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Topics: Astrophysics, Dark Matter, Diversity in Science, Nobel Prize, Women in Science
Two who advanced what we know about astrophysics:
And, one so familiar and deep cover, she was literally "hidden in plain sight":
From discovering pulsars to correcting the optics of the fuzzy Hubble Space Telescope, here are 17 stories of women who made undeniably vital contributions to astronomy and physics.
Popist: These 17 Women Changed The Face Of Physics, Mika McKinnon
Topics: Aeronautical Engineering, Flight, Green Energy, Green Tech, Solar Power
A pioneering flight around the world will use nothing but sunshine for fuel. In the dusty peach dawn of a desert day, the Solar Impulse 2 airplane took flight at 11:12 PM Eastern time on March 8 from Abu Dhabi on the first leg of a bid to fly around the world exclusively powered by electricity generated from sunlight.
The primary structural component is carbon-fiber sheets that weigh just 25 grams per square meter, or roughly three times lighter than a similar sized piece of paper. That carbon fiber is used sparingly in structural spots where forces push on the airplane. But the interior of the wings, the fuselage and other areas are empty to save even that tiny bit of weight, co-pilot Bertrand Piccard explained to Scientific American.
Atop those wings, as well as the body and even the tail of the plane, are 17,248 solar cells as thin as a human hair that generate electricity as the plane flies, some of which is stored in four lithium polymer batteries. Those batteries take over powering the plane’s four electric motors at night, which spin the two propellers under each wing. All told the plane weighs 2,300 kilograms and the four batteries are the heaviest passengers, weighing in at 633 kilograms. Making the plane required 12 years of calculations, computer simulations, building and testing, according to Piccard, and some $140 million.
Scientific American:
Solar Plane Takes Flight to Circle Globe in 180 Days [in Photos], David Biello
Site: Solar Impulse
You Tube: Solar Impulse Channel
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| Image Source: NobelPrize.org |
An admitted repeat, but I didn't want to just list her as a mere name during Women's History Month. I am grateful for her and subsequent research by Dr. Blackburn's regarding telomere length and aging in African American men.
Topics: Biology, Genetics, Nobel Prize, Research, STEM, Women in Science
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009
Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase".
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.
If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed. This is the case in cancer cells, which can be considered to have eternal life. Certain inherited diseases, in contrast, are characterized by a defective telomerase, resulting in damaged cells. The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies.
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 7 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/
National Institute of Health:
Discrimination, racial bias, and telomere length in African-American men.
Chae DH1, Nuru-Jeter AM2, Adler NE3, Brody GH4, Lin J5, Blackburn EH5, Epel ES3.
When a group of Sikh children were asked who their favourite superheroes are, the answers were barely surprising: Iron Man, Batman, Superman and the usual list of DC and Marvel old-hands.
But when they were asked if they knew of a Sikh comic book superhero, their response was unanimous: an emphatic no.
“And then we asked them, ‘Would you like to see one?’ The looks on their faces was just priceless,” says Supreet Singh Manchanda, a technology executive and comic creator based in San Francisco.
“They just beamed.”
My friend, fellow comic creator and artist Samax Amen wrote about one OUR most favorite Milestone Media Group book "Shadow Cabinet." Check it out.
http://ghettomanga.blogspot.com/2015/03/my-few-words-about-my-favorite.html?m=1
My website, "The Ratchedemic" discusses issues and occurrences in the world around us, highlights Black excellence, and promotes me on my journey to my life goals. In the three months since I first started this website and blog I have done great things with discussing and highlighting, but not so much on the promotion aspect. Now with today's newest post all that changes, check it out at the link below and learn about how my love of the fantastic has made me who I am today; a "Super Black"!
http://theratchedemic.squarespace.com/blog/2015/3/9/super-black
I really don't have any set pattern. I know some people do and it works for them. Being on other writing sites before this, people have shared their experiences and given tips like always take a note pad out with you in case a breakthrough comes or an idea. Of course you can put any such note on your phone these days. Personally I prefer when I am out and about just to be going about my regular business, focus on that is usually enough.
By the way, I have never attended a writing class.
Writer's block is the other thing people have shared and many famous writers have suffered from this for one reason or another and written about it. Happy to say I really don't get this affliction. I have so many ideas on the go and works that need completing. For me it is rather more the opposite. I could write a story about what's really happening on my grains of toast or what happened when my wet coffee granules came alive and joined the carnival down the road, everybody thinking it was a real person dressed in costume or something. As for my toast: I was concentrating on the crumbs which became mountain peaks, finding myself trudging through this buttery substance - something like that. Whether anyone would care to read it would be another thing ... My issue would be more that when an episode relating to my health is bothering me I sometimes have to stop ... Even so, I try to scribble with pen at those times and having note pads to write on doesn't always help when I can't find them. So I may end up writing on envelopes or scraps of paper etc and hope to find them later. Yeh, really disorganised like that but it works for me. The central idea will still be there somewhere in the back of my mind so I don't worry about it.
