Under Secretary Tara D. Sonenshine, U.S. Department of State, Remarks before Science Diaspora Networking Reception
Thank you very much, Bill [Special Advisor William Colglazier].
Earlier this afternoon, at the Global Diaspora Forum, I had the
opportunity to articulate why the Diaspora community is so important. I
am delighted to speak to you this evening so I can also emphasize the
importance of scientists within that community.
They are essential. In the 21st century, the challenges we face are
complex. We need microbiologists, chemical scientists, geoscientists,
physics scientists, civil engineers, and others in the STEM field to
make the breakthroughs that can provide solutions.
But among those scientists, we have to make sure that we do
everything we can to empower women and girls in the field. That's a
priority for President Obama, for Secretary Clinton, and for the
American people.
Women comprise more than 50 per cent of the population in the world -
and although great gains have been made - they continue to be under
represented at all levels of society.
I am talking about women in political positions. I am talking about
women in boardrooms. Women in the conflict resolution field. And I am
talking about women scientists.
This isn't just about moral fairness - although that is certainly argument enough.
It's also about expanding our chances for solutions by expanding the diversity of our talent pool.
Studies have shown that - when it comes to solving problems of any
kind - we reduce our chances when we restrict the diversity of people
working to solve them.
Members of one group or gender tend to reinforce and support one
another's cultural and other biases. But a diverse group is more likely
to challenge suppositions and premises. We need the talents of everyone -
men and women.
That's why I am so pleased there was a panel today, led by Deputy
Secretary Margolis, that discussed ways that women scientists in the
diaspora community can help recruit more scientists.
The truth is, we can do so much more - for young men and women. My
department is working hard to do that. Through our Bureau of
International Information Programs - or IIP - we work with our embassies
to promote science and technology programs.
Our Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs - or ECA - is
expanding the talent pool of aspiring scientists. Through our Benjamin
A. Gilman Scholarship Program, for example, we increased the
participation of STEM students from 21 per cent last year to 28 per
cent.
We are working with the diaspora community wherever we see the
opportunity. In Brazil, the government's "Science Without Borders"
program aims to send more than 100,000 STEM students abroad in the next
four years, with the U.S. as a primary destination.
So our embassy in Brazil has been working with the Brazil-USA
Association of Educational and Cultural Entities to earmark $ 200,000
for scholarships so that young Brazilians - including low income
students - can apply.
In India, we saw how accomplished women from the diaspora can make a
difference. Last February, we convened a digital video conference in
which Sunita Williams, a U.S. astronaut of Indian-Slovenian descent,
visited India to address more than 3,000 young people. An additional 70
Indians engaged online.
Sunita inspired them with her own story about beating the traditional
barriers that women face. At one point, she observed - and I quote:
"From space, you cannot see borders between countries. Looking at the
world from that perspective, I wondered how anyone on this planet could
be fighting one another."
A visit like that can make the difference. It can make a young person
decide to take that leap into science. The more partnerships,
coalitions and networks we build, the greater the opportunities we can
give them. The greater our chances of making the scientific
breakthroughs that find solutions, grow economies, create jobs - and
make life better for everyone.
So I am delighted to join with today's partners in signing this
memorandum of understanding for Public Diplomacy Partnerships on
Science, Technology and Innovation.
But before we bring the partners forward, I would like to introduce
Dawn McCall, who heads our Bureau of International Information Programs.
She has a few words to say.
Thank you all for listening to me today - and more importantly, thank you for working to support our future scientists.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Posts resume Saturday
Posts resume Saturday! I'm getting ready for Labor Day weekend tomorrow (Friday.)
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mysterious AIDS-like disease discovered
From CBS News: Mysterious AIDS-like disease discovered
(AP) Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.
The patients' immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn't known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.
This is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs in adults, but doesn't spread the way AIDS does through a virus, said Dr. Sarah Browne, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
She helped lead the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan, where most of the cases have been found since 2004. Their report is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
"This is absolutely fascinating. I've seen probably at least three patients in the last 10 years or so" who might have had this, said Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
It's still possible that an infection of some sort could trigger the disease, even though the disease itself doesn't seem to spread person-to-person, he said.
The disease develops around age 50 on average, but does not run in families, which makes it unlikely that a single gene is responsible, Browne said.
Some patients have died of overwhelming infections, including some Asians now living in the U.S., although Browne could not estimate how many.
Kim Nguyen, 62, a seamstress from Vietnam who has lived in Tennessee since 1975, was gravely ill when she sought help for a persistent fever, infections throughout her bones and other bizarre symptoms in 2009. She had been sick off and on for several years and had visited Vietnam in 1995 and again in early 2009.
"She was wasting away from this systemic infection" that at first seemed like tuberculosis but wasn't, said Dr. Carlton Hays Jr., a family physician at the Jackson Clinic in Jackson, Tenn. "She's a small woman to begin with, but when I first saw her, her weight was 91 pounds, and she lost down to 69 pounds."
Nguyen was referred to specialists at the National Institutes of Health who had been tracking similar cases. She spent nearly a year at an NIH hospital in Bethesda, Md., and is there now for monitoring and further treatment.
"I feel great now," she said Wednesday. But when she was sick, "I felt dizzy, headaches, almost fell down," she said. "I could not eat anything."
AIDS is a specific disease, and it stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. That means the immune system becomes impaired during someone's lifetime, rather than from inherited gene defects like the "bubble babies" who are born unable to fight off germs.
The virus that causes AIDS — HIV — destroys T-cells, key soldiers of the immune system that fight germs. The new disease doesn't affect those cells, but causes a different kind of damage.
Browne's study of more than 200 people in Taiwan and Thailand found that most of those with the disease make substances called auto-antibodies that block interferon-gamma, a chemical signal that helps the body clear infections.
Blocking that signal leaves people like those with AIDS — vulnerable to viruses, fungal infections and parasites, but especially micro-bacteria, a group of germs similar to tuberculosis that can cause severe lung damage. Researchers are calling this new disease an "adult-onset" immunodeficiency syndrome because it develops later in life and they don't know why or how.
"Fundamentally, we do not know what's causing them to make these antibodies," Browne said.
Antibiotics aren't always effective, so doctors have tried a variety of other approaches, including a cancer drug that helps suppress production of antibodies. The disease quiets in some patients once the infections are tamed, but the faulty immune system is likely a chronic condition, researchers believe.
The fact that nearly all the patients so far have been Asian or Asian-born people living elsewhere suggests that genetic factors and something in the environment such as an infection may trigger the disease, researchers conclude.
The first cases turned up in 2004 and Browne's study enrolled about 100 people in six months.
"We know there are many others out there," including many cases mistaken as tuberculosis in some countries, she said.
(AP) Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.
The patients' immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn't known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.
This is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs in adults, but doesn't spread the way AIDS does through a virus, said Dr. Sarah Browne, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
She helped lead the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan, where most of the cases have been found since 2004. Their report is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
"This is absolutely fascinating. I've seen probably at least three patients in the last 10 years or so" who might have had this, said Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
It's still possible that an infection of some sort could trigger the disease, even though the disease itself doesn't seem to spread person-to-person, he said.
The disease develops around age 50 on average, but does not run in families, which makes it unlikely that a single gene is responsible, Browne said.
Some patients have died of overwhelming infections, including some Asians now living in the U.S., although Browne could not estimate how many.
Kim Nguyen, 62, a seamstress from Vietnam who has lived in Tennessee since 1975, was gravely ill when she sought help for a persistent fever, infections throughout her bones and other bizarre symptoms in 2009. She had been sick off and on for several years and had visited Vietnam in 1995 and again in early 2009.
"She was wasting away from this systemic infection" that at first seemed like tuberculosis but wasn't, said Dr. Carlton Hays Jr., a family physician at the Jackson Clinic in Jackson, Tenn. "She's a small woman to begin with, but when I first saw her, her weight was 91 pounds, and she lost down to 69 pounds."
Nguyen was referred to specialists at the National Institutes of Health who had been tracking similar cases. She spent nearly a year at an NIH hospital in Bethesda, Md., and is there now for monitoring and further treatment.
"I feel great now," she said Wednesday. But when she was sick, "I felt dizzy, headaches, almost fell down," she said. "I could not eat anything."
AIDS is a specific disease, and it stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. That means the immune system becomes impaired during someone's lifetime, rather than from inherited gene defects like the "bubble babies" who are born unable to fight off germs.
The virus that causes AIDS — HIV — destroys T-cells, key soldiers of the immune system that fight germs. The new disease doesn't affect those cells, but causes a different kind of damage.
Browne's study of more than 200 people in Taiwan and Thailand found that most of those with the disease make substances called auto-antibodies that block interferon-gamma, a chemical signal that helps the body clear infections.
Blocking that signal leaves people like those with AIDS — vulnerable to viruses, fungal infections and parasites, but especially micro-bacteria, a group of germs similar to tuberculosis that can cause severe lung damage. Researchers are calling this new disease an "adult-onset" immunodeficiency syndrome because it develops later in life and they don't know why or how.
"Fundamentally, we do not know what's causing them to make these antibodies," Browne said.
Antibiotics aren't always effective, so doctors have tried a variety of other approaches, including a cancer drug that helps suppress production of antibodies. The disease quiets in some patients once the infections are tamed, but the faulty immune system is likely a chronic condition, researchers believe.
The fact that nearly all the patients so far have been Asian or Asian-born people living elsewhere suggests that genetic factors and something in the environment such as an infection may trigger the disease, researchers conclude.
The first cases turned up in 2004 and Browne's study enrolled about 100 people in six months.
"We know there are many others out there," including many cases mistaken as tuberculosis in some countries, she said.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Male Scientist Balancing Act
From Inside Higher Ed: Male Scientist Balancing Act
DENVER
– Numerous studies have focused on how women in academic science
balance their quest for career advancement with their family
responsibilities. A study released here at the annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association (by researchers who have done
considerable research on women in science) turns to male scientists, and
asks how they balance work and home responsibilities.
The scholars conducted in-depth interviews with 74 physicists and biologists who are graduate students or faculty members at prestigious universities, and the results illustrate options that male scientists have that many female scientists who have or want children lack. A majority of men studied who have families organized their lives in decidedly unequal ways with regard to family and home duties. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most traditional male scientists are older (and more successful). But the study finds that many male scientists starting their careers (and whose wives work outside the home) do not attempt to have equal responsibility for raising children or managing homes.
The findings are significant, the authors write, because scientific disciplines are “greedy” about time commitments, and young scientists in particular are expected to work well above 40 hours a week. Further, these men are the colleagues of women (and those voting on hiring or tenuring women) trying to advance in science. (The authors are Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University, Sarah Damaske of Pennsylvania State University, Anne E. Lincoln of Southern Methodist University and Virginia Johnston White of Rice University.)
Based on their interviews, they divide the male scientists into four groups: pursuing autonomy, egalitarian partners, neo-traditional dual earners, and traditional breadwinners.
Those pursuing autonomy (15 percent) are academics who (single or married) have opted not to have children. As such, they do not face the same pressures as those with children to balance child-rearing responsibilities.
The nearly one-third of those studied in the egalitarian category talked in their interviews of many of the same pressures that female scientists with families experience -- especially "extreme hours and intricate schedules." Many of these men were married to women who were also on the tenure track, and under similar pressures. Many discussed the need to sacrifice (especially sleep and leisure time) to try to make it all work.
