. Even at the peak of the Cold War, the US and USSR were freely sharing weather observations.” 49:22: Some of best computer forecasts are generated by the Europeans, from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “If we want to see them, we have to pay through the nose for them. Everybody else subscribes to the older idea that since the taxpayer has paid for this data, it should be freely available to all.” 50:33: Economists have demonstrated that even if the only thing you are concerned with is how much money the government would make, it’s an inferior model. The freedom of data has led to small enterprises doing specialized forecasting based on the available data. Those companies create jobs and are taxed; the U.S. government gets more money that way, than the Europeans do trying to sell environmental data. Kerry says there are efforts to get Europeans on board with this “more gracious, economic model of sharing environmental data.” 53:19: On quantifying the risk of climate change: If it’s one degree warming by the end of the century, there’s not much difference. If it’s four to five degrees, the world could erupt in a conflict over water and food shortages. 54:03: In thinking about what we should do, if anything, to reduce the rate of warming, it is rational to consider both risk and the possible consequences. 56:10: Look on bright side [of climate change]: “We have an opportunity here to transform our energy systems ahead of the curve.”   If there were no climate change, we would still eventually run out of fossil fuel. 56:45:  Discusses the shortcomings of solar and wind energy.  The wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine … and we are not very good a storing energy. 57:10: Kerry discusses the positive potential of next generation fission energy. Fourth generation fission reactors can consume the waste that’s been stockpiling around the world and turn it into much safer waste that can be safely buried.  These next generation plants cannot meltdown, they are physical incapable of it. 58:12: Discussing why more fourth-generation nuclear plants are not being built in the U.S.: “It’s almost a “no-brainer” and yet the word ‘nuclear’ is such a red flag for environmentalists and others that the political barriers are immense; the technical barriers are not.” 58:50: “In thirty years are we going to be buying clean energy from China and India or selling it to them? That’s our choice now.” 59:07: Once you put carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, it takes thousands of years for it to go away; unless we develop technology to pull it out of the atmosphere. In next decade or two important decisions will be made. 1:00:06: “If I had a large budget, on the practical side, I would come up with much better ways of monitoring and forecasting hurricanes. One of the great tragic limitations … is we do pretty bad job of estimating their initial intensity. I’d field a fleet of solar powered robotic aircraft in the stratosphere launching pods on parachutes … down into the troposphere to measure the intensity of hurricanes to improve their forecasts.” 1:01:25:   Dawn thanks Dr. Emanuel for joining her on STEM-Talk. 1:01:35:   Ford comments on the interview: “Kerry is incredibly engaging and insightful about the future of weather and hurricane forecasting. He’s truly at the forefront of this increasingly important field.” 1:01:49:  Dawn says that she is eager to follow-up with Dr. Emanuel on his retirement plans to give air tours on hurricanes. 1:01:57: Ford says he also flew into a hurricane when he was in the Navy. 1:02:15: Dawn and Ken sign off.        

 In this episode of STEM-Talk, we talk to one of our own senior research scientists, Dr. Yorick Wilks, renowned for his work in natural language processing. Wilks is also a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield in England, and senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute at Balliol College. A “war baby” born in London in the midst of the Second World War, Yorick was sent away to school due to the bombings. He excelled and went to Cambridge, where he studied with Margaret Masterman, a protégé of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Yorick first came to America—L.A. in the 1960s—on a one-year Air Force Research Grant. Yeas later, he moved to Stanford University’s AI Lab, where he worked with John McCarthy, one of the founders of Artificial Intelligence. Yorick’s research interests have been vast and rich, including machine translation, translating, understanding and extracting meaning from language, belief representation and human and machine communication. He has authored 14 books and many more papers, and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including, in 2008, the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Lifetime Achievement Award. Yorick also speaks several languages, including Swahili and Japanese. Yorick is a senior research scientist at IHMC’s Ocala, Florida facility where he was interviewed for this podcast. STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC Associate Director and senior research scientist Bonnie Dorr—who is also a leading expert in natural language processing—conduct this rich interview, full of both historical insight and wisdom about the future of AI.  Yorick also spends much of his time in Oxford, England, where he lives with his wife and two beloved dogs, an Italian greyhound and a German Sheppard. 1:07: Ken mentions that Yorick was an easy selection by “a unanimous vote by the double secret selection committee.” He calls Yorick a pioneering researcher, mentor and a raconteur of the first order. 1:31: Ken continues: “Yorick was on the ground floor when AI and the Internet were in nascent stages of development.” 2:30: Dawn reads an iTunes 5-star review of STEM-Talk from “Love the ocean”: “I just listened to Joan Vernikos’ STEM-Talk, and I am convinced that I am on my way to living a healthier life from the changes I’ve made incorporating what she said in her talk. What an inspiration she is, and how proud I am to have met her at NASA, where I currently work, and know that even after her NASA days, she continues to research and publish. STEM-Talk truly finds those brilliant and interesting people and encourages in-depth discussions. Continuous five-stars.” 4:30: Dawn welcomes Yorick and Bonnie. 4:58: Yorick describes upbringing: “I was a war baby, from a poor, working class family.” His parents worked in aircraft factories and sent him to school outside of London because of the bombings. 5:48: He got a scholarship to a good school; and another scholarship to attend Cambridge. “In some ways, I escaped my upbringing completely.” 6:00: Yorick won a school prize at age 16, and asked for Aristotle’s Metaphysics. That marked his first interest in philosophy. At Cambridge, he studied math and physics; he changed to philosophy after a year. 6:50: He considers himself in “apostolic succession from Wittgenstein” via Margaret Masterman, his philosophy tutor at college. “She wasn’t good at teaching; but she was a genius, a guru.” 7:56: Wittgenstein didn’t like women in his classes; he didn’t like ugly people, Yorick says. “But she hung in there, and Wittgenstein was the biggest influence in her life.” 8:22: Wittgenstein thought understanding the world meant understanding language…But he wasn’t anti-science at all. He was an engineer by background. He thought how we saw the world was determined by language. 9:10: Masterman thought she was carrying out a Wittgenstein philosophy, but with new technology (computers.) 9:20: Yorick tells about spending the 1960s in L.A., the era of sex, drugs and rock n roll. He had a one-year Air Force Research Grant and was attached to an offshoot of the Rand Corporation, which was Bob Simmons’ group. He worked on an IBM 360, and started programming (in Lisp) his thesis ideas in L.A. 11:15: Yorick moved to Northern California at the end of the 1960s. 12:09: He took a job John McCarthy’s AI lab at Stanford. 12:25: Yorick recalls some the earliest days of the Internet at Stanford. 13:54: “Margaret Masterman had the idea that you could code the meaning of language with a small number of semantic primitives (features).” 15:11: Yorick’s thesis was building a representation of English that was in another language of semantic primitives. It was ahead of its time. Back then, Noam Chomsky was popular: “Syntax and grammar were what mattered…We were dead set against that. We thought it was completely wrong.” 16:30: Yorick created the first semantically-based machine translation system from English to French. “It was no good as a translation; it was just the idea of doing it that way.” 17:13: Yorick coined semantic parsing, which today is commonplace, but back then was novel. 17:49: Yorick discusses his appreciation for the perspective now often referred to as “human-centered computing.” He was influenced by Martin Kay, a computational linguist who thought that translation was too sophisticated for machines alone, but rather that human/machine teamwork was necessary. “For laws, constitutions, poetry, the human must be in the loop. Machine translation is just a tool for the human.” 22:00: Yorick talks about the two broad approaches—symbolic and statistical—to computerized language processing. 23:10: “The biggest shift in language processing in the past fifty years has been the advent of massive hardware—more so than theoretical advances.” 25:06: All the new Google translations are basically statistical now. “Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, but they are easily produced given big-data and they are workhorses that deliver. You can get a decent translation and understand almost anything now.” 25:25:  But, “language cannot be, at base, statistical. We cannot be statistical engines generating English. A novel isn’t just a very long Markov Chain… novels have structure… novels are about stuff.” 25:55:  Currently most people seem to agree that some kind of cooperation between statistical and symbolic methods will be most efficacious in AI. 26:25: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 27:00: Yorick talks about the current popularity of network-based methods such as “deep understanding” and “deep learning.” 28:56: “We all know when we say one thing but mean another. Statistics won’t express that, but linguists have spent decades expressing it.” 29:10: “Deep learning is a bigger matter,” he says, calling it an “absurd misnomer.” Yorick continued that it has “produced good results in facial recognition, speech recognition. It hasn’t yet produced striking results in language understanding…I don’t think it’s that different than what went before. 30:19: “We are living in a world, where funding and hype and real science are mixed up in a strange way; to get somewhere and flush our real funding, you have to sound as if you are the new Messiah.” 31:15: “I inherited machine translation because it was the prime task that Masterman’s research center was set up to do. I parlayed that into a representation for language and meaning.” 32:50: “In the 1970s and 80s, I got very interested in the representation of human beliefs…that connected back to my early work on semantic representation. I began to think we couldn’t understand language unless we could understand what the other person believes about language and the world.” 34:00: Yorick has continued to work in belief representation at IHMC, specifically on work funded by the Office of Naval Research that models dialogue to try to determine who is the main influencer and has the leadership role. 34:30: In a chance happening, Yorick met David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. Levy got interested in human conversation and wanted to create the best conversational machine. Levy wanted to build a machine to win the Turing Test competition called the Loebner Prize. 35:44: Yorick led the team in 1998 at Sheffield that won for Levy, who funded it. 36:50: Bonnie talks about all the areas of research Yorick has covered: understanding language, translating language, extracting meaning from language, detecting correct word sense from ambiguous words. She asks him about the future of the fields he has worked in. 40:30: “Dialogue systems are very hot. Human-machine cooperation is “the hottest topic in AI right now.”  How we are going to control automated cars?  “They’ve got to talk like us; otherwise it’s hopeless.” 41:20: Yorick talks about working on the EU’s largest project on artificial companions, or conversational companions. “Just as people tell dogs their secrets, people would have computer companions that would live with them. It would be a hand-bag sized type thing. It would be your interface with the web.” 44:12:  Yorick talks about AI systems as “cognitive orthoses.” 44:25: Yorick predicts people will warm to the idea of artificial companions. “A computer program would have photographs and talk to you about them. It would debrief you on your memories and keep your memoires straight; and help to keep you mentally alive. It’s going to be a lot better than no companion at all.” 45:05: “People will have emotional relationships with anything. The bar isn’t that high.” 45:35: Dawn asks Yorick to talk about Ken Ford’s observation that after decades of pundits and philosophers arguing that AI is provably impossible, suddenly that argument has been replaced with the assertion that not only is it possible, but superhuman AI is so inevitable that it is the greatest danger ever faced by the human race.  In only about a decade, the conversation has shifted from you can’t do it … to you shouldn’t do it! 46:42: Yorick says that the media stokes these fears irresponsibly. 46:56: “Stephen Hawking knows no more about AI than anybody who reads the newspapers. His mind is full of cosmology … which is no help.” 47:20: “Automated weapons could do horrible things; but all weapons can do terrible things.”  It’s not what people think the problem is, AI itself is not the problem. 50:14: Yorick enjoys mentoring Ph.D. students; their most common problem is that their writing is so compressed, he says. The only way out of that is to have them write just one paragraph that is completely clear; and to let that grow. 51:38: He describes a different territory for research with respect to fifty years ago, when there was a “virgin territory in research.” His advice to researchers: “If you think you have anything original to say, say it and see where it takes you.” 54:10: Yorick speaks French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Swahili (which has 16 genders, meaning noun clauses, not sex.) 55:05: Knowing languages, you see how badly some are designed. 56:36: “IHMC is quite like John McCarthy’s lab at Stanford. You’re left to do what you want as long as someone is attracted to it; there’s no party line.” 57:58: “I have a very high view of dogs. They remember you. They have a lot of attractive features.” He has an Italian greyhound and a German Sheppard. 1:00:38: Ken muses on the fascinating interview, which covered a broad range of AI topics, Yorick’s rich educational experiences, and his participation in the early days of the Internet. 1:01:20: Ken and Dawn sign off.

