seminars Archives - Knight Science Journalism @MIT

by Anna Cass / December 5th 2023 / Fellowship Life

The Science of Art: KSJ Fellows Tour Art Conservation Labs

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, located between the Charles River and Northeastern University, is a popular destination for both visitors and locals. The museum, also known as the MFA, houses nearly 500,000 works showcasing examples of creativity and communication from all over the world. While the MFA’s 100 public galleries are filled with wandering visitors, just a freight elevator ride and a key card swipe away is 22,000 square feet of conservation laboratory space.

In those labs, conservators meld science and art to preserve the creations of peoples past for the people of the future. This November, Knight Science Journalism (KSJ) Fellows got an inside look at this little seen part of the museum — a behind the scenes tour that illuminated the pivotal roles that chemistry, biology, physics and other sciences play in the art world. “I’ve always had a hard time connecting with art,” shared KSJ fellow Lisa Grossman, “[Meeting conservators at the MFA has] given me something new to look for and a whole new set of questions to ask of the art.”

KSJ Fellow Nicky Phillips (left) and KSJ Director Deborah Blum (right) look through a glass window into one of the MFA’s conservation studios as a conservator (center) works on Our Lady of Guidance (Nuestra Señora de Guía), a painting from the 1760s by Venezuelan artist Juan Pedro López. Fellows quickly learned that conservation involves both fine art skills and a strong grasp of material sciences. Visitors can look through this same window at the MFA, but KSJ Fellows were given special access inside the labs.

In the MFA’s Scientific Research Laboratory, Lisa Grossman (center) holds a tiny fragment of gold encased in a clear resin cube, as her husband Alexander Lussenhop (right) and Sharon Begley Fellow Deborah Balthazar (left) look on. The resin cube, which is used to hold and position the sample, is shaved down precisely, exposing an edge of the material and allowing scientists to examine its properties. The fragment, hardly wider than the thickness of a fingernail, and no longer than half a grain of rice, is considered to be a large sample.

KSJ Fellow Kai Kupferschmidt photographs a large display about blue pigments in the MFA’s Scientific Research Laboratory. Kupferschmidt authored a book on the subject: “Blue. In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color.”

Materials used to create pigments, such as the ones pictured here in the MFA’s conservation labs, change drastically over time and geography. Pigment samples from specific times and places offer points of comparison for scientists looking to learn more about when, where, and how a work of art was created. One ongoing project at the MFA seeks to identify pigments in pieces of artwork from a wide variety of time periods in India.

Fellows listened intently as one of two full-time scientists working in the Scientific Research Laboratory discussed some of the questions they have been investigating in the chromatography lab, and the careful but creative methods they used to arrive at their answers.

Madeline Ostrander peers through a microscope at crushed metallic bits of beetle wings used to create green coloration in a painting originating from India. Ongoing projects in the Scientific Research Laboratory seek to fill gaps in knowledge of obscure works, using a variety of materials and methods to determine a piece’s origin and resolve other unanswered questions.

by Elizabeth Gamillo / March 15th 2023 / KSJ News & Events

KSJ Alum Bethany Brookshire Shares the Backstory Behind ‘Pests’

Bethany Brookshire can recall planting tomato seeds in her garden one spring, with the full intention of harvesting them for a beautiful pasta sauce or a salad. And she can recall her arch nemesis, a scheming and slick squirrel she refers to as F***ing Kevin, taking a bite out of each one before they ever made it to her plate.

Some might look at F***ing Kevin and see a mere garden pest. For Brookshire, a former Knight Science Journalism fellow, the rodent was the inspiration for her debut book, “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.”

Rats, pigeons, mice, snakes, deer, coyotes and sparrows are just a few of the pesky creatures that make up the book’s cast of characters. Split into five major sections, “Pests” takes readers on a journey from the Karni Mata Temple in India, where rats are worshipped, to python hunts in the everglades of Florida, where snakes are killed as soon as caught. It is as much about what our relationships with pests can tell us about ourselves as it is about the maligned animals themselves. “They are a reflection of who we are [and] what we want,” Brookshire told an audience of Knight Science Journalism Fellows and guests in a seminar at the KSJ offices in February.

At the event, Brookshire gave the audience an insider’s look at the structural and stylistic choices she made in writing the book, from the book’s five-part structure, which she calls “The Daisy,” to the technical tricks she deployed to ensure the book would be briskly paced. Inspired by Michael Pollan and his book, “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,” Brookshire said carefully mapped the rising and falling of the narrative before ever striking the keyboard, alternating between heavier and lighter material to make sure the narrative didn’t sag like soggy clothes on a flimsy clothesline.

