Bayside, NY girl scores 2nd in science challengeFrom

From The Queens Courier: Bayside girl scores 2nd in science challenge
Cheyenne Hua has won national recognition for her innovative inventions aimed at putting the brakes on speeding and getting to the bottom of home flooding — and she’s only 14.

The Bayside whiz kid took home a second place victory in the 13th annual Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge — the leading national science competition for students in grades five through eight — on October 5. She also won a $1,000 cash prize and a trip to Costa Rica.

“It feels really good to have won second place because all the other finalists were very, very smart. To have such a high ranking among them is awesome,” said Hua, a ninth grader at Hunter College Junior High School.

Hua landed a spot in the top 10 finals with her “smart speed-bump” idea. Her model essentially places two undetected bumps inside the road. When a car passes over the first bump, sensors in the road will recognize if the car is speeding. Then, a timed lever raises up the second bump which pops up to slow down drivers.

She said she was inspired by a fatal crash caused by drag racers two years earlier outside her home on Francis Lewis Boulevard — which she says is a problematic zone for speeders.

“I just wanted to come up with a better solution than the current ones. Some models of cars can’t go over speed bumps. The ones that exist now just sit there, and every car has to suffer through the giant bump. With my invention, only the cars that speed have to go over it,” she said.

Hua’s second invention — a flood protection system — was what helped her land the runner-up win. She worked with a scientist-mentor from the program throughout the summer to develop the project before her final presentation in October.

The invention equips new homes with an adhesive based sheet of waterproof fabric that goes around the house foundation. A ring floats around the top, and when water from the flood comes in, the ring rises and so does the fabric, Hua said. It prevents water from entering the home.

“This past summer, there’s been a lot of flooding. Even though I wasn’t affected, I saw around the news that a lot of people were,” she said. “I just wanted to come up with a system that would be helpful and that people could use to prevent flood damage.”

Although Hua didn’t take home the grand prize, Mary Rollins, vice president of Corporate Education Partnerships and also one of the judges, said it was a close win.

“The judges deliberated for several hours. We’re saying very honestly and openly that this year’s competition was tighter than ever,” she said. “Cheyenne was a really amazing young lady — very composed and incredibly equipped with a strong science background. She’s exactly the kind of student we want when we think of these contests.”

Hua flew to St. Paul, Minnesota — the farthest she’s ever been in the United States — to present her project to a panel of Discovery Education and 3M judges. She also had to answer a series of questions about her project at the end of her five-minute demonstration.

“It was kind of nerve-racking, and I was really relieved when it was finished,” she said. “But it was a great experience.”

Hua, who wants to be an engineer in the future, said she missed three days of school, and is just about finished catching up on the heavy work load.

“It was definitely worth it — especially meeting such cool, awesome people like the mentors, the judges and my fellow finalists. I made great friends. I don’t think I would have met anyone like that through the normal process of life,” said Hua, who still keeps in touch with the other finalists via email.

Hua said she has more inventions under her sleeve and hopes to expand and improve her speed-bump and flood protection ideas.

“I could see Cheyenne working in the field of science and really focusing on real world science, looking for a way to come up with real solutions for real world problems,” Rollins said. “I could see her using science to solve some of our greatest world challenges in the future.”

Astronaut Shannon Walker

Here's the NASA website on the NEEMO mission:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NEEMO/index.html

(31 Aug. 2009) --- Attired in Russian Sokol launch and entry suits, backup spaceflight participant Barbara Barrett (left); Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, backup Soyuz commander and Expedition 21 flight engineer; and NASA astronaut Shannon Walker, backup Expedition 21 commander and flight engineer, take a break from training in Star City, Russia to pose for a portrait. Photo credit: Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center
From NASA's website:
SHANNON WALKER (PH.D)
NASA Astronaut

PERSONAL DATA: Born June 4, 1965 in Houston, Texas. Married to astronaut Andy Thomas. Recreational interests include cooking, soccer, running, weight training, flying, camping, and travel. Her mother, Sherry Walker, resides in Boerne, Texas. Her father, Robert Walker, is deceased.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Westbury Senior High, Houston, Texas, in 1983; received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1987; received a Masters of Science and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Space Physics from Rice University in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

ORGANIZATIONS: Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association; The Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots.

SPECIAL HONORS: Goethe Institute Scholarship for Study Abroad, Rice Fellowship for Graduate Study, Rockwell Sustained Superior Performance Award; seven Group Achievement Awards for work in the International Space Station (ISS) Program; three Going the Extra Mile Awards for work in the ISS Program; a Space Flight Awareness Award for contributions to the ISS Program; and nine Performance Bonus Awards.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Dr. Walker began her professional career with the Rockwell Space Operations Company at the Johnson Space Center in 1987 as a robotics flight controller for the Space Shuttle Program. She worked several Space Shuttle missions as a flight controller in the Mission Control Center, including STS-27, STS-32, STS-51, STS-56, STS-60, STS-61, and STS-66. From 1990 to 1993, Dr. Walker took a leave of absence from the Johnson Space Center to attend graduate school, where her area of study was the solar wind interaction with the Venusian atmosphere. In 1995, she joined the NASA civil service and began working in the International Space Station (ISS) Program at the Johnson Space Center. Dr. Walker worked in the area of robotics integration, working with the ISS International Partners in the design and construction of the robotics hardware for the Space Station. In 1998 she joined the ISS Mission Evaluation Room (MER) as a manager for coordinating on-orbit problem resolution for the International Space Station. In 1999, Dr. Walker moved to Moscow, Russia to work with the Russian Space Agency and its contractors in the areas of avionics integration for the ISS as well as integrated problem solving for the ISS. She returned to Houston in 2000 after a year in Russia and became the technical lead for the ISS MER as well as the Deputy Manager of the On-Orbit Engineering Office. Prior to selection as an astronaut candidate, Dr. Walker was the Acting Manager of the On-Orbit Engineering Office.