While the men described desires to move ahead professionally, they noted that they couldn’t work as they did before they had children. "I am not nearly as productive as I used to be.... And it's hard because I used to work here till whenever I wanted to and then I’d go home and I could work at night, now I kind of get home, put the kids to bed.... No academic institution is particularly -- that I know of -- is particularly great for family.... The people that do best in academia, sadly, often are those who don’t have [the responsibility of] child care."
The "neo-traditional" group of men (22 percent of the sample) was disproportionately made up of graduate students. These men have wives who work outside the home, and the wives are primarily responsible for the home front. The paper says that the men repeatedly stressed that their wives made the decision to organize life in this way, but the authors question how free a choice was involved.
"[I]t appears that men overemphasize their wife’s decision as a 'choice,' when in reality their wife’s choice to care for the children is constrained by her husband’s schema of children as primarily ‘her issue,’ ” the authors write. “For example, a physics graduate student argues that even though the trajectory of both his and his fiancée's careers have changed for family considerations, his wife chose to allow her trajectory to change even more than his. He indicates that his wife, who is currently in graduate school in a humanities discipline, would want to stay at home to raise their children when they are young: ‘I think that my timeline for taking and not taking jobs is not going to be as dependent on when I have kids. I think that’s going to be more dependent on my future wife because she hopes to not be working when the children are very, very young. That means that she wants to -- there’s certain times in the career track when it’s better or worse to take time off…. So that’s her issue.'"
Others talked about women being "burdened" by child-bearing, but with the understanding that this burden benefited the careers of male scientists, the authors write.
"That these graduate students and faculty members distance themselves from child care and home care is illustrative of a general trend among men in the transitional dual-earner model. These men portray decisions about child rearing as made entirely by their wives, rather than joint decisions, which has the effect of rhetorically -- and possibly practically -- removing them from the responsibility of care-work," the authors write.
And then there are the traditional breadwinners, who made up 30 percent of the sample, and who were the most likely to be tenured and older. These men were married to wives who did not work outside the home, and many said that they were able to better focus on science because they didn’t have to worry about much of anything at home.
Some of those interviewed expressed awareness of how they benefited. “For me it’s a little easier because I have a wife that has stayed home and taken care of [the children]. I imagine it would be much much more challenging if I didn’t have a spouse that was planning on staying home,” said one.
But others seemed decidedly less sympathetic to the impact of their choices. Asked, “Do you think that having children then is difficult to manage with being a scientist?” one physicist said, “No, absolutely not. That’s why you have a wife.”
The scholars conducted in-depth interviews with 74 physicists and biologists who are graduate students or faculty members at prestigious universities, and the results illustrate options that male scientists have that many female scientists who have or want children lack. A majority of men studied who have families organized their lives in decidedly unequal ways with regard to family and home duties. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most traditional male scientists are older (and more successful). But the study finds that many male scientists starting their careers (and whose wives work outside the home) do not attempt to have equal responsibility for raising children or managing homes.
The findings are significant, the authors write, because scientific disciplines are “greedy” about time commitments, and young scientists in particular are expected to work well above 40 hours a week. Further, these men are the colleagues of women (and those voting on hiring or tenuring women) trying to advance in science. (The authors are Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University, Sarah Damaske of Pennsylvania State University, Anne E. Lincoln of Southern Methodist University and Virginia Johnston White of Rice University.)
Based on their interviews, they divide the male scientists into four groups: pursuing autonomy, egalitarian partners, neo-traditional dual earners, and traditional breadwinners.
Those pursuing autonomy (15 percent) are academics who (single or married) have opted not to have children. As such, they do not face the same pressures as those with children to balance child-rearing responsibilities.
The nearly one-third of those studied in the egalitarian category talked in their interviews of many of the same pressures that female scientists with families experience -- especially "extreme hours and intricate schedules." Many of these men were married to women who were also on the tenure track, and under similar pressures. Many discussed the need to sacrifice (especially sleep and leisure time) to try to make it all work.
While the men described desires to move ahead professionally, they noted that they couldn’t work as they did before they had children. "I am not nearly as productive as I used to be.... And it's hard because I used to work here till whenever I wanted to and then I’d go home and I could work at night, now I kind of get home, put the kids to bed.... No academic institution is particularly -- that I know of -- is particularly great for family.... The people that do best in academia, sadly, often are those who don’t have [the responsibility of] child care."
The "neo-traditional" group of men (22 percent of the sample) was disproportionately made up of graduate students. These men have wives who work outside the home, and the wives are primarily responsible for the home front. The paper says that the men repeatedly stressed that their wives made the decision to organize life in this way, but the authors question how free a choice was involved.
"[I]t appears that men overemphasize their wife’s decision as a 'choice,' when in reality their wife’s choice to care for the children is constrained by her husband’s schema of children as primarily ‘her issue,’ ” the authors write. “For example, a physics graduate student argues that even though the trajectory of both his and his fiancée's careers have changed for family considerations, his wife chose to allow her trajectory to change even more than his. He indicates that his wife, who is currently in graduate school in a humanities discipline, would want to stay at home to raise their children when they are young: ‘I think that my timeline for taking and not taking jobs is not going to be as dependent on when I have kids. I think that’s going to be more dependent on my future wife because she hopes to not be working when the children are very, very young. That means that she wants to -- there’s certain times in the career track when it’s better or worse to take time off…. So that’s her issue.'"
Others talked about women being "burdened" by child-bearing, but with the understanding that this burden benefited the careers of male scientists, the authors write.
"That these graduate students and faculty members distance themselves from child care and home care is illustrative of a general trend among men in the transitional dual-earner model. These men portray decisions about child rearing as made entirely by their wives, rather than joint decisions, which has the effect of rhetorically -- and possibly practically -- removing them from the responsibility of care-work," the authors write.
And then there are the traditional breadwinners, who made up 30 percent of the sample, and who were the most likely to be tenured and older. These men were married to wives who did not work outside the home, and many said that they were able to better focus on science because they didn’t have to worry about much of anything at home.
Some of those interviewed expressed awareness of how they benefited. “For me it’s a little easier because I have a wife that has stayed home and taken care of [the children]. I imagine it would be much much more challenging if I didn’t have a spouse that was planning on staying home,” said one.
But others seemed decidedly less sympathetic to the impact of their choices. Asked, “Do you think that having children then is difficult to manage with being a scientist?” one physicist said, “No, absolutely not. That’s why you have a wife.”
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Israeli Women Ahead in Science Poised to Lead in Biotech
From Bloomberg News: Israeli Women Ahead in Science Poised to Lead in Biotech
“It makes you feel that in the life-sciences field, a woman can make a mark,” says Nistenpover, a bio-medical engineering major at the university in Haifa who plans to work in bio-mechanics or bio-materials research.
Women outnumber men in biology and related sciences in higher education in Israel. That could give women an advantage as the government and private investors put increasing amounts of money into the life-sciences industry, one of the country’s fastest growing sectors, collecting the most venture capital money in the first half of this year.
Hiring and promoting women could also give startups an edge because women still have to work harder and be smarter than men to succeed, says Hagit Messer-Yaron, president of the Ra’anana- based Open University and the Ministry of Science’s chief scientist from 2000 to 2003.
“The women that make it to the top usually have to prove themselves and overcome hurdles that are above and beyond what men are required to do,” Messer-Yaron says. “When these women make it as managers, they are over-achievers and can help these companies succeed.”
While most high-tech employees are male, women comprise 60 percent to 70 percent of the biotechnology workforce, according to Nisha Group, a recruiting firm based near Tel Aviv.
Still, men dominate upper management. Women hold about 13 percent of chief executive officer positions in companies in the Tel Aviv Biomed index and less than 5 percent in the Tel Aviv Technology index, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg.
That’s destined to change in biotech, says Ora Dar, head of the life sciences sector at the Office of the Chief Scientist in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.
“As this field matures, you are going to see women increasingly taking executive positions,” says Dar, whose team of about 100 evaluators, who decide what projects and incubators to finance with taxpayer money, is more than 70 percent female. “It’s a matter of experience.”
“Women traditionally are not the main breadwinners in the family and can afford to pursue a PhD, whereas men have more pressure to go out and make a high salary, says Anat Cohen- Dayag, president and CEO of Compugen Ltd. (CGEN), which was founded by members of an Israeli army intelligence unit that designed software to break codes. The Tel Aviv-based company uses algorithms to trawl private and public databases to discover proteins that may have the ability to treat diseases.
Cohen-Dayag is one of three female CEOs in the Tel Aviv Biomed index. The others are Kinneret Livnat Savitsky of BioLineRx Ltd. (BLRX), which develops clinical stage therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs, and Pnina Fishman of Can Fite Biopharma (CFBI) Ltd., which is focusing on treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.
Most of the companies in the sector are very young, with little or no revenue, according to Uri Geiger, managing partner at Herzliya-based Accelmed, which invests in medical-device makers. Of the more than 1,000 life-science companies in Israel, 57 percent are focused on medical devices, Geiger says, with the remainder in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health information technology and other small fields.
Metallo-Therapy Ltd., which is developing a new method for cancer diagnosis by delivering nano-liposomes to tumor cells, recently received a $4 million investment from Moshe Arkin, former CEO of Agis Industries Ltd. and Perrigo Co. (PRGO)’s vice chairman. Amal Ayoub, Metallo-Therapy’s founder and CEO, says she thinks one reason is that she’s female -- and Arab.
Galit Zuckerman, founder of Medasense Biometrics Ltd., which is working on an automated, non-invasive pain monitoring diagnostic device, says women are taking life sciences jobs as academic positions are increasingly hard to find. ‘
‘You have all these women with growing expertise in biology,’’ she says. “It’s only natural that they increasingly market that knowledge.”
Every week, Daniella Nistenpover
sits down in a lecture hall for one class in neurophysiology and
another in biological processes, and sees a sea of women.
That’s not the case when the 22-year-old takes courses in
the theory of electrical circuits or differential equations at
the predominantly male Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
She says it’s evidence that she’s picked the right career. “It makes you feel that in the life-sciences field, a woman can make a mark,” says Nistenpover, a bio-medical engineering major at the university in Haifa who plans to work in bio-mechanics or bio-materials research.
Women outnumber men in biology and related sciences in higher education in Israel. That could give women an advantage as the government and private investors put increasing amounts of money into the life-sciences industry, one of the country’s fastest growing sectors, collecting the most venture capital money in the first half of this year.
Hiring and promoting women could also give startups an edge because women still have to work harder and be smarter than men to succeed, says Hagit Messer-Yaron, president of the Ra’anana- based Open University and the Ministry of Science’s chief scientist from 2000 to 2003.
“The women that make it to the top usually have to prove themselves and overcome hurdles that are above and beyond what men are required to do,” Messer-Yaron says. “When these women make it as managers, they are over-achievers and can help these companies succeed.”
Executive Positions
Israel got the nickname “startup nation” in a 2009 book with that title. It has about 60 companies on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any country outside North America after China. The high-tech industry accounts for 47 percent of manufactured exports.While most high-tech employees are male, women comprise 60 percent to 70 percent of the biotechnology workforce, according to Nisha Group, a recruiting firm based near Tel Aviv.