Late in the talk, Brookshire turned to the topic of the anxieties that can weigh on writers when they compare themselves to their peers. She has come to think of science writers like blacksmiths, she said: Some blacksmiths create intricate iron fences, others create breathtaking sculptures, and others forge swords.

“I make horseshoes,” she said, drawing a round of laughter. “But it’s a damn good horseshoe.”

The message in the metaphor, Brookshire explained, was that writers should take pride in writing in their own unique way, and avoid measuring their successes by others’ accomplishments.

Said Brookshire, “Know yourself, not who you wish you were.”

Elizabeth Gamillo is a student in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. She was previously a daily correspondent for Smithsonian and wrote for Science magazine as their 2018 AAAS Diverse Voices in Science Journalism Intern.

by Elizabeth Gamillo / November 3rd 2022 / Fellowship Life

Look Out Below: KSJ Dives Into New England’s Marine Scene With Photographer Keith Ellenbogen

Blue sharks, dolphins, coral reefs. Keith Ellenbogen, an acclaimed underwater photographer who seeks to inspire wonder of the natural world with his mesmerizing shots of sea life, has snapped them all. In his latest public art exhibition, Space to Sea— A Photographic Journey into Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, Ellenbogen turns his camera to the lively marine ecosystem living just off the coast of New England.

Last month, Ellenbogen gave Knight Science Journalism Fellows a guided tour of the new exhibit, which spans a stretch of boardwalk outside the New England Aquarium in Boston. His photos bring to life the hidden world of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, an 842-square-mile underwater jewel at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay. “There’s always been an absence of imagery locally about New England in the Boston area,” Ellenbogen told the gaggle of fellows who’d gathered around him on the boardwalk. What many people don’t know, he said, is that the biodiversity in Stellwagen Bank sanctuary rivals that of picturesque tropical ecosystems in places like Hawai’i or the Caribbean islands.

Researchers have documented almost 600 species residing in the sanctuary — some as permanent residents, some as migratory visitors. It is New England’s only national marine sanctuary and a popular waystation for humpback whales. The area’s unique underwater topography and current patterns bring in nutrient-rich waters filled with plankton, the base of the ecosystem’s food chain.

The fellows’ tour of the exhibit began outside the Simons Theater, where a three-story-tall photo shows a humpback whale breaching the surface, white water droplets surrounding it as if it were wearing a cowl made of crystals. Over four years, Ellenbogen dove into Massachusetts’s waters to capture these and other scenes that capture the beauty and drama of Stellwagen Bank’s ocean life. Elsewhere in the exhibit, there are images of gulls, ocean sunfish, and lobsters at various life-stages — from larva to adulthood.

An image of a breaching Humpback whale, part of Keith Ellenbogen’s Space to Sea photography exhibit, is displayed on the wall of the Simons Theatre at Boston’s New England Aquarium.

And then there are the plankton — a rainbow of different species that Ellenbogen and researchers at the MIT Sea Grant Lab photographed in the lab, under glass slides. To get rich detail in each image, the team used photomicrographic techniques, Ellenbogen explained. Although rarely seen, plankton accounts for 50 to 80 percent of the planet’s oxygen.

Further down the boardwalk, the fellows encountered a Pantone pallet of colors showing the everchanging concentrations of microscopic plankton in the sea. Ellenbogen and his colleagues made the images by processing raw data from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellites, which can use spectral techniques to track plankton concentrations over large areas of the ocean. Working with MIT Sea Grant researchers, Ellenbogen assigned vibrant color codes to different concentrations. The result was a visually arresting series of images that show how plankton concentrations in the Boston harbor changed between 2018 and 2021. In total, Ellenbogen said, 12 MIT students worked with him to craft the images.

Ellenbogen isn’t formally trained as a scientist, but through his collaborations with scientists, he has come to embrace — and excel at — the elements of science communication and environmental storytelling. He says that underwater photography is one of the strongest ways to communicate the importance of biodiversity visually and can be a tool to emphasize and bring attention to science writing. Explains Ellenbogen, “While most people can’t get underwater to go diving, the photography can really help communicate those kinds of stories.”

The “Space to Sea” exhibit is a collaboration between Ellenbogen, MIT Sea Grant, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, and will be on display until next spring in commemoration of the sanctuary’s 30th anniversary. Ellenbogen is a Visiting Artist at MIT Sea Grant.

by Zain Humayun / March 13th 2020 / KSJ News & Events

The Chirp Heard ‘Round the World: LIGO’s Lisa Barsotti Reflects on a Landmark Discovery

During her recent visit to the Knight Science Journalism Program, Barsotti described what it was like to be part of the team that first observed gravitational waves.