Selected by NASA in May 2004, Walker completed Astronaut Candidate Training in February 2006. Her training included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. Dr. Walker is qualified to fly aboard the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. She has also completed qualification in the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Skills program and the Canadian Space Agency Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Robotics Operator (MRO) course.

Following her Astronaut Candidate Training, Dr, Walker assumed the duties as the crew support astronaut for the ISS Expedition 14 crew, which was on orbit for 215 day from September 2006 to April 2007. As a crew support astronaut she was the primary contact for all crew coordination, planning, and interactions, and was the primary representative for the crew while they were on orbit. In addition, Dr. Walker was assigned as a Spacecraft Communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center in Houston. In that role, she was the primary communication link between the crew on the Space Station and the ground support team. Her work as a CAPCOM culminated in her assignment as the lead Space Station CAPCOM for the STS-118 Shuttle mission which docked with the Space Station and carried out four EVAs and added the S5 truss to the Station.

In the Summer of 2007, Dr. Walker began training for a long duration flight on the International Space Station. Initially assigned as a backup Expedition 19 crewmember, as a backup crewmember for Expedition 21/22 and a primary crew member for Expedition 24/25.

Dr. Walker launched and served as flight engineer (co-pilot) of Russian Soyuz spacecraft, TMA-19, on June 15, 2010 for a long duration mission aboard the International Space Station. She again served as a Flight Engineer during landing, which occurred November 25, 2010. The entire mission lasted 163 days, 161 of them aboard the Station.

NASA evacuates astronauts from deep-sea training

Commander Shannon Walker

From Breitbart.com: NASA evacuates astronauts from deep-sea training
NASA evacuated a crew of astronauts Wednesday from an underwater lab off the coast of Florida where they were training for a trip to an asteroid, due to the approach of Hurricane Rina.
"Crew decompressed overnight and will return to surface shortly. Hurricane Rina just a little too close for comfort," the US space agency said in a message on the microblogging site Twitter.

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) team climbed aboard support boats that were waiting at the surface and they were expected to be on dry land by 9:00 am (1300 GMT).

The crew includes Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, commander Shannon Walker of NASA, and Steve Squyres, an expert on planetary exploration at Cornell University in New York.

They were about midway through a 13-day mission at the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory, the only undersea lab of its kind in the world located three miles (4.5 kilometers) off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.

The practice run aimed to help astronauts figure out how they would get around on a near gravity-free asteroid, a trip President Barack Obama has said could happen by 2025.

Hurricane Rina, packing winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) per hour, was forecast to become a major category three storm before making landfall near the sprawling resort city of Cancun on Thursday.

Dino Dan and Other Kids Shows Miss the Mark

I thought the post below was going to talk about the fact that although both girls and boys love dinosaurs, TV shows that cater to children only have the boy as the lead character - as evidenced in Dino Dan.

Cartoons really do girls a dis-service. Boys can be "take charge" kind of kids and get things done, but let a girl have that "can do" attitude, and she's just a bossy bitch. [And, sadly, girls - and when they grow older, women, feel the same way about their female bosses! Because we've been ingrained since childhood that only guys have the right to tell women what they should be doing, presumably.]

But as you see below, the post is rather more concerned about teaching kids that imagination and "wishing" can accomplish things, rather than buckling down to work and making things happen on your own.
From BlogHer.com: Dino Dan and Other Kids Shows Miss the Mark

When Kids Shows Just Miss the Mark:

You know him. You might have been him -- there’s always one in a class. The little boy that’s obsessed with dinosaurs and knows everything about them. No matter what you try to talk about, they find a way to link it to dinosaurs.

That’s Dan. And because this is a show about him, his classmates tolerate him and even think he’s cool.

But there’s a problem. You see, Dan doesn’t just know everything about dinosaurs -- he sees them all around Toronto. The show commits itself to having Dan believe this, even convincing his best friend it’s real. But nobody else believes him, and there are hints all around that it is Dan’s imagination. What could have been a very entertaining show about the power of imagination instead feels more like a little boy who is so desperate for his father that he creates the one scenario that’s guaranteed to bring him home -- real dinosaurs.

What Role Models on Tap For Girls?

Just saw a commercial today for a new sitcom - I Hate My Teenage Daughter.

What a great and inspiring title for a sit com!

I couldn't quite grasp who all the characters were - but in one scene a girl says, "You've never been my best friend," as she brushes past a woman and starts climbing the stairs, and I assume that's the daughter, and the mother at the foot of the stairs just kind of crumples over - in a comedic rather than a destroyed way, which is how a real mom would feel - and does feel - when a teenager disses her mother that way.

