Three Girl Scout Councils in New Jersey and
the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE)
are joining together to host 100 Years of Science, a one-day conference
for girls in grades six through eight on Saturday, Sept. 29. The keynote
address, "Becoming Explorers On Earth and in Space," will be given by
Dr. Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist and mineralogist with the Planetary
Environments Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
Dr. Pamela Conrad with the Girl Scout flag.
Conrad has worked for the past several years on the
development of approaches and measurements for assessment of
habitability in planetary surface environments.
The conference will take on Saturday, Sept. 29 from 9 a.m.
to 3 p.m. at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. The event is
open to Girl Scouts in grades six through eight. Interested girls who
are not currently Girl Scouts can register for Girl Scout membership
before the event. The cost is $25 per Girl Scout and $15 per adult
chaperone.
In addition to hearing the keynote address, participants at
the conference will conduct experiments centered on renewable energy.
They will examine a wind turbine, test turbine blades, design, construct
and test photovoltaic systems and solar water heaters, and much more.
For more information, contact Lorena Kirschner at 973-248-8200 or lkirschner@gsnnj.org.
Conrad has studied the comparative early evolution of Earth
and Mars and the measurement of habitability potential on rocky bodies
in the solar system. She is deputy principal investigator and
investigation scientist for the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument
suite, which landed at Gale Crater on Mars as part of the Mars Science
Laboratory mission in August. Her extensive field experience revolves
around characterizing the edges of the habitable zones in deserts and
testing rock targeting tools. She has participated in seven arctic
expeditions as well as two Antarctic expeditions, and explored deep-sea
hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Pacific Ocean from a submersible.
Girl Scouts is the premier leadership development program
for girls. In Girl Scouts, girls discover themselves, connect with
others, and take action to create positive change in their own
communities. For more information about Girl Scouts, call Girl Scouts of
Northern New Jersey at 973-248-8200 or visit www.gsnnj.org.
Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey serves 20.5 percent of
girls ages 5-17 in 160 municipalities including all of Bergen, Morris, Passaic, and Sussex counties and the northern half of Warren County. There are currently 34,399 girl members and 17,745 adult members.
BOSTON (AP) — A chemist accused of lying about drug samples
she tested at a state lab could face additional charges as prosecutors
and defense attorneys sift through thousands of criminal cases that
could be upended by her actions.
Annie Dookhan,
34, of Franklin, was arrested Friday in a burgeoning investigation that
has already led to the shutdown of the lab, the resignation of the
state's public health commissioner and the release of more than a dozen
drug defendants.
Many more defendants are expected to be released.
Authorities say more than 1,100 inmates are serving time in cases in
which Dookhan was the primary or secondary chemist.
"Annie Dookhan's alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the entire criminal justice system," state Attorney General Martha Coakley said during a news conference after Dookhan's arrest. "There are many victims as a result of this."
Dookhan
faces more than 20 years in prison on charges of obstruction of justice
and falsely pretending to hold a degree from a college or university.
She testified under oath that she holds a master's degree in chemistry
from the University of Massachusetts, but school officials say they have
no record of her receiving an advanced degree or taking graduate
courses there.
State police
say Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples involving 34,000
defendants during her nine years at the Hinton State Laboratory
Institute in Boston. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are scrambling to
figure out how to deal with the fallout.
Assistant Attorney General John Verner called the charges against Dookhan "preliminary" and said a "much broader" investigation is being conducted.
Verner
said state police learned of Dookhan's alleged actions in July after
they interviewed a chemist at the lab who said he had observed "many
irregularities" in Dookhan's work.
Verner said Dookhan later
acknowledged to state police that she sometimes would take 15 to 25
samples and instead of testing them all, she would test only five of
them, then list them all as positive. She said that sometimes, if a
sample tested negative, she would take known cocaine from another sample
and add it to the negative sample to make it test positive for cocaine,
Verner said.
Dookhan pleaded not guilty and was later released on
$10,000 bail. She was ordered to turn over her passport, submit to GPS
monitoring, and not have contact with any former or current employees of
the lab.
Dookhan's relatives and attorney declined to comment
after the brief hearing in Boston Municipal Court. Her next court date
is Dec. 3.
