Black Diamond

29 May 2009

Today, I attended the inauguration event for the new CISBO research center in Denmark. The presentation was held at the "Black Diamond", one of the architectural "gems" of Denmark. Considerable new development has happened along this stretch of the harbor in Copenhagen and it is lovely in a way that I would characterize as "nautically elegant."

The meeting was about 4 hours long and 75% of it was in Danish. Only the presentations of two international scientists -- Kjell Andersson from Sweden and me -- were in English. Kjell, an MD with an engineering education, gave a very interesting talk summarizing some extensive work studying the role of the indoor environment in contributing to the growing incidence of allergy and asthma in Sweden. He has coined this new term -- neuropsychoimmunoendocrinology -- for the type of work on human subjects that he thinks is necessary to sort out the complex physiological response to the environmental stressors we now encounter.

My assignment was to take on the seemingly impossible task of summarizing the state of indoor air research from a global perspective. I was up late last night and again early this morning putting together visuals for the talk. It was well received.

Late this afternoon, I took a 35 minute flight from Copenhagen to Hamburg where I've met up with Alexis. We just finished playing Scrabble -- Alexis won by 5 points (286 to 281) after I made a strategic error late in the game that allowed her to place "quit" on the board! We're expecting Ingrid, Daniela, and Dana any minute.

These photos are all from the Black Diamond and its vicinity.