Actually, I don't think the vision requirement is an age thing. I read an article a while back
that said older astronauts may be preferable because older people seem to handle
radiation exposure better than younger people do. I couldn't find the original article I read but
you can find something similar here.
This article says:
Those radiation limits vary with age and gender. For 30-year-old astronauts, the maximum allowable mission length for a female is set at 54 days and reaches 91 days for male spaceflyers, the report stated. By age 55, the total days in space max out at 159 days for female astronauts and 268 days for their male counterparts.
I ended up majoring in physics, instead of aerospace engineering. I was just too intimidated by the engineering courses, the attitudes of the male students majoring in engineering, and even some of the engineering professors to continue in that field. Physics is not exactly a terribly woman-friendly field, but at the time it seemed much less frightening than engineering. I eventually got a Ph.D., but it was a tremendous struggle. In graduate school, the other female students and I did have problems with the attitudes of one or two professors, but we had even more difficulties with the gender-biased attitudes of the male graduate students, and sometimes the undergraduate students in the lab sections we taught. I see the same types of misogynist and sexist comments I heard from my fellow graduate students posted on Slashdot in response to every article discussing the low numbers of women in technical fields.
A lifetime of hearing that women are just not as good in math and science as men has left a permanent scar. Even though I stayed with science and earned a Ph.D., I think my own internal prejudices are holding me back in my career, just as much as the prejudices of my colleagues and society in general. I often find myself doubting my own capabilities. I question the results of my research far more often than my male colleagues do. For a very long time, I would not ask questions at conferences because I was afraid of appearing ignorant. I'm still petrified about screwing things up when I work with hardware in the lab, even though I know that my male co-workers have accidentally fried their share of equipment. I feel as though the men in my field are allowed to make mistakes, but I only get once chance to get it right, just because I'm a woman.
I had a similar experience, although I did not major in computer science in college.
In high school, I was one of the best students, if not the best in my school, in the math and science courses. I frequently asked questions that the science teachers could not answer. I took calculus my junior year, so I had taken all of the math courses that my high school offered and would have had to take a college math course during my senior year. The guidance counselors at my high school did not want to deal with the logistical problems that having one of their students enroll in a course at the local college would have caused. This was back in the 1980s, in a small town, and they just didn't know what to do with me. When I said that I was interested in studying aerospace engineering in college, the guidance counselor made an outrageously ignorant suggestion that I become a flight attendant or go to some vocational school to learn the skills needed for service jobs in the commercial airline industry. I was a straight A student, so they should have seen that I had the potential to do more than just be a flight attendant. I doubt they would have suggested this to a male student.
When I graduated from high school and went away to a large university, I enrolled in my school's honors program for math, science and engineering students. I dropped from being the best student in math at my high school to the middle of the pack the day I walked into my first college class, simply because a wider pool of students were enrolled in the program. The better students (mostly male) in the program had been allowed to take college math and science courses while they were still technically in high school. Some of these students also came from larger cities, where there were opportunities for summer internships in science and engineering fields for high school students. There were not any opportunities like this in my small town. In college, I was at a disadvantage from the start, not because I lacked talent, but because I had received little guidance and support from my high school. I can't help but wonder if my high school guidance counselors would have tried harder to get me into a college math course, or help me find summer internships, if I had been male. In college, I frequently felt like I was the "odd girl out" since I was one of the few female students and I had to do a lot of work on my own to catch up to the other students in the program.
I'm glad to see that someone else here understands that the motivation of the learner is very important.
I think there were some major problems with this course that had nothing to do with how I taught it. Most of the students in this course did not want to be there. On the very first day of class, as I started to pass out the syllabus, a male student loudly proclaimed to the entire class that he thought this course was going to be boring and he was only taking it because his adviser made him take it. I hadn't even started lecturing yet, so obviously his lack of interest had nothing to do with bad PowerPoint presentations. I don't think he had even looked at the syllabus before he shouted this out to the whole class. He was just not interested in the subject, and possibly had difficulties with having a female instructor for a course in the physical sciences. Yes, this is still a problem, and sometimes it makes me feel like I'm living in the year 1807, not 2007. I think there were a lot of students who felt the same way as this student, but would not say it openly because they needed to pass the course in order to graduate.
Bad presentations can affect how much people learn, but bad attitudes can have an even bigger effect. It doesn't matter what you say, or how you say it, if your audience has already decided they don't want to listen before you begin the presentation. I think a few students became more interested in the subject matter as the course progressed, judging by the questions they asked in class. However, I'm really not quite sure if there is anything I could have done to change the minds of the students who had already decided before the first day of class that they did not want to be there and were not going to give the course a chance.
It really irritates me that most of the comments in the discussion of this article have focused on the presenters and why PowerPoint is evil. Being a good listener and paying attention to the material is even more important than the quality of the PowerPoint presentation and the handouts. The slides and handouts don't matter at all if you just don't want to be in a meeting or attending a class.
I recently taught a college level science course that is typically taken by non-science majors to fulfill graduation requirements. The other instructors in our department recommended that I make my PowerPoint slides available on the course web site before the lectures. When I started doing this, I found that about 75% of the class did stopped coming to the lectures. Warning the students that they would miss important material from demonstrations, discussions, and in-class activities if they skipped lectures did not make any difference in attendance. The students who were interested in the course and willing to do the work to earn good grades downloaded the notes, came to the lectures, and participated in class discussions and activities. Unfortunately, most of the students were only taking the class because their academic advisers forced them to take it or because they were expecting an easy "A." These students downloaded the notes, frequently skipped class, did not participate in class discussions, and then complained that their low test scores were due to my bad teaching, not their lack of effort. Making the PowerPoint slides available before a lecture only helps the students who actually want to learn. If the students aren't willing to take an active role in their own learning experience, nothing the instructor does will help them to learn or retain the material presented in class.
The same basic idea applies to business meetings and conferences. If you're not paying attention and being an active listener, then it does not matter whether or not the presenter is a good speaker or uses PowerPoint. Having a copy of the slides beforehand does not matter if you decide to skip the meeting since you already have the notes. It also does not help having the slides ahead of time if you do not study them to prepare for the meeting, or if you just sit there passively listening during the meeting. People learn better and retain more when their minds are actively engaged in a presentation through note-taking or discussions of the material being presented.
I have serious issues with the conclusions of the researchers discussed in the article. Their conclusions do not fit my own personal experiences or what I was taught in my graduate level courses on pedagogical methods at all. Also, I don't think that pictures are much different from written information, since reading words and interpreting a graph both require processing visual information. Graphs and diagrams are also useless without legends and axis labels written out in words, so you can't avoid the written word by just showing graphs and diagrams on slides.
When I was a student, I found that I got absolutely nothing out of lectures if I just sat there and passively listened to a speaker. I got more out of lectures when I took notes. Passive listening increased the likelihood that I would zone out or fall asleep in the middle of the lecture, particularly when I was tired from staying up until 2:00 am to finish my quantum mechanics homework. Of course, what I got out of my notes and the lecture depended a lot on how well the material was presented. If the professor was not organized, was difficult to hear, had really bad chalkboard skills, and went too fast, I got very little out of the lecture even if I tried to take notes.