The obstruction
charges accuse Dookhan of lying about drug samples she analyzed at the
lab in March 2011 for a Suffolk County case, and for testifying under
oath in August 2010 that she had an advanced degree from the University
of Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley said at a news conference.
In
one of the cases, Boston police had tested a substance as negative for
cocaine, but when Dookhan tested it, she reported it as positive.
Investigators later retested the cample and it came back negative,
Verner said.
The only motive authorities have found so far is that Dookhan wanted to be seen as a good worker, Coakley said.
According to a state police report in August, Dookhan said she just wanted to get the work done and never meant to hurt anyone.
"I screwed up big-time," she is quoted as saying. "I messed up bad; it's my fault. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."
Dookhan's
supervisors have faced harsh criticism for not removing her from lab
duties after suspicions about her were first raised by her co-workers
and for not alerting prosecutors and police. However, Coakley said,
there is no indication so far of criminal activity by anyone else at the
lab.
Co-workers began expressing concern about Dookhan's work
habits several years ago, but her supervisors allowed her to continue
working. Dookhan was the most productive chemist in the lab, routinely
testing more than 500 samples a month, while others tested 50 to 150.
One
co-worker told state police he never saw Dookhan in front of a
microscope. A lab employee saw Dookhan weighing drug samples without
doing a balance check on her scale.
In an interview with state
police late last month, Dookhan acknowledged faking test results for two
to three years. She told police she identified some drug samples as
narcotics simply by looking at them instead of testing them, a process
known as dry labbing. She also said she forged the initials of
colleagues and deliberately turned a negative sample into a positive for
narcotics a few times.
"I hope the system isn't treating the
evidence against her the way she treated the evidence against several
thousand defendants," said defense attorney John T. Martin, who has a
client who was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea based on concerns
over Dookhan's work.
Dookhan
was suspended from lab duties after getting caught forging a colleague's
initials on paperwork in June 2011. She resigned in March as the
Department of Public Health investigated. The lab was run by the
department until July 1, when state police took over as part of a state
budget directive.
ALLAHABAD: The National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), Allahabad,
organised a pre-workshop brainstorming session on "Women's Participation
in Science". A large number of women
scientists, members of faculty, women research scholars and
postgraduate students of Allahabad University, PG colleges, participated
in it.
Prof AK Bakshi, vice-chancellor, UP Rajashree Tandon
University was the chief guest while Prof Sumati Rao, Pratima Gaur and
Shivani Chaturvedi were guests of honour.
Many resource persons spoke on issues of relevance to women for
knowledge sharing and problem solving and also to gear up for the
upcoming workshop on "Defining role of women scientist and teachers in
promotion and application of science and technology" being organised by
Prof Manju Sharma, NASI woman scientist chair. The workshop will be held
eld on October 5-6.
Highlighting the importance of education
NASI general secretary Prof Krishna Misra said the role of women in
society is vital for its progress, adding that women are great human
resource and therefore, it is essential to educate them. "If you teach a
woman, the whole society will be educated," he said.
Prof Sumati
Rao said due to patriarchal society and negative attitude arising from
cultural and societal values it is difficult for women to pursue their
educational career, especially in rural areas. The women's educational
opportunities could be enhanced only if the perspectives are changed.
Prof Pratima Gaur said, "Many women suffer from low self-esteem and are
always discouraged by their families. They must be stimulated to pursue
their innate capacities and rise above this inferiority." Bakshi said,
"Women must be educated and science education is pivotal tor women as it
provides a scientific approach to thinking, and helps them understand
things better." He said every woman, particularly those in rural areas,
should get the opportunity to study science for dealing and analysing
socio-economic and health issues.
Women who are outnumbered by men in a group are less likely to speak
their mind. In fact, new research has found that women speak 75 percent
less than men when in such a setting.
To prove this, Chris Karpowitz, the lead study author and a political scientist at Brigham Young University, and Tali Mendelberg,
study co-author and a professor at Princeton, observed how groups
discussed how to distribute money earned from a hypothetical task. The
researchers had participants vote by secret ballot with half the groups
following a majority vote and the other half following a unanimous vote.
"Women have something unique and important to add to the group, and
that's being lost at least under some circumstances," Karpowitz said.
