The Matilda Effect in Science
A new study from Social Studies of Science (published by SAGE) reveals that when men chair committees that select scientific awards recipients, males win the awards more than 95% of the time. This new study also reports that while in the past two decades women have begun to win more awards for their scientific achievements, compared to men, they win more service and teaching awards and fewer prestigious scholarly awards than would be expected based on their representation in the nomination pool.
Wow the career aspirations are interesting yet not surprising. Even within the field of medicine, the “lifestyle-oriented” specialties have become more enticing, and hence more competitive.
Kids Today vs. Kids in 1982
An interesting infographic (this is an excerpt, full version is here) for many reasons, including smoking, safe sex and graduation rate stats. But pay special attention to that “career aspirations” section there.
We’ve got some work to do yet, science fans. The importance of STEM jobs in our economy is only growing. We can’t let a generation slip away.
(via PR Daily)
Benefits of yogurt (in mice): Less weight gain and bigger testicles
I feel like yogurt companies might start advertising this study’s outcomes.
This is fascinating!
npr:
Rare Sighting Of Dashing, Two-Legged Hairy Sprinting Crab?
In latin it’s called Thaumoctopus mimicus, but I’d call it The Master. It’s Meryl Streep in octopus form. There are ocean animals that can change shape, imitate plants, rocks, flora, and I’ve blogged about some of them. But this octopus is special. It seems to study other creatures and then imitate them, copying their moves and their bodies. It can do sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, jellyfish and weird beings that have no name, and maybe no earthly existence. Is it imagining? I don’t know, but no scientist has ever seen a shaggy sprinting bi-pedal crab — until our octopus decided to be one. -Robert Krulwich
Why you never see baby pigeons.
This used to trouble me. I finally got around to looking it up and I was somewhat grossed out. Pigeons hide their nests and keep their young in the nest until adulthood. While the eggs incubate (for about two weeks) the nest is kept constantly covered — by the male during the day, and by the female on the night shift. Once the little suckers hatch, they spend another two weeks in the nest feeding off a protein substance that looks like yellow cottage cheese called “pigeon’s milk” secreted from the throat of both the male and female parents. When they’re all grownup and flapping, they finally hit the road.
Dogma Overturned: Women CAN make new eggs!
A study led by Jonathan Tilly of the Massachusetts General Hospital overturns the decades-long idea that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. It reports that women of reproductive age carry ovarian stem cells, meaning that they can produce new eggs. Tilly’s team, which made a similar finding in mice in 2004, also discovered that mouse eggs derived from such stem cells can indeed be fertilized.
Really interesting article on how companies learn your secrets to predict and influence your shopping habits.
The Science of Ponytails?
“Somehow,” Dr. Goldstein recalled, “a bunch of balding, middle-aged men sitting around a table came up with the idea that the ponytail was the embodiment of all this interesting physics.”
This can’t be all that is interesting in physics right now, really?
The crucial characteristics are elasticity, density and curliness, which essentially tell how springy a piece of hair is, plus the length of the ponytail. The researchers came up with a simple formula that describes the ponytail shape when the hair is bundled together. Of course, they called it the Rapunzel number.
Go Ahead and Live in Sin! Science Says It’s Okay
There are plenty of nice reasons to get married, but increasingly the basic experience of being married doesn’t seem all that different from simply living together without ever making it legal—or living in sin, as our grandmothers like to call it. Now there’s some new research that proves that the line between marriage and cohabitation has been blurred to such an extent that it’s barely visible. The study, which appears in the Journal of Marriage and Family, found that being married doesn’t really have any long term advantage over living together—at least in terms of happiness, health, and one’s social life.
What researchers discovered was that there’s an initial bump in well-being right after a person marries or moves in with someone, as compared to staying single. But this advantage was short lived—in other words, the honeymoon came to an end and people fell back down to reality, which can be a miserable place whether you’re married or single.
How (Not) to Communicate New Scientific Information: a Memoir of the Famous Brindley Lecture
“In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED.”
Interesting memoir on Dr. Brindley’s lecture sent to me by my brother. I’m surprised I’d never heard of this before since it’s pretty hilarious.
Where Christmas lights go to die… and be reborn as slippers.
Super Small: Help Choose the Year’s Best Microscope Photos
Deadline: October 31, 2011
A whole shop full of organ-themed toys. Geeky yet charming. I think I like the ovary, testicle and prostate the best.
"Take the world apart and figure out how it works." - Built to Spill, 1994.
