women in science – Australian Science

International Conference on Digital Discrimination and Social Networks Online

Danica Radovanovic — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 00:09:25 +0000

Recently, I had a chance to attend and participate at the ICUD International Conference: Digital Discrimination and Social Networks that took place takes on March 13 and 14, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The ICUD Project aims to Creatively Unveil hidden forms of Discrimination on the Internet, especially on social network sites such as Facebook, and provide practical tools to combat discrimination online. This project is lead by www.asceps.org, and is co-funded by the European Union’s DG Justice: Fundamental Right and Citizenship programme.

It was a wonderful opportunity and space for interaction, discussion, learning and exchange of ideas and experiences: for social workers, academics, researchers, educators, Internet experts, NGOs, activists, young people and anyone interested in the issues surrounding discrimination on the Internet, especially in regards to social networking sites.

Complex topics like teen usage of Internet tools and social networks, racial discrimination, digital divides, network strategy against discrimination, hate speech, online gaming communities, LGBT issues, presence and representations of women online, youth and identity were discussed during the two-day conference.

Each session, talk, workshop and panel contributed to the ICUD conference and discussion, I’m selecting here few of them, for other details please see the references.

Game Over Hate: Building Better Online Gaming Communities

A project and an initiative Game Over Hate (Germany/Portugal) that was presented during the first day of the conference – had the goal to tackle hate in online gaming environments and to foster inclusive gaming communities.

Participants had a chance to discuss the most profitable branch of the entertainment industry (video games), the massive online communities that exist around it and how everything comes together in a world of hate speech, trolling and rape culture.

In this workshop there was a discussion about the role of the internet as both entertainment and as an alternative to offline socialisation by looking at the impact, size and scope of the new online gaming communities. Through interaction, some stereotypes about games were unmasked. There was an interesting discussion on how players interact online, what types of games they play and what happens when so many people cooperate and compete online.

In an effort to understand this, workshop leaders look into cases from different communities, such as Anita Sarkeesian (FeministFrequency), Phil Fish (FEZ), Carolyn Petit (GameSpot), Zoe Quinn (Depression Quest), and “Fat, Ugly or Slutty

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The Highlights of 2013

Danica Radovanovic — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 10:04:12 +0000

This year our writers churned out a host of fantastic articles, including a series of posts dedicated to women in space, written by Sharon Harnett. One of the most notable of the series was all about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman astronaut. This year was the 50th anniversary of her historic spaceflight. We also had a few great interviews, including one with Henry Reich, creator of the YouTube series Minute Physics. We’ve managed a number of achievements. We’ve helped several science writers gain exposure and reputation world wide, we’ve appeared on ABC’s Newsline, and we’ve been listed in TED’s top 10 science and technology websites.

So, in no particular order, here are ten of our favourite articles from 2013. We hope you’ll enjoy these stories. Stay curious and scientifically passionate!

A Tale of Two STEM Women by Buddhini Samarasinghe

When I first read this story, I was struck by how often we focus on happy stories like Marie Curie’s, and how the story of someone like Clara Immerwahr remains largely forgotten. She had a tremendous amount of potential, as evidenced by her being the first female to receive a Ph.D at the University of Breslau, an endeavor that is certainly not for the faint-hearted even now. One can only wonder at the ‘might-have-beens’ if she had had the same support and encouragement that Marie Curie did, if she had not married Haber, or if Haber had been a different kind of person. These examples highlight that talent alone is not enough; we need to encourage that talent by promoting equality and recognizing our own biases when it comes to women in STEM. Read more>>

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman (in science) by Amy Reichelt

Obtaining a senior academic position for any aspiring young academic is one of those uphill struggles with roads lined with self doubt, setbacks and sacrifice. Some call it the way to tenure-track, in my mind it’s one of those ill-defined paths through a potentially haunted forest inhabited with monsters, gigantic poisonous spiders and creepy people who communicate by screaming. It can be harder still to even reach that point, particularly for young women. While the number of women professors in Europe, N. America and Australia has increased over the last decade, universities still have a disproportionately small number of women in senior professorial positions. Read more>>

