Women in Science: Meet a Mathematician, a Physicist and a Geologist Through Art

From KQED:  Women in Science: Meet a Mathematician, a Physicist and a Geologist Through Art

Last week was Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, and math. Historically dominated by men, these fields have recently grown more welcoming of women, though sadly a few challenges linger. But there's nothing like role models for inspiring the scientific spirits of today and tomorrow! And Marie Curie isn't the only one out there–history is rife with lesser-known but no less fabulous female scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.

Ada Lovelace - Sydney Padua

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) is a prime example: though ALD has raised her profile, she's not yet a household name. But as the world's first computer programmer, she deserves to be. She gets extra credit because her programs were written for an entirely theoretical machine, Charles Babbage's analytical engine.
The analytical engine was never realized, but Babbage's notes on a much simpler device, the difference engine, were finally translated into reality 120 years after his death. One of these remarkable machines is housed at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, where you can also learn more about Lovelace.
Or, for those who prefer to learn everything via the internet, check out the fantastic footnotes in The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. In addition to being a serious nerd, the author is a professional animator. Lovelace is lucky to have her as a re-animator! Heh.

Madame Wu and the Violation of Parity - Ele Willoughby

Speaking of portraits of women in science, check out this woodcut of experimental physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997). Wu emigrated from China to America in 1936 to get her doctorate at UC Berkeley under Ernest O. Lawrence. She later used her expertise in beta decay (a type of radioactivity) to prove the suspicion of a couple of theoretical physicists that the weak force disobeys the law of parity. The theoreticians won a Nobel Prize in 1957. Whether Wu's exclusion from the award represents bias against women or experimentalists at the time (the other guys were Chinese too, so it wasn't sinophobia), who knows, but a couple of decades later Wu got the first Wolf Prize. She would have turned 100 this year.
Women like Lovelace and Wu are particularly inspiring because they entered STEM fields at times in history when few women saw it as an option. But valuable role models can also be found among contemporary female scientists–such as the creator of the Madame Wu woodcut! For her day job, geophysicist Eleanor Willoughby studies marine gas hydrates at the University of Toronto. But as minouette, she makes and sells beautiful linoleum block prints on Etsy, many of them inspired by science and scientists–including the print of Countess Lovelace, Enchantress of Numbers, shown above.
Poor Ada died too young, but her spirit may be soothed by the knowledge that, almost two hundred years later, she's inspiring new generations of mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.

 

Science award is dedicated to city

From the Oxford Mail: Science award is dedicated to city

A PROFESSOR who has won a prestigious $100,000 award recognising women in science has dedicated the award to Oxford, the city where she launched her career.
Prof Pratibha Gai has been named the 2013 European Laureate at the 15th annual L’Oreal-Unesco For Women in Science Awards.
It celebrates the work of female scientists from around the world.
She said: “I want to dedicate this award to the people of Oxford for making this possible.
“I’m absolutely thrilled and greatly honoured to receive this prestigious award. It is very humbling for me.”
The award recognises her achievements in modifying her electron microscope so she could observe chemical reactions occurring at surface atoms of catalysts.
This helps scientists in their development of new medicines, or new energy sources.
Prof Gai, who lives near Eynsham, started her career at Oxford University.
She works at the University of York and is following in the footsteps of Oxford University professor Frances Ashcroft, who won the award last year for her diabetes research.
Prof Gai said: “I want to take this opportunity to encourage women scientists.
“We need more of them to benefit science as a whole.
“What happens is that society, even today, has ideas about what is acceptable for women to do in life and often that excludes science.
“But what I tell girls is to aim high, you can do whatever you want to do. Science teaches you about the world you live in.”
She added: “Fifty per cent of the population are women, so science should reflect that, though things are getting better.”
The prize money will be awarded at a ceremony on March 28 next year at the Unesco headquarters in Paris.
Awards were handed out to four other exceptional female scientists, one from each continent.
The awards jury was chaired by Prof Ahmed Zewail, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Linus Pauling, chair professor of chemistry and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Unesco director-general Irina Bokova said: “These five outstanding women scientists have given the world a better understanding of how nature works.
“Such key developments have the potential to transform our society.
“Their work and their dedication serves as an inspiration to us all.”

 

Eden Prairie Girl Is Runner-Up In National Science Contest

From Eden Prairie (MN) Patch:  Eden Prairie Girl Is Runner-Up In National Science Contest

Carolyn Jons, 14, recently was named runner-up in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.
Jons created a storage bag that prevents mold by absorbing oxygen. A 3M scientist served as Jons' mentor as she developed her product.

Jons is a freshman at Eden Prairie High School.

As the runner-up, she received $1,000 and a trip to Costa Rica, according to the Star Tribune.

A student from New Hampshire won the $25,000 grand prize, according to the Star Tribune.

 

Santa Barbara, CA: Upper Hand to College to Host STEM Conference for Girls

From Newshawk:  Upper Hand to College to Host STEM Conference for Girls

Local education firm Upper Hand to College will host a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) conference for girls in grades 6 to 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17 at the UCSB campus.
The conference will offer a fun, inspiring and motivational day, geared toward increasing the number of women in STEM fields. The conference will feature keynote speaker Dr. Anita Sengupta, a NASA scientist who worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover.
Few girls are pursuing careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. A recent Girl Scout Research Institute study found that 17 percent of high school girls are interested in STEM fields, yet women account for only 20 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering, computer science and physics. Furthermore, while women make up nearly 50 percent of the U.S. workforce, they hold less than 25 percent of the jobs in STEM.
“We want to help increase the number of women seeking careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields,” said Naiyma Houston, founder and director of Upper Hand to College. “We invite all girls, grades 6 to 12, to join us for this inspiring and fun-filled day to learn about the variety of career opportunities in STEM fields and meet and connect with female role models.”
Girls attending the conference will:
» Engage in hands-on activities and seminars
» Become aware of the wide variety of career opportunities in technology, science and engineering
» Gain a new enthusiasm for STEM
» Meet and connect with awesome female role models
» Learn the importance of taking classes in science, math and technology in middle school and high school
» Leave with the knowledge and understanding that women have the capability to be successful in the professions of science, technology and engineering
Each student will attend two workshops of their choice. Workshops include: Make Your Own Lip Balm; Build a Water Filter; Fun with Polymers; Create a Prosthetic Hand Model; Create Your Own Hand Sanitizer; Challenge Your Design Skills; Hair Dryer Dissection; Design a Hot Air Balloon; Aquarium Visit; and Campus Tour of UCSB. A description of each workshop is available on the conference registration form.
Upon completion of the day’s workshops, participants will earn a Certificate of Participation from the 2012 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Conference.
The conference will also feature a separate track of workshops for parents, teachers and counselors where participants will learn why a STEM education is especially valuable for girls and how to best prepare girls for a STEM education in high school and college. Parents have the opportunity to participate in a Parent Academic Coaching session with Robin McDougal, M.Ed, author of The Pearl Project, and What Color is Your Thinking?
To register for the conference, click here or call 805.984.2656. The cost to register for students is $20, and $25 for parents, teachers and counselors.
The economic future of California and the United States depends on developing a diverse and robust STEM workforce. Currently in the United States there are 3 million unfilled jobs that require STEM skills. Over the next 10 years it is projected that STEM jobs will grow 17 percent compared with 9.8 percent for non-STEM jobs.
— Kelly Kapaun is a publicist representing Upper Hand to College.

