Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Science

in Biology, Education, Science | June 14th, 2013

A year ago the Euro­pean Union launched a cam­paign to attract more young women into the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sions. In Europe, women lag behind men in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, mak­ing up only a third of sci­ence researchers. But the video the EU made was laugh­able.

You may recall. It was called, Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! and fea­tured three young fash­ion­istas parad­ing around in high heels while a male sci­en­tist peers quizzi­cal­ly at them over his micro­scope.

Along comes sci­ence jour­nal­ist Ker­stin Hop­pen­haus to set the record straight. Hoppenhaus’s new series for the Ger­man sci­ence site SciLogs is called Sig­nif­i­cant Details: Con­ver­sa­tions with Women in Sci­ence. The inter­views are fresh, infor­ma­tive, and acces­si­ble.

It’s inspir­ing to see such a range of women explain their research and walk us through their process for doing it.

A recent inter­view fea­tured Dr. Kris­ten Pan­fil­io (above), an Amer­i­can biol­o­gist on fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. Panfilio’s work focus­es on insect extraem­bry­on­ic devel­op­ment, which means she stud­ies how insect tis­sues devel­op into the bug’s ulti­mate shape by com­par­ing the process in two insects: the milk­weed bug and the red flour bee­tle.

Each con­ver­sa­tion begins with a “sig­nif­i­cant detail” of the woman’s work. With the wry humor and pre­ci­sion of a true sci­en­tist, Pan­fil­io demon­strates how she pre­pares her favorite tool, a glass stick, by soft­en­ing the end with a cig­a­rette lighter.

Panfilio’s spe­cif­ic field is evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­men­tal genet­ics. Along with her lab assis­tants she stud­ies how embry­on­ic cells know what role they should play in form­ing a spe­cif­ic organ­ism shape. How does a bone cell know it’s a bone cell?

The inter­view is about as much like Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! as Meryl Streep is like Lind­say Lohan. This is a real per­son talk­ing about how she has built her career (she want­ed to be an artist when she was a teenag­er and stud­ied ancient Chi­nese his­to­ry at a small lib­er­al arts col­lege) and explain­ing her high­ly spe­cial­ized work.

She also touch­es on one of the most won­der­ful things about sci­en­tif­ic research: Some of the most excit­ing moments are when the results don’t align at all with expec­ta­tions.

Best of all, it’s just one of the won­der­ful inter­views in Hoppenhaus’s series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix and vis­it her web­site to learn more.

 

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The Greatness of Charles Darwin Explained with Rap Music

in Biology, Music | June 13th, 2013

Read Open Cul­ture long enough, and soon­er or lat­er you’ll encounter “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman, the Cana­di­an MC whose rhyming sub­jects of choice include evo­lu­tion, The Can­ter­bury Tales, and British ver­sus Cana­di­an Eng­lish. Though the hard-read­ing Brinkman has, it seems, staked out the musi­cal genre of “lit hop” for him­self, he’s gained just as much of his dis­tinc­tive brand of rig­or­ous­ly fac­tu­al hip-hop noto­ri­ety by rap­ping for the oth­er of what C.P. Snow defined as the “two cul­tures.” His par­al­lel sci­ence rap­ping career began on a com­mis­sion from Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick micro­bi­ol­o­gist and Rough Guide to Evo­lu­tion author Mark Pallen. Out of all this came “the first peer-reviewed rap” show, The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion, whose devel­op­ment we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured.

Above, you’ll find the music video for “Artif­i­cal Selec­tion,” one song from The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion. “Arti­fi­cial selec­tion, it starts with a ques­tion,” Brinkman raps. “How did peo­ple ever get cows, chick­ens and pigs / And oth­er ani­mals and plants to act so domes­tic? / We took them from the wild and we bred them, brethren.” He explores the top­ic fur­ther, touch­ing on Charles Dar­win’s The Ori­gin of Species, the inad­ver­tent usage of evo­lu­tion by ear­ly farm­ers and live­stock breed­ers, domes­tic aphids kept by ant colonies, and even the nat­ur­al selec­tion inher­ent in the MC’s devel­op­ment of his per­for­mance tech­niques. On Brinkman’s offi­cial site, the video comes with tags like “Hered­i­ty,” “Lamark­ism,” and “Uni­ty of Com­mon Descent.” How many rap videos could cred­i­bly do the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Isabella Rossellini Embody the Animal Kingdom’s Most Shocking Maternal Instincts in Mammas