Spiders on Mars? No, An Australian Radio Telescope! by Elizabeth Howell

The MWA is a powerful telescope in its own right, but what is even more exciting is it will form part of a larger project in the coming years. The Square Kilometre Array will link radio telescopes on two continents — Australia and Africa — to get a fine look at the sky in radio wavelengths. MWA is just one part of this array. There will also be dish receptors in eight countries in Africa, with the core and some mid-frequency aperture arrays in South Africa’s Karoo desert. Read more>>

Hopeful results in latest HIV vaccine trial, but many hurdles to overcome yet by David Borradale

A HIV vaccine, known as SAV001-H has shown promising results in an early clinical trial, with no adverse effects reported and importantly, a significant increase reported in HIV specific antibodies in participants who received the vaccine. In this trial, 33 HIV positive participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups: half into a treatment group receiving the vaccine and half into a placebo group who did not receive the vaccine. The participants were followed up at regular periods, testing safety of the vaccine and antibody response over a one year period. Read more>>

Are Australians Really Getting Dumber? by Magdeline Lum

The Australian Academy of Science has found that when it comes to science Australians are getting dumber in its latest report on science literacy. Compared to three years ago, less people in Australia know that the Earth’s orbit of the sun takes one year. Among 18-24 year olds 62% surveyed knew the correct answer, a fall from 74% three years ago. Other results would also send scientists into a tail spin of despair, with 27% of respondents saying that the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, though an improvement from 30% of respondents in 2010 who thought this. What does this all say? If you take the face value of the press release and the ensuing media coverage, Australians are getting dumber. Read more>>

From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories? by Lauren Fuge

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods, for an obvious reason: narrative helps us cognise information. Telling intelligible, coherent stories to both ourselves and others helps our brains to organise data about our lives and our world. But when we askwhy stories are so effective at helping us cognise information, the answers are surprising: it seems that somewhere in the otherwise ruthless process of natural selection, evolution has wired our brains to prefer storytelling over other forms of communication. Read more>>

Plastic’s Reach by Kelly Burnes

Plastic. Seems it has extended its reach into the farthest corners of the universe. An earliest post described how plastic has changed our lives, for better…and for worse. ADD link to earlier post. That post largely reflected on the growing problem of plastic in the oceans and the effect on plant and animal life. Now, it seems that plastic threatens our freshwater lakes now too. Read more>>

Postcard from Spitzer: weather on 2M2228 is hot and cloudy by Kevin Orrman-Rossiter

Long distance weather reports are now a commonality. The report for 2MASSJ22282889-431026 is somewhat unusual. It forecasts wind-driven, planet-sized clouds, with the light varying in time, brightening and dimming about every 90 minutes. The clouds on 2MASSJ22282889-431026 are composed of hot grains of sand, liquid drops of iron, and other exotic compounds. Definitely not the first place to spend a summer holiday. Not that 2MASSJ22282889-431026 (or 2M2228 as it is known in The Astrophysical Journal Letters) will appear on a travel itinerary anytime soon. For 2M2228 is a brown dwarf, 39.1 light years from earth. Read more>>

The bacteria that live inside hurricanes by Charles Ebikeme

Seven miles above the Earth’s surface, where the weather is born, lies the troposphere – the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Up there, where the clouds dance around, are bacteria that can make it rain, and are important for the formation of clouds. The atmospheric microbiome is a concept and field of study that is gaining importance. As we come to grips with a changing climate and environment, understanding more and more our Earth ecosystem remains vital. With hurricane damage in the US and elsewhere seemingly on an exponential increase in recent decades, it is important to mitigate for the worst. Read more>>

Quantum computing: Australian researchers store data on a single atom! by Markus Hammonds

Computing is also an incredibly fast moving field of technology, and research is finally taking us towards the exciting world of quantum computing! Quantum computers will work using quantum bits, or qubits for short, which are analogous to the digital bits used in computers like the one which you’re using to read this article. Recently, a team of engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time ever, how a single atom can be act as a qubit, effectively showing the first step in building an ultra fast quantum computer. And they might just have created the best qubit ever made. Read more>>

Happy 2014 from Markus, Charles, Kevin, Kelly, and Danica!

