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20 February 2004

Editorial: SAS at the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Forrest M. Mims III

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's leading scientific organization (www.aaas.org). The 2004 annual meeting of the AAAS was held in Seattle, Washington, from 12-16 February.

My daughter Sarah attended to participate in the simultaneous annual meeting of the National Association of Junior Academies of Science. My wife Minnie was Sarah's sponsor.

Participation in the National Association of Junior Academies of Science is limited to students whose research projects placed in the top ranks of the various state Junior Academies of Science. Sarah's invitation resulted from her first place standing at each of the past two years at the Texas Junior Academy of Science. Her project for 2000-2001 was validation of Sahara dust arriving in Texas following African wind storms. Her 2001-2002 project was about the discovery of abundant fungal spores and bacteria in smoke from large fires in Yucatan that arrived in Texas.

Student amateur scientists presented their research on large fabric-covered boards at the AAAS exhibit hall. Posters were attached to the boards with stick pins or Velcro.

The day after the high school projects were displayed, university students presented their posters in the same exhibit hall. The next day professional scientists presented their posters.

My poster was entitled "Validating Satellites Using Simple Instruments." The poster described a comparison of aerosol optical depth measurements made with a simple Sun photometer designed for the GLOBE program (www.globe.gov) with the same measurements made from space by the MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

It was a novel and rewarding experience to present my science in the same forum Sarah presented hers a few days earlier, especially since her project had much more scientific significance than mine. One of the scientists who visited Sarah's poster said that her discovery should be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. He was duly impressed when she explained her results were published as the leading paper in Atmospheric Environment a few days before the AAAS conference.

The AAAS Annual Meeting is highly interdisciplinary, and attendees could pick from a buffet of were more than 130 symposia, lectures and seminars in many fields. There was also a Forum for School Science, a career fair and career workshops.

Some sessions were very well attended. For example, the room was packed at symposiums on atmospheric aerosols, physics and biomedicine. Other sessions attracted only a handful of attendees. But that's OK. Interdisciplinary conferences are like this.

Unfortunately, the poster sessions, especially those for the high school and university students, were poorly attended. Only half a dozen or so scientists stopped by Sarah's poster. The exhibit hall was much busier when the professionals presented their posters a few days later, but only a few dozen or so attendees visited my poster.

Most of these were citizen scientists, some of whom were from Seattle and others who had traveled to Seattle to attend the AAAS meeting.

One of the visitors to my poster spends his summers at a fire lookout site. Another works for a power company. Three Microsoft programmers visited. One visitor is an SAS member. All had an abiding interest in science.

There's a simple way to greatly increase the number of visitors to the poster sessions at these AAAS meetings: Place the poster boards in the convention center halls ways and foyers instead of the exhibit hall.

Since 1992 I have taught a science short course at the University of the Nations in Hawaii. The students have to do a science project for the class and present their findings orally and in a poster.

We reserved a special room near a food court area for the first poster session, but that was a total flop. No students visited. Therefore, we simply moved the posters into the food court itself. This worked! The students and their posters were surrounded by visitors eager to learn more.

In subsequent years, we moved the posters to the outdoor dining area on campus. Now virtually every student on campus passes by the posters during supper time. Most stop to look at the posters and ask questions.

The halls and foyers of the AAAS meeting could use some excitement. Everyone attending must walk through them on the way to the many meetings. So I'll send this to the AAAS and ask them to consider a change in their poster session that just might provide the huge boost in attendance and interest that occurred at the University of the Nations when we moved the posters to where the people are.