 

Explorer of the Week: Elena Garcea

From National Geographic:  Explorer of the Week: Elena Garcea

Elena Garcea, a member and leader of multiple National Geographic archaeological projects in Africa, has always been interested in studying ancient people’s lifestyles. When she’s not in the field, she teaches paleoethnology and interprets the data from the field.
What project are you working on now?
My current field research takes place in a small island in the Nile River, Sai Island, and on the west bank of the Nile (Amara West) in Upper Nubia, northern Sudan. I’m investigating the major economic and cultural shifts that took place between 10,000 and 4,500 years ago, when the latest hunter-gatherers started to produce their food with domesticated animals and plants, adopting animal herding first, and then plant cultivation. These shifts involved changes in the settlement systems, the production of different pottery vessels and stone tools, and the establishment of new social relations. I usually spend one or two months a year in the field.
What inspires you to dedicate your life to archaeology?
I like my job because it allows me to work with both my hands and my brain. I enjoy working in the field in Africa, and I am attracted to understanding the beginning of things. My major interests focus on the spread of early Homo sapiens—our human species—as they moved out of Africa between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago, first reached southwestern Asia, and then Europe. I’m also fascinated by the dynamics that occurred when the latest hunter-gatherers started to produce their food and domesticated animals and plants, adopting animal herding in Africa some time after 10,000 years ago. An assemblage of worked stones, or potsherds, has many stories to tell us. It can reveal how the people who made those stone tools and those pots adjusted to the environment where they lived, how they survived and developed, and how they related with other groups who lived in the surroundings. Prehistory is the science that deals with common people, their behavior, and their lifestyles. It teaches us to think about a geography and a history different from those designed in the last 2,000 to 3,000 years by wars and armistices, conquerors and vanquished, rulers and subordinates.

Garcea examines two joining potsherds, or broken pieces of ceramic material. Photograph by Roberto Ceccacci

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve discovered in your work or in the field?
When I was working in the central Sahara desert, I discovered the archaeological remains of the earliest humans of our species, Homo sapiens, who left East Africa and gradually moved towards North Africa, Europe, and then the Middle East. Nobody knew at the time—it was the early 1990s—that the early representatives of our species lived in the Sahara, which was not a desert then, around or slightly before 100,000 years ago. Even the experts in this field had denied it. Understanding the out-of-Africa movements of early Homo sapiens subsequently became another major interest of mine.
If you were to meet your eight-year-old self, what would you say?
“You always wanted to be an archaeologist and you made it!” Young people should find a passion in what they would like to do. Passion is the key to overcome the difficulties and the obstacles that every job can bring.
If you could trade places with one explorer at National Geographic, who would it be and why?
I would switch jobs with Zinhle “Zinny” Thabethe because she can change the world. While I work to uncover the past, she works for the future to cure and educate HIV/AIDS patients by bringing hope with the music of her choir. She is a person I deeply admire. She can successfully contribute to afflicting problems with her artistic talent. My work is similar, in a way leading an archaeological team is like conducting an orchestra. You need the cooperation of every single voice.
What do you think National Geographic explorers will be exploring in a hundred years?
Many of the diseases that we are creating with our careless attitudes, as well as everything existing on Earth and in space. However, I hope National Geographic will continue to support archaeological research and understand the value of knowing our human past. A hundred years is not a whole lot of time for an archaeologist.

Garcea on the Nile river, Photograp by Roberto Ceccacci

What one item do you always have with you?
I always have a handkerchief in my pocket. I hate using paper tissues as they are polluting, tearable, and hard to dispose of in the field. Handkerchiefs can be useful for many purposes (wiping, holding something that is too hot or too cold, unscrewing jars, etc.).
What is your favorite National Geographic magazine article?
“The Black Pharaohs” by Robert Draper. The archaeology of Sudan has been long neglected and here it is very clearly presented. Some of it, at least.
If you were to bring back one species of animal that has gone extinct, what would it be?
I would like to meet Homo habilis, the earliest member of the same genus as ours, Homo sapiens. Homo habilis evolved around 2.3 million years ago and became extinct around 1.4 million years ago in Africa. He is the first species for which there is evidence of use of stone tools.

Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman who Mapped the Ocean Floor

Booklist: Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman who Mapped the Ocean Floor
Hali Felt, Henry Holt and Company, 2012

Description
Her maps of the ocean floor have been called "one of the most remarkable achievements in modern cartography" yet no one knows her name.

Soundings is the story of the enigmatic Marie Tharp, geologist, gifted draftsperson, and the inknown woman behind one of the greatest accomplishments of the twentieth century.

For years most people, including those in the scientific community, thought the ocean floor was a vast expanse of nothingness. In 1948, at age 28, Marie Tharp walked into the newsly formed geophysical lab at Columbia University and practically demanded a job.

The scientists at the lab were all male, the women who worked there were relegated to secretary or assistant. Thruogh sheer willpower and obstinacy, Marie was given the job of interpreting the soundings (records of sonar pings measuring the ocean's depths) brought back from the oceangoing expeditions of her male colleagues.

The marriage of artistry and science behind her analysis of these dry data gave birth to a major work: the first comprehensive map of the ocean floor, which laid the groundwork for proving the then controversial theory of continental drift.

When combined. Marie's scientific knowledge, her eye for detail, and her skill as an artist revealed not a vast empty plane but an entire world of mountains and volcanoes, ridges and rifts, and a gateway to the past that allowed scientists the means to imnagine how the continents and the oceans had been created over time.

Just as Marie dedicated more than twenty years of her professional life to what became the Lamont Geological Observatory, engaged in the task of mapping every ocean on Earth, she dedicated her personal life to her great friendship with her coworker Bruce Herzen. Partners in work and, in many ways, partners in life, Marie and Bruce were devoted to each other as they rose to greater and greater prominence in the scientific community, only to be envied and finally dismissed by the head of their beolved institute.

They went on together, refining and perfecting their work and contributing not only to humanity's vision of the ocean floor but to the way subsequent generations would view the earth as a whole.

With an imagination as intuitive as Marie's. brilliant young writer Hali Felt brings to vivid life the story of the pioneering woman whose work will continue to inspire fellow scientists for generations to come. 

Discriminination - not overt, but there all the same

In the United States of America, girls can be anything they want to be - in the sense that there are no laws that say - "If you enroll in school, we will kill you" which is the case for women in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabi, for example.

Yet there are gender gaps of girls in the sciences. Is it because girls lack math sense, or is it because girls - and boys - have been trained since day one that girls exist as eye candy for boys, girls are worthless unless they have a boyfriend, and girls can't keep a boyfriend if they're too smart.

Which is what girls - and boys - are taught in cartoons during their formative years all the time.

From Sequential Tart: Mad Science for Girls (and Boys),

Part 1:Traditionally, mad scientists are usually male. This has been the case ever since the Frankensteinian dawn of meddling with things man was never meant to know -- although, ironically, the pioneering mad doctor and his patched-together reanimated namesake were both created by a woman, nineteenth century novelist Mary Godwin Shelley.

Despite Mary Shelley's seminal (ovarian?) role in creating the concept of the mad scientist as occasionally unwitting Faustian anti-hero / supervillain, trailblazing female computer visionaries like Ada Lovelace and proto-nuclear chemists like Marie Curie continued to be widely regarded as the exception that proves the rule in real-life STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a corollary of this, the more exotic and problematical realms of fictional super-science have remained an almost exclusively male domain well into the more recent era of archetypal comic book geniuses such as Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom (mad, bad and dangerous to know) and literal "science hero" types such as Marvel's Reed (Mr. Fantastic) Richards and Hank (Ant-Man / Yellowjacket) Pym (who are sometimes none too stable or morally reliable themselves).



Up until the last decade, this tradition of male predominance has also been reflected in the portrayal of kids as mad scientists. Perhaps the best known example of this is Dexter, the elementary school-aged title character of Dexter's Laboratory, which initially aired on Cartoon Network from 1996-1999, with an additional two seasons' worth of new episodes released from 2001-2003. The irritable, antiheroic prepubescent protagonist of this series is a bespectacled, lab-coated junior version of the stereotypical mad scientist, right down to his quasi-Slavic foreign accent.