Okay, so when I was in college, we still used chalkboards. However, I have the same problems with PowerPoint talks. If I sit there in the dark and listen passively during PowerPoint presentations at meetings or conferences I get absolutely nothing out of the presentation. I've found I retain more when I try to be a more active listener by taking notes and asking questions, but the speaker needs to go slowly enough for me to keep up with him or her.
I also have found that when I study material on my own, I need to reinforce what I am learning by speaking or taking notes. When I took French in college, I learned new vocabulary faster by saying the words out loud as I read them, or by writing the words down while I spoke them. When I read technical articles, I actually need to write down notes on a piece of paper (or type on a computer) as I read or I will not retain any information from the article at all. I think this is the same problem I had in lectures, only in this case, I need to be an active reader, rather than an active listener. I know some people like to use highlighters to mark up their textbooks or articles. This does absolutely nothing for me, as it is still passive reading. I need to summarize everything into my own words in order to retain the information, whether I am reading articles and textbooks, or listening to a lecture.
I honestly do not think the problem with PowerPoint presentations is that they provide too much information and that people inherently have difficulties processing information simultaneously in visual and oral formats. I think the real issue is that people have different learning styles and not everyone learns best through the same classroom or presentation techniques. I don't think that most people have a good sense of self-awareness when it comes to knowing how they really learn best. I found that I actually became a better student after taking courses in pedagogical methods, since I gained a new understanding of why my instructors planned their courses the way they did. Studying pedagogical methods also helped me find ways to overcome some of the difficulties I had when course material was presented in a manner that did not fit my learning style.
Within this sphere there is almost no electric field -- filaments can be seen as a kind of lightning rods, except there is no lightning because they are in vacuum.
Space is not as empty as people think. The near-Earth space environment, and the space environments of any planet with a magnetosphere, are full of plasma. As a result, spacecraft charging and electrical discharges (think lightning) are a problem for spacecraft. This problem has been studied by a lot of people, including NASA's Electromagnetic Effects & Spacecraft Charging Working Group.
As for usefulness of the whole thing, I guess, you can use this for steering the spaceship, however the analogy to surfing is very poor.
I admit that I didn't really understand this article or how this spacecraft design is supposed to work. The people working on this have probably published something a bit more technical that would do a better job of explaining it. However, the idea of using magnetic fields in space to "steer" spacecraft is not new. Interactions between the Earth's magnetic field and magnetic torquer coils are already being used for attitude control and spin rate control on satellites.
Mercury has no magnetic field and the one around Mars is patchy and not nearly as strong as the on here on Earth. Does that mean this would be better suited for terrestrial travel?
You are correct that Mars has a very weak, patchy magnetic field. However, Mercury does have a rather strong magnetic field. Mercury even has a magnetosphere, even though it does not have an atmosphere. In fact, the MESSENGER spacecraft is currently on its way to Mercury to study the planet's magnetosphere. Venus, on the other hand, does not have a magnetic field.
Themis, the goddess of justice, wisdom and good counsel, the guardian of oaths in Greek mythology, represents the THEMIS mission. She will confirm without prejudice, as implied by her fame, one of the two competing theories for auroral eruptions. THEMIS, with her sword (representing instruments) and scales (representing science discoveries), has both power and impartiality.
Basically, the scientists chose this name because they are hoping their mission will help resolve some of the major controversies in magnetospheric physics thanks to it's advanced instruments and multi-spacecraft approach. They also probably realized it would make a good acronym. Thinking up a catchy acronym for a NASA mission is much harder than you think!
I really hate to nitpick here, since your post was one of the very few intelligent ones in this dicussion. However, it is not a surprise to me that you could not find Kristian Birkeland's name mentioned anywhere on the THEMIS web site.
Birkeland's story just happens to be interesting enough that someone wrote a popular book about his arctic adventures. I have heard from several scientists that Lucy Jago's book about Birkeland is an interesting read, but that she does not get everything exactly right and there may be some exaggerations about certain events in the book. I have not read Lucy Jago's book, but I have looked at the orginal book that Birkeland published about his expeditions. While Birkeland was one of the first people to realize what the actual cause of the aurora borealis might be, he did not correctly understand all of the details. Since the dawn of the space age, scientists around the world have been using sounding rockets and satellites to better understand the processes that cause the aurora and fill in the details that Birkeland was unable to understand from his ground-based observations. Most of these people get very little credit or public acknowledgement of their work, even though they have advanced our understanding of the Sun, the Earth's magnetic field, the ionosphere, and the aurora significantly since Birkeland's time. Maybe it would have been nice if they had mentioned Birkeland on the THEMIS web site, but there are probably a lot of other notable space scientists that they didn't mention either.
Also, from what I know about THEMIS, I don't think that most scientists would actually describe it as an "auroral" mission. The perigees of the THEMIS satellites are about 1-2 Earth radii, which would be close enough to do auroral work if it was in a polar orbit. However, I thought that THEMIS was in a mainly equatorial orbit (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!). The apogees of the THEMIS satellites are between 12 and 34 Earth radii which put them in a great position to study a region of the Earth's magnetosphere called the magnetotail. Some pretty interesting processes that ultimately result in energy being dumped into the Earth' ionosphere during auroral displays start in the magnetotail. Unfortunately, while thinking about things like magnetic reconnection, magnetic field dipolarizations, current disruption, and substorm current systems gets anyone with a Ph.D. in plasma physics excited, they probably don't mean much of anything to the general public. These topics are not exactly covered in high school science courses, or even most college science courses, as they require a lot of math. The people who put together the NASA press releases and the THEMIS outreach site probably decided to focus on the things that a lay person might understand and would be interested in, which are the connections between the magnetic field and the aurora. A lot of people don't even know about the aurora borealis because they have never seen it themselves. I'm sure that the THEMIS team (and the people involved with any other mission of this type) found it was pretty hard to explain the mission science and why it is important to the public because the general public really knows very little at all about this sort of thing.
Where to find real women scientists and engineers
on
Top Ten Geek Girls
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree that this list is insulting. It sure makes me feel like all of those years I spent in graduate school working on my Ph.D. in physics were a total waste. I've been involved in a lot of public outreach projects aimed at improving the visibility of women scientists, but apparently these public outreach programs have not had any effect on the perceptions of the general public.
The person who came up with the CNET list certainly didn't try very hard at all. If they really were interested in creating a list of women who have contributed to mathematics and science, there are a lot of organizations and web sites where they could have found better information. For example:
And of course, there are also many Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Programs at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
People always wonder why more women do not pursue careers in science and engineering. The persistence of the misconception that only men can be successful in science and engineering, as well as stupid garbage like this list, are definitely not helping. Reading the CNET list made me feel as though women's contributions to science are completely unappreciated. On the other hand, reading some of the Slashdot comments mentioning prominent women who should have been on the list, gives me a little bit of hope that things can change.
An unmanned probe to Mars, if designed well, can last for more than a couple of weeks or months once it reaches Mars. The Opportunity rover has been sending data back for about two years now. The Mars Global Surveyor satellite has been sending data back for more than 8 years. The huge amounts of data obtained by these missions will probably keep scientists busy for a few years after the spacecraft or rovers themselves no longer function. The cost of these unmanned missions is very small compared to what President Bush wants the U.S. to spend over the next decade to send humans to Mars for a short, risky mission that will probably have very little scientific return.