From Contact Music: Frankie Cocozza's Dad Boasts 'My Son Has Bedded 67 Girls'

Frankie Cocozza, the British singing hopeful and finalist on The X Factor, found himself in the bottom two during Sunday's results show (17th October 2011), but managed to escape elimination. Frankie's rendition of Coldplay's The Scientist failed to impress the judges, but the singer's father has been talking up his son's success with the ladies.

Speaking to UK's People newspaper, Frankie Snr said of his 18-year-old son, "I don't think he has slept with more than 100 girls. I think he is on number 67. I'd say my number is 30 or 40 but it might be more". The teenager stunned the live audience at his audition by revealing a tattooed list of girl's names on his bottom. His father claims to see his younger-self in Frankie, saying, ". I would be out every night. I'd go on the lash and meet a lady. They would all be one-night stands because we would want a different girl the next day". Despite being installed as an early favourite to win the competition, Cocozza found himself in danger of being eliminated on Sunday's show. His mentor Gary Barlow had switched songs from Daniel Merriweather's 'Red' to 'The Scientist', just hours before Saturday's live performance.

Luckily for the Brighton-born singer, the judges chose to eliminate boy band 'Nu-Vibe' from the competition following their performance of Cheryl Cole's 'Promise This' in the sing off survival round.

He's 18 and he's had 67 girls. And Dad is so proud. I wonder how many kids he has?

Of course you can't place all the blame on him. There are a high percentage of girls today who think nothing of one night stands. They don't worry about birth control either, because if they get pregnant, they'll have no problem getting welfare. The stigma of being someone whom the guy will NOT respect in the morning is long gone. Thanks to the crap media we are inundated with every day!

(And then of course there are the girls who think that a boy would not have sex with them unless they were pretty...not realizing that a boy will have sex with them regardless of what they look like - the sex is the thing. Which is something girls have to realize. Self respect above all, girls! Boys are full of hormones and will do anything for sex, so wait until you grow up and get a job and meet someone mature!)

Of course girls are good at math!

When the average boy or girl thinks of professions for women - nurses and teachers spring first to mind, don't they?

Well..guess what, nurses need to do a lot of math. And they have no problem knowing math, because there are so many female nurses, aren't there?!!

I had never given much thought to what nurses need to know... I have done my best to stay away from nurses - and doctors - my entire life.

But I was at a used book store yesterday and I came across a bright red paperback book entitled Math for Nurses.

The book's description doesnt really tell much:

Now in its Seventh Edition, this pocket guide is a compact, portable, easy-to-use reference for dosage calculation and drug administration. The author uses a step-by-step approach with frequent examples to illustrate problem-solving and practical applications. Coverage includes review of mathematics, measurement systems, and a comprehensive section on dosage calculations.

Practice problems throughout the text and end-of-chapter and end-of-unit review questions will aid students' application and recall of material. A handy pull-out card contains basic equivalents, conversion factors, and math formulas.

The point is, girls have no problem with math.

The problem is... girls have problems with guys who have problems with girls who have no problem with math. And that's a pity.

(What's really sad about this book, Math for Nurses, is that many of its readers - nurses, obviously, have reviewed it on Amazon.com and said it was rife with math errors! How ironic is that! The students know more than the book that is supposed to teach them.)

A physicist in the cancer lab

From Symmetry (Dimensions of Particle Physics): A physicist in the cancer lab

Nicole Ackerman thought she would always be a particle physicist—until a newfound interest in biology drew her toward medical imaging. Her research on Cherenkov radiation, the blue glow from charged particles outracing light, could aid development of cancer treatments.

Nicole Ackerman is a serious physics geek. As a graduate student at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, she ran computer simulations for EXO, the Enriched Xenon Observatory, an investigation into the nature of neutrinos; blogged for the particle physics website Quantum Diaries; and led lab tours. Her Gmail handle is neutrinoless, for the type of radioactive decay EXO is intended to detect. A tattoo of an equation called the Taylor series expansion circles her left arm because, she says, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever learned.”

So what is she doing at the Stanford University School of Medicine? One of two researchers with particle physics training on an interdisciplinary team, Ackerman is helping to develop a new form of imaging that could be useful in testing cancer treatments.

In one sense, she hasn’t strayed far from her roots: she studies a phenomenon called Cherenkov radiation, bluish light associated with fast-moving charged particles. Ackerman and other researchers are exploring whether Cherenkov light from radioactively tagged molecules could aid tumor imaging and drug development.

While her transition to biology has posed some challenges, Ackerman believes her training in particle physics simulations will allow her to make unique contributions to the field: “It feels like it’s filling a niche that was previously empty.”

Thinking outside the box
Ackerman became interested in physics in middle school, reading popular science books about quantum mechanics and string theory. As an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she traveled to CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, to work on one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle collider in the world. Then she spent a summer at SLAC working on BaBar, an experiment investigating the universe’s puzzling shortage of antimatter, before starting her graduate studies there in 2007.

But after a few years, she began to wonder if she was suited to research in a field where a single experiment may span decades and involve hundreds or even thousands of people. “To imagine spending my entire life on one project—I don’t think I could do that,” she says.