Since the rest of Dexter's family all act and sound like ordinary suburban Americans, this accent makes little sense within the context of the show except as a deliberate affectation on the boy genius' part. As series creator Genndy Tartakovsky told the New York Times Magazine in a 2001 interview, "[Dexter] considers himself a very serious scientist, and all well-known scientists have accents." However, as the interviewer prodded him to acknowledge, the fact that Tartakovsky's own family immigrated to the U.S. from Russia when he was nine years old suggests that to some extent, the mysteriously Slavic-accented Dexter is "an upgraded fantasy version of your boyhood self."

Dexter operates out of an elaborate Batcave-like, high-tech lab he has somehow managed to construct beneath his family's otherwise ordinary suburban home. This lab features a helpful interactive A.I. of his own invention in the form of the Quadraplex T-3000 Computer. However, neither the soothingly female-voiced A.I. nor any of Dexter's elaborate security measures seem capable of preventing his ditzy older sister Dee Dee from repeatedly gaining access to the supposedly secret lab, frequently swiping and misusing untested new devices or wrecking her brother's experiments by playing around randomly pushing buttons.

Dexter's purely mechanical inventions run the gamut from a flying saucer with pincer-tipped mechanical arms, prominently featured in the show's title sequence, to a variety of robots. These range from a flattery-spouting mechanical parrot, to a "Mom-droid" designed to fill in for Dexter's sick mother, to Dynomutt X-9. The latter is a four-legged android Dexter created to replace his favorite superhero Blue Falcon's fallen canine sidekick. Unfortunately, the robot dog proved to have an excessively severe and ultra-violent Judge Dredd / Punisher-type interpretation of how to enforce the law, so Dexter and its superhero master were eventually forced to destroy it.

Dexter also makes frequent use of various self-created robotic battle suits such as the Dexo-Transformer. This is an imposing pilot-operated mecha that is closer in basic size and function to the towering Transformer-sized Gundams in the anime Gundam Wing than it is to Iron Man's form-fitting high-tech armor, although it is capable of dramatically increasing or decreasing in size. The Dexo-Transformer grants its pilot sufficient artificial super-strength to whale on his similarly battle-suited archrival Mandark, a somewhat more actively evil boy mad scientist who attends the same school, more or less in person. The suit's other offensive capabilities include cannon missiles, dodgeball launchers, and electrical shocks.


The Multi-Forming Megabot, which the Dexter's Laboratory Wiki describes as the pint-sized scientist's greatest invention, is also a giant fighting robot. In this case, the final robot is formed by merging several normally separate piloted vehicles together, in what the Dexter's Lab Wiki refers to as "a parody of the Super Sentai Robots in the East, Power Rangers Zords / Megazords and...other Disney / Hasbro Mecha." With superior balletically-agile maneuverability (perhaps due in part to one of the subordinate pilots being the unintellectual but graceful ballerina-wannabe Dee Dee) and an arsenal that includes twin swords and an energy-ball attack, this immense conglomerated mecha eventually enables Dexter to successfully defeat the giant mutated monster Badaxtra in Japan in the episode "Last But Not Beast."

The boy scientist has also come up with an assortment of much more improbable allegedly scientific discoveries that are virtually indistinguishable from magic. These include a so-called life potion, which Dee Dee appropriates to bring her stuffed animals -- and, eventually, even small appliances and pieces of furniture -- to life, and a hypnosis pen, designed for writing notes that will compel anyone who reads them to follow the writer's instructions (to go do all his household chores for him so he can complete his experiments in peace and quiet, in Dexter's case). Naturally, this, too, falls into the wrong hands. Like a slightly more benign variation on the deadly cursed notebook in the manga Death Note, the pen winds up being thoroughly misused by Dee Dee, by Dexter's secretly sentient pet monkey, and by Mandark, who gleefully scribbles instructions for Dexter to destroy his own lab and for Dee Dee, the object of Mandark's decidedly unrequited crush, to reluctantly kiss him.

As the author of the Dexter's Laboratory Wikipedia article points out, "Despite her hyperactive personality, Dee Dee sometimes makes more logical decisions than Dexter, or even gives him helpful advice." However, Dee Dee's standard "destruction in a pink tutu" M.O., coupled with the fact that she appears to be the only human female member of the regular cast -- with the exception of the siblings' mom, a woman so cheerfully clueless that she wears her trademark apron and rubber gloves even to Dexter's chess matches -- have an inevitably undermining subliminal effect on the show's presentation of gender. With the polar opposites Dee Dee and Dexter as the essential yin and yang of the show, a feminist viewer would be hard pressed not to conclude that the series' underlying philosophy is that boys are -- or at least potentially can be -- intellectual world conquerors, while girls are more apt to be birdbrained fluffballs who routinely ruin Important Stuff with their silly pirouetting nonsense.

In the course of researching this article, I did discover one Dexter's Laboratory episode that at least initially appeared to strikingly contradict this impression -- "School Girl Crushed," storyboarded and written by Charlie Bean. In this 2003 fourth-season episode, Dexter and Mandark's Dr. Doom / Reed Richards-esque archrivalry is unexpectedly disrupted when a new girl student named Soyen Chen beats out both of them for first prize at the school science fair with her Unified Theory of World Domination and Destruction -- "It's just a simple equation, really" -- displayed on posterboard. "She's beyond technology!" Mandark breathes reverently. "Dealing only in numbers!" Dexter agrees. "A much higher intelligence!" the two of them conclude. "She must be destroyed!"


The admiring and envious boys agree to team up to eliminate this new threat. But every time they get together to set up an ambush for their unwelcome girl-rival, they wind up spending the next seven or eight hours attacking each other with giant tanks, mecha, satellite-based laser cannons and other high-tech weapons instead. Meanwhile, Soyen saunters by on her way to and from Huber Elementary School, making comments like "I thought you guys liked school!" and blithely noting that they've missed an entire day of classes, including a math test on which she got an A+.

After several days of this, Soyen nonchalantly shorts out the electric-powered giant robots Dexter and Mandark are currently facing off in by turning on the sprinkler system on her lawn. Both scorched and singed boys collapse in defeat on the grass, despairingly acknowledging that she has them outclassed at science. Soyen responds, "Science? I'm not even into that stuff any more!" When Mandark uncomprehendingly exclaims, "What else is there?", Soyen flirtatiously replies, "Boys!" This prompts both Dexter and Mandark to make a panicky high-speed exit, pursued by Soyen making kissing noises.

The events of this episode do establish that, contrary to what the airheaded example of Dee Dee might suggest, mad science is not a male-dominated field in Dexter's world due to some sort of inherent intellectual inferiority on the part of the female half of the population. Unfortunately, Soyen's abrupt loss of interest in science once she has discovered boys tends to reinforce the sexist assumption that, I.Q. equality or not, girls are seldom found in the exacting, concentration-intensive STEM fields because they are too prone to distraction over frivolous preoccupations such as chasing boys.

Asked Why There Are So Few Female Physicists, Male Scientists Often Cite Lack of Math Skills. Oh, Really?

From the Mary Sue:  Asked Why There Are So Few Female Physicists, Male Scientists Often Cite Lack of Math Skills. Oh, Really?

Why are their fewer females in physics than biology? Turns out the answer changes depending on whether you ask men or women. A team led by sociologist Elaine Ecklund polled 3,455 scientists on why they think the gender gap in physics is so much larger than in biology, and while women were more likely to cite discrimination, men’s explanation tended more toward “women just suck at math.”
Sigh.