On the 11^th of February, 2016, physicists declared that they had finally detected gravitational waves, elusive ripples in the fabric of space-time. Scientists around the world celebrated the discovery, which confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

The observation of gravitational waves earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, and it marked a triumph for scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. Among them was Lisa Barsotti, a physicist who has dedicated her career to the search for and study of gravitational waves. Recently, Barsotti spoke at the Knight Science Journalism Program, where, with the help of videos and live experiments, she took her audience on an astronomical adventure. Along the way, she shared what it was like to be part of one of the century’s greatest scientific achievements.

“There are some aspects of the story that are really remarkable,” Barsotti began. She explained that in the 17th century, Isaac Newton came up with a formula that described gravity. Although the formula seemed perfect, there was still a problem that many later scientists were content to ignore. Newton’s theory predicted that when the distance between two objects changed — Barsotti moved two chairs apart to illustrate — the gravity acting on the objects changed instantly. But how could anything move instantly, faster than light?

Einstein was skeptical. He proposed instead a theory in which gravitational energy propagates in waves, rippling through the space-time fabric at the speed of light — but no faster. Known as the general theory of relativity, Einstein’s model elegantly tied together the loose ends of Newton’s physics by reimagining space itself. “Mass tells space how to curve, and space tells the mass how to move,” Barsotti said.

Barsotti stretched out a pink sheet to explain the science. Moving her arms, she produced wavecrests that traveled the length of the sheet. She explained that the wave caused the distance between any two points on the sheet to change by a tiny amount. In theory, the same thing should happen to two points on Earth when a gravitational wave passes through the planet. All that’s needed is an exquisitely sensitive instrument capable of detecting that change.

In 1992, the National Science Foundation approved funding for just such an instrument: a pair of observatories — one in Livingston, Louisiana, the other near Richland, Washington — together called LIGO. The observatories use laser beams reflected between distant mirrors to detect the slightest shifts in space-time. And on a historic day in September 2015, they picked up the signal of gravitational waves created by the merger of two faraway black holes.

Barsotti could recall the excitement. At first, she said, her team wanted to make absolutely sure they had not made a mistake: In the past, false claims of gravitational wave detection had dealt blows to the public’s perception of the field. But when it became clear that the detection was real, the excitement was uncontainable. For Barsotti, the achievement represented a seemingly unsurpassable career highlight; she said she asked herself what she was going to do with her life. “That didn’t last long,” she laughed.

In the four years since that first detection, scientists have observed more than 50 additional potential gravitational wave events. New detectors are being constructed around the world, including a third LIGO observatory in India. And Barsotti has set new goals for herself. At MIT, she and her colleagues are busy developing the next generation of sensors for LIGO. Better detectors will allow scientists to both find more gravitational waves from around the universe and learn more about the cosmic events that produce them, like supernovae and merging black holes.

As the seminar drew to a close, Knight Science Journalism Fellow John Fauber asked Barsotti what Einstein would say if he were around to see how far physicists have come. “I think he would say, well done.” Barsotti said. “It’s amazing.”

by Rachel Fritts / February 28th 2020 / KSJ News & Events

Author Lydia Denworth Makes a Scientific Case for Friendship

Be it zebras, zebrafish, or humans, strong social bonds are linked to a long list of health benefits, Denworth said at a recent Knight Science Journalism seminar.

“One of the things I have learned about friendship is how important showing up is,” author Lydia Denworth told a roomful of guests during a February 20 seminar at MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program. “So, thank you for showing up for me.”

The Brooklyn-based writer — a contributing editor for Scientific American and blogger for Psychology Today — was in town to talk about her latest book, “Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond.” She arrived wearing two brightly colored friendship bracelets with DNA double-helix designs, modeled after the cover of her book. Her hour-long talk took the audience on a journey through the history of the scientific study of friendship, how we’ve come to appreciate its evolutionary and biological importance over time, and how to nurture these valuable relationships in our own lives.

Fittingly, the science of friendship itself begins with a friendship, Denworth said. In the 1950s, psychiatrist John Bowlby teamed up with animal behavior scientist Robert Hind to study the bond between mothers and babies in non-human primates. Their partnership pioneered a new way of looking at social bonds as an evolutionary strategy, one that Bowlby believed extended throughout animals’ lives. Even after Bowlby formed his “attachment theory,” however, platonic, nonfamilial forms of attachments were largely ignored. “Friendship was the last relationship to really come under the scientific microscope,” Denworth said.