If we focused on sending unmanned probes to Mars and the other planets, the U.S. government could probably afford to fund both the unmanned spacecraft missions and biologists studying extremophiles in hostile environments here on Earth. The President's Vision for Space Exploration has had a terrible effect on NASA science fuding, as well as science funding for other governement agencies as well.
I agree with you dlevitan. I think it is definitely worth the time and money to go to a good school and be challenged.
A few years ago, when I was a student at the University of Minnesota, the Physics Education Research Group gave students in the introductory physics courses a sort of pre-test called the Force Concept Inventory at the beginning of each semester. The goal of the pre-test was to discover what kinds of misconceptions students had about physical concepts. Students who had taken high school physics courses did not necessarily do better on the pre-test than those who didn't take physics in high school.
I got straight A's in high school and took AP math courses, but when I got to college I discovered that there were a lot of things that my high school physics and math teachers did not explain properly, or did not cover at all. I think that students are coming out of high school knowing even less and less each year, but they think they will have an easy time in college because they got good grades in high school. The last time I taught a college science course, I was shocked and horrified by the things that the students did not learn in high school. The young man in the article is going to have a rude awakening someday, when he realizes how little he actually knows and that he can't keep on coasting through life based upon his high school performance. I think that the college he attended did him a great disservice by allowing him to use so many high school credits and finish in such a short time.
When I worked at NASA Goddard in Maryland, my car got searched at the gate a lot. I moved to Maryland from northern Minnesota, so my car has an engine block heater and an electrical cord hanging out near one of the headlights. Almost every single time I went up to the gate, the guard would make some comment about the cord, even if I didn't get searched. There was even one week where my car got searched every single day.
Apparently having an engine block heater and an electrical cord hanging out of the front of your car is suspicious. I thought about having the engine block heater taken out, but I was worried about the mechanics in Maryland not doing it properly since they probably didn't see a lot of engine block heaters. The plug end of the cord didn't completely go up inside the car, and I would have needed to take out the headlights to fix the cord so it wouldn't hang. I suppose it wouldn't have been that much trouble to do that, but I never got around to it.
I should have told the guards at NASA some wacky story about driving a special electric test vehicle that used a prototype engine for the next lunar rover, and having to plug in the car to recharge the battery. Some of the guards might have had an easier time believing that made-up excuse than the truth about why people in Minnesota need engine block heaters.
I don't know if you will ever see this response because you posted anonymously, but thank you for posting your message. I wish I had some mod points right now! I think a lot of the men who post on/. act like this web site is their own private tree house with a "no girls allowed" sign on the door. They would probably be surprised to learn how many women actually visit/. frequently and post in the discussions.
I probably shouldn't even bother reading/. because the huge numbers of misogynist posts in discussions like this are really depressing. Some of those posts are probably lame attempts at humor or flamebait, as you mentioned. Those posts are pretty easy for me to ignore. I may be female, but I'm not so up-tight and emotional that I can't recognize those posts for what they are.
On the other hand, there are some incredibly misogynist posts that actually sound sincere. Those posts truly frighten me. Those posts make me wonder why I went into a male-dominated field, when I could have chosen a career where my gender was not an issue. Those posts also make me worry about how I will be treated by men outside of work, because they seem to express a genuine disrespect of women that borders on a pure hatred of the opposite sex.
I realize that/. is just a silly web site, and people will post garbage just to see if they can get a reaction. However, the degree of misogynism present is just disgusting and it scares me because some of the men posting those comments could have girlfriends, wives, and daughters. Nearly every woman I know has had at least one relationship with a man who subjected her to verbal abuse on a regular basis. We often hear rumors about other women who are being physically abused by their partners or see reports of domestic abuse on television. Women need to be careful in our relationships with men to avoid becoming a victim - not just of sexual harassment at work, but also of rape or physical abuse. I can't help wondering how the men posting the misogynist comments on/. about working with women treat their own female relatives away from work. I don't see how the men who say such horrible things about working with women on this web site could possibly treat their wives or daughters with kindness and respect. Either you respect women as human beings, or you don't.
I'm really glad that I saw your post. You are obviously a lot more mature than some of the people here.
I never did anything special to make her feel welcome, nor should I have had to.
It's just sad that you feel that way about your lone female co-worker. I think this is a big part of the reason why more women do not go into science and engineering. If a new man had joined your crew, would you have made an effort to welcome him and help him become part of the team? If so, you should do the same for your female co-worker. Of course, if your idea of making a new co-worker feel welcome is taking him out to a strip club, then you've got problems. On the other hand, what's the harm in asking your lone female co-worker to join the rest of the crew for lunch or drinks after work so she can get to know everyone?
I don't know the details of the office environment where you were the lone man with 10 women co-workers, but it doesn't sound like a good place to work. Being surrounded by chatty, gossipy women who can't talk about anything other than shoes, nail polish, who their friends are dating, or baby pictures can be miserable even for other women. I often feel out of place at social events where I'm the only women there who works in a technical field, or the only woman who is not a housewife or does not have kids. I can sympathize with your feeling uncomfortable being the only man in that office. However, the tone of your post suggests you may have some general issues in dealing with women in a professional setting.
You should really think about whether or not you are treating your male co-workers differently from the female co-workers. Women just want to be treated with respect and fairness in the workplace. None of us want to be given special treatment just because we are women. Unfortunately, it sounds like you are going out of your way to ignore the women who work with you. You are illustrating the exact problem that the person who posted the original message is trying to overcome, and seem determined to perpetuate the exclusion of women from socialization with their co-workers in male-dominated environments.
From reading a lot of the posts here, I get the impression that a lot of guys are so completely terrified of being slapped with sexual harassment law suits that they will not even talk to women at work. Some of the guys posting in this discussion apparently have absolutely no clue what kind of behavior constitutes sexual harassment. This is totally ridiculous. Interacting with female co-workers isn't all that difficult. I honestly think this is just an excuse for excluding women from the normal socialization between co-workers. It is NOT sexual harassment when a group of men who frequently go to a pub after work invite a female co-worker to join them.
On the other hand, it is sexual harassment to repeatedly ask a female co-worker out on dates even though she refuses every single time you ask. It is sexual harassment to deny a woman a promotion or pay raise because she refuses to go out on dates with you or refuses to have sex with you. If a female co-worker does agree to go out on a date with you, it is sexual harassment to tell your male co-workers the details of your date or to spread rumors about her sexual relations at work.
If a group of men ask a female co-worker to join them at their weekly after work visit to the pub, they need to behave in a respectful manner towards her. When they go to the pub, they should treat her with the same consideration that they do at work, even though they are not technically at work anymore. For example, sexually explicit jokes or comments with graphic descriptions of bodily fluids, sexual organs, sexual intercourse, rape, or a woman's menstrual cycle are not appropriate. Making derogatory comments about women in general is also not appropriate. If you wouldn't talk that way to your mother, then you probably shouldn't talk that way in front of a female co-worker.
