•The Saturday evening dinner meeting will feature a keynote address by NSF Director Arden Bement.

•The Saturday lunch meeting will feature Mario Livio, Senior Astrophysicist and Head of the Office of Public Outreach, Space Telescope Science Institute. For some two decades, Dr. Livio has popularized abstruse subjects in astronomy and mathematics through books, lectures, magazine articles, and radio and television appearances. He has delivered popular lectures at such venues as the Smithsonian Institution, the Hayden Planetarium, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the Glasgow Science Centre. He has appeared on PBS, NPR and CBS, among other radio and TV outlets, to discuss scientific and mathematical subjects His book on the irrational number phi, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number, won the Peano Prize and the International Pythagoras Prize for popular books on mathematics.

•The Sunday lunch meeting will feature a talk by Dr. Maxine Singer, recently retired (2002) as President of the Carnegie Institute and Scientist Emeritus at the National Cancer Institute. Her research contributions have ranged over several areas of biochemistry and molecular biology, including chromatin structure, the structure and evolution of defective viruses, and enzymes that work on DNA and its complementary molecule, RNA. Around 1960 she collaborated intensely with her NIH colleague Marshall Nirenberg in the elucidation of the genetic code. In recent years, her foremost contributions have been in studies of a large family of repeated DNA sequences called LINES—sequences interspersed many times in mammalian DNA. Among her many honors is a 1970 Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences for her outstanding work in the biological science.

• 

Tissue Ownership: Ethical, Legal, and Policy Considerations. Led by Dr. William Gardner, Executive Director, American Registry of Pathology.

Improved scientific understanding of genetic mechanisms, coupled with recent dramatic advances in technical capabilities, has put within our grasp the molecular fingerprints and "recipes" of all tissues, including those harboring disease. These genetic messages may remain intact in preserved tissues for long periods of time e.g., centuries. Currently, many millions of tissue specimens reside in hospital, clinic and research laboratories throughout the world. Deciphering the genetic messages in these tissues introduces questions of access, ownership, commercial capabilities, etc. Ethical, legal and sociological answers will influence the ultimate utility of such tissues and everyone has a potential stake in how these questions are answered. This session will put these general questions into perspective and will tease out individual cases. (Additional Information to follow)

• 

International Polar Research, led by the Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation (Additional Information to follow) 

• 

Science and Engineering in the Courtroom: Ethics and the Expert Witness Speakers: Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington and Director of the Federal Judicial Center and Mark S. Frankel, Ph.D., Director of the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program, American Association for the Advancement of Science. n addressing an AAAS Annual Meeting, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer observed that the law "increasingly requires access to sound science because society is becoming more dependent for its well-being on scientifically complex technology." A critical issue facing judges is how to distinguish between scientific evidence that should be admitted into a legal dispute and that which is unacceptable because of its poor scientific foundation. This session will discuss factors that judges rely on to make those decisions, and the role of the expert in presenting scientific and technical information in legal proceedings. When scientists or engineers engage the legal system as experts, they are subject to norms and practices not always familiar to them. This raises questions about how they can act responsibly in that setting. The session will identify ethical issues that have confronted experts recruited to participate in litigation, and the extent to which long-standing professional norms provide useful guidance.

The presentation will be preceded by a reception.