When Alessio Fasano entered medical school at the University of Naples (Italy) School of Medicine, his goal was to eliminate childhood diarrhea. Working with a mentor who’d studied the physiology of the gut, Fasano decided to focus on the microorganisms that cause diarrhea. That opened up his world to specialize in overall gut health, and Fasano became a leading expert in celiac disease and gluten-related disorders. Following medical school, Fasano spent three years at the Center for Vaccine Development in Baltimore, and later returned to the U.S. to pursue his career. Today the world-renowned gastroenterologist is chair of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment. He is also the director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Fasano was the lead researcher of a seminal 2003 study showing that 1 in 133 Americans have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder characterized by gluten-induced damage to the small intestine. His book Gluten Freedom http://tinyurl.com/zdbcdkk has been hailed as “the groundbreaking roadmap to a gluten-free lifestyle.” He is also the author of “A Clinical Guide to Gluten-Related Disorders.” http://tinyurl.com/zbhme6j His lectures at IHMC “The Gut is Not Like Las Vegas,” (November 2014) http://tinyurl.com/o83y8xz and “People Shall Not Live by Bread Alone: People Shall Not Live by Bread Alone” http://tinyurl.com/pcssk5j have gotten over 70,000 views on YouTube. Fasano has been featured widely in media, such as NPR, CNN and Bloomberg News. In this episode of STEM-Talk, Fasano talks about his early life as a curious boy in Italy, with a scientist grandfather as his first mentor, the impassioned trajectory of his career, and the underlying importance of gut health in determining our overall health. 00:56: Dawn describes Fasano as “a leading light in the study of the microbiome.” Fifteen years ago, Fasano and his colleagues discovered the pathophysiology of celiac disease and role of the protein zonulin in causing it. 1:10: Ford cites growing evidence that the microbiome content of the intestinal tract influences our metabolism, stress tolerance, immune response, memory and cognitive performance. 2:56: Ford reads five-star iTunes review of STEM-Talk entitled “cognitive satiety:” “Never have all the lobes of your brain been so satisfied. Every episode is fascinating and beautifully orchestrated. The content is interesting and diverse. There’s no room for boredom. The double secret selection committee does a superb job of keeping the listeners educated, engaged and more intelligent with every minute. And the hosts have a linguistic seduction that you wish it would never end. I could listen to STEM-Talk for hours. Thank you, and please keep the talks coming.” 3:51: Dawn introduces Fasano as a world-renowned pediatric gastroenterologist and research scientist. He specializes in treating people with celiac disease, wheat and gluten sensitivities, as well as infants and children with difficult to treat gastro-intestinal problems. 5:15: Dawn welcomes Alessio and Ken to the interview. 5:37: Fasano talks about his childhood in Italy. He was raised largely by his grandfather, a retired physicist who had once worked in Enrico Fermi’s lab. During World War II, Fasano’s grandfather refused to move to Germany as Mussolini had requested, so he ended up teaching high school science. 6:26: “I remember vividly being with him in his lab. [That] sparked an interest in physics and science.” 7:03: Fasano’s initial focus in medical school was eliminating childhood diarrhea— “not a glamorous field to get into.” At that time, five million people died annually from diarrhea, 80 percent of them children. 9:08: On his medical school mentor’s suggestion, Fasano went to the Center for Vaccine development in Baltimore to study micro-organisms in the gut. His two-month term became two years. Afterwards, he went back to Italy for a year and a half, returning to the U.S. in 1993, where he has been ever since. 9:47: Ken points out that Fasano has said that, “Twenty-five hundred years ago, Hippocrates posited all disease begins in gut: emerging understanding of the interplay between gut microbiome, intestinal mucosa and immune and nervous systems seems to support this contention.” 10:05: “Hippocrates was so right, without having all the information that we have right now,” Fasano says. 11:14: Fasano says that his thirty years of studying the gut have boiled down to the past five years, with the emergence of “the perfect storm of knowledge” about the microbiome. 11:50: The intestinal mucosa, a 3,000 square feet interface, negotiates cross-talk between us as human beings, the ecosystem, and our interaction with the environment. 12:30: Besides digesting food, the gut is involved in a continuous discussion with our environment, regulating the friends and foes that enter. The gut is the organ with the most immune cells; it’s also considered the body’s second brain, and has even more neuronal cells than brain itself. 13:28: The gut is a 20-foot-long tube. The epithelial cells interact with various types of immune cells. 16:00: The nervous system cells coordinate the interaction between the immune and epithelial cells, sometimes through messenger cells. 17:17: “Imagine all this decision making,” Fasano says. The epithelial cells have sensors that see who is in the lumen: friends, or if it’s foes, “You have to prepare for war.” 17:50: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 18:33: Recent information indicates that the microbiome develops in the womb during the last trimester of pregnancy, but the major imprinting happens in the birth canal. That is why full-term, vaginal births are best for healthy microbiome development. Then other things—breastfeeding, for example—should occur to ensure sustained microbiome health. 22:05: The immune system developed to fight micro-organisms. 22:52: The microbiome teaches the immune system to work in a child’s first 1,000 days. A good, balanced microbiome is one that teaches the immune system to set the bar high for infections. 23:45: An unbalanced microbiome in infancy may be caused by the Western diet, C-section delivery, and infections. These things teach the immune system to have a low threshold for infections, placing infants at risk for chronic inflammatory diseases later in adulthood. 24:50: Fasano comments on the Human Genome Project: As humans, we have 23,000 genes, most of which we share with other animals; 95 percent of our genes are identical to a mouse. Only 400 genes distinguish us from chimpanzees. Other species have many more genes: Worms, for example, have 75,000 genes. 26:07: What are the implications of our relatively shallow gene pool? “We were not supposed to be dominant creatures on earth,” Fasano says. 26:53: Fasano explains his piano player analogy: Our 23,000 genes are like piano keys. There is an infinite combination of notes. The piano player is the microbiome that decides, based on genetic cross-talk, what notes should be played and when—just as genes express or suppress their activities. 28:10: Whereas previously, we were told that having the genes to develop diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, cancer, and multiple sclerosis determined our fate—that we would get those diseases—we now know that’s not true, Fasano says. “It all depends on our lifestyle; and how that affects our microbiome, which in turn affects which genes are turned on or off…. If I have the genes for Lou Gehrig’s disease, that does not mean I will get it. It depends on how I live my life.” 29:00: Until recently, we thought our disease destiny was determined by our piano player—assumed to be an outside. Now we understand that the piano player—our microbiome—is living inside of us. 29:57: Now the questions that we can ask are: What kind of player is there? What kind of music does he play? What kind of music is playing as we speak? “Doing mathematical modeling, we can predict if playing certain kind of music, you will end up with that kind of clinical outcome.” 30:48: “We cannot manipulate our genes, but we may eventually be able to manipulate our microbiome so we can keep ourselves healthy for a much longer period of time.” This is primary prevention; or precision medicine. 31:34: Ken comments: “This interaction between our genome and the microbiome is the part that I find most interesting and hopeful for the future. It explains the riddle of how a simple genome produces such a highly differentiated and complex animal; and opens up new pathways for medicine and human performance and resilience.” 32:10: “This is the best time to be in science,” Fasano says. “Technology and knowledge are moving so fast.” 33:18: “It’s up to us to keep [our microbiome] in a compatible, friendly discussion with the genome we inherited from our parents.” But the health of our microbiome also boils down to our lifestyle. “The way we live will dictate the destiny we have.” 34:54: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 35:30: Two ingredients of auto-immune disease were once thought to be genes and environmental triggers that create inflammation. The question that no one could explain was: “How can these two worlds physically interact to make this happen?” 38:24: Then they stumbled upon zonulin, a protein modulating the permeability of tight junctures between cells in the digestive tract. 39:20: Now zonulin has been linked to a myriad of auto-immune and GI disease such as Crohn’s Disease, as well as multiple sclerosis, cancer, schizophrenia, and autism. 40:12: Larazotide acetate is a promising peptide that blocks zonulin. It is now in in a phase three clinical trial. 44:40: Zonulin negotiates the interaction with the environment when it’s at the forefront of the gut; it also modulates traffic between body compartments, including the blood brain barrier (BBB). 45:00: German scientists have linked the production of zonulin to more advanced stages of glioma; the more compromised the BBB is, the more zonulin is present. 45:30: The microbiome may have a role in autism, since kids with autism have GI upsets. They are trying to understand what the role of the microbiome is in that. Either the activated immune cells create inflammation in the brain; or the microbiome produces metabolites that have a direct effect on the brain. 