"When women participated more, they brought unique and helpful
perspectives to the issue under discussion. We’re not just losing the
voice of someone who would say the same things as everybody else in the
conversation."
When voting by majority decision, women deferred speaking if
outnumbered by men in a group. However, when voting unanimously, the
researchers found that women were much more vocal ,
suggesting that consensus building was empowering for outnumbered
women. The researchers also found that groups arrived at different
decisions when women did participate. These findings, however, are not
simply limited to business settings.
"In school boards, governing boards of organizations and firms, and
legislative committees, women are often a minority of members and the
group uses majority rule to make its decisions," Mendelberg said. "These
settings will produce a dramatic inequality in women's floor time and
in many other ways. Women are less likely to be viewed and to view
themselves as influential in the group and to feel that their 'voice is
heard.'"
The research was published by American Political Science Review, an academic journal specializing in political science. The researchers observed 94 groups of at least five people.
Women in Technology Sharing Online (WitsOn)
is a new six-week pilot program that will connect undergraduate
students with prominent female online mentors in science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM) fields. The program is sponsored by Maria
Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, and will begin October 1.
The New York Times reports that
even though women earn more college degrees than men, they claim less
than 20 percent of the undergraduate degrees in STEM fields.
Undergraduates at participating universities can submit questions to
the online mentors, and receive answers, advice and maybe even job
offers. Prominent mentors include Mae C. Jemison, the first black female
astronaut and Jacqueline K. Barton, the chairwoman of the chemistry
department at Caltech.
Dr. Erin Cadwalader, Public Policy Fellow at the Association for Women in Science,
said her organization was thrilled to hear about the program. She says
it’s important for women in science fields to see and interact with
successful role models. “Feeling like you belong is a huge part of it,
and it has a huge impact on whether women choose to go into these
fields,” she said.
She said the most important thing a mentor could tell an
undergraduate student would be to stress what makes science attractive
in the first place, and to show young women that she is intellectually
satisfied and has high job satisfaction. “You don’t want to spend your
whole life fighting against the current. It’s important to know that
there are lots of happy women in science,” she said.
Cadwalader says the program has great potential if it proves to be
successful, and would like to see the idea expanded to reach women in
all stages of their professional pathway: postdoctoral students,
graduate students and even women applying for positions as professors in
universities. “One of the big problems isn’t getting women into STEM
jobs, but the many reasons why they drop out of the pipeline: lack of
recognition, work-life satisfaction, or in engineering they feel
isolated because they’re a minority... It doesn’t create an environment
they want to stay in,” she said. “Helping women help other women is key
to moving that forward,” she said. Originally published on Youthradio.org, the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe.
My mom, who is 75, wants to go up to teeny tiny town near Rapid City,
to see her sister, who is 80. They live in a house in the boonies and
have no internet.
I'll be back online on Monday the 24th and promise not to miss another day.
Please bear with me, your patience is appreciated!
By: Jeremy Hsu, InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer
Published: 09/10/2012 11:48 AM EDT on InnovationNewsDaily
Whenever Erika Ebbel Angle shows up wearing her Miss
Massachusetts tiara at tapings of her television show, all the kids in
the live studio audience go "Oooooh!" But it takes more than a tiara to
define Angle: She's an MIT graduate with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from
Boston University and the founder of the nonprofit organization Science
from Scientists, as well as the host of a 10-minute science show on
regional cable TV. And she's preparing to enter the entrepreneurial
world with her own biotech startup.
The value of beauty and
brains combined is rarely emphasized outside Hollywood, but early
feedback from "The Dr. Erika Show" suggests many younger girls have
embraced the message Angle is sending when she pairs the pageant tiara
with a lab coat in her eponymous TV show. Girls have told the show's producers they want to become "princess scientists."
"Science comes with a stigma that if you are a female scientist, you
have no other interests and you are a sweatpants-wearing person who has
no interest in your own physical appearance or maintenance," Ebbel Angle
said.
In Japan, a similar desire to combat the geeky stereotypes of science drives the "Miss Rikei Contest,"
organized by a student group and scheduled for Sept. 12. Six female
finalists chosen from among Japanese university students and researchers
will compete for votes based on the criteria of beauty, intelligence
and making contributions to improving the image of science. ("Rikei"
means "science" in Japanese.)