Cross-fertilisation and challenges work for me. I was once challenged to write outside of my genre when I was on ABCtales so I wrote a western called "On Route to Tama" which is a short story and this led me to write a flash fiction piece called "Riders" which earned me a cherry and I did a short video on, then some so called Russian channel decided to upload said video to what I'd term a totally inappropriate site no sooner had I posted it on You Tube. I've had to write letters and all sorts to try to get my entire channel removed from them!
Competitions sometimes have themes and I can see those as a challenge and an opportunity to stretch myself too. I don't always enter them but I can still write around the theme and to the word count just to see if it works for me.
Coming on BSFS has already given me two ideas for stories I would not otherwise have really thought about and that's purely through interacting with people and it isn't even straightforward - more like - but what if?. Turn something on its head. That also can also trigger "more bounce to the ounce".
Editors I think can be useful but do they understand people not from their own cultural comfort zone? Does this matter? I would say it does. Making money is one thing but wiping out everyone else's identity factors in preference for the western market and is totally unethical in my book, having the kind of consequences we all live with today. An alien visiting this planet would have a very warped perception of diversity left to media coverage and mainstream book outlets.
I hope sharing my simple revelations here may prove useful to someone. There's some awesome talent on this site which I hope will maximise to deserved fruition.
In relation to the above, I found this article on Twitter
One Love
Patricia
Topics: Bias, Diversity in Science, Education, STEM, Women in Science
This is a re-post from 2012 whose title I didn't quite explain: "the limit as it approaches" is a term in Calculus - helped to co-develop by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz to define The Derivative; Leibniz's impact was Integration. The point of the article in Physics Today I think is still three years hence quite relevant, as well as PT's own Calculus social reference.
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| South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement |
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| Harvard Theoretical Physicist Dr. Lisa Randall |
PHYSICS TODAY: Of all the sciences in the US, physics continues to have the lowest representation of women. Currently, women earn just 21% of bachelor’s degrees and 17% of PhDs in the field. Discourse about women in physics often centers on representation, and the unspoken assumption seems to be that if the representation of women were to increase to some higher level, all would be well. However, the focus on representation obscures important issues and ignores the day-to-day experiences of women physicists.
In fact, women physicists could be the majority in some hypothetical future yet still in their careers experience problems that stem from often unconscious bias. After all, science, and especially physical science, is seen by many cultures as a primarily male domain. But do women actually experience problems in their day-to-day work as physicists? Do they have equal access to opportunities and resources? If not, how does that inequity affect their careers? If harmful, sex-based differences of access exist, then those of us who care about the situation of women in physics need to come up with a solution that encompasses more than just increasing female representation.
I had the pleasure of being educated by Dr. Elvira Williams at North Carolina A and T State University. She was the fourth African American female awarded a PhD in physics in the United States, specifically Condensed Matter-Diffusion Physics, from Howard University (she's third from the bottom of this list). She last taught at Shaw University.
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| Dr. Elvira Williams: Cambridge Who's Who |
I'm proud and honored to have studied General Physics II and Electromagnetic Field Theory from her.
Physics Today: Women in Physics: A Tale of Limits
Help get this black sci-fi project greenlighted.
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| Image Source: NobelPrize.org |
Topics: Biology, Genetics, Nobel Prize, Research, STEM, Women in Science
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009
Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase".
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.
If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed. This is the case in cancer cells, which can be considered to have eternal life. Certain inherited diseases, in contrast, are characterized by a defective telomerase, resulting in damaged cells. The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies.
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 7 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/
National Institute of Health:
Discrimination, racial bias, and telomere length in African-American men.
Chae DH1, Nuru-Jeter AM2, Adler NE3, Brody GH4, Lin J5, Blackburn EH5, Epel ES3.
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| Source: Biography.com |
Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.
Translation: Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness. John of Salisbury, Wikiquote
Topics: Bloody Sunday, Civil Rights, Soldier, Voting Rights, Women's Rights
I knew I wanted to talk about this hero on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. The president will speak today in Alabama, and I would presume some part of his commentary will mention her particular shoulders (like my sister's) that stood up for one like me when I was just learning to walk. Going backwards, as I've stated, violates causality and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is better to go forward, together, lifted on shoulders that pushed us all here. She and many others, made our foray on astronautics at NASA; education and engineering; sports and politics up to and now inclusive of the presidency possible. The conditions were not as ubiquitous nor taken for granted as they are today. Thus, we have a generation that believes in magic; that neglecting the sacrifices of the past will have no impact on the present; that their rights taken for granted will always be there if they don't act upon them. There wouldn't be an effort at Voter ID for a non-problem, if your voice made no difference; had no impact.