Said one male respondent, a physics graduate student, ”Physics is more difficult for girls and you need a lot of thinking, and the calculation, and the logic. So that’s maybe hard for girls.”
Yes. We ladies just aren’t good with the logic! We’re always so unreasonable, with our tendency to behave irrationally and turn into raving she-beasts, especially around that time of the month, ifyouknowwhatI’msaying. Pass me my Midol!
And compare a male biology professor’s explanation that “On balance [women are] just less interested in math” to the response of a female physics grad student, who noted how a friend of hers ”was always told, ‘Oh, you’re not good at math,’ until she found herself getting As in a multivariable calculus class. You know, she was scared of math all through high school.”
The division was by no means clear-cut between the sexes; some men did cite discrimination as a factor, and some females pointed to innate factors as part of the reason why more females go into biology, though the “innate factor” in question is a desire to connect emotionally to their work, not a lack of mad math skillz. Said one female postdoctoral fellow in biology, “I think women … want to have more of a sense that what they are doing is helping somebody. … Maybe there are more women in … biology [because] you can be like ‘Oh, I am going to go cure cancer.’”
According to Ecklund, the fact “that few men in either discipline emphasized the present discrimination that women in science may face (and that men in physics hold a much larger share of senior faculty positions) suggests that discrimination is not being adequately addressed in physics departments at top research universities.” Hopefully this study will serve as the wake up call that physics departments need to acknowledge that they have in fact been ignoring what is a very real problem.
Though the fact that so many men apparently still think the puny female mind (note the sarcasm, please) just isn’t equipped to handle higher math is pretty discouraging. Can it be required that every K-12 math classroom have a sign in it saying “DISCLAIMER: Women Don’t Inherently Suck at Math! Just So You Know.” so we can clear this up once and for all? Seriously. There’s no excuse.

 

 

Malayali girl top US scientist

From Deccan Chronicle:   Malayali girl top US scientist

Deepika Kurup, the US based Malayali girl whose scientific project impressed many including President Obama, has been named America’s Top Young Scientist and awarded $25,000 and an adventure trip.
She is the eldest daughter of Dr Pradeep Kurup who teaches in a university at Nashua in New Hampshire and Meena. Deepika developed a sustainable and cost effective water purification system to win the 2012 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.
‘It feels awesome,’ Deepika told DC over phone from her home. “I put a lot of time and effort into this project and I am happy it got a recognition like this.“
A ninth grader at Nashua High School in New Hampshire, 14-year-old Deepika and nine other finalists worked with leading scientists for the last three months. The idea was to take up a theoretical concept and convert it into an a prototype that would solve a problem in everyday life.
Deepika’s system harnessed solar energy to disinfect contaminated water.
On October 16, the finalists shared their innovations with a panel of judges and also competed in two other challenges. They were evaluated on their knowledge and creativity.
It has been noted that her innovation “can help improve the lives of the 1.1 billion people around the world who lack access to clean drinking water.” Dr Pradeep, whose parents are settled in Chennai, went to the US in 1983 for higher studies and Meena joined him there in 1994.
On August 18, after Deepika was listed among the 10 finalists for the science contest, the family was called in by President Obama for a chat. The President said he had read a newspaper report about Deepika’s project. Deepika says she would try to refine her prototype further. However it is neurology that interests her more.
“I think brain is the most complex organ and I would like to learn more about it,” says the Harry Potter fan who likes Korean pop songs and plays the clarinet and saxophone. “
Malayali girl top US scientist

 

Celebrating girls for their intelligence and courage

From St. Albert Gazette:  Celebrating girls for their intelligence and courage

October 11, 2012 was the first UN International Day of the Girl. It was a worldwide commemoration of girls’ leadership, potential and capacity in recognition of challenges they face, including violence, oppression and poverty. While I perused the images of celebration, however, I was sadly reminded of other tragic, disturbing and disappointing pictures of girls.
Last June, the European Commission attempted to attract girls to study science by releasing an atrocious video called Science: It's a Girl Thing! Three young girls wearing short skirts and stilettos strut forward on the screen, stopping to pose for an adult male scientist, who looks up from his microscope, removes his glasses and stares intently. The next 40 seconds are flashes of makeup, steam, sunglasses, bubbling water and his even gaze, interrupted with shots of the girls laughing and smiling provocatively. The video was removed quickly after overwhelming negative response to its blatantly sexist nature.
In a different image, Amanda Todd spent years trying to escape a bad decision she made to lift her shirt while on a webcam. An online predator took a photo and widely distributed that picture. The hateful bullying that ensued by youth at school culminated in her choice to hang herself last week. Her despair is exacerbated by the malicious attacks that continued after her death, made by people who wouldn’t stop hurting when there was nothing left to be harmed.
Meanwhile, pictures of Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani and advocate for girls’ education, are gripping. I wonder how someone with such youthful innocence and clarity of purpose could be deemed a threat, but the Taliban sees her this way. They shot her in the head and she is now recovering in the U.K. The Taliban deems this dark-eyed child a “spy of the West,” declaring that “Sharia says that even a child can be killed if he is propagating against Islam.”
But one of the most heart-wrenching pictures I have seen of a girl is that of a nameless Sudanese child taken by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Carter in 1993. The child is alone, collapsed while on her walk to a feeding camp, bent forward in pain and exhaustion, with her face in the dirt and her hands by her head. In the background, a vulture waits patiently. It appears to be only a matter of time before it will have a carcass to devour. While the picture effectively brought the famine to the eyes of the world, the photographer was criticized for not helping the girl after taking the picture. Her fate is unknown.
Regardless of these extremely varied situations, these girls are all presented as objects of ridicule, of desire, of contempt, of attack or of news. Their courage, intelligence, vulnerability or voice is lost when their attackers or recorders reduce them to an image on the screen, without heart, feelings, intellect or merit. This is deeply tragic.
Girls grow in settings around the world where their quest for dignity is thwarted by confusing messages all around them. They are told they are too outspoken, too fat, too smart, too emotional or too independent. They are told to expose themselves or cover themselves; told to be beautiful but to remain silent and submissive. Their success begins from a deficit.
The girl is the representation of humanity, and can embrace compassion, brilliance, courage, wisdom and honour. Let us celebrate her enduring potential by giving her life, respect, support, opportunity, safety and equality. And let us be careful to not limit her to an image on a screen, for any reason.
Dee-Ann Schwanke is a St. Albert resident with five daughters.

 

Lab scientist, marathoner to raise money for MDI girl with rare illness

From Bangor Daily News:  Lab scientist, marathoner to raise money for MDI girl with rare illness