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Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:04:28 +0000

I’m loath to begin a weekly roundup on a low note, and I’m truly sorry to have to, but this most certainly needs to be discussed. It’s been a turbulent week this week in the science blogging world. Turbulent and full of raised concerns over the state of things for those in a science communication career. Basically, there have been two sexual harassment scandals in the news – the first concerning Urban Scientist Danielle Lee and her terrible treatment by an editor at biology online, and the second around playwright and author Monica Byrne and some downright shameful behaviour on the part of Bora Zivkovic, blogs editor at Scientific American.

Both women, after being given rather distasteful treatment, decided to go public with the matter. This has rightfully sparked some quite heated discussions across the online science writing community. The entire matter is summarised quite well by Priya Shetty at the Huffington Post and Laura Helmuth at Slate. I’d recommend reading Dr Isis’ perspective on all of this too. My personal opinion is that the behaviour of “Ofek” at biology online (who has been fired since the incident in question) and of Zivkovic (who has since resigned from the board of directors and Science Online) is an utter disgrace and humiliation to all of us involved in the science communication community. While it’s reassuring to know that neither of these recent events has occurred without repercussions, it raises the huge concern of precisely how often events like these occur and simply go unreported.

I feel it’s of prime importance to all of us to show our support to Lee and Byrne, not only for their sake but for the sake of all others out there who’ve been similarly marginalised. They need to know that they have our support and that we will listen if they choose to make the remarkably difficult decision to speak out about experiences like these. That is, after all, what a community is all about. Personally, I’d like all of online scicomms to be an open and welcoming forum for discussion of all kinds. I’m not sure if I feel it can be, knowing that things like this are occurring beneath the surface, but I truly hope that such nasty incidents can someday be a thing of the past.

Now… Scandals aside, there have also been some rather remarkable happenings this week in science.

Perhaps most remarkable is the news that amputees may be able to have their sense of touch restored with technology. Much like Luke Skywalker in The Return of the Jedi, people left disabled due to amputations may soon be able to not only control prosthetic limbs directly with their brains, but also feel them. Needless to say, the implications of this are just wonderful!

Prosthetic wired to the brain could help amputees feel touch

In my lab at the University of Chicago, we’re working to better understand how the sensory nervous system captures information about the surface, shape and texture of objects and conveys it to the brain. Our latest research creates a blueprint for building touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees and tetraplegics via a direct interface with the brain.

Recognising threats is a vital skill in the natural world, and has been a mainstay of evolution in animals since the Precambrian era. And some creatures have evidently gone to great lengths. Latest research shows that the rainbowfish, a fairly humble seeming species, can smell predators when they’re still embryos, a mere 4 days after fertilisation!

The nose knows: Rainbowfish embryos ‘sniff out’ predators

Jennifer Kelley, a scientist with the University of Western Australia, explains that predator recognition is required at such an early age because responding to predator cues is absolutely crucial for early survival. For example, detection of “alarm cues” suggests that other fish in the vicinity have been attacked by predators.

Seeming like something taken straight out of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, blood has been discovered inside a fossilised mosquito for the first time ever. While most likely not from a dinosaur, it’s fascinating to finally have concrete proof of such an audacious science fiction concept.

First Blood-Filled Mosquito Fossil Makes Jurassic Park Feel More Real

Even if it doesn’t bring us closer to getting an amusement park of death and delight, this is a pretty exciting discovery. We never knew that blood could last so long inside of a mosquito! What other kinds of surprises are hiding underneath Montana?

And finally, as an avid Instagram user myself, I find it rather interesting that a study has found that photographing your dinner can actually make the meal less enjoyable. While this doesn’t look to be a particularly big study, it exposes an interesting little facet of human psychology. And for the record, no, I don’t normally Instagram my food. Though I know a few people who do.

