The three members of the Girl Scientist's Club sat on the back seat of Mr. and Mrs. Karlovassi's Toyota Highlander. Amber's parents sat in the front - her dad was driving and her mom was chatting to him desultorily as he drove.
The SUV was equipped with two TV screens, so that the passengers in the back could watch two different movies at the same time if they wanted to. However, the three girls had brought computer devices - not games but Kindles, and in between looking out at the scenery, occasionally chatting, they concentrated their attention on.
Emily was reading a novel version of Star Trek, The Original Series: Captain's War, which featured Mr. Sulu in a leading role.
Amber was playing Every Word, an anagramming game, in which she was given a series of 6 or 7 letters, and had to find as many 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 letter words that she could from them.
Trelane had brought a sketchbook, too, and growing tired of reading Seaborn, a novel about men and women genetically altered to live in the depths of the ocean, and was wiling away the time drawing a futuristic submersible.
Amber, who was seated next to her, snuck a glance at her work.
"That's pretty good, Trelane," she commented. "Looks like a real artist drew it."
"Why, thank you," said Trelane with a grin.
"Must be nice to have talent," said Amber sadly. "All I can draw is stick figures."
"Me, too," said Emily, looking up from her book. "Did you have to practice to get so good, or does it just come naturally?"
Trelane eyed her work critically. "A bit of both," she said. "I've always been a good drawer, and of course I pay attention to everything I see so that I know how to draw it - proportions and stuff, you know. It does look pretty cool...one day I'm going to build something like this!"
Her two friends smiled and nodded confidently at her, then went back to their own pursuits.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Woman Oceanographers website
Trelane was surfing the web, and came across a website that was devoted to women oceanographies:
http://www.womenoceanographers.org
Wow, she thought, reading through the articles there, enraptured. One day I'm going to have a biography on this website!
Our goal was to design a Web site that can engage the public and school children in the day-to-day science of women marine scientists. Through this project, we hope to encourage young women to pursue careers in science and to remove the mystery that surrounds being a scientist. Over the course of a year we will highlight twelve women, underscoring the different career paths in science and the diversity of the women who choose science as a career.
The expertise of the women on our Web site covers many of the subdisciplines within marine science. The women have backgrounds in chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, mathematics, geology, or geophysics. They are at different stages in their careers and are following different career paths including research, teaching, research assistants, administration, or a combination of these at universities, research institutions, government laboratories, and companies across the country. While many of these women have earned doctorates, others have gone directly into marine science from a bachelors degree, working, for example, as programmers, graphic illustrators, and data analysts.
As the new millennium gets started we believe it is appropriate to step back and assess what women scientists across the country and across the world are accomplishing today, and how they are no longer considered ’unique’ but instead are an accepted and integral part of the scientific community.
This Web site is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Program Awards to Facilitate Geoscience Education. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution provided support through cost sharing on the funded grant.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Trelane and Marine vocabulary
Trelane signed and looked at her list of marine vocabulary words. She was reading from the book The Universe Below, by William J. Broad, and it was hard reading for her - lots of terminolgoy that she'd never heard before. But she read with her dictionary close at hand, and had also studdied the glossary.
Advanced Unmanned Search System - One of the world's first complex robots able to roam the seabed without a tether. AUSS was begun by the American Navy in 1973 for wide-ranging hunts for lost gear down to depths of 6.1 km (3.8 mi). Seventeen feet in length, it made 114 successful dives for the Navy before being turned over to private industry in 1994.
Akademik Mstislav Keldysh - The 422-foot mother ship of Russia's MIR twin submerisbles and one of the world's largest oceanographic research vessels.
Albatross - A large, web-footed seabird that spends most of its life in the ait.Algae - An ancient group of primitive plants ranging from unicellular Phytoplankton to kelp forests.
Alvin - The world's first submersible able to roam the deep seabed. Completed by the American Navy in 1964, and run by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, it was originally rated for a denth of 1.8 km (1.1 miles) but was eventually strengthened so it could descend down to 4.5 km (2.8 miles). The 25 foot craft can carry up to 3 people.
