U. dean aims to make science accessible with SNL

Even on the wild and woolly frontiers of science, things can sometimes sound — let's face it — a little dull. Not to mention confusing, full of jargon and footnotes. So some of us shy away.

That's one reason why Pierre Sokolsky, dean of the College of Science at the University of Utah, has begun Science Night Live, or SNL for short. Like another famous SNL, this one is designed to be both thought-provoking and entertaining, sometimes even funny.

The idea is to bring research scientists into informal settings that include a beverage or two. In Oregon, they call a similar program, run by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Science Pub. And in England, where the idea took hold 10 years ago, it's called Cafe Scientifique.

The Science Pub Web site describes their monthly event this way: "an informal get-together where you can interact with experts and where there's no such thing as a silly question. No scientific background is required — just curiosity, a sense of humor, and an appetite for food, drinks and knowledge."

The popularization of science in Salt Lake City also includes the Science at Breakfast lectures, presented by the U.'s College of Science Advisory Board, and the Utah Science Center's Science in Society public dialogue series. But Science Night Live is even more laid-back. The inaugural evening of SNL took place last week at Port O' Call, a private club in downtown Salt Lake City, featuring University of Utah biology professor Erik Jorgensen.

Jorgensen looks like your prototypical mad scientist, complete with a thatch of wild hair, but sounds more like a stand-up comedian. As the evening progressed he chatted amiably and then took the microphone to present a talk called, alternately, "Gay Worms" and "Boy Meets Hermaphrodite: Sexual Attraction in Worms."

Jorgensen, who is also scientific director of the U.'s Brain Institute, does basic research on the tiny nematode, c. elegans, in an effort to understand the biology of the brain. On the same day that he kicked off SNL his latest ground-breaking research was published in the journal Cell, this time looking at how worms poop. What he and his graduate student assistant, M. Wayne Davis, discovered, along the way, was startling: that subatomic protons in the worms' gut act like cell-communicating neurotransmitters. It's the first time researchers have found protons that act as transmitters, a fact that may have implications about the brain. Previously the only recognized neurotransmitters were molecules, which are 100 times larger than protons.