But female scientists may resent
the idea that their physical appearance is up for scrutiny at all.
Scientists of both genders are just as varied in appearance as those in
any other profession, and several researchers interviewed by LiveScience
suggested style choices shouldn't be nearly as discussion-worthy as
their work. [5 Myths About Girls, Math and Science]
Efforts to incorporate feminine beauty into the role model for
scientists can also touch a sensitive nerve because women have fought so
long to get beyond female stereotypes in the historically
male-dominated fields of science and engineering. While Ebbel Angle's TV
show focuses on helping out students with their science projects or
investigating science questions, the pageant-style format of the Miss
Rikei Contest has received more mixed reactions. Beauty and the geek
The Miss Rikei Contest
caused a minor stir among U.S. scientists, journalists and educators
after Joanne Manaster, online course developer and lecturer of science
courses for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, alerted her Twitter followers to the pageant's existence.
"One of the websites I found [discussing the contest] included comments
that were all from men who were viscerally reacting to the pretty
women," Manaster said. "I think this bothers people who are in science,
especially women who want to be taken seriously."
Organizers of
the Miss Rikei Contest did not respond to requests for comment. But
LiveScience also asked the opinions of three young Japanese women who
received bachelor's degrees in science or engineering from universities
in Japan. Two of the three agreed to comment only on condition of
anonymity.
"Yukari," a biology researcher at a university in New
York City, called the Miss Rikei Contest "superficial" and resisted the
idea of trying to make science appear more overtly feminine, in the
stereotypical sense of the word.
"I rather like the idea that
it's an oasis for geeky people that doesn't much care about what the
rest of the world is concerned about," Yukari said. "There's something
about science for me that overrides this image of male-dominant and
geeky, so that if you can see how important or fun science is, it
doesn't matter if it's male-dominated or geeky or doesn't pay as much as
finance."
"Rin," a neuroscience researcher at a university in
New York City, predicted the Miss Rikei Contest would prove ineffective
as a means of encouraging more Japanese women to pursue science careers.
[Mommy Track: Why Women Leave Science, Math Careers]
"Any female scientists who have done great work in their field could be
great models for young students," Rin said. "These scientists don't
have to be like a super-model or actress."
Kanae Kobayashi, who
is working for a Japanese securities company after earning bachelor's
and master's degrees in industrial engineering, shrugged off the contest
as harmless — "seems like fun" — but she, too, thinks it will do little
to encourage young women to pursue science careers. Helpful or harmful
Harmless or ineffective is one matter. But can promoting the ideal of
female beauty and brains actually discourage girls or young women from
pursuing science? That possibility arose from a University of Michigan
study in the March issue of the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science.
The study found that feminine role models decreased girls' interest and ability in math,
and also lowered their expectations of success in the short run. Such
"beauty-focused" role models also discouraged future plans to study math
among girls who had not previously identified an interest in science,
technology, engineering or math.
Diana Betz and Denise
Sekaquaptewa, the psychology researchers behind the Michigan study,
noted that past research by Sapna Cheryan, a psychology researcher at
the University of Washington, confirmed how "geeky role models" also can
discourage women in fields such as computer science.
So what's a female role model to do?
"On the surface, it might look like a 'Damned if you're feminine,
damned if you're not' situation," Betz and Sekaquaptewa told LiveScience
in an email. "But really, it's about extremes: Role models should
broaden examples of who can succeed in different fields, not limit them
to one stereotyped image or another."
The researchers suggested
that girls and young women need to see diversity among female role
models so that they don't associate science with just one type of person
— whether that type is "geeks" or "girly girls."
"Perhaps the best way to encourage girls to explore math and science is to expose them to real female mathematicians and scientists,"
Betz and Sekaquaptewa wrote. "Girls need to learn that scientists are
real, complex people, just like them, and that they have diverse kinds
of jobs with varied goals." [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds]
The pair also pointed out that what discourages girls or young women is
an unattainable ideal, but added that the idea of "unattainable" may
change among different age groups. That's why young girls may idolize
"Dr. Erika" for her pageant poise and science smarts even as
middle-school girls turn away with resignation from super-model role
models in science. Giving science a makeover
Feminine stereotypes historically have haunted women scientists, including Rosalind Franklin,
a co-discoverer of DNA. In his 1968 account "The Double Helix," James
Watson, one of the genetics pioneers who had relied on Franklin's work,
unflatteringly recounted Franklin's lack of lipstick and her
unwillingness to dress in a more feminine manner.