BAR HARBOR, Maine — There are many motivations for people who are planning to run in the 11th annual Mount Desert Island Marathon this weekend.
For most of them, their main motivation likely will not be a 6-year-old girl and a mouse. For several people running in the 26-mile foot race this Sunday, however, it is an opportunity to raise money for research aimed at benefitting a girl with Rett syndrome who lives in Mount Desert.
Eliza Sprague has a distinct mutation of Rett syndrome — the only known documented occurrence of the mutation in the whole world — and scientists at the biomedical research lab are breeding a specific mouse model that will be used to study her condition.
Last year, Eliza’s mother, Meghann Harris, ran the marathon with a goal of raising $25,000 to fund the creation of the mouse model. Harris completed the course and ended up raising $39,000 for the ongoing project and research effort.
“That was the first time I had ever run a race,” Harris said this week. “With [helping] Eliza on my mind, it was easy.”
This year, however, it is employees at the lab who will be running to raise money for Eliza’s cause. The marathon is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 14, on Main Street in Bar Harbor. The race course winds through the villages of Otter Creek, Seal Harbor, Northeast Harbor and Somesville and finishes in Southwest Harbor.
In typical Rett syndrome cases, symptoms manifest at 18 months of age and cause toddlers to regress, losing abilities such as making eye contact, crawling and walking, that they’ve established over the first year and a half of life. Rett patients can live into their 40s but spend much of their lives incommunicative and in a wheelchair.
According to Harris, Eliza was diagnosed with Rett syndrome at 12 months of age, after her family noticed that her daughter wasn’t reaching these normal developmental milestones. But to the surprise of her family and doctors, Eliza did develop these abilities, only at a slower rate than children without Rett syndrome.
Rett syndrome is an autistic spectrum disorder, Harris said, and so presents Eliza with both cognitive and physical challenges. Erratic breathing is one symptom of Rett syndrome, Harris said, which can affect speech and physical coordination. Eliza can walk and talk, though not as well as most children her age.
Harris said Friday that Eliza has responded well to physical therapies, however, and that she and her husband Shawn Sprague have pushed their daughter to pursue them because of the benefits they provide. Harris said her daughter’s ability to stay upbeat and committed to her therapy sessions — for an hour at a time, six times a week — has been an inspiration to her.
“She’s just so strong,” Harris said. “She fights through the difficulties. When I see what she does every day, it only seems right that I match that.”
Harris, who was a soccer player in college, acknowledges that she does have some limits. She is not running the marathon this year but in her place is Cathleen Lutz. Lutz, who has become friends with Harris and Eliza, leads the research team at Jackson Lab that is spearheading the effort to develop a mouse model for mild Rett syndrome cases.
“It’s a very rare case,” Lutz said Wednesday about Eliza’s mutation. “It’s never been reported before.”
Lutz, whose research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases such as Rett syndrome and spinal muscular atrophy, said she first heard about Eliza from her husband, who works at a local bank with the girl’s grandfather.
Through that connection, she said, an appointment was set up for Lutz to meet Eliza and her family.
So when she first met with Eliza and Harris at the local YMCA a year or so ago, she was surprised to see that Eliza could walk, talk and be sociable.
“The first thing I said to Meghann is ‘Are you sure [she has Rett syndrome]?’” she said. “Eliza is very engaged. She’s very active. She’s very strong.”
Lutz was not only struck by Eliza’s particular condition, but she was impressed with Harris’ determination to do something to help her daughter.
When they met, Harris asked Lutz about what kind of research was being done about mild Rett cases such as Eliza’s. According to Lutz, the only mouse models out there are for more severe Rett cases, which would be ineffective for studying more subtle versions of the disease. And the National Institutes of Health, which provides the lab with millions of dollars in research funds, places restrictions on how that funding can be used, she said.
“NIH doesn’t just hand you money to make a new model because you are interested in it,” Lutz said.
So Lutz told Harris that, to begin work on creating a mouse model with the same mutation that causes Eliza’s more mild form of Rett syndrome the lab likely would need $25,000. She was surprised, she said, when Harris said she would raise the money by running in the marathon.
Lutz said she has run marathons before and knows how difficult it is to train effectively and then to run the race. Harris’ determination to do it, without any prior experience, has stayed with the scientist.
“I was very impressed with the fact that she pulled this off,” Lutz said. “She’s really pushing this effort in ways that many parents don’t have the energy to do.”
Lutz said her decision to run this year is out of admiration for Harris’ commitment. Lutz said she will have some company along the way. Other lab employees will be running in the race and have offered to help raise funds for the cause, she said.
Lutz said she and her team have made substantial headway in the past year toward developing the model but still face some technical challenges in bringing it to fruition in the form of a living, breathing mouse. How much time, and how much money, it might take to bring the mild Rett mouse model to life, she does not know.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Lutz said. “We have to back up a step or two [and try again].”
The goal, once researchers have a biologically engineered mouse they can study, is to examine how the syndrome manifests in the mouse — what symptoms it has (if any), how those symptoms might change over time, and what biological factors might affect those symptoms, Lutz said. If enough about the affected mice can be understood, researchers then could begin to test various drugs to see what effect they might have and what kind of effective treatments might be developed.
“It’s probably not going to be a cure,” Lutz said. “It probably will be a treatment of symptoms.”
If developing the mouse model has not been easy, running the marathon on Sunday won’t be any easier, Lutz added. She has competed in marathons over flat terrain before, she said, which she considers “a piece of cake” compared to the MDI Marathon’s hilly course.
Lutz said it has been a few years since she ran a marathon and admitted she is a little scared. But she said she is not too concerned about what her finish time might be.
“It’s more about the camaraderie than it is about the competition,” the scientist said. “And a lot of it is about raising awareness [about Eliza’s condition].”
For information, or to donate money to the project, visit the Facebook page for Run for Eliza and Rett Syndrome.

 

Women in science, you have nothing to fear but your own subconscious

From the Guardian: Women in science, you have nothing to fear but your own subconscious

A few days ago I received an invitation to an afternoon of scientific lectures taking place at my university. The notice was issued by the head of the school, who would host, and consisted of four speakers. The event was to be chaired by a fifth person, and followed by a panel discussion with four additional professors. Ten people in total were taking part – and all of them were men.
I have always been fascinated by the skewed gender ratios at higher levels in the academic life sciences. Unlike disciplines such as physics, chemistry or engineering, where female students are thin on the ground, biology can claim no such shortage of raw professorial material. It is, in fact, positively burgeoning with young women. When I started my PhD in Seattle in 1990, our department was fifty-fifty for both PhD students and post-docs. In the UK, the number of women and men earning undergraduate degrees in the life sciences is also balanced, a trend that carries on into the PhD phase. When you go to international scientific conferences, the audiences are teeming with women – even if the podia usually are not. It is only later that the jaw-dropping attrition begins: the pool of women biologists is whittled away relentlessly until, by the end, only 15% of professors are female¹. Numbers of PhDs awarded in the biological sciences have been largely gender balanced for many years now (over 40% from 1993, according to governmental figures from the United States²), so it is unlikely merely to be a lag at this point. In short, old men are being replaced with younger models.
It's difficult to understand exactly why this happens: there are many possible explanations, and combinations of factors may also come into play. But decades of research in the social sciences, along with the numbers, suggest where not to look for answers. Are men simply better at science, and therefore outcompete women on a level playing field? The equal number of PhD students in biology (and the excellent grades girls achieve in high school) belie this idea, and the notion of female inferiority is rarely voiced these days (except by anonymous commenters in certain online venues).
Is it more personal? Biologists work long hours, and the desire to have a decent work/life balance may drive many women out of the profession of their own accord. The life sciences career path is rife with short-term contracts, which also don't help those wanting to start a family. Meanwhile, a study published in 2010 showed that women scientists shoulder on average approximately twice as many household chores as their male partners, and also bore more childcare responsibilities. This might seem trivial, but it wouldn't help women to compete, either³.
What about sexism? In these more enlightened times – and given the deterrent of university employment tribunals – overt discrimination is probably not the major culprit any more. But in her wonderful book, Why So Slow? Advancement of Women, Virginia Valian painstakingly documents many studies showing the inherent, subconscious bias that both men and women have against female scientists, who unlike men, do not conform to the "schemata" ("capable", "independent", "can-do") that we tend to think of when we envision scientists⁴. Picture a scientist in your head: the image is likely to be male. We're just wired that way. The same wiring causes internal dissonance when we are faced with a female scientist. Schemata are the same pesky things that prompt someone to say "What did he say?" when you mention you've been to see your doctor – even though about 40% of doctors in the UK are women, and are set to outnumber their male counterparts in only a few years.
So it was with great interest that I heard about a new study from Moss-Racusin and colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences⁵. The experiment was a variation on the classic name-swapping CV studies (see Valian's book for more on these) which have been used to show that, given an identical bogus CV, people are more likely to prefer candidates if a male name is printed on the top. This randomised, double-blind experiment was performed on 127 scientific faculty from "research-intensive universities" in the US, who agreed to evaluate a potential student-cum-laboratory manager.
The results were eyebrow-raising – though perhaps, given the many studies performed before, not terribly surprising:

"Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent."

