DC Science Café

06/22/2024

Dear FB Friends Crowdmind: I seek recommendations for a swimmable lake location for an early September vacation, preferably in the NY/NJ/PA/MA region. What say you?

04/04/2023

I will be talking about my crystal microphotography and fellow sci-artist Michele Banks will be discussing her neuroscience/microbiology-inspired work on 2/4 in this Zoom event organized by Silver Spring Town Center Inc. Thanks to Lisa Martin for the opportunity. Throughout most of April, my and Michele's art is on display at April in the Galleries with Featured Artists Ivan Amato and Michele Banks in Rockville, MD.

Here's how to register for this evening's sci-art talk: https://lnkd.in/ex6TGM2P

03/28/2023

Spent a good part of the day hanging my crystal photomicrographs for an art show I am sharing with fellow sci-artist Michele Banks. The show, in Rockville, MD, runs from 3/29 to 4/26 and has openings on 3/31 and 4/7. Come if you can! https://artistsandmakersstudios.com/april-2023-in-the-galleries-at-parklawn/

03/17/2023

Dear Cafeists, Artists and Makers Studios in Rockville, MD, has now listed my show with fellow sci-artist Michele Banks. Hope to see you there. The show is titled Micromajesty: Intersections of Art and Science. https://artistsandmakersstudios.com/april-2023-in-the-galleries-at-parklawn/

05/10/2022

Hello, former DC Science Cafe partners. I hope you all are doing well. I have moved to NJ to be closer to family and for a new job at Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. I am hoping that DC Science Writers Association will pick up the baton and keep DC Science Cafe alive.

Meanwhile, I thought I would let you know this: Finally emerging from a 7-year series of publication delays, including security reads by three-letter agencies, my "latest" book--an institutional history of the Naval Center for Space Technology--is out. It's about a part of the Space Age you probably don't know about. A pdf of the book will be available soon on my website: https://ivanamato.com/books/ Physical books are on their way too.

I hope all of you have engaging projects underway and people to share life's sinusoidal trajectory--those ups and downs is what I am trying to say.

My “latest” book–an institutional history of a lesser known player in the origin and evolution of the Space Age–has finally become available in 2022. It should’ve been…

01/02/2022

Dear DC Science Cafe Community,

As this new year begins, I want to thank all of you who attended even a single one of the nearly 50 DC Science Cafe events that I ran since the first one way back in 2011. I had hoped to run an event (on the future of food) in late March 2020, but that was when the wave of event cancellations picked up momentum as the world acknowledged it was in the throes of a deadly pandemic. I am writing to let you know that I will not be restarting the series. I have accepted a job at Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and so work and life will be shifting to the NY/NJ area.

I am grateful to all of you who attended the DC Science Cafe events over the years. That effort on your part was the single act in this world that made the effort so worthwhile and rewarding for me. I am grateful to Andy and Marjan Shallal for their support throughout the series and the many events and restaurant professionals at the various Busboys and Poets restaurants without whom these events would have been all intellectual without the hedonic elements that were pivotal for their success. And I am grateful to all of the brilliant scientists, engineers, historians and others who shared their expertise and hard-won knowledge and insight as discussion leaders.

There is a chance that science-communication colleagues in the DC area will pick up the baton and keep DC Science Cafe going. If so, I will work with them to keep you informed. Meanwhile, there are other terrific science-based public-engagements in the area. Among them is a series by PSW Science and another by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS)

With my good wishes to all of you for a better 2022,

Ivan Amato, founder and facilitator of DC Science Cafe.

P.S. A pandemic project of mine was to develop some abilities in the sci-art arena crystal photomicrography. I just set up an online gallery and have begun posting some of my work. I have posted an example here: vitamin C that I recrystallized from an ethanol solution I had in my liquor cabinet (Mezcal!). I invite you to meander among the handful of collections I have set up for viewing.

08/25/2021

Dear DC Science Cafeists,

I hope you are all managing through these very difficult times. I still lament having to cancel a DC Science Cafe event I had scheduled for March 23, 2020, just as the World Health Organization had declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. One way I have been compensating is by expressing my interest in the intersection of art and science by way of an art form sometimes called crystal photomicrography. I am thrilled to let you know that I will participating in a group art show beginning next week at the Arts Club of Washington. If you are so inclined, check it out.

08/03/2020

This is what it takes to smack down diseases with pandemic potential. It is possible.

In a study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, DARPA Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) performer Jim Crowe (Vanderbilt University) and colleagues outline the development of an integrated sequence of validated technologies -- including single-cell mRNA-sequence analysis, bioinformatics, synthetic biology and high-throughput functional analysis -- that enables the rapid discovery of highly potent antiviral human monoclonal antibodies. Their 78-day study was specific to Zika virus, and their work is now being used to identify potential countermeasures for COVID-19: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-0594-x]

04/26/2020

Dear DC Science Cafeists,

I have adding the second and third posting in my Medium series, One One Thousand, which is about what happens in one second, in one tick of a clock.

INTRODUCTION: https://medium.com//one-one-thousand-50af8f2da164

A SECOND OF HUMANITY https://medium.com//one-one-thousand-4123a39d5373 (A second of humanity)

LIFEBLOOD https://medium.com//one-one-thousand-31516e0feca3 (Heart and Blood)

If you are so inlined, let others know about these short essays. Thanks.

May you be well and stay that way.

Onward.

Ivan Amato
Founder of DC Science Cafe

An ode to the vastness of a second

04/20/2020

Dear DC Science Cafe community,

I was greatly looking forward to convening with you for a DC Science Cafe event on the future of food, and of production and consumption. That was supposed to have happened on March 30. I have always defined these events as "defiantly live" to stress that I run them at Busboys & Poets without providing online options, in part, to defy what has been a relentless pressure to live more of our minutes and seconds in virtual contexts rather than in-person ones. It is my hope that I will be able to resume DC Science Cafe on the other side of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, I invite you to read my essay in Medium, titled "One One Thousand," which is an ode to the preciousness and vastness of every single second that ticks and tocks from the now into the past.

https://medium.com//one-one-thousand-50af8f2da164

03/15/2020

Dear Science Cafe attendees,

These are pandemic times and so I will do my part in the societal collaboration of social distancing by postponing the DC Science Cafe event on the alternative protein movement that I had organized for March 30. My apologies. I would have loved to run the event and see you all there. I look forward to a time in the not-so-distant future when we shall gather for the next DC Science Cafe event when we will eat, drink, THINK, and be merry together.

Onward.

Ivan Amato
DC Science Cafe, Founder and Facilitator