Still, men dominate upper management. Women hold about 13 percent of chief executive officer positions in companies in the Tel Aviv Biomed index and less than 5 percent in the Tel Aviv Technology index, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg.
That’s destined to change in biotech, says Ora Dar, head of the life sciences sector at the Office of the Chief Scientist in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.
“As this field matures, you are going to see women increasingly taking executive positions,” says Dar, whose team of about 100 evaluators, who decide what projects and incubators to finance with taxpayer money, is more than 70 percent female. “It’s a matter of experience.”
More Pressure
More women than men earn science degrees in Israel, according to Lizi Shoov London, partner and managing director of the Biomedical and Cleantech division at Nisha Group outside Tel Aviv. About 58 percent of biology doctorate degrees awarded in 2010 were to women, a study by Israel’s Council for Higher Education found. That compares to women earning 44 percent of equivalent degrees in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics.“Women traditionally are not the main breadwinners in the family and can afford to pursue a PhD, whereas men have more pressure to go out and make a high salary, says Anat Cohen- Dayag, president and CEO of Compugen Ltd. (CGEN), which was founded by members of an Israeli army intelligence unit that designed software to break codes. The Tel Aviv-based company uses algorithms to trawl private and public databases to discover proteins that may have the ability to treat diseases.
Working Mothers
The industry is a good fit for working mothers like herself, she says. ‘‘Because of its academic characteristics, the culture in the industry has traditionally been more permissive, enabling more flexible hours, which has enabled women to juggle career and family.’’Cohen-Dayag is one of three female CEOs in the Tel Aviv Biomed index. The others are Kinneret Livnat Savitsky of BioLineRx Ltd. (BLRX), which develops clinical stage therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs, and Pnina Fishman of Can Fite Biopharma (CFBI) Ltd., which is focusing on treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer.
Most of the companies in the sector are very young, with little or no revenue, according to Uri Geiger, managing partner at Herzliya-based Accelmed, which invests in medical-device makers. Of the more than 1,000 life-science companies in Israel, 57 percent are focused on medical devices, Geiger says, with the remainder in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health information technology and other small fields.
Venture Capital
The share of the government research and development budget allocated to health-related companies almost doubled in the last decade to 26 percent from 14 percent, according to Israel Chief Scientist Avi Hasson, head of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor fund that invests as much as $500 million a year.
Biomedical companies attracted the most venture capital in
the first half of this year, according to IVC-KPMG, which tracks
the industry. The $240 million represented 26 percent of all the
venture capital invested in startups in the period, more than in
the previous year, a IVC-KPMG survey found.
Orbimed Healthcare Fund Management, a New York-based
investment management firm focused on health-care, started the
Orbimed Israel Partners $222 million fund in Israel in April
with partial government investment, while the Tel Aviv venture
capital firm Pontifax Ltd. raised $88 million for bio-medical
investments last year. Metallo-Therapy Ltd., which is developing a new method for cancer diagnosis by delivering nano-liposomes to tumor cells, recently received a $4 million investment from Moshe Arkin, former CEO of Agis Industries Ltd. and Perrigo Co. (PRGO)’s vice chairman. Amal Ayoub, Metallo-Therapy’s founder and CEO, says she thinks one reason is that she’s female -- and Arab.
‘Only Natural’
‘‘Being an Arab woman was actually an advantage,” says Ayoub, who has a doctorate in biomedical engineering form Ben Gurion University. “It got Arkin’s attention.”Galit Zuckerman, founder of Medasense Biometrics Ltd., which is working on an automated, non-invasive pain monitoring diagnostic device, says women are taking life sciences jobs as academic positions are increasingly hard to find. ‘
‘You have all these women with growing expertise in biology,’’ she says. “It’s only natural that they increasingly market that knowledge.”
Monday, August 20, 2012
No sex please, we are humans: UK-Indian genetics expert says immaculate conception is possible
This is an op-ed piece, but it raises some interesting points.
If life can be created artificially, will that destroy the husband and wife dynamic and the family dynamic? I don't think so.
From Daily Mail Online India: No sex please, we are humans: UK-Indian genetics expert says immaculate conception is possible
If life can be created artificially, will that destroy the husband and wife dynamic and the family dynamic? I don't think so.
From Daily Mail Online India: No sex please, we are humans: UK-Indian genetics expert says immaculate conception is possible
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it … The wonderful Cole Porter song, Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love, lists many of the species who enjoy pairing off: 'Even Pekineses at the Ritz do it!'
The Pekineses are not alone: 99.9 per cent of higher animal species reproduce themselves sexually. Species capable of reproducing themselves without contact between male and female are in the distinct minority.
Whiptail lizards and some hammer-head sharks apparently do it. Or rather, don’t do it. But so far no one has written a song about them and their lonely sexual endeavours.
But a research geneticist from Imperial College London, Aarathi Prasad, has tried to do the next best thing. Not only has she written a celebration of those eccentric creatures who are capable of reproducing by themselves without sexual contact, she controversially claims that sexless reproduction is the way of the future for humans, too.
A generation ago, test-tube babies were the stuff of science fiction: now, we accept these things as realities. In the same way, suggests Prasad, we could well be looking at a future in which human babies could be born without any sperm donors, let alone contact between the sexes. The future is sexless.
Since her publicity photographs show a beautiful young woman with bare shoulders posing coquettishly for the camera, some readers might feel that Aarathi Prasad is teasing them just a little.
But her book, Like A Virgin, is exploring a fundamentally serious theme, and one at the heart of Western liberal thinking. It is that we human beings are in control of our own destiny, and there is nothing sacred or special about life itself.
This is because we live in a world where science means we can manipulate everything — even the process of reproduction. Indeed, the central tenet of her story is that virgin births are now almost within the grasp of science. Can she really be serious?
And while she watches our jaws drop, she reminds us not to be prejudiced. If women can do it, why not men, she asks.
Already, in Australia, they have pioneered an artificial womb — a plastic container specially designed to hold fluids and bacteria found in natural wombs. Admittedly the creatures being developed in this artificial womb are grey nurse sharks — but, where sharks lead, humans could follow.
According to Prasad, it will one day be technically possible for a man to develop a child in one of these ‘wombs’ without the co-operation of any female partner.
Probably, by now, you are beginning to echo Captain Mainwaring’s words to his corporal in Dad’s Army: ‘I think you’re getting into the realms of fantasy here, Jones.’
But Prasad points out that science has already developed artificial sperm. And that such sperm has produced offspring. How far behind can be the synthetic egg?
So far the synthetic sperm has been confined to Japanese laboratory mice, resulting in a baby mouse called Kaguya in 2004.
Kaguya was conceived after the genetic content of an egg from a young mouse was modified to make it appear as if it were sperm, which was then used to fertilise a mature egg from another mouse.
Kaguya was the lucky one which survived from 371 synthetically fertilised eggs. But the point is that science will ensure the technique improves, and it may become viable for human use.
Prasad’s book also comes up with all kinds of freak case histories which appear to suggest that a virgin birth might not be beyond the bounds of science as new techniques develop.
She tells of cases where growths in the ovaries simulate the properties of a foetus. We read of weird ‘ovarian teratomas’ (tumours which grow from unfertilised egg cells) which can develop humanoid features such as teeth and hair.
One such malformation discovered inside a young Japanese virgin in 2003 had a doll-like body with an eye which had lashes.
The idea is that with more understanding of the processes behind these freakish cases, we could learn how to reproduce without the aid of any partner. Prasad warns such research may well be necessary. Infertility is on the rise in the world, she claims — which means that the normal means of reproducing the human race could actually be under threat in the very long term.
She warns that the Y chromosome — the strand of DNA which helps shape the male of any species — is ‘hurtling down the evolutionary road towards extinction’. Research has shown that the genetic information contained on it has been disintegrating over time.
And, if that is the case, if the Y chromosome really is dying out, then does this not mean that the human race itself is slowly dying out — unless scientists can devise artificial means for the human race to reproduce itself?
And is it not clear that, if this were to happen, the human race will opt for Prasad’s idea of virgin birth?
Like so many scientists, Aarathi Prasad believes long-held taboos and traditions should be cast aside in the name of progress.
She wants us to drop all our prejudices about sex, sexual difference, reproduction and foetuses, and to allow science to develop in any way it chooses.
‘Why can’t a man be a mother?’ she asks. ‘Why do we care so much about what it means to be a 'mother' rather than to be a 'parent'?
‘By all reasonable estimates, in the near future we will conquer the tyranny of the womb. The question remains if we can also conquer the tyranny of human prejudice, too.’
Of course, she is being contentious so that her spirited book will sell. But Prasad is not a neutral research scientist: she is an out-an-out liberal campaigner in favour of taking research on human embryology and fertilisation as far as it will go.
In her vision of the world, it is only fuddy-duddies who would question why anyone — elderly women, men, you name it — should not become pregnant if they choose to indulge the whim.
She is a brilliant scientist, and I know nothing about her subject. But the greatest problem facing this planet isn’t the slight dip in human fertility in the West. Rather, as any third world charity worker will tell you, it is the vast problem of overpopulation, especially in parts of the world scarcely capable of feeding themselves.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the issue is not that a few selfish older ladies or gay men cannot have babies. It is that the babies who have already been born in vast numbers do not have enough to eat. Prasad’s book provides a very strong example of how scientists can ignore the blindingly obvious in an attempt to brainwash us.
No doubt there are some people who love to contemplate the brave new world in which the messy business of relationships between the sexes is done away with.
They probably rejoice at the idea of a future in which human beings are made from artificial sperm; a future where the ‘best’ baby is selected from 371 fertilised laboratory eggs and the others are chucked away.
If Aarathi Prasad is to be believed, such a concept does not belong to the realms of fantasy, but is, on the contrary, just round the corner.
For Prasad and those who think like her, it goes without saying that science offers us choice, and choice is always a good thing. But is it?
Would we really have a better world if we had been able to select our children in the way we might choose a pet in a shop? Is there not something healthy and adventurous about accepting what comes?
Is there not something creepy — almost Nazi — about the idea of trying to create for ourselves a perfect child who does not inherit Uncle Sid’s dyspepsia, Aunt Mavis’s wonky teeth, and those weird knees from Charles’s side of the family? Does not the attempt to make babies into designer items remove any of the adventure of being born?
Yet, above all, is there not something sinister and joyless about the notion of going it alone when it comes to reproducing ourselves?
In the old myth about the Garden of Eden, God says that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. Modern science disagrees. It thinks there is nothing wrong with this.
A generation ago, we watched families breaking up in large numbers for the first time, and the breakdown of marriages. Nearly every observer of society agrees that this was calamitous, especially in the less privileged parts of our cities, where lack of family structure is the major background and cause of crime, psychological dislocation, and anti-social behaviour.
What appears to be a scientific exploration is actually a political tract, saying that we can do without a patriarchal, male-dominated society, do without Dad, without family, without any of the structures which have hitherto shaped the human destiny.
The subtitle of Prasad’s thesis is How Science Is Redesigning The Rules Of Sex. To my mind, this book is not so much redesigning the rules of sex as suggesting sex as we know it should be abolished.
It is a good example of something purporting to be a work of science but is, in fact, as brimful of prejudice as any religious text, and as biased as any loony tract.