I realize that among adults it is impossible to completely avoid all sexual innuendo. Every once in a great while it is probably okay to share a slightly off-color joke or comment with both your male and female co-workers. Sometimes off-color remarks just pop up in casual conversations between adults, with no malice intended. This is not sexual harassment. If you offend someone, they should tell you right away. You should then immediately make a sincere apology: "I'm sorry for offending you and I will do my best not to make remarks like this in the future." Do not get defensive or be sarcastic in your response and say something like: "Gee, take it easy lady! It's only a joke. Don't get your panties in a bundle!" It's also really irritating when guys make catty "meowing" noises when a woman takes offense at something or expresses a strong opinion. Those kinds of responses are certain to get you into trouble.
So in other words, just be polite and you will be fine. Give your female co-workers the same respect you would give the other women in your life. And if you ever hear one of your male co-workers making an inappropriate sexual comment to a female co-worker, think about how you would feel if he had said this to your mother, your wife, your sister, or your daughter. Then tell him to apologize to the victim of his insensitive remarks. She will be most likely be glad someone was there to intervene.
Once upon a time, AOL used to be a decent service, but it has become increasingly worse and worse. About 2 versions or so ago, AOL became completely intolerable. When my sister cancelled her AOL service, she was unable to get the AOL software to uninstall properly. Rather than trying to manually find all of the AOL components and clean up the registry, she just gave up and re-formatted her hard drive. I'm trying to get rid of AOL myself now. If you know of a web site or newsgroup that might have helpful hints for properly uninstalling AOL and tracking down pesky junk left in the registry, can you please post a link to it on Slashdot? I'd rather not have to format the hard drive and re-install everything, although that certainly would wipe out AOL for good.
Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen,
There's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.
Argh. Now I will have that song stuck in my head all day long.
Of course now that Pluto has been demoted, they will need to
revise the verse that says:
Mars is red and Jupiter's big
And Saturn shows off its rings.
Uranus is built on a funny tilt
And Neptune is its twin,
And Pluto, little Pluto is the farthest planet from our sun.
If you're feeling nostalgic, the complete lyrics and a.wav clip
are on this
web site.
I didn't think Cheyenne Mountain was actually being permanently shut down.
This Denver Post article and this Washington Post article say Cheyenne Mountain is being put on a sort of standby status with minimal personnel until the U.S. government figures out how the facilty fits into the changing priorties of our national defense strategy. The main justification given was that a nuclear missile attack from Russia or China is very unlikely. This seems a bit short-sighted to me, as there are other potentially dangerous nuclear powers emerging right now.
I find this rather ironic, since in the pilot episode of SG-1, the whole Stargate program had been mothballed and the facility was only being manned by a skeleton crew - until the Goa'uld decided to pay us a little visit. Hmmm... Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
The women you named are all noteworthy scientists, but there are a lot more famous women scientists than that! What about Lise Meitner, the famous nuclear physicist? Marie Curie's daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Don't forget Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist. Laura Bassi was a well-known Italian scientist in the 1700s who became the first woman to teach at a European college. Maria Mitchell was America's first professional woman astronomer. There were even female philosophers and mathematicians in ancient times, like Hypatia of Alexandria.
To find information about noteworthy women scientists, just search on the Internet for WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Programs. Many WISE programs at large universities often have a resource libary of information on women scientists. Some WISE programs even maintain web sites with biographies of women scientists that include reference lists. I suggest that any teacher or librarian who is interested in developing a collection of materials on women scientists try contacting the director of a WISE program at a local college. She would probably be happy to help.
I have a book someplace that has short biographies of living women scientists and engineers who work for NASA, but I can't remember what it was called at the moment so I am having trouble finding it online at Barnes and Noble. There is also a web site related to this book called Women of NASA that has biographies of women who work for NASA (click on the Profiles link). This web site has a teacher guide on it as well.
The National Academies of Science also has a good web site about women in science
called "I was wondering..." which is geared towards a young audience. The National Academies Press also has a Women's Adventures in Science book series related to this web site.
Women have made many important contributions to science throughout history, and there is a lot of information about women scientists out there. It just might take a little effort to find it.
Dr. Van Allen made so many more contributions to space science than just his discovery of the radiation belts. He was one of the founding fathers of the field of magnetospheric physics. He was also involved in the first satellite missions to visit Venus and Mars, as well as the Pioneer missions to the outer planets. Much of his opposition to manned space flight was motivated by the success of these early satellite missions and the enormous scientific return from them. He believed that unmanned missions like Pioneer could contribute much more to our scientific knowledge than manned missions. He also argued that unmanned missions were more cost effective than manned missions. For more information, I suggest reading his autobiography.
Unfortunately, it seems that with science funding being so tight these days, you can't get funding to do a study similar to one that is being done by another researcher or has already been published by someone else. I think the current attitude of a lot of government agencies is that if something has been done, why spend more money to do it again? The results of new studies that no one else has tried before make the evening news and keep the taxpayers happy. No one except for the scientists themselves cares about results published in scientific journals that only confirm the results of earlier studies. Political forces and the media are basically interfering with the scientific process because they demand newsworthy results to justify funding science. Because of this, certain scientific journals will now only accept papers that present earth-shattering, new results that have never been reported before. It's just sad really, how the politics of science funding are preventing scientists from doing good research and verifying that the results of published studies are correct and reproduceable.
I totally agree with you Mr. Pippin! I have a Ph.D. in physics, and know about a lot of things that could be used to hurt people in really nasty, horrible ways. Of course, I am a nice midwestern girl, so I would never, ever do anything like that.
The general public seems to dislike and distrust scientists because they think we know more than they do about certain things and are hiding the truth from them. People have been distrustful of scientists for centuries and have taken steps to control knowledge they perceived as dangerous in the past. Just look at what the church did to Galileo. I can't help thinking that it is only a matter of time before the government decides that the knowledge possessed by scientists is a security risk, and they round us all up and put us into some kind of internment camp to keep our knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. Or the government could just have all scientists implanted with microchips to monitor our every move.
The level of paranoia about terrorism and the general lack of scientific understanding by the public in the U.S. has really got me scared. When you combine all this paranoia and ignorance with the restrictions on stem cell research and the teaching of evolution demanded by some religious conservatives, the U.S. is heading straight back into the dark ages.
I am acquainted with a couple of people who live in rural areas and grow orchids in their basements under lights. This is actually a pretty common practice for hobbyists and professional growers, as basements provide a nice, controlled environment and they are often humid. Apparently, the police have showed up at their homes on more than one occasion because someone in town noticed their basement lights are on nearly 24 hours a day and that they have a huge number of plants down there. Apparently, growing high quality blooming plants to exhibit at shows sponsored by your local garden club is now a suspicious activity, while sneaking around in the bushes and peeping into your neighbor's windows at night is okay.
If you grow orchids from seeds, you need to have a laboratory setup because the seeds are microscopic and difficult to propagate. You need stuff like an autoclave to sterilize your tools and agar as a growing medium. Sales of some of the tools you need, like flasks in which to start the seedlings, are being restricted now according to the article. I know other people, myself included, who grow orchids in semi-hydroponic media. All perfectly innocent and harmless uses of these materials. I worry that thanks to people who grow other, less innocent plants using these methods, gardening and having houseplants are soon going to be considered criminal activities.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I don't think the vision requirement is an age thing. I read an article a while back that said older astronauts may be preferable because older people seem to handle radiation exposure better than younger people do. I couldn't find the original article I read but you can find something similar here. This article says:
Those radiation limits vary with age and gender. For 30-year-old astronauts, the maximum allowable mission length for a female is set at 54 days and reaches 91 days for male spaceflyers, the report stated. By age 55, the total days in space max out at 159 days for female astronauts and 268 days for their male counterparts.