Then a new opportunity appeared.

At the June 2010 Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, Ackerman heard a speaker describe antibiotics binding to a molecule on a bacterium. The depth and complexity of molecular biology “blew my mind,” she says.

As she saw more talks and spoke to more biologists, “for the first time in my life, I appreciated what biomedical research looked like,” and how interesting it was.

About a week later, at a conference in Italy, she heard another talk about applications of particle physics in medical imaging and nuclear reactor monitoring. Ackerman had heard about these applications, but hadn’t realized the work was happening in universities, not just in industry. She decided to switch fields and pursue applied particle physics for her PhD.

To learn more, Ackerman contacted scientists working in medical physics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, including molecular imaging researcher Ted Graves. When Graves told her his lab was studying Cherenkov radiation, she recalls, “My reaction was to kind of squeak and say ‘Cherenkov! Cherenkov’s my favorite!’” She joined Graves’ lab and began working on a PhD project in fall 2010.

That strange blue glow
Cherenkov radiation is a “really bizarre phenomenon,” Ackerman says. Named for Russian physicist Pavel Cherenkov, who studied it in the 1930s, it occurs when a charged particle zips through a particular medium faster than light does. “People get upset and say, well, things can’t travel faster than the speed of light,” she says. While that’s true in a vacuum, light becomes more sluggish in materials such as water, and in some cases a charged particle can outrun it.

As the particle moves through the material, it distorts surrounding atoms by pulling or pushing away their electrons. The atoms relax back into place after the particle passes, releasing a bit of electromagnetic radiation. Normally, these emissions aren’t visible, just as tiny ripples on the ocean can’t be seen from a plane. But if the particle breaks the light barrier, the radiation adds up to a bluish glow, analogous to a large ocean wave that is visible from far above.

To physicists, Cherenkov radiation is nothing new. BaBar, the experiment at SLAC, used Cherenkov light detection to help identify particles, and the South Pole observatory IceCube looks for Cherenkov light from particles produced by neutrinos hitting atoms in the ice. But in the medical community, it was largely ignored.

Eye-opening experiment
That changed in 2009, when a team led by researchers at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts reported they could detect visible light emanating from mice injected with molecules labeled with a radioactive isotope. Radioactive labels are often used in medical research to follow molecules of interest—a potential drug, for example—through an animal’s body, and in the clinic to evaluate cancer patients. Doctors may inject a patient with a radioactive form of glucose, which accumulates in sugar-hungry cancer cells and makes them stand out in an image.

“My reaction was to kind of squeak and say ‘Cherenkov! Cherenkov’s my favorite!’”

“I can look at the physics side of it and say, guys, this is your best-case scenario.”
In this case, the team suggested the light was Cherenkov radiation, produced when the radioactive isotope decayed and emitted high-energy charged particles called positrons. The study suggested that the light offered a way to “see” radioactive decays in an animal’s body. The team called the new technique Cherenkov luminescence imaging, or CLI.

While researchers already obtain similar information with other techniques, such as positron emission tomography, or PET, CLI is cheaper. It provides a bridge between the world of PET and other nuclear imaging techniques and the world of optical imaging, says medical physicist Simon Cherry at the University of California, Davis. Some researchers hope to use CLI to image tumors in human patients during surgery, so doctors can check whether all the cancerous tissue has been removed before closing up a patient. However, this will be challenging since the light is very weak and can’t penetrate far through tissue.

Running the numbers
Many CLI studies have been performed with mice. But Ackerman focused on studying Cherenkov light in the virtual world by running simulations with Geant4, software created primarily for particle physics. Developed in the 1990s, Geant4 allows researchers to simulate the behavior of particles. As a virtual particle moves through matter, the program essentially “rolls the dice” to determine what might happen at a given instant, repeats the process to plot the particle’s path and decay, and then does this for many particles. Geant4 has found a variety of uses outside particle physics, such as estimating the amount of radiation astronauts receive in space and verifying radiation treatment plans for cancer patients.

Ackerman had already used Geant4 during her time on EXO to simulate parts of the data-gathering process. In Graves’ lab, she focused on radioactive isotopes called alpha emitters, which scientists hope to use to kill cancer cells but currently don’t have a good way of imaging. With her simulations, she was able to confirm that the alpha emitter actinium-225 could also indirectly produce Cherenkov light through high-energy electrons released by its daughter isotopes. Scientists developing alpha-emitter treatments could use Cherenkov imaging to watch a drug’s path in mice and ensure it’s reaching the tumor, she says.

Ackerman has also used Geant4 to study other potential cancer treatments. For example, scientists hope to increase the effectiveness of radiation treatments by injecting patients with gold nanoparticles that accumulate in the tumor and intensify the radiation dose to the area. Ackerman’s simulations allowed her to estimate the size of this effect: It could increase the radiation dose to the tumor cells’ nuclei by about 2.5 times. By trying different nanoparticles in Geant4 and determining an upper limit on the effect, Ackerman might be able to save researchers time and money in the lab.

“I can look at the physics side of it and say, guys, this is your best-case scenario,” she says. “If you’ve gotten that, you don’t need to keep trying to make different types of nanoparticles to see if you do better.”