in Biology, Comedy, K-12, Science | May 13th, 2013

Moth­er’s Day can elic­it com­pli­cat­ed emo­tions in the human ani­mal. Not so Moth­er Ham­ster. While you were out to brunch, she was mat­ter-of-fact­ly devour­ing the run­ti­est of her lit­ter. And not because he failed to present her with a bou­quet and flow­ery card. “It’s a good morsel to recoup some of the vit­a­mins and pro­tein that are lost dur­ing child­birth,” she explains with a shrug.

This heart­warm­ing vignette is but one of the rev­e­la­tions in Mam­mas, the lat­est web series from the inquis­i­tive and extreme­ly game Isabel­la Rosselli­ni. Hav­ing embod­ied a vari­ety of insects, arach­nids, and marine life in the sci­ence-based Green Porno and its fol­low-up Seduce Me, the moth­er of two is cur­rent­ly suit­ing up to play some of the Ani­mal King­dom’s most noto­ri­ous moth­ers, from the oppor­tunis­tic Cuck­oo to the self-sac­ri­fic­ing Aus­tralian sub­so­cial crab spi­der (Diaea ergan­dros).

The com­i­cal­ly inven­tive cos­tumes are an added bonus, par­tic­u­lar­ly for any human moth­er (or father) with an aver­sion to dress­ing their ani­mal-lov­ing off­spring in store bought dis­guis­es, come Hal­loween. Catch the com­plete series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (and YouTube)

Film­ing a Sprint­ing Chee­tah at 1,200 Frames Per Sec­ond

Rainn Wil­son Talks About Life’s Big Ques­tions in His Web Series Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake

Ayun Hal­l­i­day thinks Isabel­la Rosselli­ni is the bee’s knees, espe­cial­ly when her glass legs are filled with beer. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Read the Original Letters Where Charles Darwin Worked Out His Theory of Evolution

in Biology, History | April 3rd, 2013

darwin letter2

So much has been writ­ten about hand-writ­ten let­ters, most­ly lament­ing their death. What else can be added about the beau­ti­ful vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of hand­writ­ing and the sat­is­fy­ing feel of paper sta­tion­ary and envelopes, not to men­tion the mir­a­cle of let­ter deliv­ery? Think of all those heart­sick sol­diers in wars old and mod­ern receiv­ing an actu­al let­ter from home, thou­sands of miles away.

The only news about let­ter writ­ing is that we con­tin­ue to dis­cov­er its val­ue. Just recent­ly Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty pub­lished some 1,200 let­ters exchanged between Charles Dar­win and his clos­est friend, the botanist Joseph Dal­ton Hook­er. The let­ters span 40 years of Darwin’s work­ing life, from 1843 to his death in 1882, and join the oth­er let­ters in the Dar­win Cor­re­spon­dence Project.

There is so much to appre­ci­ate about these let­ters. Call it 19th cen­tu­ry bro­mance, if you must, but the cor­re­spon­dence between Dar­win and Hook­er touched on near­ly every sub­ject, sci­en­tif­ic and per­son­al. Dar­win wrote Hook­er for his help nego­ti­at­ing with pub­lish­ers, for his opin­ion about whether seeds from islands with­out four-legged ani­mals are ever hook-shaped, and for his sup­port after his 6‑year-old daugh­ter Maria died.

From a sci­en­tif­ic point of view the most impor­tant let­ter may be the one Dar­win wrote Hook­er on Jan­u­ary 11, 1844. Writ­ing from his home, Down House in Kent, Dar­win fires ques­tions at Hook­er about seeds, seashells and Arc­tic species—his mind obvi­ous­ly a blur of activity—and then describes that his work has tak­en a “pre­sump­tu­ous” turn. After years of research and col­lect­ing spec­i­mens, he was begin­ning to form an idea that “species are not (it is like con­fess­ing a mur­der) immutable.”