I ended up majoring in physics, instead of aerospace engineering. I was just too intimidated by the engineering courses, the attitudes of the male students majoring in engineering, and even some of the engineering professors to continue in that field. Physics is not exactly a terribly woman-friendly field, but at the time it seemed much less frightening than engineering. I eventually got a Ph.D., but it was a tremendous struggle. In graduate school, the other female students and I did have problems with the attitudes of one or two professors, but we had even more difficulties with the gender-biased attitudes of the male graduate students, and sometimes the undergraduate students in the lab sections we taught. I see the same types of misogynist and sexist comments I heard from my fellow graduate students posted on Slashdot in response to every article discussing the low numbers of women in technical fields.
A lifetime of hearing that women are just not as good in math and science as men has left a permanent scar. Even though I stayed with science and earned a Ph.D., I think my own internal prejudices are holding me back in my career, just as much as the prejudices of my colleagues and society in general. I often find myself doubting my own capabilities. I question the results of my research far more often than my male colleagues do. For a very long time, I would not ask questions at conferences because I was afraid of appearing ignorant. I'm still petrified about screwing things up when I work with hardware in the lab, even though I know that my male co-workers have accidentally fried their share of equipment. I feel as though the men in my field are allowed to make mistakes, but I only get once chance to get it right, just because I'm a woman.
I had a similar experience, although I did not major in computer science in college.
In high school, I was one of the best students, if not the best in my school, in the math and science courses. I frequently asked questions that the science teachers could not answer. I took calculus my junior year, so I had taken all of the math courses that my high school offered and would have had to take a college math course during my senior year. The guidance counselors at my high school did not want to deal with the logistical problems that having one of their students enroll in a course at the local college would have caused. This was back in the 1980s, in a small town, and they just didn't know what to do with me. When I said that I was interested in studying aerospace engineering in college, the guidance counselor made an outrageously ignorant suggestion that I become a flight attendant or go to some vocational school to learn the skills needed for service jobs in the commercial airline industry. I was a straight A student, so they should have seen that I had the potential to do more than just be a flight attendant. I doubt they would have suggested this to a male student.
When I graduated from high school and went away to a large university, I enrolled in my school's honors program for math, science and engineering students. I dropped from being the best student in math at my high school to the middle of the pack the day I walked into my first college class, simply because a wider pool of students were enrolled in the program. The better students (mostly male) in the program had been allowed to take college math and science courses while they were still technically in high school. Some of these students also came from larger cities, where there were opportunities for summer internships in science and engineering fields for high school students. There were not any opportunities like this in my small town. In college, I was at a disadvantage from the start, not because I lacked talent, but because I had received little guidance and support from my high school. I can't help but wonder if my high school guidance counselors would have tried harder to get me into a college math course, or help me find summer internships, if I had been male. In college, I frequently felt like I was the "odd girl out" since I was one of the few female students and I had to do a lot of work on my own to catch up to the other students in the program.
I'm glad to see that someone else here understands that the motivation of the learner is very important.
I think there were some major problems with this course that had nothing to do with how I taught it. Most of the students in this course did not want to be there. On the very first day of class, as I started to pass out the syllabus, a male student loudly proclaimed to the entire class that he thought this course was going to be boring and he was only taking it because his adviser made him take it. I hadn't even started lecturing yet, so obviously his lack of interest had nothing to do with bad PowerPoint presentations. I don't think he had even looked at the syllabus before he shouted this out to the whole class. He was just not interested in the subject, and possibly had difficulties with having a female instructor for a course in the physical sciences. Yes, this is still a problem, and sometimes it makes me feel like I'm living in the year 1807, not 2007. I think there were a lot of students who felt the same way as this student, but would not say it openly because they needed to pass the course in order to graduate.
Bad presentations can affect how much people learn, but bad attitudes can have an even bigger effect. It doesn't matter what you say, or how you say it, if your audience has already decided they don't want to listen before you begin the presentation. I think a few students became more interested in the subject matter as the course progressed, judging by the questions they asked in class. However, I'm really not quite sure if there is anything I could have done to change the minds of the students who had already decided before the first day of class that they did not want to be there and were not going to give the course a chance.
It really irritates me that most of the comments in the discussion of this article have focused on the presenters and why PowerPoint is evil. Being a good listener and paying attention to the material is even more important than the quality of the PowerPoint presentation and the handouts. The slides and handouts don't matter at all if you just don't want to be in a meeting or attending a class.
I recently taught a college level science course that is typically taken by non-science majors to fulfill graduation requirements. The other instructors in our department recommended that I make my PowerPoint slides available on the course web site before the lectures. When I started doing this, I found that about 75% of the class did stopped coming to the lectures. Warning the students that they would miss important material from demonstrations, discussions, and in-class activities if they skipped lectures did not make any difference in attendance. The students who were interested in the course and willing to do the work to earn good grades downloaded the notes, came to the lectures, and participated in class discussions and activities. Unfortunately, most of the students were only taking the class because their academic advisers forced them to take it or because they were expecting an easy "A." These students downloaded the notes, frequently skipped class, did not participate in class discussions, and then complained that their low test scores were due to my bad teaching, not their lack of effort. Making the PowerPoint slides available before a lecture only helps the students who actually want to learn. If the students aren't willing to take an active role in their own learning experience, nothing the instructor does will help them to learn or retain the material presented in class.
The same basic idea applies to business meetings and conferences. If you're not paying attention and being an active listener, then it does not matter whether or not the presenter is a good speaker or uses PowerPoint. Having a copy of the slides beforehand does not matter if you decide to skip the meeting since you already have the notes. It also does not help having the slides ahead of time if you do not study them to prepare for the meeting, or if you just sit there passively listening during the meeting. People learn better and retain more when their minds are actively engaged in a presentation through note-taking or discussions of the material being presented.
I have serious issues with the conclusions of the researchers discussed in the article.
Their conclusions do not fit my own personal experiences or what I was taught in my graduate level courses on pedagogical methods at all. Also, I don't think that pictures are much different from written information, since reading words and interpreting a graph both require processing visual information. Graphs and diagrams are also useless without legends and axis labels written out in words, so you can't avoid the written word by just showing graphs and diagrams on slides.
When I was a student, I found that I got absolutely nothing out of lectures if I just sat there and passively listened to a speaker. I got more out of lectures when I took notes. Passive listening increased the likelihood that I would zone out or fall asleep in the middle of the lecture, particularly when I was tired from staying up until 2:00 am to finish my quantum mechanics homework. Of course, what I got out of my notes and the lecture depended a lot on how well the material was presented. If the professor was not organized, was difficult to hear, had really bad chalkboard skills, and went too fast, I got very little out of the lecture even if I tried to take notes.