Geant4 isn’t the perfect tool for Ackerman’s research. The standard Geant4 models of physics processes typically deal with higher energies than those seen in radiation treatments for cancer. But Ackerman plans to investigate how much these limitations affect her data and whether the models could somehow be modified to address them. She also hopes to program a virtual mouse into Geant4 so she can simulate processes in mice, the standard lab animals.

A new start
According to Graves, the traditional curse of biology is that it’s a qualitative science; physicists like Ackerman bring a more quantitative mindset to the research. But Ackerman has also been eager to learn about biology. “That’s refreshing and important,” says Rehan Ali, a postdoc in Graves’ lab. If you’re coming from a particle physics background and want to contribute to biomedicine, “you have to really spend time getting to know the field first, and she’s done that.”

Making the transition from particle physics to biology hasn’t been entirely easy. After signing up for an imaging anatomy class that required her to identify organs, Ackerman says, “I thought, oh crap, how am I ever going to learn all our squishy bits inside? Because they all kind of look the same.” And when trying to simulate the behavior of an imaging instrument, she ran into difficulties getting information from the manufacturer. “Coming from particle physics, the guy next to you wrote the code and the guy on the other side built the system,” she says. “So it’s been very strange trying to model this system and not knowing all the details.”

Even in her new environment, Ackerman maintains ties to her particle physics past and follows news in the field. While she misses the particle physics community, she says she likes contributing to a field where her simulation skills are less common. “I might be the only one thinking about some of these details,” she says. If her alpha-emitter studies help researchers develop a cancer treatment more quickly, “that’ll make a difference to people I know,” she says. “The work I do matters more.”

Jobs for women are there for the plucking

But a lack of role models - thank you, mass media - hinders our children's belief in themselves and their capabilities.

The article below is about airline pilots, but the same concepts hold true for women scientists. There are plenty of women scientists, but percentage wise they are only a small percentage of the whole.

Let's change that!

From Deutche Welle: More women earn their wings at Lufthansa and other airlines
Female aviators have flown combat missions for the military, but it's taken them much longer to break the gender barrier at commercial airlines. The percentage of women pilots is still extremely low, but rising.

Back in the 1960s, the head of Lufthansa's pilot training school, Alfred Vermaaten, once quipped: "A woman has a better chance of becoming a world heavyweight boxing champion than an airline captain". It took decades to prove Vermaaten wrong. Lufthansa's first female pilot took to the skies in 1988, and went on to becoming the German flag carrier's first female captain in the year 2000.

Lufthansa currently employs nearly 300 female pilots, which means women account for little more than 5 percent of the airline's pilots an industry average based on a random sampling of major commercial airlines compiled by Deutsche Welle.

Today the odds of a woman being a commercial airline pilot are better than becoming a heavyweight boxing champion, but they're still a lot lower than the 12 percent on the supervisory boards of Germany's major DAX companies. Furthermore, 36 percent of judges in Germany are women and nearly 40 percent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet is female.

No discrimination in the cockpit
In Vermaaten's time, it was unthinkable for a woman to be in the cockpit of any commercial airline, even though many female pilots had flown for the military during the previous half-century.

"We had a saying that 'if God meant women to fly, he would have painted the sky pink, not blue,'" said Captain Jörg Handwerg, a spokesman for the airline pilots' association Vereinigung Cockpit. However, gender discrimination is no longer an obstacle to a career in the cockpit, he added. Quite the contrary.

"When (women) apply for a job, airlines are happy. They want to get rid of the stigma they discriminate against women. They want to encourage women to become pilots, but with only an 8 percent application rate, you cannot have 50 percent women pilots," he said.

Although there are no quotas or numerical targets in its recruitment of female pilots, Lufthansa sponsors an annual program called Girls' Day, in which companies present vocational choices to teenage girls. "We try to promote the job of an airline pilot, flight engineer or mechanic to high school girls, to show them that these kinds of career paths are options for them," explained Lufthansa spokesman Michael Lamberty.

Lack of female role models
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Women fly for the German military, but few other female role models exist
That so few women apply for the flight training programs airlines offer is puzzling, especially since the pay is good. The starting salary at a major commercial airline such as Lufthansa is about 60,000 euros ($82,000), which is more than that of a junior hospital doctor or lower level federal judge in Germany.

First officer Rieke Hurler, 25, earned her pilot's license in 2010 after completing an in-house flight training course that lasted nearly three years. Hurler, whose father is also a pilot, had already dreamed about flying as a child.

"I think if my father would not be a pilot, I would not have even thought about it," Hurler said, adding that the lack of female role models could be a reason why so few women consider a career in the cockpit. "In the movies and TV, it's always the male heroes who are flying the airplanes".

Too technical for women?
Perhaps flying jets, like fixing cars, is simply one of those 'male' tasks which doesn't appeal to most women?

"The female pilots we have are wonderful, but women in general just don't seem to be interested in this very technical job," said Handwerg. But Hurler believes many women are frightened off by the perception that flying is a purely technical career.

"You don't need to study maths or physics to be a pilot. Lots of women think it's only a technical job, but you need communication and team skills, soft skills too," said Hurler. "I think there's no difference whether you're a woman or man flying an airplane. There's nothing that a woman can't do in this job," she added.