Fif­teen years lat­er Dar­win pub­lished On the Ori­gin of Species. (Find it on our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.)

In his let­ters to Hook­er, him­self a great botanist and explor­er, Dar­win works out and wor­ries over his ideas. In one let­ter he express­es impa­tience with all oth­er exist­ing expla­na­tions for the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of plants.

The Cor­re­spon­dence Project has archived more than 7,500 of Darwin’s let­ters alto­geth­er, includ­ing the mail he sent home while at sea aboard The Bea­gle. Dar­win was 22 when he joined a team to chart the coast of South Amer­i­ca, a trip that was planned for two years but which stretched into five. After a bout of sea­sick­ness, Dar­win wrote home to his father.

A quick aside to those who long for the days of long let­ters and who believe that our IQs drop a point with each text: Take note of Darwin’s lib­er­al use of amper­sands, numer­als and quaint 19th cen­tu­ry con­trac­tions (sh’d for should, etc.). IMHO, these are all just Vic­to­ri­an short­cuts to speed up the process of hand­writ­ing when the mind can work so much more quick­ly.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site: .

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Are You Ready for the Return of Lost Species?: Stewart Brand on the Dawn of De-Extinction

in Biology, TED Talks | March 18th, 2013

The Earth is los­ing life forms at a dis­turb­ing rate. The biol­o­gist Edward O. Wil­son has esti­mat­ed that at least 27,000 species per year are dis­ap­pear­ing from our plan­et. That’s an aver­age of 74 species a day, or three every hour. Researchers warn that if we stay on this track, the Earth will enter its sixth mass extinc­tion–the first since the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

With ani­mal and plant habi­tats being crowd­ed out by a human pop­u­la­tion that has passed the 7 bil­lion mark and is grow­ing at a rate of 70 mil­lion peo­ple per year, sci­en­tists attempt­ing to stem the tide of extinc­tion have their work cut out for them. The vast major­i­ty of efforts, of course, are aimed at pre­serv­ing endan­gered species and mak­ing sure more species do not become endan­gered. But one man is spear­head­ing a bold project to actu­al­ly bring back species we have already lost.

Stew­art Brand first came to noto­ri­ety in the 1960s, as one of Ken Kesey’s Mer­ry Pranksters and as the cre­ator of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log. In 1996 he co-found­ed the Long Now Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing long-term think­ing in our accel­er­at­ing cul­ture, with its “patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span.” One of Brand’s pet projects at Long Now is Revive & Restore, a pro­gram to coor­di­nate genet­ic research into bring­ing back present­ly extinct species. Brand spoke about the project (see above) on Feb­ru­ary 27 at a TED con­fer­ence in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia.

Revive & Restore’s first project is to bring back the pas­sen­ger pigeon, a bird that died off in 1914 but was once so abun­dant that migra­to­ry flocks in North Amer­i­ca would dark­en the sky. The pas­sen­ger pigeon was cho­sen as the ini­tial project because it is bet­ter-known than many extinct species and because the bird’s DNA (tak­en from muse­um spec­i­mens) has already been sequenced. But Brand promis­es that the pas­sen­ger pigeon is only the begin­ning. “The fact is,” he says, “humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. We have the abil­i­ty now, and maybe the moral oblig­a­tion, to repair some of the dam­age.”

Passenger Pigeon Audubon .jpg

Pas­sen­ger Pigeon (Ectopistes migra­to­rius) by John James Audubon, 1824. Water­col­or, pas­tel, graphite, gouache, black chalk and black ink on paper. The image depicts a behav­ior known as “billing,” in which one bird shares food by regur­gi­tat­ing it into the bill of anoth­er. The male, with it’s more col­or­ful plumage, is shown stand­ing on the low­er branch, with the female up above.