The author is a clever geneticist, and I know nothing. But I very much doubt whether human beings ever will be able to reproduce without the time-honoured meeting of male and female. But even if she is right, how boring life would be without the mutual attractions of the sexes, and the complexities, joys and frustrations of family relationships
UNC professor, students piece together model of prehistoric reptile
From News Observer: UNC professor, students piece together model of prehistoric reptile
Alison the rauisuchian was a reptile to be
reckoned with in her day, the Late Triassic, and in her neighborhood –
the spot in supercontinent Pangea that became southern Durham County.
She weighed nearly a ton, and she and her fellow rauisuchians prowled at the top of the food chain until they disappeared at the end of the Triassic, to be succeeded by dinosaurs.
She’s no small shakes in the annals of North Carolina fossil-dom, either. Since her discovery in a Durham County brick quarry by two UNC-Chapel Hill students in 1994, she’s been hailed as one of the state’s most important finds.
She weighed nearly a ton, and she and her fellow rauisuchians prowled at the top of the food chain until they disappeared at the end of the Triassic, to be succeeded by dinosaurs.
She’s no small shakes in the annals of North Carolina fossil-dom, either. Since her discovery in a Durham County brick quarry by two UNC-Chapel Hill students in 1994, she’s been hailed as one of the state’s most important finds.
She’s the first rauisuchian (“raw ih SOO kee un”) found in eastern
North America, though there have been others in the U.S. West and
elsewhere. She’s the only one of her particular species ever found.
Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues, Smithsonian Institution senior scientist and curator of vertebrate paleontology, helped with early research carried out by Dr. Joseph G. Carter, paleontology professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of Geological Sciences.
The rauisuchian’s discovery, along with its captured prey, “provided unexpected new insights into Late Triassic life in what is now eastern North America,” Sues says.
At work in the lab
Now, some of Carter’s students are finishing the first complete rendition of Alison in polyurethane, readying her for a broad public debut. It’s expected to be finished during the fall semester and hopefully will go on display within this next year, perhaps at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. The actual bones are already there, under lock and key.
Though there’s no way to determine sex, in scientific parlance, she’s Portosuchus (genus) alisonae (species), named by students for the late Alison L. Chambers, their companion on many a paleontology field trip.
To students bending her ribs and putting her tailbone together like a jigsaw puzzle, she’s just plain Alison.
Student Maria Connolly asked the assembled heads bent over the polyurethane skeleton one recent morning if they knew why Alison is so trim.
It’s her metabolism, Connolly cracks. She’s dead!
That’s not all, chimes in Carter, a transplanted Kansan who echoes the Coroner’s pronouncement on the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Not only merely dead,” he quotes. “But really most sincerely dead.”
Two-hundred-and-twenty-one million years dead, give or take 5 million.
Ah, but when she was alive! She wore armor plates on her neck, back and breast, was about 11 feet long, and likely stood upright at least part of the time.
A nickname for a rauisuchian is “bear croc” – it looks like a crocodile, prowls like a bear. Though they’re not ancestors of the dinosaur, Carter says, “It was Nature’s first attempt to build a dinosaur-like predator.”
Head uplifted, massive jaws open, eye sockets unseeing, she looms above her builders. On a table nearby, her yet-unattached hands are lifted in an unintended but touching gesture of supplication.
Previous students did an incomplete reconstruction in 2000; it substituted painted Plexiglas for the bones missing when Alison was unearthed. After a campus showing, this first replica was relegated to the lab while Carter and students researched Alison’s rauisuchian relatives and used their findings to create the missing parts .
A determination to keep Alison in North Carolina led Carter to take on the arduous task of overseeing her reassembly 18 years ago, even though his specialty is invertebrates. (He’s currently coordinator of an international effort to create the most complete family tree ever assembled for bivalves – clams, oysters, and the like.)
But no way, he says, was he going to send Alison out-of-state. “This is part of North Carolina’s heritage.”
Had her bones left, she’d be as unknown to most North Carolinians as the state’s other big vertebrate fossil find – a Late Triassic crocodile-like creature, a rutiodon, found in the 1800s in Durham County. It’s in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Quarry discovery
Alison came to light when Carter student Brian Coffey and roommate Marco Brewer spotted some bone chips, then an anklebone, as they hiked the quarry. They felt that this was something big, and when they hauled the anklebone in to Carter, he agreed.
“When I saw it, I thought it must be another rutiodon,” he says.
A large part of the class went back to the quarry, and subsequently found part of the skull, a couple of teeth, the entire neck, most of the shoulders, two arms complete with hands, the collarbone, breastplate, part of the hip, part of the back, most of both legs including the feet, part of the tail, and many ribs.
“It was one of the most complete rauisuchians ever discovered,” says Carter. And it was articulated – the bones positioned just as they’d been in life.
The crab-like hand with a locked-together thumb and forefinger ending in a sharp claw meant that they had stumbled upon an entirely new species.
The creature was found lying in what was once a lake, on top of captured prey. The spenosuchian crocodylomorph beneath her “looked like an alligator in its head, long skinny legs like a greyhound,” Carter says. Subsequently researched by the Smithsonian’s Sues, it was yet another new species, grallator, this one of the genus Dromicosuchus.
Not only that, Alison’s stomach area contained remains of four other small Triassic creatures, one of which, Carter says, was “second, second, second cousin” to a reptile thought to be an ancestor of mammals.
Carter theorizes that having killed its dinner, the rauisuchian was trying to drag it out of the lake when it got stuck in the mud and died.
To test his cause-of-death theory, he tried to walk in the similar sediment of nearby Jordan Lake when the water was low. “I tried to see how sticky it was. If you got both legs stuck in there, you’re in deep trouble.”
‘Show and tell’
Carter wears Hawaiian shirts to class, has a poster of Indiana Jones in his office and, like his students, appreciates but is not overwhelmed by their weighty task. Teaching paleontology, he says, “is like having ‘show and tell’ every day.”
“It’s just fun to talk about new discoveries. People have an inherent desire to know about the world they live in.”
Usually, he says, reconstructing a major fossil find is undertaken only by experts in museums. But Alison’s promise of being “a really marvelous teaching tool” prompted him to break tradition and involve undergraduates, even his freshman-seminar students planning to study English, philosophy and the like.
Other experts like Sues and Dr. Paul E. Olsen of Columbia University joined in the research and subsequent paper-writing, as did graduate students Karen Peyer and Stephanie E. Novak.
But it was undergraduates who hauled Alison’s skeleton, surrounded by petrified mud, out of the quarry in chunks. “It’s like these bones were encased in concrete,” Carter says.
Some of them, compressed by millions of years’ worth of sand, fell into pieces. “You have to know where they were, and then glue them back together again.”
Sure, the 300 students who’ve worked on Alison have made some mistakes, he says in a later conversation. “Just like today,” when a rib being bent broke instead.
“Sometimes, you’ve got to break a bone to build a skeleton,” he says.
Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues, Smithsonian Institution senior scientist and curator of vertebrate paleontology, helped with early research carried out by Dr. Joseph G. Carter, paleontology professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of Geological Sciences.
The rauisuchian’s discovery, along with its captured prey, “provided unexpected new insights into Late Triassic life in what is now eastern North America,” Sues says.
At work in the lab
Now, some of Carter’s students are finishing the first complete rendition of Alison in polyurethane, readying her for a broad public debut. It’s expected to be finished during the fall semester and hopefully will go on display within this next year, perhaps at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. The actual bones are already there, under lock and key.
Though there’s no way to determine sex, in scientific parlance, she’s Portosuchus (genus) alisonae (species), named by students for the late Alison L. Chambers, their companion on many a paleontology field trip.
To students bending her ribs and putting her tailbone together like a jigsaw puzzle, she’s just plain Alison.
Student Maria Connolly asked the assembled heads bent over the polyurethane skeleton one recent morning if they knew why Alison is so trim.
It’s her metabolism, Connolly cracks. She’s dead!
That’s not all, chimes in Carter, a transplanted Kansan who echoes the Coroner’s pronouncement on the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Not only merely dead,” he quotes. “But really most sincerely dead.”
Two-hundred-and-twenty-one million years dead, give or take 5 million.
Ah, but when she was alive! She wore armor plates on her neck, back and breast, was about 11 feet long, and likely stood upright at least part of the time.
A nickname for a rauisuchian is “bear croc” – it looks like a crocodile, prowls like a bear. Though they’re not ancestors of the dinosaur, Carter says, “It was Nature’s first attempt to build a dinosaur-like predator.”
Head uplifted, massive jaws open, eye sockets unseeing, she looms above her builders. On a table nearby, her yet-unattached hands are lifted in an unintended but touching gesture of supplication.
Previous students did an incomplete reconstruction in 2000; it substituted painted Plexiglas for the bones missing when Alison was unearthed. After a campus showing, this first replica was relegated to the lab while Carter and students researched Alison’s rauisuchian relatives and used their findings to create the missing parts .
A determination to keep Alison in North Carolina led Carter to take on the arduous task of overseeing her reassembly 18 years ago, even though his specialty is invertebrates. (He’s currently coordinator of an international effort to create the most complete family tree ever assembled for bivalves – clams, oysters, and the like.)
But no way, he says, was he going to send Alison out-of-state. “This is part of North Carolina’s heritage.”
Had her bones left, she’d be as unknown to most North Carolinians as the state’s other big vertebrate fossil find – a Late Triassic crocodile-like creature, a rutiodon, found in the 1800s in Durham County. It’s in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Quarry discovery
Alison came to light when Carter student Brian Coffey and roommate Marco Brewer spotted some bone chips, then an anklebone, as they hiked the quarry. They felt that this was something big, and when they hauled the anklebone in to Carter, he agreed.
“When I saw it, I thought it must be another rutiodon,” he says.
A large part of the class went back to the quarry, and subsequently found part of the skull, a couple of teeth, the entire neck, most of the shoulders, two arms complete with hands, the collarbone, breastplate, part of the hip, part of the back, most of both legs including the feet, part of the tail, and many ribs.
“It was one of the most complete rauisuchians ever discovered,” says Carter. And it was articulated – the bones positioned just as they’d been in life.
The crab-like hand with a locked-together thumb and forefinger ending in a sharp claw meant that they had stumbled upon an entirely new species.
The creature was found lying in what was once a lake, on top of captured prey. The spenosuchian crocodylomorph beneath her “looked like an alligator in its head, long skinny legs like a greyhound,” Carter says. Subsequently researched by the Smithsonian’s Sues, it was yet another new species, grallator, this one of the genus Dromicosuchus.
Not only that, Alison’s stomach area contained remains of four other small Triassic creatures, one of which, Carter says, was “second, second, second cousin” to a reptile thought to be an ancestor of mammals.
Carter theorizes that having killed its dinner, the rauisuchian was trying to drag it out of the lake when it got stuck in the mud and died.
To test his cause-of-death theory, he tried to walk in the similar sediment of nearby Jordan Lake when the water was low. “I tried to see how sticky it was. If you got both legs stuck in there, you’re in deep trouble.”
‘Show and tell’
Carter wears Hawaiian shirts to class, has a poster of Indiana Jones in his office and, like his students, appreciates but is not overwhelmed by their weighty task. Teaching paleontology, he says, “is like having ‘show and tell’ every day.”
“It’s just fun to talk about new discoveries. People have an inherent desire to know about the world they live in.”