46:40: The truth of today is the garbage of tomorrow. Science is refurbished every five years. “You need to put yourself in the discussion all the time,” Fasano says. “If you are not open-minded enough, you will go out of business.” 47:35: Fasano’s grandfather told him, “If you want immediate success, science is not your field.” Another attribute of a scientist is humility: you have to question yourself all the time. “Science is a constellation of failures with very few successes, and we live for those. How bored would we be if every experiment that we did was successful?” 49:38: Dawn relays a personal story about scientists’ dedication: As a post-doc, she had a sign in her office that a mentor had given her, which said: “Brick walls are there for a reason. They make you prove how badly you want something.” 50:06: “Science in Italy is a hobby today,” Fasano says. Italy invests less than three percent of its GDP in science. “There’s no way that Italy can keep apace with countries like the U.S. that consider science an investment. Bright people relocate to unleash their creativity and make a difference.” 51:36: He adds, “Italian science has the resources to be at forefront of the story.” 52:47: Fasano recently opened a research institute in his hometown of Salerno called the European Biomedical Research Institute. It is on the site of the first Western medical school, where the first medical school textbook was written; the first diploma to be a doctor was given; and the first female physician practiced. 55:40: This institute is mainly focused on nutritional health. 56:30: Fasano says his biggest adjustment to living in the U.S. has been lifestyle. “Here people live to work.” And of course, the food. “In the beginning I could not adjust to fast food. I am a strong proponent of slow food. Drive-ins in Italy are inconceivable.” 58:00: What he loves about living in the U.S.: “The sky’s is the limit in terms of realizing your potential.” 59:10: Ken wraps up: “We humans appear to be a kind of super organism. Humans and microbes have developed a co-dependency which affects our wellness, including the expression of our genes.” 59:46: Dawn and Ken sign off.

For this special episode of STEM-Talk, IHMC Research Scientist and STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis sits on the other side of the microphone. This summer, Dawn was one of six divers selected for NASA’s NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) 21 mission, and we were able to talk to her live from the Aquarius Reef Base, located 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. During the 16-day mission, Dawn and her colleagues performed field research designed to test operations and equipment for future space exploration. In particular, the international crew of aquanauts performed research both inside and outside the habitat. During simulated spacewalks carried out underwater, they evaluated tools and mission operation techniques that could be used in future space missions. Inside the habitat, the crew’s objectives include testing a DNA sequencer, a medical telemetry device, and HoloLens operational performance for human spaceflight cargo transfer. In many ways, the NEEMO mission crystalizes Dawn’s career. Her research expertise has been focused on human performance, risk mitigation and resilience in extreme environments—namely undersea and in space. In addition to her accomplishments as a scientist, Dawn is also a long-standing diver, and this year was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Conducting the interview is IHMC Senior Research Scientist and former NASA astronaut Tom Jones. Dawn shares aspects of her daily life in the undersea habitat, from eating freeze dried food to watching thousands of fish from the galley window every night before bed. She also delves into the research that she conducted, which included testing a mini DNA sequencer and deep water dives to collect samples of several coral species and weighted walks on the ocean floor to simulate space walks. STEM-Talk’s Billy Howell and Jason Conrad, key players in the production of each episode, also join the impromptu conversation with “fanboy” questions for Dawn. Dawn kept a blog about her experience, which you can read at: http://www.ihmc.us/blog/neemo 2:00: Dawn discussed her experience as manager for the world record-breaking diving exploration project Wakulla Springs. 2:24: On her induction, last April, into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, she said, “It was cool to be sitting with women I have looked up to since I was a little girl.” 3:23: Dawn described certain challenges faced by people working in extreme environments such as Navy divers, deep sea divers and astronauts: decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity and nitrogen narcosis. 5:02: Ken Ford read a 5-star iTunes review (which are piling up): “The best podcast. It is as if the double secret selection committee has hacked my Google search. Keep up the great work, team.” 5:37: Tom Jones explained that the NEEMO mission, now in its 15th year, is an analog to deep space expedition. 6:09: Dawn said her voice sounded high because of the increase in air density in her undersea habitat. 7:14: Dawn explained that for the in-water work, they gear up and jump out of the habitat in hard hat diving supplies. “There is constant communication with the habitat,” she says. 9:30: “It makes such a difference to have a great team.” 9:50: “The nice thing is we have support divers who bring supplies up and down on a daily basis. It is not as isolated as space expeditions.” 10:50: Dawn described some of the physiological effects of being at a pressure of 3 atmospheres and 62 feet deep: “I can’t whistle; I have a high voice; we can feel swells pick up overhead—the pressure changes, so our ears are constantly popping. We’re hungry all the time.” 12:12: They performed simulated space walks to identify different species of coral for the Florida International University marine sciences team. 13:25: They used geology sample tools and water-resistant iPads. 14:20: They tested medical telemetry equipment (like miniPCRs for DNA sampling) that may be used at the International Space Station; then relayed the data back to physicians. 18:40: With the cheek swab and saliva samples, they looked for epigenetic changes that occur in response to living in a saturation environment. 19:11: Every morning, they got up around 6:00 or 6:30 and make coffee. Then they did the first round of medical telemetry: collecting blood pressure readings, oxygen saturation, hydration levels, and weight. Those were also collected in the evenings. 20:54: “Every evening we’ve been spending watching the amazing night life outside our window.” 21:07: The free time was spent at the galley window, watching all the different fish swim by. Dawn described a lion fish swimming by…She also saw eagle rays and squid. 21:45: She looked for modifications that occur in response to living in a saturation environment. “We are trying to get a baseline idea. Molecular tags change the way a DNA is read out, expressed, and what protein product is made.” 22:52: Their findings may one day be used to prepare for a Mars expedition. “The Software/hardware in the habitat and planetary exploration analog has been focused on long-range space duration, specifically Mars.” 24:40: “The food has been way better than anticipated; but we can have food sent that’s fresh.” They ate mountain house camping food, using hot water and a microwave. She was able to stick to her vegetarian diet. 25:43: They all bunked out at around the same time. There was a round-the-clock mission control on Aquarius Reef. 26:29: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 27:07: Dawn lauded the NEEMO team: “The people are forward thinking; everyone on this team communicates very well. The mentality where you prioritize team over self; for a mission like this (and space) have to be thinking about team. 28:08: The team comprised astronauts, physicians, engineers, molecular biologists. 30:00: Prior to the mission, they had a week of solid training at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They also had a week of hands-on training in the Keys before going under water. 31:09:  Dawn is startled by support diver in galley window 31:40: In December, Dawn talked to NEEMO founder Bill Todd, about her epigenetics experiment. During that conversation, he asked her to be part of the dive crew.  “I couldn’t speak … I said absolutely, it wasn’t even a question. I was honored.” 34:10: Dawn described the challenge of being in such a beautiful research environment: “Not only are you testing out the procedures; you’re doing it in a place where you enjoy it, and a bad move could be detrimental. You’ve got to keep your situational awareness up and running the entire time while you are doing these other tasks.” 34:47: Tom recalled being in space, enjoying the view of the earth, when his colleague said to him, “Just think Tom, we’re just three inches away from instant death.” 35:15: Before leaving the habitat and returning to the surface, the aquanauts underwent a 16-hour (largely overnight) decompression procedure while breathing 100% oxygen. 38:15: Billy asked Dawn if she can feel the above sea weather in her habitat: “When the seas are rougher above us, you can definitely feel it down here; the habitat connected to life support buoy. With the swells, the pressure changes in your ears. You can see fish moving with the swells. One cool thing… the lightening storms at night: You can see water light up, and it’s absolutely beautiful.” 39:57: Massive heavy dry pots were used to send materials up and down and keep everything dry; the support divers worked really hard to move them back and forth. The electronics were wrapped in plastic bags, in case of any kind of leaking. 42:07: Sometimes there were delays in communication during bad weather. 43:45: Dawn described her experience as a support diver for a day. 46:14: “It was a lot of fun to be on the other side,” she said of the interview. “And having a simulated space walk in the background while I was doing an interview was priceless…” 46:36: Ken said that this live interview from the bottom of the sea “is the kind of thing you’ll only hear on STEM-Talk.” 46:53: Dawn and Ken sign off.  

As STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis points out in this interview, guest Colin Champ looks like he could be featured on the television show “The Bachelor.” But the striking young doctor (who alas, is in a serious relationship) is a radiation oncologist at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center. Dr. Champ is also deeply invested in researching how exercise and nutrition can help treat and prevent cancer. In his very popular book entitled, “Misguided Medicine: The Truth Behind Ill-Advised Medical Recommendations and How to Take Health Back into Your Hands,” Champ tackles several popularly-held myths regarding health such as the perils of salt and meat intake. Take a look at: http://tinyurl.com/jokel72 On Dr. Champ’s web site, The Caveman Doctor, http://www.cavemandoctor.com/start-here/, he also challenges conventional wisdom and governmental guidelines on nutrition. Dr. Champ received his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and his bachelor’s in chemical engineering from MIT. He grew up, in his own words, in the “blue-collar, steel town” of Pittsburgh, in a mixed lineage family of Austrians, Irish and Southern Italians. At an early age, he excelled at both sports and science. Dr. Champ’s lecture at IHMC, “Augmenting Cancer Therapy with Diet,” can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot96y5-D_K0 He also regularly writes for Health Wire: http://www.myhealthwire.com/editors/dr-colin-champ In this STEM-Talk episode, Dawn and IHMC Director and CEO Ken Ford talk with Dr. Champ. 3:33: Dawn introduces Dr. Champ as a radiation oncologist focused on breast cancer, cancers of the central nervous system, clinical nutrition/exercise relating to cancer treatment/prevention. He is board certified in both radiation oncology and integrative medicine. 5:00: Champ discusses his upbringing outside of Pittsburgh. “My family structure greatly influenced my life…. My grandfather was the son of Austrian immigrants. My grandmother was Southern Italian. My dad’s side was also Southern Italian and Irish. My grandfather ran the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie railroad accounting with no college education. He built most of his house and was always into health/fitness. He had an organic garden and left a strong imprint on me.” 6:15: Champ’s mother was “a good cop,” and very loving. His father pushed him to work hard, and there were three cornerstones to Champ’s upbringing: sports, health and academics. “Certainly sports played a huge role in my upbringing. I was involved in sports. I played basketball until I hated it.” 7:00: Science was also pushed heavily in the household. “I was good at science and math at a young age.” 7:50: Champ’s father wanted him to go to the Air Force Academy. Champ realized it wasn’t for him and went to MIT instead. 8:55: “From there it was just kind of a springboard of science and really questioning things.” That led him to medical school. 11:20: Champ discusses what drew him to radiation oncology: “I get to see patients everyday. I don’t think in any other field of medicine that you see people so often. It allows you to forge relationships with people. Providing cancer patients with hope is rewarding.” He added that the science of it (for example, working with giant linear accelerators) is a fun aspect of the job. 15:00: Champ says the low-fat diet is a medical myth that makes certain false promises: to make you skinny, prevent diabetes and cancer, and stop your arteries from clogging. Other myths include the need to decrease your salt intake; exercise by running marathons; and stay out of the sun (which has a lot of health benefits). And, “a little stress is not bad for you—it causes body to fight free radicals as innate antioxidant mechanism.” 17:15: Champ discusses the fallacies of the American dietary guidelines. 20:15: Instead, one way to approach diet is by asking questions such as: If you were to not eat anything for the next five days, what would your body eat? A small amount of carbs (50-150 grams per day, for example.) 23:25: Champ says that if you work out a lot, you need to salt load. 26:00: Some epidemiological studies show that eating less fat cholesterol decreases your risk of dying from a heart attack. But that doesn’t decrease your risk of dying from everything else. 29:00: Champ discusses the widely publicized association between processed and red meat and cancer. The findings are based on flawed studies, Champ says: “A lot of the studies group red meat with hot dogs, etc. People are eating these things wrapped around a bun.” 31:20: Meat provides a nutrient-dense resource for our bodies. “Every food can be dangerous to some degree, but we need foods to survive.” 33:20: Vegetarians can also follow the ketogenic diet; they should lean more on macadamia nuts, diary, eggs, and safer oils including those made with avocado, macadamia, and palm. 35:30: Champ discusses his own diet: It’s short on carbs (50-150 grams/day) and high in fat. “I cook a lot; cooking is like meditation. If you don’t cook, it’s pretty hard to maintain a healthy diet.” For breakfast, he eats bone broth or eggs with spinach or Bok Choy; or an omelet; and tea. For lunch, he has a green leafy vegetable, cooked in a fat source like ghee or grass-fed butter; and fish or organ meats. Dinner resembles lunch. The evening before this interview, Champ ate feta cheese-wrapped lamp meatballs, Brussel sprouts, dark chocolate, and red wine. 38:50: Champ does martial arts/lifts weights 3-4 times per week. Low level activity is very good for burning fat; high intensity is good for stimulating muscle growth. “I’m not a fan of long-distance running. It provides a mental benefit for many people. But it wears and tears at the joints and heart.” 42:35: Sun exposure is linked to some skin cancers; squamous and basal cell carcinoma (the latter of which are almost always non-cancerous); and the bad one, melanoma. 44:00: But sun exposure is also associated with a decreased risk of prostate and breast cancer. The sun confers other health benefits including making bones stronger; and lowering blood pressure. 49:00: Mice studies show that combining radiation and the ketogenic diet can kill tumors. “The intriguing thing is that as metabolic therapies come out, the ketogenic diet may provide an escape mechanism for cancer cells.” 54:00: Taking exogenous ketones may make the ketogenic diet easier to follow. 55:00: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 59:00: Although it’s not completely certain that the ketogenic diet does help cancer patients, Champ says, “we have to keep trying.” Especially for patients with low life expectancy, such as those with glioblastoma, who on average survive only 15-17 months. 1:00:53: AMPK down regulates mTOR (one pathway that tells cancer cells to grow.) It pulls sugar from our blood and up regulates mitochondrial biogenesis. It puts body in an anti-cancer state. 1:07:50: New data is coming out that says fasting 13 hours a day may improve breast cancer outcomes. 1:09:10: It’s the era of the active patient: both exercise and diets (like the ketogenic diet) are allowing patients to take control of their own health. 1:09:38: Champ started the Caveman Doctor web site as a medical resident: to look at the whole medical/healthcare system from a historic point of view: evolutionarily, culturally; common sense wise. And, to make it simple for people to understand. “The goal is to get the average person healthier.” 1:11:10: Champ also tries to get people to question their own food narratives. “I have a lot of issues about how our health is dictated by cultural/societal norms. No one thinks about eating organ meats—or insects.” 1:12:50: Champ wrote a Health Wire article entitled: “Is Exercise Making You Fat?” “If you don’t exercise the right way, and don’t eat the right kind of food, exercise might actually make you fatter.” 1:14:35: Champ follows, and tells his patients, to follow this protocol: Question things first; figure out the answers; implement those. “More often than not, in medical school, we avoid numbers one and two and go to three. We’re taught not to question things.” 1:16:15: “The best patients are those that ask questions. More people need to do that with their own health, especially people on a low-fat diet.” 1:19:30: The whole argument against cholesterol/fat was based on a rabbit study; but rabbits eat nothing like humans, Champ says. There are many non scientific interests with clinical trials. “Even with gold-standard trials, special interests come into play.” 1:21:30: Champ travels regularly to Italy and talks about his favorite (non-pasta/pizza) food there: Italian cheese and wine; squid, octopus, Roman tripe; Florentine steak. 1:25:16: The “Mediterranean diet” is a term that gets used a lot, but what does it really mean? In Italy (and Spain), it means “whole foods; but a lot of cured meat; certainly not a low-fat diet; but it’s real food.” 1:26:50: Champ’s health advice in a nutshell: eat real foods; get eight hours of sleep per night; limit carbs; take the stairs, not the elevator, and park far away; cook your own meals. 1:28:50: Ken calls Champ “impressive on many levels.” Champ’s knowledge provides “a ray of hope in a sometimes bleak medical landscape.” 1:29:26: Dawn and Ken sign off.        