Okay, so when I was in college, we still used chalkboards. However, I have the same problems with PowerPoint talks. If I sit there in the dark and listen passively during PowerPoint presentations at meetings or conferences I get absolutely nothing out of the presentation. I've found I retain more when I try to be a more active listener by taking notes and asking questions, but the speaker needs to go slowly enough for me to keep up with him or her.
I also have found that when I study material on my own, I need to reinforce what I am learning by speaking or taking notes. When I took French in college, I learned new vocabulary faster by saying the words out loud as I read them, or by writing the words down while I spoke them. When I read technical articles, I actually need to write down notes on a piece of paper (or type on a computer) as I read or I will not retain any information from the article at all. I think this is the same problem I had in lectures, only in this case, I need to be an active reader, rather than an active listener. I know some people like to use highlighters to mark up their textbooks or articles. This does absolutely nothing for me, as it is still passive reading. I need to summarize everything into my own words in order to retain the information, whether I am reading articles and textbooks, or listening to a lecture.
I honestly do not think the problem with PowerPoint presentations is that they provide too much information and that people inherently have difficulties processing information simultaneously in visual and oral formats. I think the real issue is that people have different learning styles and not everyone learns best through the same classroom or presentation techniques. I don't think that most people have a good sense of self-awareness when it comes to knowing how they really learn best. I found that I actually became a better student after taking courses in pedagogical methods, since I gained a new understanding of why my instructors planned their courses the way they did.
Studying pedagogical methods also helped me find ways to overcome some of the difficulties I had when course material was presented in a manner that did not fit my learning style.
Within this sphere there is almost no electric field -- filaments can be seen as a kind of lightning rods, except there is no lightning because they are in vacuum.
Space is not as empty as people think. The near-Earth space environment, and the space environments of any planet with a magnetosphere, are full of plasma. As a result, spacecraft charging and electrical discharges (think lightning) are a problem for spacecraft. This problem has been studied by a lot of people, including NASA's Electromagnetic Effects & Spacecraft Charging Working Group.
As for usefulness of the whole thing, I guess, you can use this for steering the spaceship, however the analogy to surfing is very poor.
I admit that I didn't really understand this article or how this spacecraft design is supposed to work. The people working on this have probably published something a bit more technical that would do a better job of explaining it. However, the idea of using magnetic fields in space to "steer" spacecraft is not new. Interactions between the Earth's magnetic field and magnetic torquer coils are already being used for attitude control and spin rate control on satellites.
Mercury has no magnetic field and the one around Mars is patchy and not nearly as strong as the on here on Earth. Does that mean this would be better suited for terrestrial travel?
You are correct that Mars has a very weak, patchy magnetic field. However, Mercury does have a rather strong magnetic field. Mercury even has a magnetosphere, even though it does not have an atmosphere. In fact, the MESSENGER spacecraft is currently on its way to Mercury to study the planet's magnetosphere. Venus, on the other hand, does not have a magnetic field.
From the THEMIS web site:
Themis, the goddess of justice, wisdom and good counsel, the guardian of oaths in Greek mythology, represents the THEMIS mission. She will confirm without prejudice, as implied by her fame, one of the two competing theories for auroral eruptions. THEMIS, with her sword (representing instruments) and scales (representing science discoveries), has both power and impartiality.
Basically, the scientists chose this name because they are hoping their mission will help resolve some of the major controversies in magnetospheric physics thanks to it's advanced instruments and multi-spacecraft approach. They also probably realized it would make a good acronym. Thinking up a catchy acronym for a NASA mission is much harder than you think!
I really hate to nitpick here, since your post was one of the very few intelligent
ones in this dicussion. However, it is not a surprise to me that you could not find Kristian Birkeland's name mentioned anywhere on the THEMIS web site.
Birkeland's story just happens to be interesting enough that someone wrote a popular book about his arctic adventures. I have heard from several scientists that Lucy Jago's book about Birkeland is an interesting read, but that she does not get everything exactly right and there may be some exaggerations about certain events in the book. I have not read Lucy Jago's book, but I have looked at the orginal book that Birkeland published about his expeditions. While Birkeland was one of the first people to realize what the actual cause of the aurora borealis might be, he did not correctly understand all of the details. Since the dawn of the space age, scientists around the world have been using sounding rockets and satellites to better understand the processes that cause the aurora and fill in the details that Birkeland was unable to understand from his ground-based observations. Most of these people get very little credit or public acknowledgement of their work, even though they have advanced our understanding of the Sun, the Earth's magnetic field, the ionosphere, and the aurora significantly since Birkeland's time. Maybe it would have been nice if they had mentioned Birkeland on the THEMIS web site, but there are probably a lot of other notable space scientists that they didn't mention either.
Also, from what I know about THEMIS, I don't think that most scientists would actually describe it as an "auroral" mission. The perigees of the THEMIS satellites are about 1-2 Earth radii, which would be close enough to do auroral work if it was in a polar orbit. However, I thought that THEMIS was in a mainly equatorial orbit (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!). The apogees of the THEMIS satellites are between 12 and 34 Earth radii which put them in a great position to study a region of the Earth's magnetosphere called the magnetotail. Some pretty interesting processes that ultimately result in energy being dumped into the Earth' ionosphere during auroral displays start in the magnetotail. Unfortunately, while thinking about things like magnetic reconnection, magnetic field dipolarizations, current disruption, and substorm current systems gets anyone with a Ph.D. in plasma physics excited, they probably don't mean much of anything to the general public. These topics are not exactly covered in high school science courses, or even most college science courses, as they require a lot of math. The people who put together the NASA press releases and the THEMIS outreach site probably decided to focus on the things that a lay person might understand and would be interested in, which are the connections between the magnetic field and the aurora. A lot of people don't even know about the aurora borealis because they have never seen it themselves. I'm sure that the THEMIS team (and the people involved with any other mission of this type) found it was pretty hard to explain the mission science and why it is important to the public because the general public really knows very little at all about this sort of thing.
I agree that this list is insulting. It sure makes me feel like all of those years I spent in graduate school working on my Ph.D. in physics were a total waste. I've been involved in a lot of public outreach projects aimed at improving the visibility of women scientists, but apparently these public outreach programs have not had any effect on the perceptions of the general public.
The person who came up with the CNET list certainly didn't try very hard at all. If they really were interested in creating a list of women who have contributed to mathematics and science, there are a lot of organizations and web sites where they could have found better information. For example:
The Women of NASA
The Society of Women Engineers
The Association of Women in Science
The Committee on Women in Science and Engineering at the National Academies of Science
And of course, there are also many Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Programs at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
People always wonder why more women do not pursue careers in science and engineering. The persistence of the misconception that only men can be successful in science and engineering, as well as stupid garbage like this list, are definitely not helping. Reading the CNET list made me feel as though women's contributions to science are completely unappreciated. On the other hand, reading some of the Slashdot comments mentioning prominent women who should have been on the list, gives me a little bit of hope that things can change.
An unmanned probe to Mars, if designed well, can last for more than a couple of weeks or months once it reaches Mars. The Opportunity rover has been sending data back for about two years now. The Mars Global Surveyor satellite has been sending data back for more than 8 years. The huge amounts of data obtained by these missions will probably keep scientists busy for a few years after the spacecraft or rovers themselves no longer function. The cost of these unmanned missions is very small compared to what President Bush wants the U.S. to spend over the next decade to send humans to Mars for a short, risky mission that will probably have very little scientific return.