Usually, he says, reconstructing a major fossil find is undertaken only by experts in museums. But Alison’s promise of being “a really marvelous teaching tool” prompted him to break tradition and involve undergraduates, even his freshman-seminar students planning to study English, philosophy and the like.
Other experts like Sues and Dr. Paul E. Olsen of Columbia University joined in the research and subsequent paper-writing, as did graduate students Karen Peyer and Stephanie E. Novak.
But it was undergraduates who hauled Alison’s skeleton, surrounded by petrified mud, out of the quarry in chunks. “It’s like these bones were encased in concrete,” Carter says.
Some of them, compressed by millions of years’ worth of sand, fell into pieces. “You have to know where they were, and then glue them back together again.”
Sure, the 300 students who’ve worked on Alison have made some mistakes, he says in a later conversation. “Just like today,” when a rib being bent broke instead.
“Sometimes, you’ve got to break a bone to build a skeleton,” he says.
Friday, August 17, 2012
A Curiousity! Girl, 15, Named Mars Rover Years Ago
From CBS Los Angeles: A Curiousity! Girl, 15, Named Mars Rover Years Ago
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — For the past eight months, scientists have been anxiously watching Curiosity barrel closer and closer to the red planet.
Were you ever curious how the Mars landing rover got it’s name? We were.
Rachel Kim, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, found the person who named the $2.5 billion project and one-ton roving lab, and it was someone most unlikely.
“I’m 15 and I’ll be a sophomore,” says Clara Ma.
Yup. Her.
Ma, from Kansas, tells Kim as a 6th grader sitting in science class, she loved to ask questions. You could say she was always a bit…curious.
“I saw an article about the Mars Rover and how you can name it and how the girl who named the two Mars Rovers before me, she had entered a contest and won. And I thought that would be an amazing thing for me to try and do.”
Until 2009, the rover was just known as Mars Science Laboratory.
More than 9,000 students from around the country entered the contest.
Ma says, “I feel so proud that I named the Rover and they chose my name.”
After Ma was selected winner in 2009, she came to JPL to see how and where Curiosity was built. She got to even sign her name on the machine as it was being assembled.
While other kids might dream of their names being up in lights, Ma’s name will be rolling around on Mars. How’s that for star-struck!
It’s been three years since she named Curiosity. Maybe she’s just coming back to Earth. “Just getting to be there for the whole proces was amazing, mind-blowing.”
She’s anticipating smooth sailing but acknowledges she will be a bit nervous. “But I’ll also be really excited at the same time. I hope everything goes well, I really really do. I’ll just be on the edge of my seat.”
Ma will return to Kansas soon. But she’s saying so long to JPL — not goodbye. She smiles, “I’d love to work at JPL some day.”
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — For the past eight months, scientists have been anxiously watching Curiosity barrel closer and closer to the red planet.
Were you ever curious how the Mars landing rover got it’s name? We were.
Rachel Kim, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, found the person who named the $2.5 billion project and one-ton roving lab, and it was someone most unlikely.
“I’m 15 and I’ll be a sophomore,” says Clara Ma.
Yup. Her.
Ma, from Kansas, tells Kim as a 6th grader sitting in science class, she loved to ask questions. You could say she was always a bit…curious.
“I saw an article about the Mars Rover and how you can name it and how the girl who named the two Mars Rovers before me, she had entered a contest and won. And I thought that would be an amazing thing for me to try and do.”
Until 2009, the rover was just known as Mars Science Laboratory.
More than 9,000 students from around the country entered the contest.
Ma says, “I feel so proud that I named the Rover and they chose my name.”
After Ma was selected winner in 2009, she came to JPL to see how and where Curiosity was built. She got to even sign her name on the machine as it was being assembled.
While other kids might dream of their names being up in lights, Ma’s name will be rolling around on Mars. How’s that for star-struck!
It’s been three years since she named Curiosity. Maybe she’s just coming back to Earth. “Just getting to be there for the whole proces was amazing, mind-blowing.”
She’s anticipating smooth sailing but acknowledges she will be a bit nervous. “But I’ll also be really excited at the same time. I hope everything goes well, I really really do. I’ll just be on the edge of my seat.”
Ma will return to Kansas soon. But she’s saying so long to JPL — not goodbye. She smiles, “I’d love to work at JPL some day.”
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Do You Think Girls Hate Math? Think Again!
From HuffPost: Do You Think Girls Hate Math? Think Again!
There are some crazy statistics out there with regard to women in math and science fields. Do you know that if you scan a room of 25 engineers, only three will be women? The Department of Commerce says that women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, but they hold less than 25 percent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) jobs. The numbers are staggering across the board. Women are much less likely than men to graduate with a STEM undergraduate degree, and if they are one of the few that do end up with a STEM degree, they are not likely to work in a STEM job.
So what do we do with this information? What should you do if you're the father of a STEM-loving girl and you want to provide the best for her? Let me introduce you to my friend, Bill Childs. He decided to take his frustration out in the most productive way possible... with music. He gathered the best and brightest kindie (kids+indie= a match made in heaven) musicians and asked them to contribute a STEM-related track for a CD to encourage girls to follow their scientific passions. The CD is the aptly-titled Science Fair. Amazingly talented artists like Mates of State, Laura Veirs and Frances England added songs with major star power. The best part? All of the proceeds go straight to the science education department at Girls, Inc.
For Bill Childs, producing this CD was a project of love and added meaning. Science Fair was inspired by the lives of his parents, Ves and Holly Childs (both accomplished leaders in STEM and feminism). Listen to what his mom has to say:
Then there are the brains behind Maykah Inc. Alice Brooks, Bettina Chen and Jennifer Kessler are trying to convince girls that STEM is cool with a product that is so much more than a toy. They were able to raise over $60,000 in orders on Kickstarter after just two weeks! They ended up raising a total of over $85,000, which is an astounding number for these entrepreneurial spirits.
It's up to us to change the environment of girls and women interested in math and science. Remember the stink that the "I hate Math" Barbie ignited in the nineties? Then there was the JC Penney t-shirt (I'm linking to my brilliant friend, Liz Gumbinner, who discusses this issue with the passion it deserves). Science continues to be marketed to young girls in all the wrong ways. We have got to do better, folks. The good news? We're on the right track.
There are some crazy statistics out there with regard to women in math and science fields. Do you know that if you scan a room of 25 engineers, only three will be women? The Department of Commerce says that women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, but they hold less than 25 percent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) jobs. The numbers are staggering across the board. Women are much less likely than men to graduate with a STEM undergraduate degree, and if they are one of the few that do end up with a STEM degree, they are not likely to work in a STEM job.
So what do we do with this information? What should you do if you're the father of a STEM-loving girl and you want to provide the best for her? Let me introduce you to my friend, Bill Childs. He decided to take his frustration out in the most productive way possible... with music. He gathered the best and brightest kindie (kids+indie= a match made in heaven) musicians and asked them to contribute a STEM-related track for a CD to encourage girls to follow their scientific passions. The CD is the aptly-titled Science Fair. Amazingly talented artists like Mates of State, Laura Veirs and Frances England added songs with major star power. The best part? All of the proceeds go straight to the science education department at Girls, Inc.
For Bill Childs, producing this CD was a project of love and added meaning. Science Fair was inspired by the lives of his parents, Ves and Holly Childs (both accomplished leaders in STEM and feminism). Listen to what his mom has to say:
I would really like to know for sure that my children and grandchildren will be treated fairly at school and on the job, regardless of their gender. I would particularly like to be sure that any of my beautiful little granddaughters who wanted to be a scientist or engineer like me would have a full opportunity to do so, and to be published when deserved and to be paid equitably. Perhaps this record will contribute toward that end.Have you heard of Brittany Wenger? She's a 17-year-old girl who just took home the top prize at Google's Science Fair. Yes, that Google. Her project is no child's play. She built an artificial brain that will help detect signs of cancer using a minimally invasive procedure. That is amazing and hopeful on so many levels.
Then there are the brains behind Maykah Inc. Alice Brooks, Bettina Chen and Jennifer Kessler are trying to convince girls that STEM is cool with a product that is so much more than a toy. They were able to raise over $60,000 in orders on Kickstarter after just two weeks! They ended up raising a total of over $85,000, which is an astounding number for these entrepreneurial spirits.
It's up to us to change the environment of girls and women interested in math and science. Remember the stink that the "I hate Math" Barbie ignited in the nineties? Then there was the JC Penney t-shirt (I'm linking to my brilliant friend, Liz Gumbinner, who discusses this issue with the passion it deserves). Science continues to be marketed to young girls in all the wrong ways. We have got to do better, folks. The good news? We're on the right track.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Maritime Training Issues with Murray Goldberg > August 2012
From Maritime Professionmnal: Maritime Training Issues with Murray Goldberg > August 2012
About Lou Mitchell
Capt. Mitchell completed all of her training at Warsash Maritime Academy. According to her profile on the International Maritime Mentoring Community:“I am a lecturer at a UK Marine College, lecturing in Chief Officer's Navigation and Structure and Maintenance and Officer of the Watch Marine Law and Management. I spent 10 years with Maersk, from cadet to Chief Officer, spending all my qualified career afloat on container ships. I hold my Masters 3000grt COC and Chief Officer Unlimited COC. I came ashore in 2008 to work for a towage company as marine Superintendent and in 2009 moved into education.“I would like to mentor Navigation Cadets, those studying their Officer of the Watch tickets having sailed as ratings and Junior Officers who are newly qualified. I loved my time at sea, but would have loved to have access to a mentor who wasn't on board the ship, sometimes you just need advice and support from someone who isn't there!”
Introduction
As a Computer Scientist by training, I understand
very well what it is like to work in an industry dominated by males. In
fact, according to the Computing Research Association, in 2006/2007 only
12 percent of undergraduate computer science and engineering degrees
from research universities went to females.
But something very interesting happened when I
became a faculty member of Computer Science at the University of British
Columbia. At that time, there were thirty faculty members in the
department - with only one of them being female. That was not much of a
surprise in a male-dominated discipline. But the really interesting part
was that the lone female faculty member was, in fact, the head of the
department. She (Maria Klawe) was also easily one of the most
intelligent, dynamic, and forward-thinking individuals I have ever met.
She always challenged the status quo, and worked extremely hard to make
every aspect of the department (and of Computer Science as a whole)
better in any way she could. She has continued to do so everywhere she
has gone - including her prestigious (and well deserved) roles as the
Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton
University, and as the President of Harvey Mudd College. Maria was an
early mentor of mine, she encouraged me to teach, she supported me as a
faculty member of Computer Science, and she encouraged me to explore the
area that has become my career - educational technologies. In fact, we
even co-founded a company a number of years later. Maria is the kind of
person who makes everyone she comes into contact with better for knowing
her. Maria’s supportive nature, enthusiasm and drive are incredibly
contagious.
I am telling you all of this because one of the many
things that Maria demonstrated to me was the power of mentoring and
being a role model. Everyone, when they are making career choices, needs
a supportive role model like Maria. Of course, “Marias” do not grow on
trees. Especially female “Marias”. So in addition to the broad impact
Maria has had (and continues to have) on the science and industry as a
whole, it is clear that one of her greatest impacts is, and continues to
be, the impact she is having as a role model for females who are
looking to enter into, or advance within, Computer Science.