Dr. Pascal Lee is not the first Renaissance man to be interview on STEM-Talk, but his impressive biography merits that moniker. “An artist, helicopter pilot, polar researcher, planetary scientist, and a pioneer in thinking about possible human futures in space,” as described by IHMC Director Ken Ford, Lee has an impressive list of accomplishments to his name. He is co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute, director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center, and senior planetary scientist at the SETI Institute. Born in Hong Kong, he was sent to boarding school in Paris as a child, and later graduated from the University of Paris with a degree in geology and geophysics. During his year of civil service after college, he lived with 31 other men in Antarctica—a formative experience that gave him a thirst for field work and hands-on exploration. As Lee himself says in this interview, “Forever in my life there will be before and after Antarctica.” Lee went on to study astronomy and space science at Cornell University, where he was also Carl Sagan’s teacher’s assistant. He then did a post-doc at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where he has been ever since. He continues to search for “new life” in the universe, with a particular interest in preparing for future exploration of Mars. This summer marks Lee’s twentieth summer field trip on Devon Island, the largest uninhabited earth with geological evidence similar to what Lee suspects would be found on Mars. Lee is also the author of a children’s book, called Mission: Mars, about what it would take for humans to travel to the planet. He is also currently working on a book for adults addressing similar questions. Several of Lee’s lectures are available on YouTube, or at his page on the SETI website: http://www.seti.org/users/pascal-lee. His personal web site is http://www.pascallee.net. In this episode, STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC senior research scientist Tom Jones, also a veteran NASA astronaut, interview Lee. 00:49: Ken Ford describes Lee’s accomplishments, adding, “Pascal and I share a passion for the moons of Mars—especially Phobos.” 2:10: Ford reads a 5-star iTunes review from “podcast file”: “The STEM-Talk podcast is a must listen. I appreciate how the format of a podcast stays focused and on topic. It is packed with outstanding content that lives up to its name. I truly found useful information and perspectives that impacts how I understand and see the world.” 3:57: Lee describes his upbringing in a Hong Kong that was booming. His father was ethnically Chinese, and his mother was French. As a child, he was sent to boarding school in France—without yet knowing how to speak French. “I started a new life at age eight. I stayed there for fifteen years.” 5:10: He always loved space travel. “I thought that was really inspiring and exciting. It wasn’t just the travel itself. [It was also the fact that there was] more to the universe than what we had on earth. Mars came into the picture a little later, as a teenager. That’s when I got serious about becoming a scientist.” 6:05: Carl Sagan’s book Cosmic Connection “really changed my life at the time…. From that day on, I decided that the planetary sciences were what I wanted to do. The rest was easy because once you have a goal and a focus, it makes a lot of decisions for you.” 6:38: Lee studied science and physics at the University of Paris. He spent his obligatory year of national service in Antarctica. 7:30: “On my way South [to Antarctica], I posted a letter to one graduate school—where Carl Sagan taught. In the middle of winter, I get this Telex from Cornell that I’d gotten in.” 8:28: Lee says his 402 days at a station in Antarctica “was an other-worldly experience. We were 31 people. All men. Forever in my life there will be before and after Antarctica.” 9:48: He went on his first helicopter ride off the coast of Antarctica. Flying through a glacier “was like flying through downtown Manhattan, with ice cliffs on either side.” 10:48: “Helicopters are like the lunar modules of the earth: take you exactly where you want to go.” In Lee’s case, that was an iceberg in the middle of the sea. 11:22: Lee was Carl Sagan’s last TA. After a few snowy winters in Ithaca, Lee was done with cold weather and headed to California. He had a post-doc at NASA Ames and has been there ever since. 12:30: Lee continues to describe his time in Antarctica. “I was expecting it to be trying. In the end, I took more books than I could read. I was so busy doing my work, exploring with colleagues and friends. I can’t say I experienced boredom one minute.” 13:25: He talks about being in a “resource-poor” environment. “You can’t go to a store. All the sudden, small things take on a life of their own. Questions like ‘Who took my pen?’ come up. Tensions arise.” 15:00: Lee was an “ambassador” of the cliques that inevitably formed. “When team leadership is not strongly exercised, then the group splits up into smaller factions. This happens on ships and submarines. That was my experience.” 17:15: He recalls falling into frozen sea ice, which was three-four feet thick when he started walking on it. “Beneath is an abyss of dark, cold, gloomy water. At some point the ice got darker (with the current). It was thinner, and I fell through the ice. I was lucky to be able to swim back to shore and threw one foot onto the ice; my friends came and rescued me.” 18:52: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 19:23: Lee’s driving motivation in science is the search for new life. “I got particularly interested in places you could one day go to: such as the moon, asteroids, Mars.” He did his Ph.D. thesis on asteroids. 21:10: For Lee’s post-doc, he proposed studying a place on earth as Mars-like as possible. “This was a way to go back to the polar regions,” he said. 22:00: He describes Devon Island, where he went for field work, as a “polar desert…. It was cold, dry, barren, dusty, windy—similar to Mars.” 25:25: “We knew from our first summer on Devon Island, that this is a place where we would have to go back, probably for many more years.” 25:40: This summer marks Lee’s twentieth consecutive field trip to Devon Island. “We go to this place for two reasons: to learn about it, so that we can interpret the Martian landscape better; the other reason is that we are using the place as a set where you can test equipment: hardware, space suits, rovers, drills that astronauts or robots could deploy on Mars; airplanes or drones…. It’s an amazing testing ground.” 27:10: Devon Island is also a great place to test operational procedures for a future Mars exploration, in figuring out issues such as how many people should go out on an exploration and how many of them should actually explore at once (versus protect safety.) “Unless you understand exactly what it takes field exploration, you don’t have good requirements for what you want to design and take to Mars. 29:15: Mars has finger-shaped valleys known as small-valley networks. They formed in a thick, warm atmosphere, which became known as “the faint early sun paradox.” 31:10: When they formed, the sun was about 25 percent dimmer than it is today. “The sun was a young star. It was still turning on, and at the time, the valley networks were forming.” 32:54: Lee saw similar things on the valley networks of Devon Island, which were formed by melting ice sheets. 35:40: The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are important to study because they are in Mars’ orbit. “Going to Mars’ orbit is a lot easier than going to the surface of Mars itself. You don’t have to re-invent the space suit, for example. It can be done much sooner. It would allow ball to get rolling in Mars exploration.” 38:10: There are several theories about how Mars’ moons developed: that they are giant asteroids; captured comets; or bits and pieces of Mars blasted out into space. 39:40: One of the more substantiated ideas, Lee says, is that they are captured comets. 41:44: The near-Earth Asteroid known as 3552 Don Quixote is emitting CO2. It is the largest D-type asteroid (very dark and red) in the inner solar system. Lee says this is evidence that it’s likely a captured, dying comet. 43:37: Phobos and Deimos are similar to 3552 Don Quixote. “They might be ice-rich bodies captured early in history. There are no signs of ice, but who knows what is happening 100 meters down: there could be lumps of ice. This could be a game-changer for getting humans to Mars…. If we had ready access to ice in Mars’ orbit. You can use it as rocket fuel to break down hydrogen and nitrogen in the water.” 44:55: The Russians looked for Phobos and Deimos in 1988; in their second probe, they made it to Mars’ orbit, but an electronics failure blunted the mission. 45:50: In 2011, the Russians again attempted to go to Phobos. They had a launch problem, causing them to fall back into Pacific Ocean off coast of Chile. They don’t have the finances to repeat such a mission. 46:48: However, the Russians are part of the European Phobos return mission. They conducted a detailed feasibility study this summer. 47:48: The Japanese space agency is pursuing a sample return mission called MMX (Mars Moon Exploration), with a goal of launching in 2022, and bringing samples back to earth in 2025. 48:00: Meanwhile, NASA had three missions to Phobos proposed, but they didn’t select any of them. 50:36: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 51:20: Johnson Space Center and others are looking at human missions to Phobos; a lot of questions are coming up: “I think what we’re seeing is a pretty significant robotic precursor mission that NASA will have to put together.” 52:28: NASA has announced it’s sending a new Rover to collect samples on Mars; in 2022, NASA would launch a Mars communications orbiter. 53:22: Gravity on Phobos is 1,700 times less than the gravity on earth. It’s still not the same as zero gravity. 56:15: Water could be in form of ice; or minerals that are hydrated. Many are carbon-rich and clay-rich. Other resources would be organics. 57:17: These places have loose regolith (soil): that means you could move materials around easily; and shelter yourself from space radiation. 59:10: The regolith on Phobos is “the Library of Alexandria” of life on Mars. The surface of Mars is very oxidizing; aggressive chemicals. 1:00:33: “The irony is that the best record of early life on Mars may be on Phobos.” 1:01:03: Lee says asteroid mining will be hard to pursue, especially without a high enough return on the investment. 1:02:39: “Going to Mars is the mother of all camping trips. But it’s a lot more complicated; and it will never be completely safe. But you need to be able to put the odds on your side to survive the effort.” 1:04:10: “I see NASA being able to do it [go to Mars.] But it will take a certain type of leadership. We’re going to need six or seven rockets before putting a human on Mars.” 1:05:15: Lee discredits certain initiatives aiming to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars, namely one called Mars One, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit foundation: “These undertakings have no technical credibility or underpinning,” he said. 1:06:40: “I think we need a space suit that is significantly lighter; we have one that weighs 300 pounds on earth. That suit, if you took it to the Moon, would have a felt weight on the moon of about 50 pounds. If you take that same suit to Mars, it would have a felt weight of 125 pounds. That is too heavy for a field worker.” 1:12:25: “It’s important that we go back to nuclear thermal rockets, which were developed in the 1960s. Nuclear thermal propulsion is a mature idea that is being tested in the desert. It was tested by Nixon in 1960s, but it’s being revived in a quiet way now. The key way to making a human mission to Mars happen is to cut down on the travel time to Mars.” 1:14:42: “The beauty of a NTR is that the only gas emitted is hydrogen. It could cut the travel time to Mars down to just a few months.” 1:15:50: “There’s a way to do safe nuclear in space. For our future on Mars, and space exploration in general, we have to go nuclear. It’s the way stars are powered, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do that in space ourselves.” 1:16:58: Lee describes his reason for writing his children’s book, Mission: Mars. “When I was the age of the kids that this book targets, people were walking on the moon. It was clear that the next step would be to go to Mars. There was no book on that for Mars. That was a big incentive for me to write the children’s book.” 1:19:44: Asked what other books he recommends, Lee cites Tom Jones’ memoir Sky Walking, about the ins and outs of being an astronaut; and Bold Endeavors: Lessons from Polar and Space Exploration, by Jack Sester. 1:21:30: Lee is currently working on another book (for adults) dubbed From Earth to Mars, about the necessary steps in getting us to Mars. 1:22:06: Dawn and Ken wrap up. 1:23:17: Dawn and Ken sign off.  