If we focused on sending unmanned probes to Mars and the other planets, the U.S. government could probably afford to fund both the unmanned spacecraft missions and biologists studying extremophiles in hostile environments here on Earth. The President's Vision for Space Exploration has had a terrible effect on NASA science fuding, as well as science funding for other governement agencies as well.
I agree with you dlevitan. I think it is definitely worth the time and money to go to a good school and be challenged.
A few years ago, when I was a student at the University of Minnesota, the Physics Education Research Group gave students in the introductory physics courses a sort of pre-test called the Force Concept Inventory at the beginning of each semester. The goal of the pre-test was to discover what kinds of misconceptions students had about physical concepts. Students who had taken high school physics courses did not necessarily do better on the pre-test than those who didn't take physics in high school.
I got straight A's in high school and took AP math courses, but when I got to college I discovered that there were a lot of things that my high school physics and math teachers did not explain properly, or did not cover at all. I think that students are coming out of high school knowing even less and less each year, but they think they will have an easy time in college because they got good grades in high school. The last time I taught a college science course, I was shocked and horrified by the things that the students did not learn in high school. The young man in the article is going to have a rude awakening someday, when he realizes how little he actually knows and that he can't keep on coasting through life based upon his high school performance. I think that the college he attended did him a great disservice by allowing him to use so many high school credits and finish in such a short time.
When I worked at NASA Goddard in Maryland, my car got searched at the gate a lot. I moved to Maryland from northern Minnesota, so my car has an engine block heater and an electrical cord hanging out near one of the headlights. Almost every single time I went up to the gate, the guard would make some comment about the cord, even if I didn't get searched. There was even one week where my car got searched every single day.
Apparently having an engine block heater and an electrical cord hanging out of the front of your car is suspicious. I thought about having the engine block heater taken out, but I was worried about the mechanics in Maryland not doing it properly since they probably didn't see a lot of engine block heaters. The plug end of the cord didn't completely go up inside the car, and I would have needed to take out the headlights to fix the cord so it wouldn't hang. I suppose it wouldn't have been that much trouble to do that, but I never got around to it.
I should have told the guards at NASA some wacky story about driving a special electric test vehicle that used a prototype engine for the next lunar rover, and having to plug in the car to recharge the battery. Some of the guards might have had an easier time believing that made-up excuse than the truth about why people in Minnesota need engine block heaters.
I don't know if you will ever see this response because you posted anonymously, but thank you for posting your message. I wish I had some mod points right now! I think a lot of the men who post on /. act like this web site is their own private tree house with a "no girls allowed" sign on the door. They would probably be surprised to learn how many women actually visit /. frequently and post in the discussions.
/. because the huge numbers of misogynist posts in discussions like this are really depressing. Some of those posts are probably lame attempts at humor or flamebait, as you mentioned. Those posts are pretty easy for me to ignore. I may be female, but I'm not so up-tight and emotional that I can't recognize those posts for what they are.
/. is just a silly web site, and people will post garbage just to see if they can get a reaction. However, the degree of misogynism present is just disgusting and it scares me because some of the men posting those comments could have girlfriends, wives, and daughters. Nearly every woman I know has had at least one relationship with a man who subjected her to verbal abuse on a regular basis. We often hear rumors about other women who are being physically abused by their partners or see reports of domestic abuse on television. Women need to be careful in our relationships with men to avoid becoming a victim - not just of sexual harassment at work, but also of rape or physical abuse. I can't help wondering how the men posting the misogynist comments on /. about working with women treat their own female relatives away from work. I don't see how the men who say such horrible things about working with women on this web site could possibly treat their wives or daughters with kindness and respect. Either you respect women as human beings, or you don't.
I probably shouldn't even bother reading
On the other hand, there are some incredibly misogynist posts that actually sound sincere. Those posts truly frighten me. Those posts make me wonder why I went into a male-dominated field, when I could have chosen a career where my gender was not an issue. Those posts also make me worry about how I will be treated by men outside of work, because they seem to express a genuine disrespect of women that borders on a pure hatred of the opposite sex.
I realize that
I'm really glad that I saw your post. You are obviously a lot more mature than some of the people here.
I never did anything special to make her feel welcome, nor should I have had to.
It's just sad that you feel that way about your lone female co-worker. I think this is a big part of the reason why more women do not go into science and engineering. If a new man had joined your crew, would you have made an effort to welcome him and help him become part of the team? If so, you should do the same for your female co-worker. Of course, if your idea of making a new co-worker feel welcome is taking him out to a strip club, then you've got problems. On the other hand, what's the harm in asking your lone female co-worker to join the rest of the crew for lunch or drinks after work so she can get to know everyone?
I don't know the details of the office environment where you were the lone man with 10 women co-workers, but it doesn't sound like a good place to work. Being surrounded by chatty, gossipy women who can't talk about anything other than shoes, nail polish, who their friends are dating, or baby pictures can be miserable even for other women. I often feel out of place at social events where I'm the only women there who works in a technical field, or the only woman who is not a housewife or does not have kids. I can sympathize with your feeling uncomfortable being the only man in that office. However, the tone of your post suggests you may have some general issues in dealing with women in a professional setting.
You should really think about whether or not you are treating your male co-workers differently from the female co-workers. Women just want to be treated with respect and fairness in the workplace. None of us want to be given special treatment just because we are women. Unfortunately, it sounds like you are going out of your way to ignore the women who work with you. You are illustrating the exact problem that the person who posted the original message is trying to overcome, and seem determined to perpetuate the exclusion of women from socialization with their co-workers in male-dominated environments.
From reading a lot of the posts here, I get the impression that a lot of guys are so completely terrified of being slapped with sexual harassment law suits that they will not even talk to women at work. Some of the guys posting in this discussion apparently have absolutely no clue what kind of behavior constitutes sexual harassment. This is totally ridiculous. Interacting with female co-workers isn't all that difficult. I honestly think this is just an excuse for excluding women from the normal socialization between co-workers. It is NOT sexual harassment when a group of men who frequently go to a pub after work invite a female co-worker to join them.
On the other hand, it is sexual harassment to repeatedly ask a female co-worker out on dates even though she refuses every single time you ask. It is sexual harassment to deny a woman a promotion or pay raise because she refuses to go out on dates with you or refuses to have sex with you. If a female co-worker does agree to go out on a date with you, it is sexual harassment to tell your male co-workers the details of your date or to spread rumors about her sexual relations at work.
If a group of men ask a female co-worker to join them at their weekly after work visit to the pub, they need to behave in a respectful manner towards her. When they go to the pub, they should treat her with the same consideration that they do at work, even though they are not technically at work anymore. For example, sexually explicit jokes or comments with graphic descriptions of bodily fluids, sexual organs, sexual intercourse, rape, or a woman's menstrual cycle are not appropriate. Making derogatory comments about women in general is also not appropriate. If you wouldn't talk that way to your mother, then you probably shouldn't talk that way in front of a female co-worker.