But the idea
of combining "beauty and brains" may represent progress of sorts. Two
decades ago, Teen Talk Barbie was telling young American girls, "Math
class is tough." The Miss Rikei Contest stands directly opposed to that
message, as does Ebbel Angle's encouragement of young girls who want to
become princess scientists.
Ebbel Angle defended the pageant idea
behind the Japanese contest, but was careful to distinguish between
beauty pageants (Miss Universe) and scholarship pageants (Miss America).
She told of appreciating the social skills and confidence that came
from competing over several years to become Miss Massachusetts after her
friends at MIT initially signed her up for a local pageant without her
knowledge.
"From what I can read about the Miss Science program,
it gives them a chance to prove they have beauty and brains," Ebbel
Angle told LiveScience. "I see nothing wrong with that. These are grown
women who are in graduate programs and undergraduate programs, deciding
what they want their image to be."
In the end, Ebbel Angle sees
the pageant crown as a symbol of possibility — girls and young women
having the ability to love science and also be dancers, musicians,
soccer players or whatever they desire. "It's less about the crown, more
about the message," Ebbel Angle said.
Manaster, the science
educator who alerted so many people to the Miss Rikei Contest through
Twitter, acknowledged her own appearance can make a difference when she
does science outreach on TV or at an engineering camp for girls — she is
a former fashion model. But she emphasized the importance of focusing
on the love of doing science.
"Maybe it's enough to show women scientists who are passionate about
their work," Manaster said. "Do science if you love it, and if you
happen to be feminine, that's great. If you're not, that's great too."
Iran's woeful deception and hypocrisy on women's human rights is
particularly prominent this week while Tehran hosts the 16th Non-Aligned
Movement summit to "eliminate international problems" and assumes the NAM's presidency for the next three years.
The summit follows the recent announcement of a ban on female students in Iranian universities.
In the coming academic year, 36 universities will implement exclusion
of women from 77 fields of study, including chemistry, computer
science, nuclear physics, engineering, business management, education
and English. Gholamrez Rashed, the head of the University of Petroleum Technology, declared: "We do not need female students at all."
Science Minister Kamran Daneshjoo
claimed that sexual segregation was of the utmost priority in order to
uphold moral standards and effect greater balance in gender enrolment.
About 70 percent of science graduates are female.
Other concerns include an unemployment
rate of more than 20 percent for people under 30 and about 28 percent
for women, and the trend for more traditional families to seek education
for daughters, allowing them unsupervised boarding in cities.
The rise of female education is associated with declining rates of
marriage and birth. Fertility has dropped from about six children a
family at the time of the Iranian revolution to fewer than two.
Educated women are more likely to marry later and less likely to marry uneducated men.
Educated and unemployed women who know their rights are a danger to a
male-dominated culture that relegates them to second-class status, and
to religio-political authorities that derive legitimacy from patriarchy,
supremacism and claims to exclusive knowledge of the divine.
The latest bans continue the Islamic Republic's policy of oppressing
and disempowering women through sexual segregation, enforced Islamic
dress codes, polygyny, early marriage, court testimony worth half that
of a man's, leniency for honor killings, stoning sentences, blocking
reformist websites and so on.
Unlike in most other Muslim countries, political dissent in
post-revolutionary Iran has been expressed in universities rather than
mosques, which has led the regime to fear these institutions as
incubators of subversion. Feminist student groups are regarded as the
most seditious.
Noble Laureate Shirin Ebadi
has declared that the new educational restrictions are designed to
undermine the feminist movement by reducing the numbers of female
students from 65 percent at present to 50 percent, and has made a formal
complaint to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
U.N. protection for Iranian women would seem unlikely, as the
organisation has not offered much support to reformers in the past.