If you want to feel like an astronaut, lie in bed all day. That may seem counter-intuitive, but the body experiences the two scenarios in a similar way. The absence of gravity in space mimics the affects of lying down flat—and not using gravity to our physiological advantage. Gravity expert Joan Vernikos talked about this and other insights on how gravity affects us, in this episode of STEM-Talk, hosted by Dawn Kernagis and Tom Jones. Vernikos spoke to them right before her IHMC lecture in Pensacola, entitled, “Gravity is Our Friend” Vernikos’ first mentor in life was her father, who at 17 years of age, left his native Greece for France, determined to study medicine, which he did. His specialization in infectious diseases took him to Egypt, where Joan and her sister were educated at English boarding schools. Her sister became a physician, while Joan “chickened out,” becoming a pharmacologist instead. After entering academia, she was recruited to NASA, where she became the director of the Life Sciences Division. Since retiring from NASA 16 years ago, Vernikos says that she’s had “a lot more time to think.” She is the author of the provocatively-titled book, “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals,” which was published in 2011. Her forthcoming book, “Designed to Move,” is about how sedentary lifestyles contribute to poor health and early death; and how movement that challenges gravity can dramatically improve life and longevity. A dynamic speaker, Dr. Vernikos has given dozens of lectures, some of which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=YouTube.com%2FDrJoanVernikos. You can also check out her web site at www.joanvernikos.com 00:47: Ken Ford describes Vernikos as a pioneer in how living in a micro-gravity environment adversely affects astronauts, compared to the benefits of gravity for those of us on earth. “Living in space is like accelerated aging,” she says—which might be instructive for thinking about preventing and treating age-related conditions such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis. 2:01: IHMC Director Ken Ford reads a 5-star iTunes review from “Fellow Musician”: “Unlike the majority of podcasts I find, STEM-Talk is a long format show with extremely in-depth discussions. I can’t believe how much serious information was packed into the first few episodes. A plus.” 2:25: Dawn gives a brief bio of Vernikos, as the former director of life sciences at NASA, who pioneered research in how living in a micro gravity environment adversely affects the health of astronauts. She also studied the effects of microgravity on the physiology of astronauts in space and aging on earth. 3:37: Vernikos talks about the influence of her physician-father, her first mentor. “I learned by apprenticeship, which is the best way to learn.” 5:05: “What I learned from father, which is fundamental to my approach, is that you listen, you ask questions, and you diagnose …. He would discuss cases at the dinner table; he would ask us, what would we do in that case. That was a fantastic preparation that served me well.” 6:24: In Egypt, which was then a British protectorate, Vernikos went to an all-girls’ English school, with other girls of 27 different nationalities. She studied pharmacy at the University of Alexandria, and then pharmacology in the U.K. 8:00: Vernikos talks about a Greek woman physician who was also a mentor. This woman developed the first drugs that lower blood pressure. “She was very unusual…headstrong…attractive…She insisted we go to the hairdresser every week.” 10:23: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 10:50: Vernikos describes her jump from academia to NASA. She was teaching pharmacology at Ohio State, and the physiology chair there was hired at NASA to start a group in biology/biomedical sciences. He needed someone in the stress business, and picked Joan. 12:36: Vernikos talks about her frustrations in pitching gravity as a medical issue to physicians. “To this day, the word gravity has not made it into the medical school textbooks.” 12:57: “I was very fortunate in my career; I never had to apply for a job. Somehow or other, I was invited to do something and it happened.” As such, she was tagged to become the Life Sciences Division Director at NASA. “I ended up in headquarters, which meant it was the end of my research career, but I never really stopped doing research.” 14:12: She calls her role there “very international” in terms of collaborating with the scientific community. She also managed the Division’s budget. 16:37: The program was observational, she said. “Every bit of information was cumulative in figuring out that gravity was more important than we thought.” 17:50: They discovered that in space, muscle wasting occurred, first because of dehydration. Muscles and bones also atrophied. Animal experiments showed that within six hours of flight, protein synthesis stopped in muscles and bones. “The signal for synthesis was gravity-related.” 20:20: She cites other cardiovascular changes: the heart got smaller, and cardiac output was reduced. The endothelium gradually disappeared with time. Joints, ligaments, collagens were lost. 20:53: “It’s not a catabolic state, but it’s a wasting state,” she said, of the micro-gravity environment experienced by astronauts. 21:17: “I think we’re flogging the same thing over and over again,” she said, in answer to Tom Jones’ question: ‘Do astronauts today preserve bone, muscle strength?’ 22:03: “All the data we have in space is in the presence of the exercise countermeasure.” 24:29: “Since I left NASA 16 years ago, I had time to think, which I didn’t have when I worked there.” 24:58: “We never really sat down and asked: ‘What is the signal the body sees? / What do you need to replace?’” 25:45: The stimulus that is needed to maintain a physiologically-intact body in a gravity micro-environment is low intensity/high frequency intermittent exposure to gravity. 26:12: The minute you stop exercising in space, you revert to a micro-gravity environment. That is not true on earth. Exercise on earth is different. The minute you stop you are still in gravity. 26:40: The space exercise experiments of astronaut Steve Hawley—who purports to have exercised as hard as he possibly could in space, then felt completely normal in the aftermath—made Vernikos conclude: “We should map what happens right after exercise. To this day, no one has looked at after-effects of exercise.” 27:54: “We are perpetual motion machines. We need to move…exercise every day does not counter act all the sitting we do.” 28:34: We need intermittent gravity stimuli for at least 16 hours a day. 29:42: Even just standing up, if it’s frequent, is better than shorter-term walking. 30:33: Vernikos says astronauts need an artificial gravity device that they can get on and off of easily, many times a day. 31:48: All of the body needs to be stimulated, especially the vestibular system, “the clearing house for blood pressure regulation,” as well as other activities central to the bone and muscle. “When the vestibular system goes silent, you’re in trouble.” Calls for systematic research on future implants. 35:20: Jones says that it took three days for his coordination and balance to come back after space flight. That’s because the maps in the brain telling you where you are in environment disappear. 38:00: A form of anabolic resistance may be at work in space…It’s similar to what happens when you lie in bed. 40:50: We don’t know how the glymphatic and lymphatic system in the brain are affected by a gravity-less environment. But without gravity, our body’s “whole detox system is fouled up.” 43:48: All impediments to detoxification result in inflammation. In space, the body is in a state of chronic inflammation, not to mention stress. 44:25: In space, the light intensity and light cycles are altered. Sleep is not sleep; there is an accumulation of carbon dioxide. “The whole life support system must be looked at again. These are crucial to the design of exploration missions, before we even begin to think about the counter measures.” 48:58: “I think it’s crucial that astronauts go on the ketogenic diet. There is a good chance that it will protect them, preventing a variety of conditions, including inflammation.” 50:00: Vernikos compares astronauts to hibernating animals, who don’t lose muscle and bone while hibernating. Their body temperature drops a little; they rely on fat for energy. They breathe more slowly; and even go through pregnancy. 51:17: Astronauts have trouble sleeping and do not feel refreshed when they wake up. Sleep is important for cognitive function. 53:55: “I firmly believe that space has revealed how gravity affects us here on earth; how it is important to our well-being; and how we should use it to maintain our health.” 55:42: The less we move the more like astronauts we become. The changes in bone loss, from one percent a year on earth to 10-20 percent a year in space has confirmed a ten-fold greater loss of bone in space than on earth. 57:05: From age twenty on, we sit more and more. We are designed to move. One time a day exercise is not enough to counteract the absence of movement throughout the day. 1:00:45: Vernikos discusses her book, “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.” The catchy title brought initial attention to the book, and public interest in it has grown. She highlights the importance of the last, and often over-looked, chapter called gravity therapy. 1:03:29: Vernikos discusses certain longevity secrets of Greeks. Among them: they use their arms when they speak (part of using gravity); they follow a mostly ketogenic diet; their movement, socialization, and emotional expressiveness is all is conducive to longevity. 1:04:53: Longevity in rural areas is greater—in Greece and around the world. 1:05:32: In her free time, Vernikos reads mysteries. “I feel science is a mystery. I think I am a sleuth who solves a problem.” 1:06:11: She says, “I don’t like studying the human body in pieces. It is a whole; you have to look at the whole picture and see how your approach can solve the problem.” 1:07:21: Dawn and Tom thank Vernikos. 1:07:39: Ford sums up Vernikos’ driving message: “Our willingness to interact with gravity will substantially improve how we age.” 1:08:20: Dawn and Ken sign off.