The authors go on to suggest that subconscious bias might be overcome, and female participation in science increased, by pre-emptively coaching people on recruitment panels to be aware of their inbuilt biases.
It's an interesting idea, and one that could be used beyond recruiting. Whenever people get together to make scientific decisions involving the evaluation of candidates, like choosing speakers for a lecture series, training might help stop them from naming the first people (i.e. men) who pop into their heads. Instead, they might sit back, take a few deep breaths and have a serious think about who else out there might be truly qualified. It might also help for scientists, of both genders, not to shy away from complaining about committees who apparently lack the originality or persistence to give science the fairness and diversity it deserves.

---

References:1. Kirkup, G., Zalevski, A., Maruyama, T. and Batool, I. (2010). Women and men in science, engineering and technology: the UK statistics guide 2010 (pdf). Bradford: the UKRC.
2. National Science Foundation, official statistics. TABLE 28. Biological sciences degrees awarded, by degree level and sex of recipient: 1966–2006 (pdf)
3. V. Valian, Why So Slow?: Advancement of Women (MIT Press, 1999)
4. L. Schiebinger and S.K. Gilmartin. Housework Is an Academic Issue: How to keep talented women scientists in the lab, where they belong. Academe Online, January-February 2010 issue.
5. C. A. Moss-Racusin et al. Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 2012 ; published ahead of print September 17, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109

 

International Day of the Girl: Why science and math programs matter

From the Berkley Blog: International Day of the Girl: Why science and math programs matter

Late last year, the United Nations declared Oct. 11 the International Day of the Girl. Celebrated for the first time this month, the occasion aims to highlight the challenges girls face around the world to gain access to education and other basic rights, and empower them to advocate on their own behalf. Despite recent publications declaring the “end of men,” evidence shows that continued investment in education for girls (and equality for women) is needed, right, and smart.

Studies indicate that increased education for girls leads to lower poverty rates and better health outcomes for the whole family. But gaps in access to primary education are common in developing countries, especially where families must pay fees for their children to attend. Literacy rates among girls often suffer; for example, in Afghanistan, 18 percent of girls age 15-24 are literate compared to 50 percent of boys.

In more developed countries with the capacity (or mandate) to provide basic educational equality, girls still lag behind boys, especially in their achievement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A 2009 study by the American Society of Engineering Education notes that undergraduate degrees from engineering schools awarded to women hit a 15-year-low. As Stephanie Coontz highlighted in a recent New York Times article, “the percentage of female electrical engineers doubled in each decade in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But in the two decades since 1990 it has increased by only a single percentage point, leaving women at just 10 percent of the total.”

Universities and industry leaders are taking measures to make the field more welcoming for young women. Most college engineering programs have diversity and outreach programs that aim to increase enrollment of women and under-represented minorities. And a recently announced pilot program, WitsOn (Women in Technology Sharing Online), matches mentors from corporations and top-ranked universities (including nearly all the UC campuses) with female students in STEM fields.

But reaching young women by the time they enter college is not soon enough. In order to increase female representation in STEM majors and graduate programs, it is essential to engage girls in related activities at K-12 levels. A few organizations have recognized this gap and created programs to address it. Microsoft’s DigiGirlz Hi-Tech Camp offers workshops and presentations for high-school girls. Black Girls Code and the NSF-funded National Girls Collaborative Project support STEM programs for underserved communities.

Efforts to increase women’s participation in these fields may be found not only in the United States but also internationally, even in countries that struggle to provide equality in basic education. Girls in Tech, with chapters in the United States and around the world, promotes women’s innovations in technology. AkiraChix, a Nairobi-based network of mentors, aims to inspire and sustain interest in technology fields among young African women. Indeed, Africa is home to many female rising stars in technology, as a recent article noted with an allusion to Yahoo’s new CEO: Who are Africa’s Marissa Mayers? And multilateral programs like USAID’s Women and Girls Lead Global and UN Foundation’s Girl Up have been launched recently to boost girls’ empowerment and access to education overall.

In my role as director of the Data and Democracy Initiative at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), I want to encourage efforts to bring greater gender-parity to science and engineering fields. Not just because studies show that greater participation of women raises the level of collective intelligence in business teams, but because democracies deserve full participation of all their citizens. Few efforts could better serve the “interests of society” than strengthening programs for girls to explore the full range of subjects available to them. On the International Day of the Girl, consider supporting local initiatives or international organizations devoted to bolstering access to education and basic human rights for girls. Both data and democracy will improve when girls are prepared to participate fully in governance, leadership, and innovation.

Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.

Physicist turned artist enjoys science of painting

From Ottawa South:  Physicist turned artist enjoys science of painting

EMC entertainment - When the high-tech bubble burst in 2001, it came as a natural career crossroads for France Tremblay.

For nearly a decade, the Kanata Lakes woman had worked as a scientist, first studying quantum mechanics at the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England, then later developing radar systems for the Department of Defence.

From 1996 to 2001, Tremblay managed teams of scientists developing the next generation of telecommunication technology at Nortel Networks.

But always in the back of her mind, she carried with her the dream of becoming a full-time artist, a seismic career switch for a woman who had spent the past 20 years developing impressive academic and professional credentials in the fields of physics and telecommunications.

The change in careers came a little earlier than originally planned with the fall of Nortel.

"I'm now a full-time artist with science as a hobby," said Tremblay.

SCIENCE

Science was Tremblay's first passion in life.

"I loved it since I was a kid," she said.

Tremblay, who grew up in Quebec City, was interested in studying the physical world, with math simply providing the paintbrush to bring her observations to life.

"The maths are an essential tool to describe the world we live in," she said.

Tremblay earned a bachelor's degree in physics at Lavalle University, in Quebec City, a master's degree in physics at the University of Toronto and finally a PhD degree in physics at Cambridge.

"Physics is the best way to do a lot of maths while linking it to the physical world, so I found that exciting," said Tremblay. "Physics means you study something that's real."

During her off time while studying in England, Tremblay toured art museums throughout Europe, and developed a second passion in life.

"I was having a natural interest in art," Tremblay said.

The fledgling artist visited many of the great museums in France, such as the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, as well as some of the smaller venues devoted to only one artist, such as Picasso and Rodin.

"They're still jewels," she said.

Those tours allowed Tremblay to begin learning the tools she would need to prepare for a career in art.

"A seed was planted in my heart in Europe," she said. "I had a decade to prepare."

When she started working as a scientist, Tremblay used her off hours to learn the fundamentals of painting, such as drawing techniques and the proper way to mix paint.

"This is a life-long learning curve," Tremblay said. "You need to have a lot of tools in your toolbox."

Since 2002, Tremblay has become a full-time artist and part-time scientist - she works as a professor in the electrical engineering department at the University of Ottawa.

She has entered high-profile exhibitions in the United States, including the Paint the Parks Top 11 in 2007, 2011 and 2012 as well as The Art of Conservation, an international annual event presented at various prestigious museums and the Society of Animal Artists exhibition from 2010-12.

She won the grand prize in the Paint the Park Top 100 in 2008 and was selected a finalist in the landscapes category and wildlife art category of the Artist's Magazine Annual Art Competition, which draws entries from nearly 15,000 artists every year.

Every year, Tremblay opens her home to the public, participating in the annual Kanata Artists Studio Tour.

Tremblay paints landscapes, still life and wildlife pieces using acrylic paint as well as drawing using coloured pencils, graphite and carbon.

She lists some of her influences as Canadian wildlife artist Robert Bateman, as well as painters Patricia Pepin and John Banovich.

In 2002, Tremblay founded an art school that she runs out of her home in Kanata Lakes.