Civil rights activist Amelia Boynton helped Martin Luther King Jr. plan the Selma to Montgomery March on Bloody Sunday, which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Amelia Boynton was born on August 18, 1911, in Savannah, Georgia. Her early activism included holding black voter registration drives in Selma, Alabama, from the 1930s through the '50s. In 1964, she became both the first African-American woman and the first female Democratic candidate to run for a seat in Congress from Alabama. The following year, she marched on Bloody Sunday. In 1990, Boynton won the Martin Luther King Jr. Medal of Freedom. Today, she tours on behalf of the Schiller Institute.
Also in 1964, Boynton and fellow civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. teamed up toward their common goals. At the time, Boynton figured largely as an activist in Selma. Still dedicated to securing suffrage for African Americans, she asked Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to come to Selma and help promote the cause. King eagerly accepted. Soon after, he and the SCLC set up their headquarters at Boynton's Selma home. There, they planned the Selma to Montgomery March of March 7, 1965.
Some 600 protesters arrived to participate in the event, which would come to be known as "Bloody Sunday." On the Edmund Pettus Bridge, over the Alabama River in Selma, marchers were attacked by policemen with tear gas and billy clubs. Seventeen protesters were sent to the hospital, including Boynton, who had been beaten unconscious. A newspaper photo of Boynton lying bloody and beaten drew national attention to the cause. Bloody Sunday prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, with Boynton attending as the landmark event's guest of honor.
Biography.com: Amelia Boynton, Civil Rights Activist
In the near future, troublesome women are marked “noncompliant” and trucked off to a space age Auxiliary Compliance Outpost – aka Bitch Planet – which is also the name of a new comic series by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro.
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| Image Source: Nobel Prize link below |
Topics: Biology, Diversity in Science, Medicine, Nobel Prize, STEM, Women in Science
Born: 4 January 1963, Fosnavåg, Norway
Affiliation at the time of the award: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain"
Field: physiology, spatial behavior
"May-Britt Moser - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 3 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/may-britt-moser-facts.html
ATTENTION, BSFS!
My newest book, "Lifemates" is finally out!
It is a 3-story anthology, coauthored by my good friend and co-writer, Terence Pegasus.
First Read the Plot, and then read the giveaway details below!
Wild Space Saga is a massive, sprawling webcomic trilogy by Brandon Hill, author of From Slate to Crimson and The World of Five Nations series, and co-writer and artist Terence “Pegasus” Elliot, weaving an epic tale of mankind’s struggle to survive in a far-flung sector of space in the distant future, against impossible odds.
The universe of Wild Space Saga has many tales to tell, fraught with adventure, romance, and tragedy. Tales of Wild Space brings to light the untold tales of this universe in times both past and present.
The Hunter and the Tiger
Ni’Linya, a indentured Feylan pleasure girl is the only friend in the life of Cole, a world-weary human assassin for the Second Imperium. For the past four years, each finished job takes him back to the penthouses of Xiao, and into the arms of his “Tiger”: the beautiful female to whom he pours out his heart, and whose bed he shares. As they indulge their nights, his Tiger sweetly calls him “Hunter,” and to his chagrin, refuses his money until the events surrounding one fateful mission to a hostile planet bring about revelations and changes in the small world of the star-crossed couple, both tragic and blessed.
Combat Pay Blues
Desperate for the considerable pay offered by a shady android, Isibar, a freelance spy for the Planetary Alliance and sometimes space pirate, takes on an assignment that no one has yet been brave (or crazy) enough to accept: infiltrating the reclusive world of Icona, the heart of the despotic, expansionist Second Imperium, in order to divulge their deepest, darkest secrets and ensure the safety of the free human worlds. Despite its initial ease, Isibar soon learns that this is a job that comes with far more hitches than he ever bargained for, and reveals far more sinister goings-on than he ever would have ever imagined.
Her Hand in Mine
Zynj used to be the shining capital planet of all human worlds until that fragile First Imperium fractured in a series of horrific wars. Now it is a burnt, polluted husk, with all humans living in underground cities and scrapping the once proud cities of the surface for raw materials to sell off-world. On this planet of provincial attitudes, Jules Galway, a lonely scrap hauler, reunites with Sar'vana Van, a Felyan friend from his childhood, who has returned with her people for routine maintenance on the systems that keep life for humans possible on the ruined world. The two happily continue their relationship where it left off ten long years ago, only to discover that in spite of the purist ways of Jules’s society, their feelings have grown beyond the puppy love of their youth. On a world that chafes under the fact that they live by alien charity, Jules and Sar’vana, having lived mutually peaceful lives until now, are exposed to internal and external perils they never thought would find them.