I realize that among adults it is impossible to completely avoid all sexual innuendo. Every once in a great while it is probably okay to share a slightly off-color joke or comment with both your male and female co-workers. Sometimes off-color remarks just pop up in casual conversations between adults, with no malice intended. This is not sexual harassment. If you offend someone, they should tell you right away. You should then immediately make a sincere apology: "I'm sorry for offending you and I will do my best not to make remarks like this in the future." Do not get defensive or be sarcastic in your response and say something like: "Gee, take it easy lady! It's only a joke. Don't get your panties in a bundle!" It's also really irritating when guys make catty "meowing" noises when a woman takes offense at something or expresses a strong opinion. Those kinds of responses are certain to get you into trouble.
So in other words, just be polite and you will be fine. Give your female co-workers the same respect you would give the other women in your life. And if you ever hear one of your male co-workers making an inappropriate sexual comment to a female co-worker, think about how you would feel if he had said this to your mother, your wife, your sister, or your daughter. Then tell him to apologize to the victim of his insensitive remarks. She will be most likely be glad someone was there to intervene.
Once upon a time, AOL used to be a decent service, but it has become increasingly worse and worse. About 2 versions or so ago, AOL became completely intolerable. When my sister cancelled her AOL service, she was unable to get the AOL software to uninstall properly. Rather than trying to manually find all of the AOL components and clean up the registry, she just gave up and re-formatted her hard drive. I'm trying to get rid of AOL myself now. If you know of a web site or newsgroup that might have helpful hints for properly uninstalling AOL and tracking down pesky junk left in the registry, can you please post a link to it on Slashdot? I'd rather not have to format the hard drive and re-install everything, although that certainly would wipe out AOL for good.
Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen,
There's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.
Argh. Now I will have that song stuck in my head all day long. Of course now that Pluto has been demoted, they will need to revise the verse that says:
Mars is red and Jupiter's big
And Saturn shows off its rings.
Uranus is built on a funny tilt
And Neptune is its twin,
And Pluto, little Pluto is the farthest planet from our sun.
If you're feeling nostalgic, the complete lyrics and a .wav clip
are on this
web site.
I didn't think Cheyenne Mountain was actually being permanently shut down.
This Denver Post article and this Washington Post article say Cheyenne Mountain is being put on a sort of standby status with minimal personnel until the U.S. government figures out how the facilty fits into the changing priorties of our national defense strategy. The main justification given was that a nuclear missile attack from Russia or China is very unlikely. This seems a bit short-sighted to me, as there are other potentially dangerous nuclear powers emerging right now.
I find this rather ironic, since in the pilot episode of SG-1, the whole Stargate program had been mothballed and the facility was only being manned by a skeleton crew - until the Goa'uld decided to pay us a little visit. Hmmm... Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
The women you named are all noteworthy scientists, but there are a lot more famous women scientists than that! What about Lise Meitner, the famous nuclear physicist? Marie Curie's daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Don't forget Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist. Laura Bassi was a well-known Italian scientist in the 1700s who became the first woman to teach at a European college. Maria Mitchell was America's first professional woman astronomer. There were even female philosophers and mathematicians in ancient times, like Hypatia of Alexandria.
To find information about noteworthy women scientists, just search on the Internet for WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Programs. Many WISE programs at large universities often have a resource libary of information on women scientists. Some WISE programs even maintain web sites with biographies of women scientists that include reference lists. I suggest that any teacher or librarian who is interested in developing a collection of materials on women scientists try contacting the director of a WISE program at a local college. She would probably be happy to help.
I have a book someplace that has short biographies of living women scientists and engineers who work for NASA, but I can't remember what it was called at the moment so I am having trouble finding it online at Barnes and Noble. There is also a web site related to this book called Women of NASA that has biographies of women who work for NASA (click on the Profiles link). This web site has a teacher guide on it as well.
The National Academies of Science also has a good web site about women in science called "I was wondering..." which is geared towards a young audience. The National Academies Press also has a Women's Adventures in Science book series related to this web site.
Women have made many important contributions to science throughout history, and there is a lot of information about women scientists out there. It just might take a little effort to find it.
Dr. Van Allen made so many more contributions to space science than just his discovery of the radiation belts. He was one of the founding fathers of the field of magnetospheric physics. He was also involved in the first satellite missions to visit Venus and Mars, as well as the Pioneer missions to the outer planets. Much of his opposition to manned space flight was motivated by the success of these early satellite missions and the enormous scientific return from them. He believed that unmanned missions like Pioneer could contribute much more to our scientific knowledge than manned missions. He also argued that unmanned missions were more cost effective than manned missions. For more information, I suggest reading his autobiography.
Unfortunately, it seems that with science funding being so tight these days, you can't get funding to do a study similar to one that is being done by another researcher or has already been published by someone else. I think the current attitude of a lot of government agencies is that if something has been done, why spend more money to do it again? The results of new studies that no one else has tried before make the evening news and keep the taxpayers happy. No one except for the scientists themselves cares about results published in scientific journals that only confirm the results of earlier studies. Political forces and the media are basically interfering with the scientific process because they demand newsworthy results to justify funding science. Because of this, certain scientific journals will now only accept papers that present earth-shattering, new results that have never been reported before. It's just sad really, how the politics of science funding are preventing scientists from doing good research and verifying that the results of published studies are correct and reproduceable.
I totally agree with you Mr. Pippin! I have a Ph.D. in physics, and know about a lot of things that could be used to hurt people in really nasty, horrible ways. Of course, I am a nice midwestern girl, so I would never, ever do anything like that.
The general public seems to dislike and distrust scientists because they think we know more than they do about certain things and are hiding the truth from them. People have been distrustful of scientists for centuries and have taken steps to control knowledge they perceived as dangerous in the past. Just look at what the church did to Galileo. I can't help thinking that it is only a matter of time before the government decides that the knowledge possessed by scientists is a security risk, and they round us all up and put us into some kind of internment camp to keep our knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. Or the government could just have all scientists implanted with microchips to monitor our every move.
The level of paranoia about terrorism and the general lack of scientific understanding by the public in the U.S. has really got me scared. When you combine all this paranoia and ignorance with the restrictions on stem cell research and the teaching of evolution demanded by some religious conservatives, the U.S. is heading straight back into the dark ages.
I am acquainted with a couple of people who live in rural areas and grow orchids in their basements under lights. This is actually a pretty common practice for hobbyists and professional growers, as basements provide a nice, controlled environment and they are often humid. Apparently, the police have showed up at their homes on more than one occasion because someone in town noticed their basement lights are on nearly 24 hours a day and that they have a huge number of plants down there. Apparently, growing high quality blooming plants to exhibit at shows sponsored by your local garden club is now a suspicious activity, while sneaking around in the bushes and peeping into your neighbor's windows at night is okay.
If you grow orchids from seeds, you need to have a laboratory setup because the seeds are microscopic and difficult to propagate. You need stuff like an autoclave to sterilize your tools and agar as a growing medium. Sales of some of the tools you need, like flasks in which to start the seedlings, are being restricted now according to the article. I know other people, myself included, who grow orchids in semi-hydroponic media. All perfectly innocent and harmless uses of these materials. I worry that thanks to people who grow other, less innocent plants using these methods, gardening and having houseplants are soon going to be considered criminal activities.