RESEARCH

Tremblay's eye for precision influenced her taste in art.

She said she approaches her paintings from the perspective of a scientist and that her work is the result of careful planning and analysis.

"A lot of my work is so realistic to the extreme," she said. "That means I have to do a lot of research on the subject."

Every year, Tremblay plans one to two trips to remote areas to "research" her paintings.

"Every painting you see (on my wall) is the result of my research in the field," she said. "I'm climbing mountains, I'm walking in the deserts - for me that's the exciting part of the process."

Her research trips have included visits to Death Valley in eastern California, the Rocky Mountains in Alberta as well as the Florida Keys.

Her research provides an intense study of her paintings' subjects.

For instance, Tremblay spent countless hours in Andrew Haydon Park in Nepean, observing, sketching and studying a specific great blue heron, the subject of her acrylic painting, The Sovereign.

"I can tell you that specific bird has lived in Andrew Haydon Park for two years," she said. "I'm not looking at the bird species. I'm looking at the bird - this isn't a bird, it's a specific blue heron."

From start to finish, a painting can take between 80 to 200 hours for Tremblay to produce.

Tremblay said her future goal remains the same every year - improve as an artist, learn better technique and design.

"I just want to do the best painting I can."

 

12-Year-Old Schoolgirl Recently Discovered to Have a Higher IQ Than Einstein and Hawking

From Medical Daily:  12-Year-Old Schoolgirl Recently Discovered to Have a Higher IQ Than Einstein and Hawking

A 12-year-old girl has recently been accepted to Mensa, the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, after she was discovered as having a higher IQ than both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Olivia Manning, from Liverpool, scored a whopping 162 points on the IQ test, 62 points higher than the average score of 100. Manning's score was not only two points higher than renowned German genius Einstein and physicist Hawking, it also places her in the top 1 percent of intelligent people in the world.
She will now have the honor of being welcomed into Mensa, meaning that she will join the network of the brightest brains from across the globe. Not only is Olivia a confirmed genius, the pre-teen schoolgirl is also very popular at her school in the North Liverpool Academy in Everton.
"A lot more people are coming up to me asking for help with their homework. I just like challenges and making my mind think," she said, according to the Daily Mail. Olivia admits that she can quickly absorb and remember new information, but she said that she was "speechless" when she discovered her incredibly high score.
She revealed that she learned her lines for a school Macbeth production within 24 hours. However, Olivia, who is a member of her school's Mensa after-school problem-solving club, will have plenty of work cut out for her. "We have given her extra work to do and will now want to know why she's not getting As in everything," Teacher and club organizer Stacey Meighen said, according to Daily Mail.

UK: Girls who love physics

From the Guardian:  Girls who love physics

A report from the Institute of Physics this week revealed that nearly half of schools didn't send a single girl on to A level physics last year. Two girls shortlisted for this year's L'Oreal Young Scientist of the Year competition explain why they've bucked the trend and chosen physics

Alexandra Carroll, St Paul's Girls School

Photograph: Ri When it came to picking my A levels, the decision was easy: physics, biology, chemistry and maths. For me, the sciences – in particular physics – are fundamental to understanding how everything around us functions.
So it came as a surprise to me that most girls in my school who are interested in science opted for two rather than three of the sciences, almost always dropping physics – a trend repeated across the whole of the UK. Physics seems to be an unpopular science, possibly as it is often considered the most difficult and tedious. Concepts of physics such as the mechanism behind electric motors are often taken for granted.
However, a few weeks ago I was afforded the opportunity to look beyond the syllabus to the true intricacy of physics. This opportunity came in the form of the L'Oreal Young Scientist of the Year competition for which the essay to enter this year was entitled "a timeline of electricity".
I was eager to enter, but in hindsight I realise I had no real idea of the enterprise I was undertaking. My timeline grew into a six-page essay as I retraced the path of electromagnetism from the creation of very first motor by Michael Faraday, to further back to a time when the discovery that lightning was actually made of electricity came as a shock (no pun intended).
The landscape of physics changed with each new discovery, such as realising that Thomas Edison did not invent the first electric bulb but an improved carbon filament that allowed the light to burn for longer.
I was delighted to be chosen as one of the final 16 to take part in a workshop at the Royal Institution on Tuesday. Even more excitingly, I discovered that we would get a unique chance to see Faraday's first motor up close – a landmark in the history of electricity. It was incredible to see the motor and its complexities in person and we also got to see his notebooks firsthand. I was looking at objects that changed industry completely.
Doing science at A level has expanded my interest in physics, with intricate concepts becoming obvious and the realisation that even the most complicated equations originate from the same basic principles, and finally the links between all three are becoming clear. But my favourite thing about physics and all sciences is that there is always more to discover. Science is infinite.

Fola Afolabi, Sydenham School

Photograph: Ri Faraday is one of the most influential scientists in history and I am still overwhelmed to have been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see his electric motor in action, especially since I'm fascinated by electromagnetism.
I believe that physics is a vital subject and from it you can develop transferable skills such as: observation, problem solving and analytical thinking. It also gives us a profound understanding into the world we live in.
I believe having it as a qualification is a real asset, especially within our modern society, which is why I found it disappointing that in 2011 physics was the fourth most popular subject in A-levels for boys in England, but the 19th most popular among girls. In the 21st century we are being empowered as young women: removing the bonds of stereotypes and breaking through the glass ceiling. Irrespective of one's gender, I believe it's important to grasp the fundamental ideas that are taught through physics.
Girls who don't study physics are missing out, without a doubt. Physics is highly regarded by employers and people who have this qualification tend to be better paid.
As a young person, before studying physics I didn't have high expectations of the subject as I had some connotations that it was hard, boring, or a "boy" subject. However after the first lesson, where we learned about heat radiation, I was heartstruck! This was taught through an experiment - by my teacher Dr Simon Faulkner - called Leslie's cube that shows how the matt black side of a box filled with hot water emits the most heat.
Physics is a natural science: it has made profound contributions to the advancement of new technologies and our understanding of the world. This is clearly seen with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, incredible scientific milestone that will be vital for unravelling the mysteries of the universe.

 

Women researchers as prolific as men in publishing papers

From LiveMint:  Women researchers as prolific as men in publishing papers

New Delhi: Women researchers in India are as prolific in publishing scientific papers as men in spite of being significantly fewer in number, says a study in Tuesday’s edition of Current Science.

While it’s established that many women drop out at progressive stages of their careers as scientists, the study in the peer-reviewed journal quantitatively establishes that—as a proportion of their representation in India’s population of scientists—women may not only be at par but better than their male counterparts.

For the study, the authors analysed—by gender—998 scientific papers published between 2004 and 2009 by researchers at the doctorate and post-doctorate levels. Generally, aspirant scientists are of ages 25-35 years at these stages of their careers. The study found that proportionally, there was barely any difference in the number of papers published by 358 women and 640 male researchers.

The study analysts found 26% of female research scholars published their findings in both science-citation index (SCI) and non-SCI journals; 11% in non-SCI and 63% in SCI journals. Almost similarly, 28% of male research scholars published both in SCI and non-SCI journals, 9% in non-SCI and 63% in SCI journals. SCI journals are those accessed by a database called the Science Citation Index, a compendium of more than 3,700 journals and a metric of their quality and outreach.

Other data show women are grossly under-represented as research scholars as well as in the larger scientific establishment. According to the department of science and technology, only about 37% of those with a PhD in science in India in 2005 were women; in general, only around 15% of India’s scientists were women, significantly lower than the 25% in the US and the European Union.

“This study is specific to women at the PhD and post-doctorate level and what’s most striking is there’s no difference in quality in their output,” said Rajesh Luthra, the main author of the study and head of the human resources department of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India’s largest group of publicly funded research laboratories.