For many younger women, the technical demands of the job and sexism are not the primary issue keeping them away from the runway. What matters is whether a company offers family friendly policies that make it easier for women to combine work with motherhood.

Combining flying with motherhood
"The job of a pilot is not Monday to Friday 9-5. It's not very regular, but it is planable," said Lufthansa spokesman Lamberty, who explained that pilots can choose from several part-time schemes that allow them to fly a fraction of their regular roster.

Furthermore, flight simulators allow pregnant pilots to keep honing their skills so they don't lose their seniority when they come back to work after maternity leave.

"Of course I'd like to have a family in the next few years and with my job it's not a problem. It's a question of organization," said Hurler, who is married, but childless.

What can be difficult is being thousands of miles away from home at a four or five day stretch - a schedule demanded not just of pilots, but of cabin crew as well. And then there are contingencies such as a volcanic ash cloud that can leave the entire flight crew stranded for days and wreck havoc with childcare arrangements back home.

"For every mother it is hard to leave small children," said Martina Stickler-Posner, who was once a flight attendant, but is now a labor lawyer representing pilots. "What I found hard for me and my colleagues is the standby regulation. You're reading a book to your child, suddenly the phone rings and mummy goes off."

Part-time pilots cost more
Stickler-Posner said that while airlines do officially offer part-time modules to accommodate the work-life needs of their pilots, such practices are sometimes not popular with airline managers because it costs more to train and maintain two part-time pilots than just one full-time pilot.

"There are airlines who say we can't afford to have more part-time workers, that pilot education is so expensive," she said. The cost of training one pilot at Lufthansa is roughly 180,000 euros, of which one third is usually paid back by the trainee in the form of a salary deduction during their first few years of work.

Ironically, when the industry is in a slump, employers are happy to reduce the workload of working mothers and some pilots might even be forced to reduce their hours involuntarily. But during an economic boom or peak travel times of the year, part-time work is discouraged, said Stickler-Posner.

The airline industry is always one of the first to feel the effect of global economic developments, from changes in the price of oil to political unrest. But one steady trend is emerging: In the past decade, the proportion of female pilots at Lufthansa has more than doubled and the number of pilot trainees has tripled to make up 15 percent of the training roster. While it's still rare for passengers to hear a female voice emanating from the cockpit, their absolute numbers are growing quickly.

Seasoned archaeologist takes museum top job

From Cayman Islands News: Seasoned archaeologist takes museum top job
(CNS): Dr Margaret Leshikar-Denton, who previously worked at the Cayman Islands National Museum for 16 years as an archaeologist, doing research and developing displays, has taken the museum’s top job. The anthropology doctor returned just over a week ago to take up the post in familiar surroundings. Leshikar-Denton also worked on the Cayman Islands’ shipwreck register and was instrumental in developing the maritime trail. “I have great respect and appreciation for the heritage and culture of the Cayman Islands. It is therefore a privilege to be entrusted with the leadership and vision of the National Museum,” she said.

A serving member of the Cayman Islands Visual Arts Society, Orchid Society and National Gallery, she is also life member of the Cayman Islands National Trust. The new museum director holds a doctorate in Anthropology (Nautical Archaeology) and honed her archaeological skills in many countries, including Mexico, Spain, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos and Turkey.

National Museum board chairperson Jeana Ebanks said that during her previous tenure Dr Leshikar-Denton showed a deep personal dedication to, and respect for, Caymanian culture. “She is adept at forging partnerships to attain major programme objectives and enjoys the widespread respect of her peers and colleagues. In addition, she has earned the complete confidence of the Board of Governors to guide the museum competently,” Ebanks said as she welcomed her appointment. “My expectations is that she will provide strong leadership for our National Museum.”

The museum expert first came to the Cayman Islands in 1980 when a team from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (based at Texas A&M University) was invited by the government to survey the islands’ waters for shipwrecks. Six years later, she accepted a full-time position at the museum and moved permanently to the Cayman Islands.

Mark Scotland, the culture minister, said Dr Leshikar-Denton’s knowledge combined with her unique experience would ensure that the National Museum remains one of Cayman’s premiere cultural entities. “We expect that under her leadership we will see many meaningful initiatives that will support the preservation of Caymanian culture,” he added.

Dr Leshikar-Denton is a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists, has worked as an independent researcher and has served as the senior representative for Central America and the Caribbean on the World Archaeological Congress. She was also the UNESCO representative at the Latin American and Caribbean Technical Commission on Underwater Cultural Heritage Meetings in 1998 and 1999.

In 2001, she served on the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) delegation during development of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. She co-edited, with Pilar Luna of Mexico, Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in Latin America and the Caribbean (2008) and contributed Caribbean Maritime Archaeology to the Oxford Handbook of Underwater Archaeology (2010).

Currently, Dr Leshikar-Denton serves as secretary for ICOMOS’ International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH), as an emeritus member of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA), and director and board member for the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA).

Time for a girl's own adventure

From Sydney Morning Herald: Time for a girl's own adventure

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is determined to avoid typecasting by the boys who run the show in Hollywood.

