Two Ways to Join
Us:
(1) Local Los Angeles Area Meetings at UCLA or
(2) World-Wide GRG Discussion Group
See below for more details.
(Last Updated: January 8, 2010)
If you wish to be added to the list above for the sake of social networking activities, please contact us. Likewise, if you wish to have your name removed for reasons of privacy, please contact us about that, as well.
(1) To be added to our LA-GRG Announcements E-mail for monthly meetings at UCLA, please E-mail Ms. Carrie Hall of the Alfred E. Mann Foundation. These meetings are normally held on the second Monday of each month at 8:00 PM. Occasionally, we meet at USC or at CalTech, once or twice a year. These meetings have been going on for nearly 15 years and are always announced in the Meetings Section of our website a few days before hand.
(2) To be added to our LA-GRG Discussion Group (hosted by UCLA servers), please send an E-mail to Mr. Johnny Adams. As a brief word of caution, this group is an active world-wide collection of over 150 physicians, veterinarians, scientists (demographers, epidemiologists, mathematicians, actuaries, biologists, zoologists), engineers, science-fiction writers, and journalists who discuss many aspects of gerontology research and its social implications, sometimes highly technical and sometimes politically controversial, with an average of five to ten messages a day seven-days-a-week. (Disclaimer: Opinions voiced are those of its individual subscribers and not those of the UCLA School of Medicine.)
If you wish to subscribe on your own, you may go directly to the GRG Discussion Group Internet Website with directions for how to set up an account with an associated password.
One of the options that several subscribers have found useful is to subscribe to a summary of each day's discussions getting a single E-mail once per day instead of having each message sent to you in real time as they are sent out by authors.
Of course, one can "unsubscribe" by linking to the same website, as well.
Once you have a password, you may access any of the earlier discussions that go back to 2004 in our message archive, using a topic search with key words of interest. Past years (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) are available, as well, if you're really interested.
Recommended guidelines for active participation in the discussions will be posted later next month. However, in the mean time, it is suggested that you set you E-mail application default to HTML rather than ASCII text format, so that you can readily view italics (important for names of journals in reference lists) and boldface (important for names of commercial companies), as they were meant to be seen. When composing messages, it is suggested that your default font should be "Times New Roman" at 'medium' (12-point) size. Also, use color sparingly if at all, except for titles in quotation marks or headings in bold, large font. Following standard practice, underlining with the color blue should be reserved for links to other websites (URLs). In the references section of any message, please use the abbreviation Refs.: in bold face, italicize the name of the book, journal, magazine, or newspaper, and use "pp." as the abbreviation for pages, and place dates in parentheses at the end followed by a period. NEJM or JAMA conventions are also acceptable.
It is our practice to start paragraphs either with a tab character or with four consecutive spaces rather than have them be flush left. The first line of a story, however, is always flush left with the date: "Month dd, yyyy; City, ST [COUNTRY] (source) - [story]" i.e., month of year spelled out in full, 1- or 2-digit day, 4-digit year, semicolon, City of dateline (first character cap only), two-letter abbreviation for state if in USA (both caps) and country name in all-caps if not in the USA, followed by the wire service or newspaper source in italics surrounded by parentheses, followed by two dashes.
In the text of the message, please insert a Line-Feed/Carriage Return (Return) somewhere between «- and 2/3rds-of-the-way over to the right margin and use that as your margin guide for subsequent lines. Those messages that have continuous text with auto-returns built-in cause an inconsistency between the screen version and a printed version, which we try to avoid.
Try to use "-- [Name]" (two dashes followed by a unique identifier for your name in signing your messages (like your initials or first name, followed by the first letter of your last name, followed by a period), so that, as numerous contributions pile up, one can readily identify who wrote what. (It can get confusing, since different E-mail applications use different conventions for indentations, vertical bars, or consecutive nested "greater than symbols" (e.g., ">>> >")
In a complimentary close, one may use something like "Best regards," "Sincerely yours," "Very truly yours," "Respectfully yours," etc. depending on your degree of familiarity (Note: If there is more than one word in the phrase, only the first word starts with a cap.). Then there needs to be a single space before your signature line, usually a diminutive or full name followed by a comma, degrees, and/or job title. If you automatically attach a closing block with your contact coordinates, make sure that you preface a phone number with "Voice:" a FAX number with "FAX:" (The FAX is all caps, by the way; not fax or Fax.), "Cell:" for cell phones, and "Beeper:" for a pager; "E-mail:" is E-mail (not email, e-mail, E-Mail, etc.); "URL:" for an Internet web address (not Web:, etc.). Long paragraphs of legal boilerplate of the form... "If you received this message in error, then ..." should be omitted. BTW, telephone numbers should have hyphens to separate digits (Never use parentheses for area codes or sprinkle in dots instead of dashes (hyphens); it's sort of cutsy-artsy, but it does nothing for others to get their work done. Likewise, those stylists who seek to imitate e. e. cummings (the poet) with no caps whatsoever, e.g., "i saw my friends in new york." is really affected or pretentious. Similarly, those who go for "ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE" can be assumed to be shouting, even if they're not trying to.). In using paired quotation marks, any closing punctuation should live inside the final quotation mark, unless it would cause severe ambiguity, such as in a computer keyboard command. If you wish to add a post script at the end of the complimentary close, that is abbreviated "PS." (Cap cap period space) (not, "P.S.," which is the abbreviation for Public School). Avoid using ampersand (&) for and, if you can. Avoid using "%" except in tables, but use "percent" spelled out (and never, never "per" space "cent" a systematic convention by some writers). For abbreviations of Mister, Misses, Doctor, Professor, etc. use "Mr.", "Mrs.", "Dr.", "Prof." (The closing period is essential and should never be left off as is frequently done by British writers; however, "Miss" has no abbreviation; "Master" is used for minor boys and has no abbreviation; while, Mizz (Ms.) is sometimes useful for the case where the party is of type "female" but age and/or marital status are unknown.) Closing question marks (?) and exclamation points (!) are always snug up against the last letter of the last word in the sentence, and never with a space in front of them, as is frequently done by European writers. Assiduously avoid multiple consecutive question marks or exclamation points ("???" or "!!!"), as they are redundant as in the malapropism "very unique."