New research shows how ‘Instagramming’ a meal can ruin your appetite

Basically, when we look at photos of say, fish and chips over and over before we eat it, our senses become ‘bored’. The photos ruin your appetite by making you feel like you’ve already experienced eating the fish and chips before… This sensation is measured in levels of satiation, a scientific term for the ‘drop in enjoyment with repeated consumption’. Consumption, in this case can just be viewing a photo of food, not actually eating a food.

And finally, let’s end with something pretty. For some gorgeous botanical images, Botanartist is a brand new blog full of some really rather charming photographs of plants, both close up and extremely close up through a microscope. If you want to enjoy some cool macro photography and scientific explanations of what you’re seeing, you’ll probably find all of this just as marvellous as I do!

I hope everyone has a great week. Until next time, DFTBA and stay curious!

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-10-20 00:04:28). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-51/

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A Supernova Post-Mortem in Radio Waves

Markus — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:09:43 +0000

It was a late February night in 1987 when, standing on top of a Chilean mountain range, Ian Shelton saw something which no one had seen for centuries. Looking up in disbelief, he watched a star explode some 160 thousand light years away. Rushing to another observatory to check with someone else, he was initially met with stark disbelief. But there was no doubt. Shelton had seen a supernova explosion with his own eyes.

Named SN 1987A, this was the death of a massive star in the Tarantula nebula. Distant enough to not even be in our own galaxy, but in the Large Magellanic Cloud – one of the Milky Way’s smaller satellite galaxies, the discovery was reported independently by Albert Jones in New Zealand. This began decades of fascinating observations for astronomers, as many began to watch this supernova expand over the years, in real time.

Supernova which are close enough to see with the naked eye are rare beasts. This was, and still is, the only one close enough and visible enough to see properly with modern telescopes, giving us some of the best information we’ve ever had about how an exploding supernova interacts with the dusty interstellar clouds which surround it.

The latest observations of this literally awesome event come courtesy of a team of astronomers working in Australia and Hong Kong, led by Giovanna Zanardo at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). Using CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array in New South Wales, the researchers have published the highest resolution images of the stellar explosion’s aftermath ever taken.

Portrait of a Dying Star

High resolution images are wonderful in astronomy. The higher the resolution, the more you can learn about what you’re seeing. Zanardo and her colleages compared their observations with other images and data taken at optical and x-ray wavelengths. On doing so, they gained some fresh insight into exactly what happens shortly after a star explodes.

In the centre of the explosion, stellar ground zero, they discovered a pulsar wind nebula. This is a pocket of intensely hot material emitted by a neutron star*, the last remains of the exploding star’s core, proving that SN 1987A did not create a black hole.

Referred to in technical jargon as a “compact source”, a neutron star is a tiny ball of incredibly dense material. With a mass up to over 3 times the mass of the Sun, these bizarre little objects truly are compact. An average neutron star has a radius of just 12 km, which is comparable with the size of Sydney. Yes, you read that correctly. The mass of a star compressed into something with a size similar to a large city.

This discovery actually answers a long standing puzzle about SN 1987 A. Supernovae like SN 1987A are normally expected to form neutron stars, because of the near-unimaginable pressures which occur inside an exploding star. But for several years, despite looking carefully, no astronomers could find any trace of a neutron star amid the stellar debris. But the star which caused this supernova would not have been massive enough to collapse into a black hole, leading theoreticians to try and devise explanations for why there was no neutron star to be seen.

If Zanardo’s team are right, and they have indeed found a pulsar wind nebula inside the shattered remnants of this dead star, then it has to be generated by something. Unless I’m mistaken, this may be some of the most convincing evidence yet for the missing neutron star!

Seeing Clearly in Invisible Light

Discovering all of this, however, was far from easy. Radio images at centimetre wavelengths are difficult to capture with detail. Exceptionally good weather conditions are needed. Zanardo explains, “For this telescope, these [observations] are usually only possible during cooler winter conditions, but even then the humidity and low elevation of the site makes things very challenging.