Brian Shul speaks softly and carries a big stick. The American war hero every bit worthy of Roosevelt’s words flew 212 missions in the Vietnam War before his nearly fatal crash. With his body severely burned, Shul was in so much pain that he wanted to die. Then one day, lying in his hospital bed, he heard children playing soccer and the voice of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow” on the radio. Suddenly, Shul, at 25-years-old, realized he had a lot to live for. He set himself on a determined road of recovery that would span 15 reconstructive surgeries and countless hours of physical therapy. Shul eventually turned his amazing story of survival into his greatest strength, and he went on to be one of fewer than 100 people to pilot the SR-71 Blackbird, a U.S. spy plane largely operational during the Cold War and thereafter. Shul and flight engineer Walter Watson flew multiple missions in which they escaped missiles over enemy territory including the Soviet Union and Libya, gathering footage and information that would help the U.S. win the Cold War. Unlike other STEM-Talk guests, Shul is neither engineer nor scientist, but he piloted and knew intimately of one of the greatest feats of both. The plane went 3,400 feet per second, which is faster than most bullets and is the speed of traveling between LA and D.C. in an hour and four minutes. For more information on Brian Shul, visit his Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Shul. Also, check out the YouTube video of his IHMC lecture, “From Butterflies to Blackbirds,” which has had more than 180,000 viewers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kIMTJRgyn0. Shul is also the author of Sled Driver: The World’s Fastest Jet: http://amzn.to/29ml4LH and The Untouchables: http://amzn.to/29fn1Yk. Here is a link to Shul’s recently opened photo gallery in Marysville, California: https://galleryonepublishing.com/sleddriver/galleryone.html 00:35: Dawn introduces herself and Ken Ford. 00:51: Ford says the SR-71 was the “remarkable product” of a sustained United States investment in STEM. 2:23: Ford reads an iTunes 5-star review of STEM-Talk from PTL Stan: “I love these interviews with the people who are leading these fields. Good science with amazingly friendly interviews by the experts themselves. The quality is amazingly good, and the subjects move right along with my thinking. Thank you, IHMC.” 2:54: Dawn describes Shul’s background. He became an airshow demonstration pilot and taught at the Air Force’s Top Gun School. He retired from the Air Force in 1990. 3:58: Shul was born in Quantico, Va. His father, who had spent 32 years in the Marine Corp, encouraged Shul to join the Air Force because of his strong interest in flying. 5:30: Shul describes the “moment of peace” before his plane crashed during the Vietnam War. “The inevitability of impacting the earth became quite clear…. For a very brief moment, you could actually see your life flash before your eyes. In a nanosecond, I could see the funeral; I could see my parents standing at graveside. And then of course the crash and the fire brought you back to reality.” 6:43: Shul describes his blind escape from the burning plane: “The heat of the fire and the reality that I had not died and was still alive became apparent to me with the pain of the fire.” 7:40: Shul describes his will to live, despite periods of deep depression and wanting to die. 10:32: ‘I’m the product of a lot of people who helped me along the way, from therapists, to surgeons, to nurses, to doctors, to Air Force flight surgeons. There were a lot of people who had a lot to do with getting Brian Shul out of a hospital bed back into the cockpit.” 13:00: “I was in awe of my own body that wanted to heal itself…. You had to want to do your therapy, and it’s not an easy thing to want when it’s just going to hurt the whole time you’re doing it.” 14:15: Shul describes his tenure of teaching at the Air Force Top Gun school. 15:30: Shul underwent a series of intensive selection process in order to fly the SR-71. 16:25: Brian describes what he means by coming out of his crash experience ‘fearless:’ “You’re not afraid to live your life fully. We’re all terminal; we’re all terminal everyday. Once you’ve come that close [to dying] you have a renewed vitality. Until that happens, you don’t want to miss a minute of [life]. That puts you on a little different frequency than the average person…” 18:16: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 18:37: Ford notes the SR-71 was developed in secrecy by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. A legendary engineer, Kelly Johnson, played a key, pivotal role in its design. 19:00: Shul refers to the plane as “the most remarkable aircraft of the twentieth century.” It would be exposed to 500 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit; they had to come up with oil, hydraulic fluid and fuel that would work in those temps. 24:04: Missiles were launched against the SR-71 over 4,000 times in 25 years; they never shot one down. 24:39: Shul describes evading two missiles over Libya on April 15, 1986. While evading the missiles, Shul and Watson reached the remarkable speed of Mach 3.5. 25:00: The faster it went, the better it flew. 27:22: “In a way, it’s a difficult shot, but you never feel invulnerable [despite the high altitude and speed.] When you’re sitting out on the tip of the sword, and penetrating enemy air space, and know that everyone is pointing his missile at you…” 28:37: “It was your ’57 Chevy. It was solid. You knew you were in the best thing that was ever built.” 32:35: “It was alone in its superiority to all other planes…. Just in the way it looked.” 35:45: “The spike inlet system was the heart of why they have never been able to duplicate this system.” 36:57: Shul describes refueling right after take-off and then refueling 3-5 times on a mission. 41:24: Reagan went to so many SALT talks, and he’d come home with some concession; people assumed he was the master negotiator. What you didn’t know was that the Russians would say that they weren’t testing those missiles. But we could say, “Walter and Brian have a photo of it…So you knew you were having an effect in fighting Communism and winning.” 42:52: “It was the epitome of Yankee technology.” 43:51: “Walter [Watson] and I are best friends to this day. Brilliant engineer: only African-American officer in Air Force history involved with this program. You needed a guy like that in the back seat. He is the heart of the mission. I kidded that if we were ever shot down, he was the spy; I was just the driver.” 45:22: “You had to learn to work together as a team because both cockpits were radically different. That’s why the training took one year.” 49:18: Shul has a life-long love of photography that started with Sports Illustrated action shots. He got himself a small instamatic during pilot training, when he just started taking pictures. He’d always been a nature lover, too, especially birds and butterflies. 51:04: “As an aviator, I found a deep passion and love for nature’s fliers. I’m in awe of how they do it; what they do. It centers me.” He is now opening up a photo gallery called from Butterflies to Blackbirds. 51:48: “One of the things I learned lying in that hospital bed is if you’re not doing your passion in life, and doing the things you love, you’re wasting those minutes; because it’s all over all too quick.” 53:57: “On April 11th, of every year, I celebrate my second birthday in life; I could have easily had my life over at 25 years old. I’ve had 42 extra years.” 54:32: Shul’s advice: “Fearlessly approach your passions and do them because you don’t know how many years you have.” 56:27: After retiring from the Blackbird, Shul turned his attention to his lifelong passion of photography. “There’s more to life than just flying an airplane. There’s more to life than just one chapter. I hope my book has more than one chapter.” 58:14: Dawn and Ken sign off.

Dominic D’Agostino looks like a bodybuilder. But that doesn’t mean that he eats a diet typical for that sport; on the contrary, the research scientist—and amateur athlete—can go an entire day without eating and says his performance—both in the lab and in the gym—improves because of it. D’Agostino is perhaps rare in the world of science in that he practices what he preaches. As associate professor in the department of molecular pharmacology and physiology at the University of South Florida, and a visiting research scientist at IHMC, D’Agostino develops and tests metabolic therapies for a range of diseases and conditions for which the ketogenic diet is the cornerstone. The low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat ketogenic diet is what he also follows for health and greater mental clarity. The ketogenic diet for decades has been used, albeit perhaps sparingly in the clinic, to treat epileptic seizures. D’Agostino is working on the development of exogenous ketones in the form of ketone esters for cancer and neurological disorders as well. For more information on D’Agostino and his research, visit: http://health.usf.edu/medicine/mpp/faculty/24854/Dominic-DAgostino.aspx or http://www.ketonutrition.org. His IHMC bio is at http://www.ihmc.us/groups/ddagostino/; and his IHMC talk “Metabolic Therapies: Therapeutic Implications and Practical Application”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gONeCxtyH18 D’Agostino is a long-time friend and colleague to STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis, and the two engage in a rich, cutting-edge conversation with knowledgeable input from IHMC Director Ken Ford in this episode. 00:37: Dawn introduces D’Agostino, who goes by ‘Dom,’ and Ken Ford as co-host. 2:14: Ford reads an iTunes five-star review of STEM-Talk from “A Sweet 81,” which is entitled BAM: “Amazing podcast. It’s like candy for the brain. That is, if candy was good for your brain. So it’s like ketones for your brain.” 2:48: Dawn describes Dom’s research: He develops and tests metabolic therapies for CNS oxygen toxicity, epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, brain and metastatic cancer. Main research focus past five years: understanding why the ketogenic diet and ketone esters are anticonvulsant and protective to the brain. 4:15: Dom says his interest in science started in high school: He was a football player and wanted to improve his athletic performance. His honors biology teacher got on him to study hard. “I saw biology and science as a way to understand my own biology and physiology to maximize my performance.” 5:23: During his Ph.D. program in neuroscience and physiology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, his mentor urged him to be an independent thinker. He describes being “thrown into the fire” when he was asked to apply basic science research to medical situations. He specifically looked at how the brain responded to hypoxia. 7:12: He did a post-doc with Jay Dean and also became a recreational diver. “Dean was the only person studying cellular and molecular mechanisms of extreme environments.” 8:36: Of Dean, he said, “The tools he created are filling gaps in the understanding of dive physiology.” 10:19: Nutritional ketosis is important for the metabolic management of diseases, especially seizures. 10:45: Nutritional ketosis works similarly to fasting: you liberate free fatty acids from the adipose tissue and break down stored glycogen levels in the liver. Once the glycogen levels reach a certain level, you start accelerating the oxidation of fatty acids in liver. 