Females are Underutilized in the Maritime Industry
The maritime industry is very similar in many
respects. According to a 2008 address by Efthimios E. Mitropoulos,
Secretary-General of the IMO:
“Female seafarers are an
under-utilized, underdeveloped but valuable resource that could provide
part of the solution to the increasing problem of finding sufficient
adequately trained personnel to manage and operate the world's growing
and sophisticated merchant fleet.
“However, it is clear that, to
achieve this, there is a need for changes in attitude towards employing
women as seafarers; recruitment of women in the shipping sector
generally; and increased maritime training opportunities for women.”
Underutilized indeed. According to a 2009 interview with Sarah Finke of the International Transport Workers’ Federation:
“We estimate that there are around 23,000
women seafarers worldwide, representing a low 2 percent of the total
workforce, and clustered disproportionately in the ferry and cruise
sectors, and in service roles. The total number is slowly increasing, as
is women’s representation in the ranks of ships’ officers and masters.
But it is an unacceptably slow process …”
So what can be done about this? Clearly this is a
multi-faceted issue which requires a broad, systemic approach to
address. However, as Maria taught me, one of the key pieces to the
approach is the availability of role models for those females who are
looking at the maritime industry as a possible career. Without such role
models, females are required to be pioneers establishing new ground.
Even with role models, this is still true to some extent, but the role
model demonstrates the viability of the career choice, and provides a
precedent for success. If we can take the role model one step further
and turn them into a mentor, then you have the “Maria effect” - a
supportive success whose drive and enthusiasm are contagious.
Female Role Models and Mentors
This is one of the main reasons that I started the International Maritime Mentoring Community.
And I am very pleased to say that of the 4,000 years of combined
maritime industry experience available there for the taking, a large
number of those years come from female mentors.
In this article, I’d like to introduce you to one of
those “supportive successes whose drive and enthusiasm are contagious” -
Capt. Lou Mitchell. Capt. Mitchell is a mentor who has volunteered to
be a part of the mentoring community. Read about her below, and then feel free to join the community and connect with mentors such as Capt. Mitchell and others.
Monday, August 13, 2012
First Methane-Exhaling Microbes Discovered in Earth's Subsurface
From Latino Post: First Methane-Exhaling Microbes Discovered in Earth's Subsurface
A new study has provided the first detailed records of methane-exhaling microbes living deep within the Earth's subsurface.
The study is headed by microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Holden proclaimed that evidence was slowly mounting for over 20 years about the biomass in the Earth's subsurface. He even argued that the evidence pointed to the possibility that the micro organisms living in the crust and marine sediments could total the amount of animals and plants on the surface.
"We're interested in the microbes in the deep rock, and the best place to study them is at hydrothermal vents at undersea volcanoes. Warm water flows bring the nutrient and energy sources they need," said Holden. "Just as biologists studied the different habitats and life requirements for giraffes and penguins when they were new to science, for the first time we're studying these subsurface microorganisms, defining their habitat requirements and determining how those differ among species. It's very exciting, and will advance our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in the deep ocean."
Holden added that because the study included methanogens, it could illuminate researchers into how terrestrial natural gas was formed. Methanogens are microbes that inhale and carbon dioxide to produce methane as waste.
"Models have predicted the habitability of the rocky environments that we're most interested in, but we wanted to ground truth into these models and refine them," Holden explains.
Graduate Student Helene Ver Eecke utilized a 2-liter bioreactor at U Mass Amherst where she could control hydrogen levels and grew pure cultures of hyperthermophilic methanogens from their study site. She also grew a commercially available hyperthermophilic methanogen species as a control alongside of the pure cultures. Eventually, she found that growth kinetics for the three organisms were about the same. All grew at the same rate when given equal amounts of hydrogen and had the same minimum growth requirements.
Holden concluded that the experiments established that "these methanogens need at least 17 micromolar of hydrogen to grow."
Among other experts brought on for the investigation were Julie Huber from the Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod who provided molecular analyses of the microbes as well as David Butterfield and Marvin Lilley from the University of Washington who contributed geochemical fluid analyses.
Utilizing the research submarine Alvin, the researchers collected samples of hydrothermal fluids flowing from black smokers up to 350 degrees C (662 degrees F) and seeping out of ocean floor cracks at lower temperatures. The samples were taken from Axial Volcano and the Endeavour Segment, both long-term observatory sites along an undersea mountain range about 200 miles off the coast of Washington and Oregon and 1-1.5 miles below the surface.
At the Axial site, they found hydrogen above their methanogen threshold for growth and obtained molecular, organism and geochemical evidence of on-going methanogenesis. At the Endeavour hydrogen levels were below the threshold and evidence for methanogenesis was largely non-existent. Holden's group then analyzed these and confirmed the lower threshold of hydrogen concentration needed by these methanogens.
At the low-hydrogen Endeavour site, they found that a few hyperthermophilic methanogens can survive by feeding on the hydrogen waste produced by other hyperthermophiles.
"We hypothesized that the methanogens grow syntrophically with the hydrogen producing microbes, and it worked out that way in the lab with a strain from the site," said Holden. "So we have described a methanogen ecosystem that includes a symbiotic relationship between microbes, which in my mind highlights the strength of our multi-pronged team approach. It really paid off. We feel that more research coupling broad field measurements with laboratory experiments will be really fruitful in the future."
Support for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation, NASA Astrobiology Institute, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
A new study has provided the first detailed records of methane-exhaling microbes living deep within the Earth's subsurface.
The study is headed by microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Holden proclaimed that evidence was slowly mounting for over 20 years about the biomass in the Earth's subsurface. He even argued that the evidence pointed to the possibility that the micro organisms living in the crust and marine sediments could total the amount of animals and plants on the surface.
"We're interested in the microbes in the deep rock, and the best place to study them is at hydrothermal vents at undersea volcanoes. Warm water flows bring the nutrient and energy sources they need," said Holden. "Just as biologists studied the different habitats and life requirements for giraffes and penguins when they were new to science, for the first time we're studying these subsurface microorganisms, defining their habitat requirements and determining how those differ among species. It's very exciting, and will advance our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in the deep ocean."
Holden added that because the study included methanogens, it could illuminate researchers into how terrestrial natural gas was formed. Methanogens are microbes that inhale and carbon dioxide to produce methane as waste.
"Models have predicted the habitability of the rocky environments that we're most interested in, but we wanted to ground truth into these models and refine them," Holden explains.
Graduate Student Helene Ver Eecke utilized a 2-liter bioreactor at U Mass Amherst where she could control hydrogen levels and grew pure cultures of hyperthermophilic methanogens from their study site. She also grew a commercially available hyperthermophilic methanogen species as a control alongside of the pure cultures. Eventually, she found that growth kinetics for the three organisms were about the same. All grew at the same rate when given equal amounts of hydrogen and had the same minimum growth requirements.
Holden concluded that the experiments established that "these methanogens need at least 17 micromolar of hydrogen to grow."
Among other experts brought on for the investigation were Julie Huber from the Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod who provided molecular analyses of the microbes as well as David Butterfield and Marvin Lilley from the University of Washington who contributed geochemical fluid analyses.
Utilizing the research submarine Alvin, the researchers collected samples of hydrothermal fluids flowing from black smokers up to 350 degrees C (662 degrees F) and seeping out of ocean floor cracks at lower temperatures. The samples were taken from Axial Volcano and the Endeavour Segment, both long-term observatory sites along an undersea mountain range about 200 miles off the coast of Washington and Oregon and 1-1.5 miles below the surface.
At the Axial site, they found hydrogen above their methanogen threshold for growth and obtained molecular, organism and geochemical evidence of on-going methanogenesis. At the Endeavour hydrogen levels were below the threshold and evidence for methanogenesis was largely non-existent. Holden's group then analyzed these and confirmed the lower threshold of hydrogen concentration needed by these methanogens.
At the low-hydrogen Endeavour site, they found that a few hyperthermophilic methanogens can survive by feeding on the hydrogen waste produced by other hyperthermophiles.
"We hypothesized that the methanogens grow syntrophically with the hydrogen producing microbes, and it worked out that way in the lab with a strain from the site," said Holden. "So we have described a methanogen ecosystem that includes a symbiotic relationship between microbes, which in my mind highlights the strength of our multi-pronged team approach. It really paid off. We feel that more research coupling broad field measurements with laboratory experiments will be really fruitful in the future."
Support for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation, NASA Astrobiology Institute, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
60 is the new 40
On August 10, 2012, the Cheyenne chapter of the AARP hosted a seminar
called Gray Matters - which was free and provided a free lunch -
unfortunately fish and cheesecake, blech - from 4 to 6 was a reception
for all travelers who had come in for the AARP National Spelling Bee to
be held on the 11th.
I attended that and it was a lot of fun. The emcee introduced a few folks, we talked about words, there was a "mock" spelling bee (which only consisted of about 20 people getting up and being questioned on one word...) and so on. And there were finger foods there - Chinese food to be precise. Don't know where they got it from or if they cooked it on site (Little America is a hotel and resort where people come to play golf among other things) but it was delish.
The spelling bee started at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (Well...8:30 is not so ungodly but I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to get there in time for registration, etc.) It started with 4 rounds of 25 words each - which was a Written Test.
The first 25 words were extremely easy. They asked words like "Greetings" and "Navel" and "Mince." I suppose a few might have been considered difficult... "Animus" and "Lacuna."
The second 25 words were equally easy, but I did miss MUGWUMP.
I assume they did this just to help everyone settle the nerves and get new people used to what was going on. People had trouble hearing some of the words (hey, they were all over 50 and most over 60) and the Pronouncer would come down and tell them the word face to face and have them say it back, etc. Indeed, the Pronouncer did an excellent job.
Third round was where they started asking the difficult words.
I missed:
QUESTIONARY INERCALATE
TUATARA
SKOSH
VIRIDITY
WIMBLE
The fourth round was the real killer. I only got 12 out of 25 right. I missed:
FELICIFIC
DOVEKIE
FLYTING
NAPERY
COTYLEDONARY
WELTSCHMERRZ
OPPUGNER
AECIOSPORE
SYNCYTIAL
KNUR
IRIDIUM
TUYERE
HYOSCYAMINE
I then stayed for the Oral rounds and was joined by one of my friends from my Scrabble Club. (I think an audience could have assembled for the Written rounds, too. There were chairs there and family were in them...but I think most people only wanted to come see the Oral rounds where you actually saw the speller's faces as opposed to their backs, etc.)
Two of the people I met last night at the reception made it to the Orals. One of them it was his first trip to the Bee and he was successful his first time out. Made it through about 10 rounds. (In the Orals, you miss two words and you're out.) Another one was an elderly woman from Minnesota who also got through about 10 rounds before being knocked out.
There were three sisters and a brother who had come as a sort of family reunion. The eldest sister made it to the Oral rounds but was bounced after only two rounds. This was too bad and it was because she was a bit unlucky - she got two 6-syllable words in a row while some of the others were getting much easier ones (but still, not ones I could have spelled). But she was disqualified along with several other people in the same round, so hopefully she didn't feel too bad.
The words in the Oral Rounds were extremely difficult. Several times more difficult than the toughest words in the final round of the Written.
But, had I studied for a year, I think I could have handled them.