IF YOU have trouble recognising Mary Elizabeth Winstead in The Thing from her other films, good. That's how the 27-year-old actor wants it. Eager to carve out a lengthy career in a male-dominated culture of interchangeable ingenues, here-today-gone-already starlets and a poor choice of roles for women, Winstead has always been conscious of keeping her CV versatile.

''What's cool is when I do get recognised on the street, it's always for something different,'' she says from Los Angeles. ''A kid will recognise me for Sky High, a teenage boy from Final Destination 3, a 25-year-old girl from Scott Pilgrim vs the World. It's really cool to be slowly building a fanbase that's a little bit more broad.''

Winstead also played the kidnapped daughter of Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4.0, the sexy actress in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, the lead dancer in Make It Happen (she's a trained ballerina) and a sorority scream queen in the horror film Black Xmas.

In The Thing, an FX-heavy prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic, Winstead takes on the role of scientist Kate Lloyd who is stuck in an Antarctic station with other scientists and a shape-shifting thing from another world. Winstead plays Lloyd as a can-do gal who relishes the chance to fight back, usually with flame-thrower in hand.

''It is a rare role for a woman in film to be strong and powerful and smart but in a way that's realistic,'' she says. ''I didn't have superpowers, I wasn't perfect-looking or in Spandex. I was just a smart woman trying to figure out a way to get out of a horrible situation and stay alive.''

She says it's rare - but why is that? Winstead was born in 1984, the year The Terminator gave us female action icon Sarah Connor. Growing up, Winstead revered Connor and Ripley from the Alien films and admits that, by now, her character in The Thing shouldn't be an anomaly.

''I know, it's really strange,'' she says. ''It's not that it never happens because we do get occasional women superheroes but still, it seems like when we are kicking ass it's because we have some superpower. What's so great about Ripley is that she's just a kick-ass woman.

''For younger women like myself growing up in the 1980s, to see something like that was really empowering so I really want to find roles like that for that same reason, so that other girls will be able to say, 'Wow, she is a totally relatable woman who's able to be strong and kick butt'.''

After her appearance in Death Proof and the associated Maxim photo spread, Winstead suddenly became aware of how her sex appeal could begin to define her work. ''There's a lot more emphasis placed on sex appeal now for women and it's frustrating, because I certainly don't want to play those parts. That's just not me. It can be hard to find parts that aren't just focused on that.''

Is this because Hollywood is still primarily run by men for men?

''I think so, it really still is a boys' club, unfortunately,'' Winstead says frankly. ''Everything is from a male perspective. When Bridesmaids came out it was like this huge revolution, the fact that here was a comedy about women and written by women. It's sad that it had to be such a big deal. Even though there are amazing female directors and executives it is still really off-balance, so it is always going to be a struggle to find really great roles.''

And the Hollywood clock ticks faster for a young woman in the profession than for a young man.

''It is frustrating,'' she says. ''Men never seem to be held back by their age while women reach a certain age and, oftentimes, they disappear into smaller roles or they're relegated to do things that are not quite what they would want to be doing. There are actresses though who are pushing the boundaries, such as Melissa Leo, so I'm hoping that as time goes on we get more diversity.''

To enhance her longevity, Winstead is using her high profile - she'll appear next year in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - to do more challenging fare in smaller independent films such as Smashed, in which she plays an alcoholic.

''I'm just getting to the level where a producer who's doing a little movie will say, 'Oh yeah, you've done some big films; we can put you in this film and maybe we'll be able to get finance and market it.'''

She lets out a laugh. ''It's so interesting how you do big films sometimes to get to do the little ones. It seems backwards but it's kinda the way it works.''

Twenty first century Girl Scouts have badges for science and technology

From Tech.Blorge: Twenty first century Girl Scouts have badges for science and technology

My memories of Girl Scouts involve camping in the rain, learning to build fires, cooking on upside down coffee cans and of course, selling cookies. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Girl Scouts now have badges for Computer Expert and Entertainment Technology.

National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered, looked at the twenty first century update of Girl Scout badges. While several still remain the same like Citizen, Cook and First Aid, you can now find on the Girl Scouts website badges for: Computer Expert, Home Scientist, Inventor, Investigate Award, Innovate Award, Digital Photography, Entertainment Technology, Geocacher, Product Designer, Digital Movie Maker, Science of Happiness, Netiquette, Website Designer, Locavore, Science of Style, Textile Artist, Car Care, Game Visionary, Social Innovator, and (Cookie) Research and Development.

Two of my favorites seem to be patterned of such shows as Covert Affairs or the cartoons, Codename: Kids Next Door and Totally Spies. These are the Detective and Special Agent badges. There are also a couple that sound daring like Adventurer and mystical like Truth Seeker. There don’t seem to be any for hacking. Maybe next year.

Not only are these badges a badly needed update but all of them help girls to explore professions that they might not think of otherwise. Activities promoted by the badges like inventing, innovating, and designing are necessary not just in science but also in most business endeavors.

To help them make the most of their science and technology prowess, there are also badges that help girls to learn about managing money. In the early stages of Girl Scouting they can earn badges for Money Counts, Making Choices, Money Manager, Philanthropist, Business Owner, and Savvy Shopper.

