Where are the women at the International Math Olympiad competition? Fivethirtyeight looks at the distribution of women on these teams.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/girls-are-rare-at-the-international-math-olympiad/
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
Cheers
Cheers...
...to the women in my program for discussing the problem of recruiting more women.
...for our meeting generating several concrete, actionable items.
...for the serious response we received from the administration when voicing our concerns.
...for the actions the administration will put in place this year during recruitment.
...for some of the guys in my program who recognized their past behavior may have been taken the wrong way.
...for that same group asking me for ways they could change and behaviors to watch out for from other guys.
...to the (male) friend who went to a science conference as a +1...and realized how messed up it was that people assumed he was the scientist and his girlfriend (the actual scientist) was along for the ride.
...for the guys who want to hear my experiences of being a women in academia...so they know how to challenge their unconscious biases.
In the grand scheme of things, this is small. But changes can't always come from the top. More often, they must start with the people on the bottom.
...to the women in my program for discussing the problem of recruiting more women.
...for our meeting generating several concrete, actionable items.
...for the serious response we received from the administration when voicing our concerns.
...for the actions the administration will put in place this year during recruitment.
...for some of the guys in my program who recognized their past behavior may have been taken the wrong way.
...for that same group asking me for ways they could change and behaviors to watch out for from other guys.
...to the (male) friend who went to a science conference as a +1...and realized how messed up it was that people assumed he was the scientist and his girlfriend (the actual scientist) was along for the ride.
...for the guys who want to hear my experiences of being a women in academia...so they know how to challenge their unconscious biases.
In the grand scheme of things, this is small. But changes can't always come from the top. More often, they must start with the people on the bottom.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Friday Funnies: Halloween Costume Edition
Like all lady Ph.D. students, I frequently ask myself: "How could I be sexier?" Thank goodness for this Halloween costume. Stylish AND safety-conscious with the polyester robe and the 5" heels. I'm only sad that it doesn't come in pink or purple to match my BIC lady pens </sarcasm>.
Seriously though, read the comments on Amazon. They are top-notch.
Friday, October 17, 2014
MacTalks - Chad Topaz
Listen to one of my favorite professors from Macalester talk about community and how the idea of community informs his research on biological swarms, why community is essential for scientific progress, and how developing community is crucial for teaching and learning.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy."
Eric Betzig Stefan Hell William Moerner
Optical microscopy was limited for a long time by the presumed limitation that it would never get resolution better than half the wavelength of light. In what is now known as 'nanoscopy' this year's Nobel Laureates circumvented this limitation, with the help of fluorescent molecules. Their pioneering work in the field of microscopy allows us to see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells, track proteins involved in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and follow individual proteins as a fertilized egg divides into an embryo.
Watch the announcement here:
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura, for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources."
This year's Nobel Laureates invented a new energy efficient light source--the blue light-emitting diode (LED). With the invention of blue LEDs, white light can be created in new ways that is both longer lasting and more efficient than older alternative light sources.
Listen to Shuji Nakamura's reaction:
Watch the announcement of the prize and learn more about LEDs here!
Monday, October 6, 2014
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with one half to John O'Keefe, and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.
John O’Keefe
Studying rats in 1971, O'Keefe discovered that certain nerve cells in the hippocampus of the brain were activated when the rat was at a particular place in the environment. At other places, different nerve cells were active. He proposed the brain has "place cells" which allow rats to build an inner map of the environment.
May Britt and Edvard I. Moser
The Moser's work focused on a nearby structure in the brain, the entohinal cortex. They found that nerve cells in this portion of the brain were activated when rats passed certain locations in a maze. Together, these locations formed a hexagonal grid, with each "grid cell" as they called them, reacting in a unique spatial pattern. The grid cells form a coordinate system that allows for spatial navigation.
Grid cells and place cells form networks with each other and also with other cells that recognize the direction of the rat's head. This complex network is an inner GPS for the brain. However it's not just rats that have this positioning system. Humans, too, appear to have similar cells as those found in the rat brains.
Listen to their reactions:
May-Brit Moser:
John O'Keefe:
Edvard I. Moser:
Relevant Publications:
1. O'Keefe and Dostrovsky. "The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat brain." Brain Research, 1971, 34, 171.
2. O'Keefe, J. "Place units in the hippocampus of the freely moving rat." Experimental Neurology, 1976, 34, 78.
3. Fyhn et al. "Spatial representation in the entohinal cortex." Science, 2004, 305, 1258.
4. Hafting, et al. "Microstructure of spatial map in the entohinal cortex." Nature, 2005, 436, 801.
5. Sargolini et al. "Conjunctive representation of position, direction, and velocity in the entohinal cortex." Science, 2008, 312, 758.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)