Amphipod - A small type of marine crustacean, swarm of which can move across the deep seabed like hordes of insects, feeding on carrion.
After writing these down, she decided to take a break, and went for a bike ride.
Advanced Unmanned Search System - One of the world's first complex robots able to roam the seabed without a tether. AUSS was begun by the American Navy in 1973 for wide-ranging hunts for lost gear down to depths of 6.1 km (3.8 mi). Seventeen feet in length, it made 114 successful dives for the Navy before being turned over to private industry in 1994.
Akademik Mstislav Keldysh - The 422-foot mother ship of Russia's MIR twin submerisbles and one of the world's largest oceanographic research vessels.
Albatross - A large, web-footed seabird that spends most of its life in the ait.Algae - An ancient group of primitive plants ranging from unicellular Phytoplankton to kelp forests.
Alvin - The world's first submersible able to roam the deep seabed. Completed by the American Navy in 1964, and run by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, it was originally rated for a denth of 1.8 km (1.1 miles) but was eventually strengthened so it could descend down to 4.5 km (2.8 miles). The 25 foot craft can carry up to 3 people.
Amphipod - A small type of marine crustacean, swarm of which can move across the deep seabed like hordes of insects, feeding on carrion.
After writing these down, she decided to take a break, and went for a bike ride.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Amber Sees A News Article
The next morning, before school, Amber was browsing through the paper and saw a news article that she thought might interest her friend, Emily. She printed it out, ready to give it to her when they met during first hour.
Seattle PI: Boeing engineer from Everett hopes to go to Mars
EVERETT, Wash. -- As a child, Kavya Manyapu would stare into the night sky above Hyderabad, India.
Her father would identify the different stars.
He would tell her about man's first steps on the moon.
He would fuel her dream to become an astronaut.
Later this month, Manyapu will spend two weeks on Mars -- or, at least, the closest thing on Earth to Mars.
The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah draws aeronautical engineers such as Manyapu, geologists, physicians and astro-biologists to its small cylindrical habitat, where research for the first human mission to Mars is taking place. The station is a prototype for the base that astronauts could use on Mars.
Think a mission to Mars will never happen?
This year, under presidential direction, NASA is putting the brakes on its near-Earth missions to the moon and the International Space Station. On Wednesday, the space shuttle Discovery completed its final trip. Shuttles Endeavor and Atlantis will make their final planned flights later this year.
NASA's new goal is to send astronauts to an asteroid and later to Mars. There is not enough money for NASA to achieve that and maintain the shuttle program at the same time. For example, the Mars Society, which founded the Utah research station, estimates a trip to Mars will cost $30 billion.
If a spacecraft took off tomorrow for Mars, Manyapu, 25, would like to be on it.
Manyapu's family members had such faith in her dream of becoming an astronaut that they moved to the United States after Manyapu graduated from high school at the age of 16. She earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In between her studies, Manyapu worked at Lockheed Martin and held internships at Boeing's Huntsville, Ala., site, where the company does space exploration work.
Today, Manyapu is a structural engineer on Boeing's 777 commercial jet program in Everett.
"I have a plan to go back into the space program," she said.
One step along Manyapu's way will be the two-week research trip to the Utah desert. The competitive research program in Utah attracts participants from NASA and from space programs around the world. Manyapu's academic adviser suggested she apply for the program, which should help her chances at becoming an astronaut.
Unlike a trip to the Moon, a mission to Mars will require astronauts to live on the planet for awhile. The Utah desert is thought to have attributes similar to Mars. The round research station in Utah is a two-deck structure, roughly 26 feet in diameter and is mounted on landing struts. All six crew members reside there, just as astronauts on Mars would.
The trip could take nearly two years to complete. The Utah station allows researchers to identify possible problems astronauts could face on a two-year journey. For instance, if the space station's toilet should fail during the actual trip to Mars, the astronauts wouldn't be able to call a plumber. They would have to figure out how to fix it themselves.
"They want to see how we can test out procedures (to solve different problems) that we could implement on Mars," Manyapu said.