11:11: Dom explains how ketosis works: the heart (and muscles) prefers fatty acids over glucose, but they don’t readily cross the blood-brain barrier. So brain energy metabolism will transition from glucose to a fuel source called ketone bodies, which is a by-product of accelerated fat oxidation in the liver. These represent water soluble fat molecules that readily cross the BBB; they help preserve, maintain and enhance brain energy metabolism in the face of starvation. 11:54: The ketogenic diet has a macronutrient ratio that mimics the physiological state of fasting: high fat, moderate protein, and very low carbohydrate. 12:22: Nutritional ketosis has been used for over 90 years to manage drug-resistant epilepsy. 13:25: The ketogenic diet helps control seizures because it’s effective at achieving brain energy homeostasis. 14:28: The Office of Naval Research has played the key and primary role in sponsoring Dom’s research program to develop and test exogenous ketone esters for mitigation of CNS oxygen toxicity in Navy divers. 14:46: “Here was a substance that could potentially mitigate CNS oxygen toxicity; but also at the same time potentially enhance physical and cognitive performance.” 15:27: Of all the ketone esters that Dom and colleagues tested, the one that would elevate beta hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate more or less in a one to one ratio was most efficacious in controlling seizures. 19:09: The ketone ester worked in every single experiment we did, which was remarkable. 20:20: Dom says they want to move into human studies of testing cognitive resilience under hypoxia using exogenous ketones. 21:00: Dom talks about the potential for ketones to protect against radiation in space as well as in cancer treatments. Adrienne Scheck at the Barrow Neurological Institute has done animal studies on glioblastoma showing that “If animals are in a state of nutritional ketosis, sensitizes tumors to radiation, and makes the radiation much more lethal because ketones have an anti-cancer effect.” 22:30: Basic science supports idea that nutritional ketosis could preserve cognitive and physical functions under conditions of hypoxia; and also preserve the cellular, tissue and physiology of people exposed to radiation. This is especially important for astronauts, who may suffer long-term from cancer. 23:16: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 23:40: Dawn mentions that Dom is taking a metabolism-centric approach to so many conditions, including seizures, cancer, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s Disease, ALS, and muscle wasting. “How to have traction in so many diseases?” 24:37: Dom explains that cellular metabolism relates to so many different disorders. 27:32: A lot of people are turning their attention to cancer metabolism. Cancer growth is tightly linked to insulin, and the liver creates ketones in response to decreased insulin. 30:31: The ketogenic diet abolishes those spikes in glucose/insulin. “That’s a powerful part of efficacy as a metabolic therapy for cancer/managing seizures.” 31:00: Ketone bodies were once considered a bad thing. But in the past ten years ago, they have been appreciated an efficient metabolic substrate for cells; and in the last five years, a powerful signaling molecule that can influence inflammation and endogenous anti-oxidant in cell. 38:33: Anecdotally, patients with Parkinson’s Disease have improved in nutritional ketosis. 40:00: They are also encouraged by research on the effects of nutritional ketosis on brain injury and stroke. 40:50: Nutritional ketosis can, in some cases, mitigate the consequences of traumatic brain injury. 43:08: 80-90 percent of people with brain injury will have seizures. The VA system is looking into this. “Exogenous ketones would be the way to go. Something could be developed that could be taken to the field—either orally or via IV.” 47:45: Undoubtedly cancer is a genetic disease in that certain oncogenes are activated that can cause transformation of a healthy cell to a cancer cell. We believe that the initial insult associated with genomic instability results from a decrease in mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. And the nucleus senses that. 48:18: Mitochondria are ultimate tumor suppressor; one way to keep them healthy is by feeding them fuels that are metabolized exclusively in mitochondria; ketones (and fatty acids) are metabolized in the mitochondria. We need to enhance our mitochondrial function and biogenesis. “The more we have, the greater bio-energetic potential the cell has for preservation under stress.” 49:20: We’re studying a bunch of disorders, including Angelman Syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by drug-resistant seizures and severely impaired motor function. 50:50: Nutritional ketosis (perhaps specifically the use of IV esters) could also avert the use of anti-seizure drugs that in children can cause developmental delays. 51:18: Brain cancer patients would be great candidates for nutritional ketosis for managing cancer. 53:34: He notes several challenges to getting ketone esters into widespread medical application: funding; IRB approval; patient recruitment. Many institutes will not run a diet trial for cancer. Metabolic-based therapies are not recognized at this time as an effective treatment for disease management. Medical school students are not taught nutrition. 56:10: Ford shares his own positive experience on the ketogenic diet, which he has been on off and on throughout his whole life and continuously for the last decade. He reports a range of physical and cognitive benefits; and is hopeful about the prophylactic potential for age-related diseases. 57:00: Dom shares his experience on the ketogenic diet, which he embraced in 2009. “I thought it was important for a strength athlete to eat six meals a day; on a carb-based diet I was hungry every few hours.” His hunger went down on the ketogenic diet. 58:30: He says making the transition from glucose to ketones was rough. He had glucose withdrawal symptoms in the brain. “I felt foggy initially; but then, there was clarity after two to three weeks. The more I followed the diet, the easier it got for me.” Specific benefits include cognitive resilience when fasting and improved sleep. 1:02:50: Fasting is the quickest way to activate AMPK; the ketogenic diet mimics caloric restriction that will activate AMPK (the suppression of insulin.) The drug metformin also activates AMPK. 1:07:38: They are also doing a lot of studies on the tissue-specific effects of metformin. 1:10:05: The ketogenic diet mimics metformin. One question is: If we use both, can we get a twofer? 1:13:09: Benefits from ketogenic diet are more beneficial (than metformin) for anti-aging. Using both may be synergistic. 1:14:12: They need to do clinical trials of metformin and ketogenic diet, in order to study the metabolic biomarkers. 1:14:35: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 1:16:37: Dom says the data on mTOR is fascinating; and in some ways confusing and conflicting to get through it all. Ketogenic diet can cause suppression of mTOR. 1:18:18: There are studies on how the ketogenic diet impacts the immune system. Adrienne Scheck published recently a paper on how the ketogenic diet could make the immune system hyper-vigilant in seeking out cancer cells. 1:19:00: The ketogenic diet activates AMPK and decreases mTOR.  Ford and D’Agostino discuss the subtle interplay between AMPK and mTOR and the possible trade-offs between health-span and longevity, especially in the context of sarcopenia. 1:19:25: The ketogenic diet, caloric restriction, intermittent fasting, and metformin converge on these pathways that are of intense interest to pharmaceutical companies. 1:20:00: Dom recommends a ketogenic diet to anyone who has had cancer and wants to prevent its recurrence. “The emerging animal data is enough” to convince him of its efficacy; he also would recommend metformin and intermittent fasting. 1:25:00: Branch chain amino acids that work through the activation of mTOR can preserve weight in animals with cancer cachexia. Could also be useful for sarcopenia. 1:26:52: Dom’s recommendation for muscle building/maintenance: “Lift heavy stuff and eat just enough to recover.” 1:27:55: Ford calls IGF-1 a “Goldilocks hormone: low and high levels both seem problematic.” 1:29:46: Dom says it’s important to make the distinction between circulating and local IGF-1. Strenuous, low-bearing exercises can increase local IGF-1, and the ketogenic diet sensitizes the body to local IGF-1. 1:32:22: Chronically elevated IGF-1 levels are not a good thing. 1:34:00: Ford recounts a significant decrease in his own circulating IGF-1 levels as a result of the ketogenic diet. 1:34:45: Ford notes that aging athletes avoid the ketogenic diet because they think it will lower IGF-1 and therefore lower their muscle protein synthesis. “But they are not making the distinction between local and circulating IGF-1; nor the distinction between a denser collection of receptors and more sensitive receptors.” 1:35:20: Athletes who do well on the ketogenic diet include those doing distance running, cycling, rowing; weight-class restricted sports. 1:36:00: The Elite Gymnast published a study of athletes on a modified Atkins diet and the ketogenic diet; those on the latter had maintenance of strength and more significant body alteration. “The use of the ketogenic diet for performance really shines in the context of trying to make weight for a certain event.” Or where the power to weight ratio is important, such as in wrestling or cycling. 1:37:37: Dom cites study of elite-level endurance athletes by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. 1:39:00: Another study showed that testosterone was 25-30 percent higher in people on the ketogenic diet (vs the Western diet); they also gained muscle strength and size. 1:41:10: We typically become increasingly carb-intolerant with age. 1:42:45: Dom would most like to see FDA approval for exogenous ketones in epilepsy patients soon. 1:43:30: “Developing metabolic-based treatments (where nutritional ketosis is the cornerstone) for neurological diseases and cancer… is the thrust of what I want to accomplish as a scientist.” 1:44:40: Dom mentions a number of people in his lab who are doing excellent work, including his wife Csilla Ari, who spearheaded work on an ALS project and is studying the effects of nutritional ketosis in behavior disorders such as anxiety. Her work showed that animals in nutritional ketosis were easier to handle. 1:48:00: Dom says ketones might have application for treating PTSD in the military. 1:49:00: Dom and Csilla have a rescue dog from the Tampa Humane Society: “He’s our recovery. We go on nightly walks; we go to the beach a lot and bring our dog with us whenever we can.” They also love international travel and visited several countries in Southeast Asia on their recent honeymoon. 1:51:00: Dom explains his optimistic outlook and good nature: “To a large extent, it’s who you surround yourself with. If you’re grateful, it’s hard to be angry.” 1:52:30: His advice to young scientists: “You really have to follow what you’re passionate about. Identify people who are doing what you want to do. Contact those people; follow their paths. If you’re really passionate, and your research is meeting a need for someone, you’re going to be happy and fulfilled.” 1:54:35: Ford calls Dom’s research “important, innovative and impactful.” 1:54:55: Dawn and Ken sign off.