When addressing an item in the middle of a long block of text, it is appropriate to use the notation [SNIP] to replace a lot of redundant prior text that is not at issue. Likewise, one may truncate (or crop) any text that follows, which is not at issue, since anyone can go back to an earlier message to retrieve it, as necessary. That way, threads will not get overwhelmingly long (there was one occasion in which a single thread got to be over 30 pages, due to the fact that it was never pruned by subsequent senders.) Frequently, long threads will spawn parallel threads under a new Subject heading.
Grammar and spelling are normally not too important and should not get in the way good communication. However, take care to use idiosyncratic jargon sparingly with italics for new terms, neologisms, or acronyms, with clarification or expansion in parentheses. Of course, BTW ("By the way") and FYI ("For you interest") are common, while IMO ("In my humble opinion") is less well known.
Finally, regarding punctuation, we expect standard usage for commas, but prefer conjunctive or alternative phrases with n>2 elements to have a final comma before the conjunction ("and" or "or")(e.g., "red, white, and blue") when all the elements are at the same syntactic depth (e.g., "1, 2, 3, or 4A and 4B" should not employ a comma after "4A"). British usage almost always omits the final comma, while American usage on this question is highly variable: academic textbooks usually put it in, while newspapers frequently leave it out.
In a string of consecutive adjectives in a noun phrase, a latter one of which could also serve as a noun, please use a dash to draw them together (e.g., stem-cell research).
Use a comma to separate the hypothetical clause from the conclusion of a conditional sentence of the form "If ... then ... else..." in which the "then" place-holder is intentionally omitted (e.g., "If X>3, Y<2"; but "If X>3 then Y<2" with no comma).
For times of day, use "AM" and "PM" in caps with no periods (not "am" or "pm").
For a range of numbers between 10 and 20 use brackets, as "[10 - 20]."
For something which you know to be grammatically incorrect, use "[sic]" after the word or expression, as you were quoting someone else's malapropism literally, and you wanted to make sure that the reader knew that it was not you who was being illiterate, while you were preserving the source rather than silently correcting it. Use "(*)" after any semantically anomalous sentence which is known to be incorrect, but makes a point that you wish the reader to appreciate. This notation is frequently used in linguistics, e.g., "Happy green ideas sleep furiously. (*)"
Emoticons are definitely acceptable, e.g., ":-)" [Happy Face = humor or sarcasm], but there are so many out there now that you may risk our not knowing what yours means.
Occasionally, one may wish to insert a long continuous underscore to separate two blocks of
text from different writers...
_____________________
For additional guidance on American English spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage, and style, click for a list of References (19).
Always keep your Spell Checker turned on (most good E-mail applications have them, even though they may not be as good as the one in Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. One can hardly afford to embarrass one's self by appearing to be illiterate when the spell checker is so easy to use and its not overly obtrusive.
Pragmatic Issues: There is a global message size limitation in ~100 KBs, so you shouldn't plan to include attachments or complex in-line photos, as they will be filtered for "permission for distribution to be granted by the Administrator" before they go out to the group and so may even take a day longer to get them published.
As List Administrator, I keep a low profile and rarely intervene in conversations between individual subscribers to the List, which are sometimes heated with multiple parallel threads, except occasionally to edit their remarks for readability (and American-English spelling with due apologies to our UK and Australian colleagues).
All discussions ultimately go into a public data base. On the other hand, I try to protect our members from exposure to SPAM messages, of which I get several attempted penetrations per day from automated "spiders" (Viagra, fake Rolex watches, cheap home loans, capital schemes from Nigeria, etc.). I let one slip by once, and I got several reprimands from List Subscribers almost instantly.
Subject-line prefixes (followed by a colon) that we have found useful in the past are as follows: "Meeting:", "Book:" are obvious. "Theory:", "Politics:", etc. "Breaking News:" with concurrent elevated-priority (e.g., single red carrot (IMPORTANT) in many E-mail systems); time-critical announcements (e.g., Watch this TV program tonight at 10 PM PDT) may also employ a single carrot; double carrots (URGENT) are normally reserved only for patient consultations and not for Group communications. The value in a Subject-line prefix is that subscribers who only wish to see science-based discussions (the default prefix, when there is no prefix) can ignore a long political thread which may be of no interest to them (e.g., the delete key on "Politics: Stem Cells..." works very well for these folk).
It may also help in the "Salutation" of your message to address it to one or a particular set of individuals or to persons in a restricted geographical area (e.g., "To Local Members..." meaning Los Angeles area or "To Bay Area Members," meaning San Francisco, etc.).
I am sure that these guidelines will be added to as time goes on, since I could hardly think of everything in a single pass.
I am told that one advantage of membership on the List is that it's a painless way to keep up with breaking news items in the field of biogerontology. Hopefully, even if I'm out of town or just not on the computer on a particular day (yes, Virginia, that happens from time to time), someone else will almost certainly send out an important pass-through from Associated Press, CNN, WSJ, etc. In addition, one can ask questions of some of the finest researchers in the world in their respective areas of subspecialty: mtDNA, ethics, or whatever.
-- Steve Coles, GRG List Administrator; January 3, 2010.
For all other questions, please E-mail Steve Coles, LA-GRG Co-Founder, directly.