As long-term studies of animal behavior became more common, Denworth explained, researchers began to notice that a wide range of species — from zebras to zebrafish — appeared to spend more time with certain members of their group. In other words, they were forming friendships. And the number and quality of these friendships could strongly impact an individual’s odds of survival. A study of female baboons published about 20 years ago, for instance, found that social bonds appeared to matter even more to an individual’s health than its place in the group hierarchy. The females with the strongest social bonds lived longer and had healthier babies. “So at the same time as there’s what you traditionally think of as survival of the fittest, there was also survival of the friendliest,” Denworth said.

Humans, it turns out, are no different. Denworth described recent research revealing connections between the quality of our social bonds and a laundry list of health factors. Strong friendships seemed to improve cardiovascular function and sleep, boost resilience to viruses, and slow cellular aging. A 1988 meta-analysis of six long-term studies found that loneliness was as damaging to subjects’ health as smoking. Friendship, Denworth said, is “a matter of life and death.”

And the nature of friendship changes as we age. Denworth explained that while teenagers spend 30 percent of their time with friends, adults allocate just four percent of their time to these relationships. But the bonds remain important throughout our lives, even as it becomes more challenging to maintain them. Denworth cited research showing that a person’s satisfaction with their relationships at 50 is the best predictor for their health and happiness at age 80.

Denworth’s advice? Be deliberate about maintaining friendships, even in adulthood. Although life can get busy with work, romantic relationships, and raising children, she argues it would be a mistake to wait until retirement to have a social life. “That’s kind of like waiting to quit smoking when you’re 65,” Denworth said. “If you smoke from 16 to 65, the damage will have been done.”

by Ashley Belanger / November 27th 2019 / KSJ News & Events

John Jarcho, on What It Takes to Make It Into the World’s Oldest Medical Journal

Jarcho, Deputy Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, spoke to Knight Science Journalism fellows about the journal’s famously rigorous review process.

“Most medical journals don’t have the resources or the luxury of having full-time editorial staff,” said John Jarcho, deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), during an event hosted by the Knight Science Journalism program on November 21^st.

But NEJM is not most medical journals. Started in 1812, it is the oldest continuously published medical journal in existence. For scientists across the globe, it has become one of the most coveted venues for publishing groundbreaking medical research.

Part of what sets NEJM apart, Jarcho explained, is its thorough editorial and peer review process. The journal employs editors from six major areas of medicine who review papers corresponding to their backgrounds. Jarcho handles cardiovascular medicine, his specialty at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. There, he said, his clinical interests in cardiomyopathy, congestive heart failure, and heart transplantation are informed by the cardiology research manuscripts he fields as deputy editor for NEJM.

Manuscripts submitted to NEJM face a gauntlet of six review stages, a detail-oriented process that draws together a series of experts to collaborate and make reports better. Roughly 10 percent of the submissions NEJM receives get rejected right away; half are tossed out by their handling editors; another quarter are rejected during peer review; and still others are turned away during final editorial meetings and statistical review.

Jarcho shared five key criteria by which NEJM editors gauge submissions: Originality, importance, quality, the possibility of error — which Jarcho said is “the thing that keeps editors up at night” — and ethics. Roughly five percent of the submissions that NEJM receives pass muster and make it into the journal. Everything else meets rejection somewhere along the way. Papers based only on animal research or studies based on a small number of subjects are likely to be rejected summarily; Jarcho said these wouldn’t “likely be of high interest” to NEJM readers.

Throughout the discussion, Jarcho shared insights on best practices for reviewing new medical research. He stressed that it was critical for journalists to scrutinize between clinical trials and observational studies, cautioning that the latter method isn’t randomized and often exhibits confounding factors that can muddy conclusions. To illustrate his point, he walked attendees through two cases — studies on cancer risks and on coronary disease in post-menopausal women — that showed how critical randomization is to determining the significance of a study’s results.

“[Randomization] makes it possible to truly isolate the effect of the treatment,” Jarcho said. “But the reality is that a very large number of the studies that you read are observational studies.”

Jarcho thinks the next big issue confronting journalists and editors who review medical research will be knowing when to trust big data in medicine, particularly when it’s applied to observational studies. “The thing that’s important to know is that most of the problems with observational data I have mentioned are not solved by making the numbers bigger,” Jarcho said.

With its rigorous review process, NEJM is prepared to scrutinize all manner of new studies — from flashy reports driven by big data to medical advances emerging from more established techniques. “We have the ability to think a little bit harder about the work that we’re evaluating, because we’re not doing it on the fly,” Jarcho said.