That means some of the conditions Manyapu may face in Utah won't be pleasant. She and other crew members will be cut off from the rest of the world. Manyapu won't be able to shower every day. She won't get to decide what she eats. She'll be a lab rat for the other crew members to study, just as she will study them.
"You have to study a lot of human behavior," Manyapu said.
Astronauts will not only need to survive the conditions on Mars, they'll need to thrive. They'll be expected to be as productive as possible, gathering data and conducting experiments.
Similarly, participants at the research station in Utah perform tests, based on area of expertise, while there. Manyapu will fill four crew roles while she's at the station: crew physiologist, human factors engineer, backup crew engineer and journalist.
Manyapu is interested in studying bone loss among astronauts, which has been a continued topic of interest among scientists. In her application to participate in the program, Manyapu proposed experiments centered around bone loss that she could do while in the Utah desert.
She's also interested in ways to improve space suits, which astronauts to Mars would rely on heavily in their long trip.
"It's so hard to move around in those," Manyapu said.
At the research station in Utah, Manyapu will get a taste for walking around in those space suits. She'll be required to wear one any time she leaves the station to go outside -- just as a real astronaut would on Mars.
Manyapu still has some roadblocks between her and her dream. She needs to raise $1,500 in the next few weeks to participate in the research program. Having only landed her job at Boeing in November, she'll have to take some unpaid time off to go. Still, Manyapu plans to report to the research station on March 26.
As for when Manyapu thinks the first manned mission to Mars will take place, she estimates 2035. Manyapu believes the technology needed to get to Mars and back isn't what's holding a mission there back.
"To keep the humans alive, that's the greatest challenge of going to Mars," she said.
Follow the mission
To learn more about the Mars Society and its research station in Utah, go to mdrs.marssociety.org. Manyapu's crew will post daily reports on the same website beginning March 26.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Amber and the Written Word
Amber Karlovassi poured water into a plastic bowl full of PerfectCast, a modeling mixtue. She stirred it carefully, as per the directions, and then, taking a deep breath, proceeded to pour the mixture into the two plastic molds, each one containing six or seven types of bones – neck bones, arm bones, pelvic bones, and so on.
There, that was done, she thought, as she filled the last hollow.
She referred to the directions again. She’d have to wait at least an hour before the casts were completely dry, before she could apply the magnets and stick everything together.
And then, she’d have a 19 inch tyrannosaurus skeleton that she’d be able to place on her desk, to accompany the velociraptor and the triceratops that were already there.
What to do while she was waiting?
Amber looked at the row of library books on her book shelf. She should work on the article she was supposed to write for the Girl Scientist Magazine website. She’d been procrastinating about that for several days. She loved dinosaurs, and she loved reading about dinosaurs, but when it came to writing about them…she was stuck! Everything had been written so much better by everyone else!
“I suppose I could start my vocabulary list,” she thought. “That’s easy. I just need to write down what other people say, and how they define the words. And then, as long as I list the source that I got the words from, it won’t be plagiarism!”
She nodded sharply. “Yes, it’s time I got to work on this. Emily has already written two articles, and Trelane has written three, and I haven’t done anything yet.”
She plucked Dinosaurs off the shelf and looked at it. Well, that was going to be hard to identify, for a start. It was published by Igloo Books, in England, but it didn’t say who had written it, or who had edited it, or anything!
Amber shrugged. If she couldn’t give them a proper citation, that was their own fault!
She turned to the back of the book and began typing out the first part of the glossary:
Ammonite – extinct marine mollusks, had coiled shells.
Ancestor – Animal from which a later, related animal evolved.
Ankylosaurs – a group of armored herbivores that lived 76-68 million years ago. There were three main groups of ankylosaurs:
Ankylosaurids
Polacanthids
Nodosaurids
Aquatic – water dwelling
Archosaurs – Triassic reptiles, immediate ancestors of dinosaurs.
And that was all the As.
That would do, thought Amber. She saved the file, opened up her email program and sent it to Emily, who had agreed to be their website editor – uploading all the material that she wrote, and that Trelane and Amber sent her.
“Hi, Emily” she wrote.
“I’ve just gotten started on my Vocabulary page, and here are the As. More to come later.”