And it is my intention to study for a year and get into the Orals next year.
So, why is the title of this blog entry 60 is thenew 40?
Because it is.
People are living longer. You don't want to outlive your money and more importantly you don't want to outlive your sense of enjoyment of life. And learning new things every day is enjoyment and keeps the mind active.
The AARP Spelling Bee is held every year, and it gives you an excellent reason to travel to Cheyenne and see The Cowboy State. You'll meet lots of interesting people.
You do have to study.
I studied very desultorily for about a month...combine all the time I studied and it was about 10 hours. Not nearly enough, but then, I'm a good speller so the Written Rounds were relatively easy - except for that killer last round.
Why learn words that you'll never, ever say in real life?Well, because they're interesting. And the concepts of what you'll learn, you can apply in other areas. So it's a win win.
So start planning to live a long, healthy, active, intellectual life, and do it now, however old you might be!
I attended that and it was a lot of fun. The emcee introduced a few folks, we talked about words, there was a "mock" spelling bee (which only consisted of about 20 people getting up and being questioned on one word...) and so on. And there were finger foods there - Chinese food to be precise. Don't know where they got it from or if they cooked it on site (Little America is a hotel and resort where people come to play golf among other things) but it was delish.
The spelling bee started at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (Well...8:30 is not so ungodly but I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to get there in time for registration, etc.) It started with 4 rounds of 25 words each - which was a Written Test.
The first 25 words were extremely easy. They asked words like "Greetings" and "Navel" and "Mince." I suppose a few might have been considered difficult... "Animus" and "Lacuna."
The second 25 words were equally easy, but I did miss MUGWUMP.
I assume they did this just to help everyone settle the nerves and get new people used to what was going on. People had trouble hearing some of the words (hey, they were all over 50 and most over 60) and the Pronouncer would come down and tell them the word face to face and have them say it back, etc. Indeed, the Pronouncer did an excellent job.
Third round was where they started asking the difficult words.
I missed:
QUESTIONARY INERCALATE
TUATARA
SKOSH
VIRIDITY
WIMBLE
The fourth round was the real killer. I only got 12 out of 25 right. I missed:
FELICIFIC
DOVEKIE
FLYTING
NAPERY
COTYLEDONARY
WELTSCHMERRZ
OPPUGNER
AECIOSPORE
SYNCYTIAL
KNUR
IRIDIUM
TUYERE
HYOSCYAMINE
I then stayed for the Oral rounds and was joined by one of my friends from my Scrabble Club. (I think an audience could have assembled for the Written rounds, too. There were chairs there and family were in them...but I think most people only wanted to come see the Oral rounds where you actually saw the speller's faces as opposed to their backs, etc.)
Two of the people I met last night at the reception made it to the Orals. One of them it was his first trip to the Bee and he was successful his first time out. Made it through about 10 rounds. (In the Orals, you miss two words and you're out.) Another one was an elderly woman from Minnesota who also got through about 10 rounds before being knocked out.
There were three sisters and a brother who had come as a sort of family reunion. The eldest sister made it to the Oral rounds but was bounced after only two rounds. This was too bad and it was because she was a bit unlucky - she got two 6-syllable words in a row while some of the others were getting much easier ones (but still, not ones I could have spelled). But she was disqualified along with several other people in the same round, so hopefully she didn't feel too bad.
The words in the Oral Rounds were extremely difficult. Several times more difficult than the toughest words in the final round of the Written.
But, had I studied for a year, I think I could have handled them.
And it is my intention to study for a year and get into the Orals next year.
So, why is the title of this blog entry 60 is thenew 40?
Because it is.
People are living longer. You don't want to outlive your money and more importantly you don't want to outlive your sense of enjoyment of life. And learning new things every day is enjoyment and keeps the mind active.
The AARP Spelling Bee is held every year, and it gives you an excellent reason to travel to Cheyenne and see The Cowboy State. You'll meet lots of interesting people.
You do have to study.
I studied very desultorily for about a month...combine all the time I studied and it was about 10 hours. Not nearly enough, but then, I'm a good speller so the Written Rounds were relatively easy - except for that killer last round.
Why learn words that you'll never, ever say in real life?Well, because they're interesting. And the concepts of what you'll learn, you can apply in other areas. So it's a win win.
So start planning to live a long, healthy, active, intellectual life, and do it now, however old you might be!
Friday, August 10, 2012
No posts today
I'm participating in the AARP Spelling Bee held in Cheyenne on
Saturday, Aug 11. Today, Friday, there's a day-long "orientation," talk
about keeping active, and mock spelling bee, and I want to attend it.
Will let you know on Sunday how I did...I'm not expecting to win but I do hope to get out of the writtens into the orals. There are 60 participants which must be whittled down to 15 - done so by 4 rounds of 25 written words each. I should be able to beat out 45 people to get on to that platform for the oral round, even if I lose on the first question!
Well, we'll see.
Will let you know on Sunday how I did...I'm not expecting to win but I do hope to get out of the writtens into the orals. There are 60 participants which must be whittled down to 15 - done so by 4 rounds of 25 written words each. I should be able to beat out 45 people to get on to that platform for the oral round, even if I lose on the first question!
Well, we'll see.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Women In The Blue Shirts Who Dare Mighty Things
From Forbes: The Women In The Blue Shirts Who Dare Mighty Things
On August 5th eyes diverted away from the delayed Olympic feeds to follow NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Control Room’s live stream. The ‘Blue Shirts’ shared their emotions with the world as they bit their nails during the 7 Minutes of Terror and finally when the first thumbnail was sent from the Mars Curiosity Rover all the way from the red planet.
There were a few women scattered amongst the blue shirts in the control room and I tweeted asking who they were. After a bunch of RTs and replies with ideas, Priscilla Vega (@PR_Vega), science writer and press officer for JPL, came through for us with a list. Rachel Sklar posted the list on her blog Change The Ratio which you should definitely read.
There were six members of the JPL team in the control room [who were women] for the launch. In no particular order, they were:
My pal @mightmendoza also found @jec2mars, who is part of the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) Team.
- Pauline Hwang, Deputy Integrated Planning & Execution Team Chief
- Erisa Hines, Attitude Control System Engineer
- Ann Devereaux, EDL Flight System Engineer
- Kelly Clarke, Deputy Realtime Operations Team Chief/GDS Engineer
- Leslie Livesay, Director for the Engineering and Science Directorate
- Nagin Cox, Assistant Flight System System Engineering Manager
I also want to call out that the meme filled tweets from @MarsCuriosity are written by Veronica McGregor, Courtney O’Connor and Stephanie Smith. Well done!
Let these ladies know that we appreciate their hard work and that we noticed them behind the starry mohawk!
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Abby Sciuto Has Inspired a Whole Generation of Women to Dominate Forensic Science
From Jezebel: Abby Sciuto Has Inspired a Whole Generation of Women to Dominate Forensic Science
A whole generation of young women has been and is, as we live and breathe, being spurred towards the field of forensic science, which is conspicuous among science and science related fields for one demographic reality — it's dominated by women, not men.
The Washington Post reports that women, possessed of a keen interest in science and inspired by police procedurals such as CSI and Bones, are entering the burgeoning field of forensic science faster than men, and are, as a result, capitalizing on a growing need among federal and state law enforcement agencies for forensic scientists. The field is relatively new to academia, with the earliest and most famous program starting in 1946 at the Michigan State University. Until the 1990s, most forensic scientists were funneled into a law enforcement agency from other fields, and then trained in-house. As the demand for forensic scientists has increased, however, so too has the proliferation of university programs. William Whildin, who worked three decades as an investigator for the Fairfax County Police Department and the Virginia medical examiner's office, started a forensic science program at GMU with the hope of advancing the field by specially training new scientists. In 2009, his program catered to just three students, but now, 200 are enrolled in one of the two graduate programs, and another hundred are pursuing undergraduate degrees.
Classes include forensic toxicology, forensic chemistry, criminal law, DNA, anthropology, crime scene analysis and how to properly execute a "find the identity of this mummified body" montage, à la a diligent Pauly Perrette, or a socially inept Emily Deschanel. Students who successfully complete forensic science programs like the one at GMU can expect to enter a field that is ravenous for new talent — the Bureau of Labor and Statistics predicts that jobs for forensic science technicians will outpace average job growth, expanding by 19 percent over the remainder of the current decade. Entry-level salaries start around $30,000, though median salaries hover around $50,000, and can soar well past $80,000 especially if a candidate scores a sweet federal agency gig somewhere in the massive, glittering office park that is the Beltway (D.C.-Baltimore traffic is THE WORST thing ever and anyone who contends, "Nah, dude — SoCal traffic is way harsh," should imagine what sitting in traffic in a slush blizzard feels like).
The really cool thing about forensic science, though, is that it's among the very few science fields that women overwhelmingly dominate. Whildin's GMU program is 90 percent female because, he explains, "Men tend to gravitate towards the gun-carrying jobs," because nothing says, "I'm a big, bad lawman" quite like waving a government-issue pistola at someone resisting arrest. Across our great and diverse nation, women still dominate the field, with a 2008 survey revealing that, of the 1,250 students enrolled in 22 graduate and undergraduate programs accredited by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, 78 percent were women.
Many of the women who enter the field attribute their strong interest in science to some influence in the media — some women credit procedurals like CSI, while others talk about being "transfixed" by cases like Jeffrey Dahmer's. The same way, for instance, that shows like Flash Gordon or Lost in Space inspired or influenced a whole generation of young male astrophysicists (I mean, probably influenced), sordid crime sagas are influencing a whole generation of young women to help locate, exhume, and identify decomposing human remains. Science, you see, is a wonderful thing.
A whole generation of young women has been and is, as we live and breathe, being spurred towards the field of forensic science, which is conspicuous among science and science related fields for one demographic reality — it's dominated by women, not men.
The Washington Post reports that women, possessed of a keen interest in science and inspired by police procedurals such as CSI and Bones, are entering the burgeoning field of forensic science faster than men, and are, as a result, capitalizing on a growing need among federal and state law enforcement agencies for forensic scientists. The field is relatively new to academia, with the earliest and most famous program starting in 1946 at the Michigan State University. Until the 1990s, most forensic scientists were funneled into a law enforcement agency from other fields, and then trained in-house. As the demand for forensic scientists has increased, however, so too has the proliferation of university programs. William Whildin, who worked three decades as an investigator for the Fairfax County Police Department and the Virginia medical examiner's office, started a forensic science program at GMU with the hope of advancing the field by specially training new scientists. In 2009, his program catered to just three students, but now, 200 are enrolled in one of the two graduate programs, and another hundred are pursuing undergraduate degrees.
Classes include forensic toxicology, forensic chemistry, criminal law, DNA, anthropology, crime scene analysis and how to properly execute a "find the identity of this mummified body" montage, à la a diligent Pauly Perrette, or a socially inept Emily Deschanel. Students who successfully complete forensic science programs like the one at GMU can expect to enter a field that is ravenous for new talent — the Bureau of Labor and Statistics predicts that jobs for forensic science technicians will outpace average job growth, expanding by 19 percent over the remainder of the current decade. Entry-level salaries start around $30,000, though median salaries hover around $50,000, and can soar well past $80,000 especially if a candidate scores a sweet federal agency gig somewhere in the massive, glittering office park that is the Beltway (D.C.-Baltimore traffic is THE WORST thing ever and anyone who contends, "Nah, dude — SoCal traffic is way harsh," should imagine what sitting in traffic in a slush blizzard feels like).