Iran also enjoys prominent positions in major U.N. voting blocs such
as the NAM, which comprises two-thirds of U.N. members, and the
Organisation of Islamic Co-operation with 56 member countries.
During the recent meeting of the OIC, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was pointedly placed next to the Saudi monarch.
Nevertheless, in March last year, 52 nations, including many members
of the U.N. not on the 47-member Human Rights Council, co-sponsored a resolution calling for a special investigator to monitor Iran's compliance with international human rights standards.
The decision followed reports of persecution of minority groups
including the Baha'is, who have suffered a long-term ban on university
attendance.
Women fought hard against educational sanctions and other
restrictions imposed by the Islamic Republic. By 1991, they had won the
right to quotas within certain academic fields, and during a period of
limited freedom of assembly and association under reformist president
Mohammad Khatami, activists established more than 600 non-government
organisations that advanced women's rights.
Restriction of freedom was intensified under Ahmadinejad, who introduced gender-based policies to decrease female quotas and increase male quotas in some university fields.
Activists who organised university sit-ins for women's rights and
street demonstrations have risked beatings and detention, and many still
languish in prison.
Women marched in the forefront of the protests following Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009, and were arguably the vanguard for the uprisings of the Arab Spring.
The government, which has distanced itself from the recent education bans introduced by universities, risks a backlash.
The women's movement emerged in part to oppose the regime's policy of limiting admittance
of female students to universities and women activists have shown
remarkable courage in challenging the authoritarian theocracy.
Reformers will see through the current hypocrisy and blame the government for the latest round.
Iranian feminists still retain potent reserves of energy and
determination for confrontation with their turbaned inquisitors. And in
truth they have little left to lose.
A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer
scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they
forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the
Internet.
By Bjorn Carey
On the surface, ants and the Internet don't seem to have much in
common. But two Stanford researchers have discovered that a species of
harvester ants determine how many foragers to send out of the nest in
much the same way that Internet protocols discover how much bandwidth is
available for the transfer of data. The researchers are calling it the
"anternet."
Deborah Gordon, a
biology professor at Stanford, has been studying ants for more than 20
years. When she figured out how the harvester ant colonies she had been
observing in Arizona decided when to send out more ants to get food, she
called across campus to Balaji Prabhakar,
a professor of computer science at Stanford and an expert on how files
are transferred on a computer network. At first he didn't see any
overlap between his and Gordon's work, but inspiration would soon
strike.
"The next day it occurred to me, 'Oh wait, this is almost the same as
how [Internet] protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for
transferring a file!'" Prabhakar said. "The algorithm the ants were
using to discover how much food there is available is essentially the
same as that used in the Transmission Control Protocol."
Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is an algorithm that manages
data congestion on the Internet, and as such was integral in allowing
the early web to scale up from a few dozen nodes to the billions in use
today. Here's how it works: As a source, A, transfers a file to a
destination, B, the file is broken into numbered packets. When B
receives each packet, it sends an acknowledgment, or an ack, to A, that
the packet arrived.
This feedback loop allows TCP to run congestion avoidance: If acks
return at a slower rate than the data was sent out, that indicates that
there is little bandwidth available, and the source throttles data
transmission down accordingly. If acks return quickly, the source boosts
its transmission speed. The process determines how much bandwidth is
available and throttles data transmission accordingly.
It turns out that harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) behave
nearly the same way when searching for food. Gordon has found that the
rate at which harvester ants – which forage for seeds as individuals –
leave the nest to search for food corresponds to food availability.
A forager won't return to the nest until it finds food. If seeds are
plentiful, foragers return faster, and more ants leave the nest to
forage. If, however, ants begin returning empty handed, the search is
slowed, and perhaps called off.
Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior
depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's
experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford
student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm
almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments.
"Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.
They also found that the ants followed two other phases of TCP. One
phase is known as slow start, which describes how a source sends out a
large wave of packets at the beginning of a transmission to gauge
bandwidth; similarly, when the harvester ants begin foraging, they send
out foragers to scope out food availability before scaling up or down
the rate of outgoing foragers.
Another protocol, called time-out, occurs when a data transfer link
breaks or is disrupted, and the source stops sending packets. Similarly,
when foragers are prevented from returning to the nest for more than 20
minutes, no more foragers leave the nest.