That done, Amber breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned to the first page of the book and started paging through it, reading entries that caught her eye. She, like a lot of aspiring writers, had learned early on that she didn’t want to write, she wanted to “have written.”
There, that was done, she thought, as she filled the last hollow.
She referred to the directions again. She’d have to wait at least an hour before the casts were completely dry, before she could apply the magnets and stick everything together.
And then, she’d have a 19 inch tyrannosaurus skeleton that she’d be able to place on her desk, to accompany the velociraptor and the triceratops that were already there.
What to do while she was waiting?
Amber looked at the row of library books on her book shelf. She should work on the article she was supposed to write for the Girl Scientist Magazine website. She’d been procrastinating about that for several days. She loved dinosaurs, and she loved reading about dinosaurs, but when it came to writing about them…she was stuck! Everything had been written so much better by everyone else!
“I suppose I could start my vocabulary list,” she thought. “That’s easy. I just need to write down what other people say, and how they define the words. And then, as long as I list the source that I got the words from, it won’t be plagiarism!”
She nodded sharply. “Yes, it’s time I got to work on this. Emily has already written two articles, and Trelane has written three, and I haven’t done anything yet.”
She plucked Dinosaurs off the shelf and looked at it. Well, that was going to be hard to identify, for a start. It was published by Igloo Books, in England, but it didn’t say who had written it, or who had edited it, or anything!
Amber shrugged. If she couldn’t give them a proper citation, that was their own fault!
She turned to the back of the book and began typing out the first part of the glossary:
Ammonite – extinct marine mollusks, had coiled shells.
Ancestor – Animal from which a later, related animal evolved.
Ankylosaurs – a group of armored herbivores that lived 76-68 million years ago. There were three main groups of ankylosaurs:
Ankylosaurids
Polacanthids
Nodosaurids
Aquatic – water dwelling
Archosaurs – Triassic reptiles, immediate ancestors of dinosaurs.
And that was all the As.
That would do, thought Amber. She saved the file, opened up her email program and sent it to Emily, who had agreed to be their website editor – uploading all the material that she wrote, and that Trelane and Amber sent her.
“Hi, Emily” she wrote.
“I’ve just gotten started on my Vocabulary page, and here are the As. More to come later.”
That done, Amber breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned to the first page of the book and started paging through it, reading entries that caught her eye. She, like a lot of aspiring writers, had learned early on that she didn’t want to write, she wanted to “have written.”
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Girl Scientist Club Chapter 9: Emily
Emily Shimako sat on the porch with a pair of binoculars. It was nine o'clock at night, and she was scanning the night sky. At least, that's what she'd intended to do, but instead she was sitting in her chair, gazing up at the stars, thinking.
As far as space exploration went, the news from the last several months had been all bad. The United States was closing down its space shuttle fleet, and seemingly closing down its space exploration plants entirely. China, on the other hand, was proceeding full steam ahead, with plans to put a manned space station on the moon, and probably one on Mars, too.
Where was the Federation of Planets...that great human achievement described in her favorite TV series, the classic Star Trek, going to come from?
Although Star Trek had gone off the air 40 years ago, to be replaced in the 90s and 00s with other space shows, Star Trek had still been the first science fiction show she'd ever seen, as it had been a favorite of her parents. Captain Kirk had been - and still was, for that matter, her favorite character, with Sulu a close second, although he really didn't have all that much to do in most of the episodes....
After Star Trek her parents had introduced her to Star Trek: the Next Generation and Voyager, but she'd never liked them as well. In Star Trek, mankind had seemingly worked together to solve all their problems, and the Romulans and the Klingons had been made, if not friends, at least noo enemies. The adventures were adventures of exploration. But in Star Trek: TNG and Voyager...the episodes were seemingly all about war, death and destruction...as it seemed there was no peace anywhere in the universe...that was just too sad a future to contemplate.
She'd been looking forward to Star Trek: Enterprise, which was supposed to tell of the early years of the Federation, but she'd been disappointed in that, too. She'd wanted to see a show set on Earth, that had explained how the star ships had been designed and built, and the United Federation of Planets created. Instead it was just more of the same. And they'd played fast and loose with history. Mr. Spock was supposed to have been the first Vulcan on a Federation starship, not a Vulcan woman named T'pol!