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-04-09 00:09:43). A Supernova Post-Mortem in Radio Waves. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/physics/a-supernova-post-mortem-in-radio-waves/

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Weekly Science Picks

Kelly Burnes — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:17:20 +0000

Google celebrated International Women’s Day with a Doodle
Source: Google

Women. This is the theme of this edition of Weekly Science Picks. Yesterday, in case you missed it, was International Women’s Day. And it is important to note the achievements of women in careers such as teaching, neuroscience and engineering because women are still in a tightly contested race with the male counterpart. But who doesn’t enjoy a little competition?

The articles selected this week touch on another issue that is being hotly debated in the U.S. as of late – the question of if women can have it all. Many of you have perhaps heard that Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has started down a path of empowering women with her new book released this week, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”, accompanied by the creation of Lean In Circles, a social networking group to help women express issues of dealing with work and family. I’m not going to get into a debate about this right now, except to encourage some discussion of this topic among our readers, female or male, and think how it applies to life in the sciences.

This first pick deals with exactly this topic. It is a selection of women in science from around the globe, tackling incredible and exciting challenges in the lab, and outside of it with families.

From the frontline: 30 something science, What’s being female got to do with anything, ask the scientists who are starting labs and having kids by Heidi Ledford, Anna Petherick, Alison Abbott & Linda Nordling

“I never thought that my life had to be limited to anything, and I want to set that example for my daughter.

Cite this article:
Burnes K (2013-03-10 00:17:20). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-22/
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Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman (in science)

amy.r — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:01:03 +0000

Obtaining a senior academic position for any aspiring young academic is one of those uphill struggles with roads lined with self doubt, setbacks and sacrifice. Some call it the way to tenure-track, in my mind it’s one of those ill-defined paths through a potentially haunted forest inhabited with monsters, gigantic poisonous spiders and creepy people who communicate by screaming. It can be harder still to even reach that point, particularly for young women. While the number of women professors in Europe, N. America and Australia has increased over the last decade, universities still have a disproportionately small number of women in senior professorial positions.

While the numbers of female students are high at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (in my undergraduate studies there seemed a 1:3 male to female ratio), the senior academic positions tend to be held by men. This discrepancy is certainly not a question of ability. It sadly appears that a large proportion of talented female students either abandon their career ambitions in favour of a non-academic job, turn down fellowships or accept jobs at less competitive universities allowing a focus on raising children and enjoying family life. Quite simply, it appears that many women in academia lose faith in being able to “have it all

Cite this article:
Reichelt A (2013-01-29 00:01:03). Sometimes it's hard to be a woman (in science). Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/women-in-science-2/sometimes-its-hard-to-be-a-woman-in-science/

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Hands on Science in the Early Years

Katie McIntyre — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:28:34 +0000

Hands on science activities to engage students in scientific inquiry and investigation are key in the early years to develop skills and knowledge in all areas of science. No one knows this better than Mrs Suzanne Clarke who is the founder of the mini-scammers science club at Mitchelton State School, a feeder club for SC@M (Science Club at Mitchie).

Hands on learning in the early years.

Established just this year, the junior science club encourages students in the early years to formulate hypothesis, carry out experiments and discuss their findings with their peers directly mirroring the similar process used in later years. Student work in multi-aged groups to manipulate materials and equipment, generate solutions and compare their results. As Mrs Clarke highlights “this method of discovery learning engages all children and promotes the use of multiple intelligences

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In the footsteps of Marie Curie: L’Oreal-UNESCO honours Women in Science

Charles Ebikeme — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:40:23 +0000

Paris, France — March 2012. The auditorium is filled to the brim — from the doors to the pulpit. High school children at the back, dignitaries at the front. Looking around you get the sense of a grand occasion in waiting. Shirts, ties and smart casuals. In true international style, headphones are available — the proceedings will be translated into French and English.

We are within the halls of the Institut Pasteur, right in the heart of Paris. A place whose name signposts the amount of history that comes along with it. In his time Louis Pasteur made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine. You get the sense something on that scale is about to happen.

Six empty chairs sit on a raised stage at the front of the auditorium, below a presentation screen with two logos and four words. The logos are unmistakable. L’Oreal and UNESCO have come together “For Women In Science

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