The upper levels, Cadet through Ambassador, cover such financial skills as Budgeting, Comparison Shopping, Financing My Dreams, On My Own, and Good Credit. Looking at today’s economy, it wouldn’t be bad if a adults were allowed to earn those badges too.

Finally, Girl Scouts aren’t just selling cookies for prizes anymore. Cookie sales are now about learning business skills. Daisy through Juniors learn about promoting the different cookies, treating your customers well and listening to their feedback, giving back to the community and being a Cookie CEO.

Beginning with Cadets the scouts start developing business plans, marketing, Thinking Big, Research and Development and P&L. Whether they ever own their own businesses or not, they are learning skills that will help them to work well in any business. They will also learn how to judge the health of a business.

Learning about nature, camping, first aid, citizenship are all wonderful, but today’s scouts are learning about much more. No longer are they preparing girls simply to be good housewives and mothers, but they are preparing girls to enter the worlds of business, technology, and science.

Now if I could just find a Girl Scout with an Entertainment Technology badge, I might be able to get all of my electronics working together or at the very least, reduce my remotes down to one.

Girls’ engineering dreams begin at MIT

From MIT News: Girls’ engineering dreams begin at MIT
Discovering the delights of hands-on science and engineering, 24 rising seventh-graders from Lynn, Mass., spent a week in July at the MIT Edgerton Center, soldering electrical connections, creating lip balm, sewing wearable circuits, inventing ice cream makers and programming their own computer games.

The GE Girls at MIT summer program, funded by General Electric (GE) and developed by members of the GE Women’s Network, the MIT Edgerton Center and the Lemelson-MIT Program, aimed to interest girls in science and technology, and ultimately increase the number of woman engineers.

Each day the girls dove into activities organized around the themes of engineering, construction, computer programming, electronics, aviation and chemistry. Amy Fitzgerald and Jessica Garrett of the MIT Edgerton Center developed and taught most of the lessons, assisted by female GE mentors, MIT undergraduates and two sixth-grade teachers from Lynn.

Garrett and Fitzgerald chose activities designed to be flexible and approached in multiple ways. For example, the girls planned and built paper-card houses with the aim of making the biggest, strongest, “coolest” structure with the fewest number of cards. Though most groups built flat structures, one group created a three-tower skyscraper taped together in coordinating colors. With its substantially greater area and high “coolness” factor, this structure scored several times higher than the competitors.

Fitzgerald commented, “This activity shows them that there’s more than one right answer in engineering. I love when kids finally look up from their own project and say, ‘Oh, theirs is totally different! What if we try ...,' and, like real engineers, borrow from each other and improve what they are doing.”

Another highlight was designing and creating a 30-second video game with help from staff members from MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program. Daniel Wendel and Wendy Huang led the session, and every table of four students had an undergraduate help them step by step through the process, creating games that were both challenging and humorous.

Garrett noted, “The week completely changed their view about what science is. They thought that science was only reading about what old guys in white coats discovered long ago, but afterward they were saying, ‘We never knew science was so much fun! Making lip balm is science! I can sew a circuit with metal thread and make an LED light up!’ On their surveys, most of them wrote that they had learned about a lot of new careers.”

“Our plan was to clue the girls in to as many careers as possible that they don’t know about,” says Fitzgerald, who remained unflappable amid excited middle schoolers. “If we can show them that there is such a thing as mechanical engineering and every day they use things made by mechanical engineers, then maybe they will want to be one.”

An integral part of the program were the GE mentors — including an MIT alumna and mother of a current MIT student — who shared their own science and engineering background and career choices with the girls. From Leigh Estabrooks, invention education officer with Lemelson-MIT, the girls learned about her previous career as a scientist working in product development for soft drink and cosmetics companies.

On a more general level, one girl wrote that she learned “not only boys can be engineers.” Another realized, “that everything I love is actually science. I learned that I could have a career in science. This program has opened a lot of doors for me that I thought would always stay closed and it has really brightened my horizons.”

The GE Women’s Network has worked for 14 years to attract young women to science-based jobs and help them develop their talents. After this successful pilot, the group plans to create more “GE Girls at” programs at other universities. Joanne Kugler, leader of the GE’s Women and Technology Initiative, said of the program, “Our vision is to excite young girls around STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] and retain their interest as they head into high school, college and eventually the workforce (and maybe they’ll even work at GE).”

Fitzgerald pointed out, “We won’t know for years whether this group will end up studying science,” while Garrett added, “But they wrote on their surveys that they want to go to college now … and they want to come to MIT.”

Established in 1992, the MIT Edgerton Center continues the mens et manus (mind and hand) legacy of beloved Institute Professor Harold (Doc) Edgerton who believed that learning by doing was integral to an MIT education. For MIT students, the center supports student teams in engineering competitions, offers hands-on classes and workshop space, and engages students in service projects in developing countries. Outside of MIT, the center advances kindergarten to 12th grade hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education through on-site workshops and intensive summer programs for youth, distribution of curricula developed at the center, and professional development workshops for teachers.

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

New stuff coming!

I've been working on a website for Girl Scientist, and there's a webzine in the works...everything that I'll share with you in the next couple of days.

So stay tuned for some good stuff!