Emily sighed. All that had been fiction. And she'd thought she'd been born just at the right time to see fiction becoming fact. The International Space Station should have been a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Instead, it was going to be a monument to futility...
Well, maybe she was just being too pessimistic. There were a few civilian space companies out there...like Virgin Galactic and Space X. People weren't going to give up on the desire for space flight just because the US government was wimping out.
What it did mean, Emily knew, was that competition to become an astornaut was going to be tough - tougher than it had ever been before.
Which is why she didn't have time to waste, in her schooling or in her curricular activities. She didn't have dreams...she had ambitions...and if she was going to make her ambition come true, she'd have to work very, very hard at it.
It was nice, she thought, that she'd met two friends, Amber and Trelane, who felt the same way she did, about their ambitions. She'd always known she was unusual, having decided at so very young an age what she wanted to be when she grew up...it was nice to finally discover that she wasn't that unusual...that there were other girls who were willing to work just as hard as she was...but who were perfectly willing to spend an hour or so biking or watching an old black and white move with giant ants or moths or even (so gross) tarantulas.
Emily picked up her binoculars and focused them on the moon. "I'll walk there, one day," she thought to herself, and knew that it was true.
As far as space exploration went, the news from the last several months had been all bad. The United States was closing down its space shuttle fleet, and seemingly closing down its space exploration plants entirely. China, on the other hand, was proceeding full steam ahead, with plans to put a manned space station on the moon, and probably one on Mars, too.
Where was the Federation of Planets...that great human achievement described in her favorite TV series, the classic Star Trek, going to come from?
Although Star Trek had gone off the air 40 years ago, to be replaced in the 90s and 00s with other space shows, Star Trek had still been the first science fiction show she'd ever seen, as it had been a favorite of her parents. Captain Kirk had been - and still was, for that matter, her favorite character, with Sulu a close second, although he really didn't have all that much to do in most of the episodes....
After Star Trek her parents had introduced her to Star Trek: the Next Generation and Voyager, but she'd never liked them as well. In Star Trek, mankind had seemingly worked together to solve all their problems, and the Romulans and the Klingons had been made, if not friends, at least noo enemies. The adventures were adventures of exploration. But in Star Trek: TNG and Voyager...the episodes were seemingly all about war, death and destruction...as it seemed there was no peace anywhere in the universe...that was just too sad a future to contemplate.
She'd been looking forward to Star Trek: Enterprise, which was supposed to tell of the early years of the Federation, but she'd been disappointed in that, too. She'd wanted to see a show set on Earth, that had explained how the star ships had been designed and built, and the United Federation of Planets created. Instead it was just more of the same. And they'd played fast and loose with history. Mr. Spock was supposed to have been the first Vulcan on a Federation starship, not a Vulcan woman named T'pol!
Emily sighed. All that had been fiction. And she'd thought she'd been born just at the right time to see fiction becoming fact. The International Space Station should have been a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Instead, it was going to be a monument to futility...
Well, maybe she was just being too pessimistic. There were a few civilian space companies out there...like Virgin Galactic and Space X. People weren't going to give up on the desire for space flight just because the US government was wimping out.
What it did mean, Emily knew, was that competition to become an astornaut was going to be tough - tougher than it had ever been before.
Which is why she didn't have time to waste, in her schooling or in her curricular activities. She didn't have dreams...she had ambitions...and if she was going to make her ambition come true, she'd have to work very, very hard at it.
It was nice, she thought, that she'd met two friends, Amber and Trelane, who felt the same way she did, about their ambitions. She'd always known she was unusual, having decided at so very young an age what she wanted to be when she grew up...it was nice to finally discover that she wasn't that unusual...that there were other girls who were willing to work just as hard as she was...but who were perfectly willing to spend an hour or so biking or watching an old black and white move with giant ants or moths or even (so gross) tarantulas.
Emily picked up her binoculars and focused them on the moon. "I'll walk there, one day," she thought to herself, and knew that it was true.
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