The really cool thing about forensic science, though, is that it's among the very few science fields that women overwhelmingly dominate. Whildin's GMU program is 90 percent female because, he explains, "Men tend to gravitate towards the gun-carrying jobs," because nothing says, "I'm a big, bad lawman" quite like waving a government-issue pistola at someone resisting arrest. Across our great and diverse nation, women still dominate the field, with a 2008 survey revealing that, of the 1,250 students enrolled in 22 graduate and undergraduate programs accredited by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, 78 percent were women.
Many of the women who enter the field attribute their strong interest in science to some influence in the media — some women credit procedurals like CSI, while others talk about being "transfixed" by cases like Jeffrey Dahmer's. The same way, for instance, that shows like Flash Gordon or Lost in Space inspired or influenced a whole generation of young male astrophysicists (I mean, probably influenced), sordid crime sagas are influencing a whole generation of young women to help locate, exhume, and identify decomposing human remains. Science, you see, is a wonderful thing.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Women physicists wade into a man’s world
From MetroNews.co: Women physicists wade into a man’s world
When it comes to physics, it’s a man’s world.
The discrepancy begins as early as high school, where there are far fewer women than men enrolled in high school physics classes across Canada. The male-female imbalance continues to worsen through university and in all career stages.
“Girls are looking for opportunities to make a difference. What we don’t communicate well about fields like physics and engineering, is that these are careers where you can have a great impact,” said Elizabeth Croft, a professor of mechanical engineering at UBC and an expert in the field of robotics.
“In high school we say, ‘Solve equations!’, ‘Do this study on the Milikan experiment!’ or ‘Document the number of electrons!’ Well, how exciting is that?” Croft said. “We don’t connect that to knowing the strength and materials needed to design a car to keep people safe, or how to process chemicals to produce enough energy for our world without polluting our environment.”
Croft is one of 15 female scientists invited to speak at UBC’s second annual Women in Physics conference this week. More than 115 people are expected to attend, many of them young women enrolled in university-level science programs. Conference organizers say they want to encourage and support young women who may have an interest in pursuing careers in physics and other sciences.
Anne Broadbent’s interest in science actually began in high school, but the postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo agrees that such a career can be isolating for many women.
“This conference is really to tell other young women that they’re not alone,” said Broadbent, who was surrounded by male classmates as she completed degrees at the University of Waterloo and the University of Montreal. “We hope to give all the women out there a sense that they’re part of a group and a community.”
The community of women scientists is growing, said Anadi Canepa, a research scientist at the National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics who is working at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Large Hardon Collider is a giant machine used to observe protons smashing and potentially creating particles that were produced during the time of the Big Bang.
“While particle physics is still a very male dominated field, it is very open to young women,” Canepa said. “In fact, a large fraction of physicists working with the experiment [in Geneva] are women. It’s a very promising field.”
The Women in Physics conference kicks off Thursday at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
1) Anadi Canepa is a research scientist in Vancouver at TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. She works for the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
What is the Large Hardon Collider (LHC)?
The LHC is a giant machine used to observe the collision of protons. The protons travel very fast, close to the speed off light, in a 27 kilometre underground pipe. A complex device similar to a digital camera captures 40 million pictures per second in order to observe the protons smashing and potentially creating particles that were produced during the time of the Big Bang. “The LHC may lead to a revolution in particle physics that can be compared to the Copernicus’ revolution,” Canepa said. “It may unravel a mirror Universe or new dimensions of space-time.”
2) Elizabeth Croft is a professor of mechanical engineering at UBC and the leader of the Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) program. She specializes in the field of robotics.
What about robots?
Croft’s research investigates how robotic systems can behave, and be perceived to behave, in a safe, predictable, and helpful manner, as well has how people interact with and understand robotic systems. “Imagine having a robot that could clean your house and tell you where it put everything because it could remember,” Croft said. “We are working to teach robots basic behaviours so they are more helpful and understandable to their users.”
3) Anne Broadbent is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. She works in the field of quantum information and how we would be able to use it once quantum computers become available.
What is quantum computing?
Quantum computers are the next generation of computers. They operate according to the laws of quantum physics, which are fundamentally different laws than what traditional computers are operating on today. According to quantum mechanics, an object can exist in more than one state simultaneously. “There are more degrees in nature than what we are using now,” Broadbent said. “By tapping into those degrees of freedom we can do things we can’t imagine possible.”
When it comes to physics, it’s a man’s world.
The discrepancy begins as early as high school, where there are far fewer women than men enrolled in high school physics classes across Canada. The male-female imbalance continues to worsen through university and in all career stages.
“Girls are looking for opportunities to make a difference. What we don’t communicate well about fields like physics and engineering, is that these are careers where you can have a great impact,” said Elizabeth Croft, a professor of mechanical engineering at UBC and an expert in the field of robotics.
“In high school we say, ‘Solve equations!’, ‘Do this study on the Milikan experiment!’ or ‘Document the number of electrons!’ Well, how exciting is that?” Croft said. “We don’t connect that to knowing the strength and materials needed to design a car to keep people safe, or how to process chemicals to produce enough energy for our world without polluting our environment.”
Croft is one of 15 female scientists invited to speak at UBC’s second annual Women in Physics conference this week. More than 115 people are expected to attend, many of them young women enrolled in university-level science programs. Conference organizers say they want to encourage and support young women who may have an interest in pursuing careers in physics and other sciences.
Anne Broadbent’s interest in science actually began in high school, but the postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo agrees that such a career can be isolating for many women.
“This conference is really to tell other young women that they’re not alone,” said Broadbent, who was surrounded by male classmates as she completed degrees at the University of Waterloo and the University of Montreal. “We hope to give all the women out there a sense that they’re part of a group and a community.”
The community of women scientists is growing, said Anadi Canepa, a research scientist at the National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics who is working at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Large Hardon Collider is a giant machine used to observe protons smashing and potentially creating particles that were produced during the time of the Big Bang.
“While particle physics is still a very male dominated field, it is very open to young women,” Canepa said. “In fact, a large fraction of physicists working with the experiment [in Geneva] are women. It’s a very promising field.”
The Women in Physics conference kicks off Thursday at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
1) Anadi Canepa is a research scientist in Vancouver at TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. She works for the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
What is the Large Hardon Collider (LHC)?
The LHC is a giant machine used to observe the collision of protons. The protons travel very fast, close to the speed off light, in a 27 kilometre underground pipe. A complex device similar to a digital camera captures 40 million pictures per second in order to observe the protons smashing and potentially creating particles that were produced during the time of the Big Bang. “The LHC may lead to a revolution in particle physics that can be compared to the Copernicus’ revolution,” Canepa said. “It may unravel a mirror Universe or new dimensions of space-time.”
2) Elizabeth Croft is a professor of mechanical engineering at UBC and the leader of the Westcoast Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WWEST) program. She specializes in the field of robotics.
What about robots?
Croft’s research investigates how robotic systems can behave, and be perceived to behave, in a safe, predictable, and helpful manner, as well has how people interact with and understand robotic systems. “Imagine having a robot that could clean your house and tell you where it put everything because it could remember,” Croft said. “We are working to teach robots basic behaviours so they are more helpful and understandable to their users.”
3) Anne Broadbent is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. She works in the field of quantum information and how we would be able to use it once quantum computers become available.
What is quantum computing?
Quantum computers are the next generation of computers. They operate according to the laws of quantum physics, which are fundamentally different laws than what traditional computers are operating on today. According to quantum mechanics, an object can exist in more than one state simultaneously. “There are more degrees in nature than what we are using now,” Broadbent said. “By tapping into those degrees of freedom we can do things we can’t imagine possible.”
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Why Women Quit Science Jobs
From PayScale.com: Why Women Quit Science Jobs
Think stereotypes are harmless? Consider this: Recent research shows that the gender gap in science jobs isn't solely due to fewer women choosing these professions. In part, it's because more women than men drop out of these fields after a few years. And stereotyping might be the reason.
Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona, used an automatic voice recorder to document random samples of subject's daily lives. The idea is that by compiling sound bites at regular intervals, the researchers would discover more about their subjects than if they asked them to recall the highlights (or lowlights) of their days.
Among their findings:
1. Women do not necessarily talk more than men. In fact, the numbers were about equal for the sexes. Both men and women averaged around 17,000 words a day.
2. While male scientists seemed "energized" by their conversations about their work, that wasn't the case for women. "For women, the pattern was just the opposite, specifically in their conversations with male colleagues," Schmader said in an interview with NPR. "So the more women in their conversations with male colleagues were talking about research, the more disengaged they reported being in their work." Disengagement, said the researchers, predicts a risk of dropping out.
3. Female scientists sounded less competent when speaking with male scientists than they did when speaking with other female scientists -- unless they were talking about life outside of work.
Lest you conclude that the problem is that male scientists are rude and dismissive of their female colleagues (or worse, that female scientists are inherently bad at their jobs) Schmader and Mehl did not find this to be the case. Instead, they pointed to something called the "stereotype threat," a psychological phenomenon in which people who are reminded of certain stereotypes -- "women are bad at math," for example -- conform to expectations, without even realizing that they're doing it.
Schmader said that female scientists who think that their male colleagues hold stereotypes about their competence based on gender might spend more time monitoring what they're saying. Ironically, this leads to coming across as less competent than they would if they were unaware of a potential bias.
"By merely worrying about that more, one ends up sounding more incompetent," Schmader said.
Think stereotypes are harmless? Consider this: Recent research shows that the gender gap in science jobs isn't solely due to fewer women choosing these professions. In part, it's because more women than men drop out of these fields after a few years. And stereotyping might be the reason.
Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona, used an automatic voice recorder to document random samples of subject's daily lives. The idea is that by compiling sound bites at regular intervals, the researchers would discover more about their subjects than if they asked them to recall the highlights (or lowlights) of their days.
Among their findings:
1. Women do not necessarily talk more than men. In fact, the numbers were about equal for the sexes. Both men and women averaged around 17,000 words a day.
2. While male scientists seemed "energized" by their conversations about their work, that wasn't the case for women. "For women, the pattern was just the opposite, specifically in their conversations with male colleagues," Schmader said in an interview with NPR. "So the more women in their conversations with male colleagues were talking about research, the more disengaged they reported being in their work." Disengagement, said the researchers, predicts a risk of dropping out.
3. Female scientists sounded less competent when speaking with male scientists than they did when speaking with other female scientists -- unless they were talking about life outside of work.
Lest you conclude that the problem is that male scientists are rude and dismissive of their female colleagues (or worse, that female scientists are inherently bad at their jobs) Schmader and Mehl did not find this to be the case. Instead, they pointed to something called the "stereotype threat," a psychological phenomenon in which people who are reminded of certain stereotypes -- "women are bad at math," for example -- conform to expectations, without even realizing that they're doing it.
Schmader said that female scientists who think that their male colleagues hold stereotypes about their competence based on gender might spend more time monitoring what they're saying. Ironically, this leads to coming across as less competent than they would if they were unaware of a potential bias.
"By merely worrying about that more, one ends up sounding more incompetent," Schmader said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