The data accentuated the fact that it was harder for women to have equally productive careers in science as men, he said. “The recently constituted task force for women in science talks about this,” he said.

In 2005, India’s science ministry constituted a committee to address the poor representation of women in science. Under-representation of women in science had grabbed international headlines after the then Harvard president and former US secretary of treasury Lawrence Summers attributed “differences in aptitude” as one reason for the lower representation of women in the upper echelons of science and engineering.

“There is a drastic drop in the percentage of women from the doctoral level to the scientist/faculty position, suggesting a bottleneck at the employment stage due to recruitment procedures and family responsibilities,” the committee said in its report, made public last year. “Focused efforts are needed to identify the sources of this precipitous drop and counteract them,” it said.

Garima Balwani, who’s pursuing a PhD in pharmacy at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, says she has never experienced any bias academically. “There are no separate restrictions for women studying science. Even to get papers published, there are no restrictions. Journals only consider your credibility,” she said.

Private companies, however, discriminated against women, she said. During her internship at a company she did not want to name, Balwani could not get hands-on training or do any actual research. “That particular company hired women only in selective departments like patent and regulatory affairs. They did not hire women in the department which involves actual research work,” she said.

Balwani added that several women who got a PhD also preferred to get into teaching, a point also emphasized by the science ministry committee.

 

Looking at Dignifying Science

From Sequential Tart News: Looking at Dignifying Science

s a girl, I was never once concerned that my career options were limited because of my gender. I grew up convinced I could be anything, and I had the support of my parents and teachers all the way. It was really only the stories of the obstacles women faced, and in some cases are still facing, that told me about the struggles of women to pursue their passions. Reading Dignifying Science was special for me, because I'm fascinated by these brilliant women who challenged scientific and cultural attitudes. Today I'm a microbiologist and writer, and it's because of female pioneers in these fields that I can contribute to how we understand and interpret the world around us. In comic form, learning about the accomplishments of these amazing women is informative and, let's be honest, fun.


Dignifying Science is written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Donna Barr, Stephanie Gladden, Roberta Gregory, Lea Hernandez, Carla Speed McNeil, Linda Medley, Marie Severin, Jen Sorenson and Anne Timmons, with covers by Ramona Fradon and Mary Fleener.

The story I was least familiar with was the spectacular life of Hedy Lamarr. She escaped her oppressive husband and the Nazis to become an American film star and inventor. Lamarr patented a communications technology that eventually became useful for cellular phones. It's a fascinating story about a beautiful woman who lived in a time when men dominated the engineering arena. My sister is an electrical engineer today, and she designs wireless tech that is probably influenced by the designs that Lamarr created. Wow!

My favourite scientist has always been Marie Curie (1867-1934), and although Dignifying Science only touches on her story, it highlights the difficulties women, and men, experienced as scientists at the turn of the century. It is a tough thing to be on the frontier of a field, and many scientists, curious and brilliant people, lived with little and studied with less. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she coined the term radioactivity. I've also studied Rosalind Franklin's work that helped to elucidate the true structure of DNA. She was a remarkable woman as well, and died before her colleagues were awarded their Nobel. Her story in Dignifying Science has an interesting blend of perspectives through the different art styles and does a good job with the complicated science and personality of Franklin.

Dignifying Science also includes stories about Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock and Biruté Galdikas. The book is entertainingly written and illustrated, and makes a point to remind us that these stories are told for dramatic effect. There are many references provided to point readers towards other works about these important women. It’s also wonderful that Dignifying Science does not present these stories as historical curiosities, as though female scientists of this calibre are rare. Instead, I feel like the book does an excellent job of capturing a few tales about brilliant women in a historical context and reminds me to follow the discoveries that women are making every day. Ottaviani's collection of stories honors these great scientists and is a compelling and fun read. 

Turn up the girl power in science

From CosmicLog:  Turn up the girl power in science

It's not exactly surprising that males are perceived as more competent in science than females — but researchers at Yale University were surprised to find that even professional scientists showed evidence of such bias. Now the big question is what to do about it.
"Whenever I give a talk that mentions past findings of implicit gender bias in hiring, inevitably a scientist will say that can’t happen in our labs because we are trained to be objective," microbiologist Jo Handelsman, lead author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a Yale news release. "I had hoped that they were right."

Nope.

Handelsman and her colleagues asked 127 science faculty members from six institutions to review an application from a senior undergraduate student looking for a job as a lab manager. The faculty members were asked to judge how competent the applicant was, how much the student should be paid, and whether they'd be willing to mentor the student.

Each researcher looked at the same application — but in some cases the applicant was given a male name (John), and in the other cases a female name was assigned (Jennifer), all on a random basis. When the results were analyzed, it turned out that the sight-unseen male applicant was rated more competent than the female. The mean starting salary offer was $30,238.10 for John as opposed to $26,507.94 for Jennifer. Faculty members were more willing to mentor John than Jennifer.

The data showed a disparity whether the demographic category in question was male or female, young or old, tenured or untenured. "The bias appears pervasive among faculty and is not limited to a certain demographic subgroup," Handelsman and her colleagues wrote.

The researchers emphasized that they weren't suggesting the biases were intentional or stemmed from a conscious desire to hold women back. In fact, they found that the faculty members tended to like Jennifer more than John. That sentiment was generally voiced by faculty women as well as faculty men. It's just that the warm feelings for Jennifer "did not translate into positive perceptions of her composite confidence or material outcomes," according to the PNAS paper.

So what is to be done? "Our results suggest that academic policies and mentoring interventions targeting undergraduate advisers could contribute to reducing the gender disparity," the researchers wrote.

The findings suggest that it's not enough to get young women interested in careers in science, technology, education and math, a.k.a. STEM. There needs to be a conscious follow-through by the folks who do the hiring and mentoring. You can read through the whole study at the PNAS website.

Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising to find out that scientists can be vulnerable to subtle biases, just like other people. Even journalists. Last month, for example, Lund University researchers Daniel Conley and Johanna Stadmark found that far fewer women than men were being invited to write commentaries for the journals Science and Nature.

Conley and Stadmark acknowledged that men tend to outnumber women in scientific fields, particularly at the higher levels, so there's something of a selection effect at work. But they said it was "still fair to conclude that fewer women than men are offered the career boost of invitation-only authorship in each of the two leading science journals." They called on the editors to "extend gender parity for commissioned writers."

Over time, raising the visibility of women scientists (and raising their salaries) will help draw more girls into research and science education. At least that's the idea. Here are a few more efforts that put girl power to work on the science world's gender issues:

'Girl Thing' reloaded: Remember the European Commission program that stirred up a controversy by putting out a glammed-up video about STEM careers for women? Now the EC's "Science: It's a Girl Thing" program is sponsoring a contest for videographers who think they can do better. On the Scientific American website, "Science Goddess" Joanne Manaster explains how to enter. The winning videos will be shown in November at the European Gender Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels. Three winners will each receive a cash prize of €1,500 ($1,930).

Think locally: It's worth looking for organizations that are bringing girl power to STEM on the community level. The best example is Sally Ride Science, which thinks globally and acts locally when it comes to getting girls involved in scientific pursuits. The organization, founded by the late space icon Sally Ride, presents a series of science festivals for girls in grades 5 through 8. The next one is coming up Oct. 27 at Rice University in Houston, with astronaut Wendy Lawrence as the featured speaker. Other organizations involved in girl-power science include Girlstart in Austin, Texas; and Science Club for Girls in the Boston area.

Women chemists in the spotlight: The Chemical Heritage Foundation's video series pays tribute to seven women who have made their mark in chemistry — including Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of bulletproof Kevlar fiber; Paula Hammond, a pioneer in nanotechnology for drug delivery; and Nancy Chang, a successful biotech entrepreneur.