Prabhakar said that had this discovery been made in the 1970s, before
TCP was written, harvester ants very well could have influenced the
design of the Internet.
Gordon thinks that scientists have just scratched the surface for how
ant colony behavior could help us in the design of networked systems.
There are 11,000 species of ants, living in every habitat and dealing
with every type of ecological problem, Gordon said. "Ants have evolved
ways of doing things that we haven't thought up, but could apply in
computer systems. Computationally speaking, each ant has limited
capabilities, but the collective can perform complex tasks.
"So ant algorithms have to be simple, distributed and scalable – the
very qualities that we need in large engineered distributed systems,"
she said. "I think as we start understanding more about how species of
ants regulate their behavior, we'll find many more useful applications
for network algorithms."
Marie Curie achieved many “firsts” in her lifetime. She was the first
woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first to win it twice. She remains
the only laureate to have won in two scientific fields: physics (1903)
and chemistry (1911). Along with her husband, Pierre, she discovered two
new elements, radium and polonium. And she was the first person to use
the word “radioactivity.”
Of course, author Shelley Emling is hardly the first to chronicle the
extraordinary life of Madame Curie, born Marie Sklodowska in Warsaw in
1867. Just two years ago, Lauren Redniss published “Radioactive,” a
remarkable, gorgeously designed book accompanied by the author’s
cyanotype artwork and drawings.
In “Marie Curie and Her Daughters,” Emling covers some familiar
terrain, but whereas many biographical accounts of Curie conclude after
the scientist’s second Nobel Prize, this book essentially begins in
1911, exploring in depth the last 20 or so years of Curie’s life. Until
her final days (she died in 1934), Curie remained a dedicated and
much-celebrated scientist — launching not one but two major research
institutes — yet she never profited financially from her achievements.
Most notably, Emling offers an intimate look at Curie’s relationship
with her children, which involved many long separations but lacked no
shortage of mutual devotion. Curie’s granddaughter Helene shared with
Emling her mother’s private reminiscences of Curie, as well as a trove
of more than 200 letters between Marie and her two daughters. The
correspondence reveals how, even as Curie’s daughters yearned for her,
they accepted how utterly dedicated she was to her scientific work.
Because of her career demands, Curie missed several of her daughters’
birthdays. At the end of her life, she was clearly playing catch up —
making up for lost time, getting to know her daughters on a deeper
level, and becoming a doting grandmother.
Curie had become a single mother at 38, when Pierre died (in 1906)
after being run over by a horse-drawn wagon in Paris. She was left alone
to raise two young children — Irene, who also became a Nobel
Prize-winning chemist; and Eve, a humanitarian who would write an
award-winning biography of her mother (and who lived to the age of 102).
After Pierre’s death, Curie fell in love with a married scientist,
Paul Langevin. Their affair was bitterly exposed by Langevin’s wife, who
released the couple’s anguished love letters to the press. Curie was
devastated. She suffered public humiliation, severe damage to her
reputation, and became suicidal. Her recovery from this painful period
was lengthy and arduous.
Emling shows how Curie’s 1921 trip to the United States, to raise
funding for her Radium Institute in Paris, proved transformative. A
comeback of sorts, it also allowed her a seven-week trip with her
daughters. They treasured this precious time with her. Curie was treated
to a stream of ceremonies, celebrations, and honorary degrees. Like a
rock star, she was besieged by fans at every stop. She also formed a
close friendship with a journalist, Missy Meloney, who had helped bring
Curie to the States and championed her work. Curie, who was later able
to make one more trip to the United States, despite her failing health,
felt deeply grateful for America’s generosity and open-hearted spirit.
This fascinating, moving story falters only in the last few chapters,
when it runs out of steam and includes some needless filler. The book’s
final line is an inexplicable clunker, as if written for a high school
textbook: “And if for no other reason, that is why ‘Manya’ Marie
Sklodowska Curie is one person worth learning more about.”
Still, that weak conclusion doesn’t diminish the inspiring message
conveyed throughout the book: that Curie was driven by “the sheer
pleasure of the beauty of science, and the enormous satisfaction derived
from making the previously unknowable known.”