NOW HERE'S THE GIVEAWAY:
I'm giving away 10 copies of my book! So the first 10 responders -no more, no less- to my blog will be given a choice between a free .mobi file of the book, compatible with the Kindle and Kindle app, or a free .pdf file.
NOW HERE'S THE BONUS!
Those who go to the book site on Amazon ( Lifemates ) and review the book will receive ANOTHER free copy of my story, "From Slate to Crimson" as a special "thank you" bonus! This giveaway will end in 3 days (by 3/9/15), and there are only 10 slots, so space is very limited!
So if you love to read sci-fi, and would like to get even more free books by doing a simple review, just PM me and tell me whether you want a .mobi or .pdf sent to you. I will contact you by PM, and arrange the delivery! All I ask is that in your Amazon review, you be honest, but kind. I won't mind if you didn't like it, but just be civil. And be sure to refer me to your review when you do it, so I can send you the next book! Happy reading!
-Brandon
Mayer Mason
Topics: Carbon Nanotubes, Diversity in Science, Nanotechnology, Women in Science
University of Illinois, repost: 2012 Maria Goeppert Mayer Prize recipient
Citation:
"For innovative experiments that elucidate the electronic interactions and correlations in low-dimensional systems, in particular the use of local gates and tunnel probes to control and measure the electronic states in carbon nanotubes and graphene."
Additional note: The first photograph of a Maria Goeppert Mayor Prize recipient seems to be in 1996 with Dr. Majorie Ann Olmstead, most likely made a part of the site as society got comfortable with the Internet, advances in tools and what could be posted. The prize has been awarded by APS since 1986: "To recognize and enhance outstanding achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career, and to provide opportunities for her to present these achievements to others through public lectures in the spirit of Maria Goeppert Mayer." Dr. Mason seems to be - at first brush of the site - the first African American woman awarded this honor.
I attended her talk at the NSBP conference in Austin, Texas. Nobel Prize next, Dr. Mason!
NobelPrize.org: Maria Goeppert Mayer Biography
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| Dr. Maria Goeppert Mayer, Nobel Laureate |
Topics: Diversity, Nobel Prize, Nuclear Physics, Women in Science
Born: 28 June 1906, Kattowitz (now Katowice), Germany (now Poland)
Died: 20 February 1972, San Diego, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, La Jolla, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure"
Maria Goeppert Mayer was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, then Germany, the only child of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria, nee Wolff. On her father's side, she is the seventh straight generation of university professors.
She went to private and public schools in Göttingen and had the great fortune to have very good teachers. It somehow was never discussed, but taken for granted by her parents as well as by herself that she would go to the University. Yet, at that time it was not trivially easy for a woman to do so. In Göttingen there was only a privately endowed school which prepared girls for the "abitur", the entrance examination for the university. This school closed its doors during the inflation, but the teachers continued to give instructions to the pupils. Maria Goeppert finally took the abitur examination in Hannover, in 1924, being examined by teachers she had never seen in her life.
Maria Goeppert Mayer - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 3 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1963/mayer-facts.html
Maria Goeppert Mayer Award
To recognize and enhance outstanding achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career, and to provide opportunities for her to present these achievements to others through public lectures in the spirit of Maria Goeppert Mayer. The award consists of $2,500 plus a $4,000 travel allowance to provide opportunities for the recipient to give lectures in her field of physics at four institutions and at the meeting of the Society at which the award is bestowed and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. The award will be presented annually.
American Physical Society: Maria Goeppert Mayer Award
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| Still from You Tube |
Not sure where she is in the process, but hopefully she's close to completion if not already a PhD. There is no reason at all that there aren't more women in STEM fields except for bias and discouragement along their matriculation K-12 and post secondary. See last month's post: STEM and Other Biases. There are certain things we should discourage, as in our current obsession with living the lives of "reality TV stars," and encourage more of this. Otherwise, as I said in the post, we're shooting ourselves collectively in the foot, and wondering how the hole got there!
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| Image Source: Nobel Prize - Biographical (link below) |
Topics: Chemistry, Diversity in Science, Nobel Prize, STEM, Women in Science
Synopsis
Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.
Early Life
Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.
A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies. [1]
1. Biography.com: Marie Curie
2. American Institute of Physics: Marie Curie: Her Story in Brief
3. NobelPrize.org: Marie Curie - Biographical