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Captivating Collaboration: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Create Golden Sculptures

in Art, Biology, Science | February 24th, 2013

Once upon a time, the lar­vae of the Cad­dis Fly were con­sid­ered pret­ty unas­sum­ing crea­tures, fresh­wa­ter dwellers whose appeal was lim­it­ed to trout and trout fish­er­men. That is until French artist Hubert Duprat came along with an aes­thet­ic offer they could­n’t refuse.

Left to their own devices, Cad­dis lar­vae con­struct pro­tec­tive cas­es from nat­ur­al mate­ri­als found in their habi­tat, patch­ing small pieces togeth­er with silken thread. A chance encounter with some prospec­tors at a riv­er in south­west­ern France led Duprat to won­der how the Cad­dis lar­vae might adapt if gold fig­ured more promi­nent­ly among their build­ing sup­plies. Thus began The Won­der­ful Cad­dis Worm: Sculp­tur­al Work in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tri­chopteras, an ongo­ing artis­tic exper­i­ment in a care­ful­ly con­trolled, sci­en­tif­ic set­ting.

Basi­cal­ly these birds are spin­ning their own gild­ed cages with what­ev­er lux­u­ry mate­ri­als Duprat intro­duces into their arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment. The result­ing jew­el encrust­ed cre­ations would not be out of place in a Madi­son Avenue win­dow, though it’s pos­si­ble a near­sight­ed dowa­ger might mis­take the tiny jew­el­er for a cock­roach.

hubert-duprat

Whether or not one would opt to wear one of these blinged-out insect cas­ings were mon­ey no object, one has to admit their engi­neer­ing is a most unusu­al feat. It would make for one humdinger of a Sci­ence Fair project if only Duprat had­n’t patent­ed the tech­nique in 1983.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pi in the Sky: The World’s Largest Ephemer­al Art Instal­la­tion over Beau­ti­ful San Fran­cis­co

Artists Turn Weath­er Data into Swirling “Liv­ing Por­traits” of Con­ti­nen­tal U.S. Wind Pat­terns

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is slow­ly fig­ur­ing out how a writer home­schools a graph­ic nov­el enthu­si­ast in sub­jects of a sci­en­tif­ic nature. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Get Ready for MIT’s “Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life” on edX

in Biology, MIT, MOOCs | January 30th, 2013

edX announced today what looks like a promis­ing new open course — Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life. Host­ed by pro­fes­sor Eric Lan­der, one of the lead­ers of the Human Genome Project, this course will give stu­dents a ground­ing in “top­ics taught in the MIT intro­duc­to­ry biol­o­gy cours­es and many biol­o­gy cours­es across the world.” The course will cov­er every­thing from the basics of DNA to the intri­ca­cies of genomics. And it won’t run you any mon­ey. But it will require some time — about 6–8 hours per week, across 12 weeks (March 5 — May 28). Plus here’s a nice perk: any stu­dent who earns a pass­ing grade will receive “a cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery,” also free of charge. You can enroll in the course right here.

We have added Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life to our ever-grow­ing list of MOOCs/Free Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es, along with anoth­er pri­mo edx course, a MOOC ver­sion of Michael Sandel’s Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?. Be sure to check it out.

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Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929

in Archives, Biology, Science | January 22nd, 2013

Ornithol­o­gists and bird watch­ers rejoice. After a dozen years, The Cor­nell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library has ful­ly dig­i­tized its near­ly 150,000 audio record­ings (a total run­ning time of 7,513 hours), rep­re­sent­ing close to 9,000 dif­fer­ent species, such as the very unset­tling-sound­ing Barred Owl (above). While the col­lec­tion also includes the sounds of whales, ele­phants, frogs, pri­mates, and oth­er ani­mals, the pri­ma­ry empha­sis here is on birds (it is a Lab of Ornithol­o­gy, after all), and there is an incred­i­ble range of calls. Cor­nell rec­om­mends some of the high­lights below:

Ear­li­est record­ing: Cor­nell Lab founder Arthur Allen was a pio­neer in sound record­ing. On a spring day in 1929 he record­ed this Song Spar­row sound­ing much as they do today

Youngest bird: This clip from 1966 records the sounds of an Ostrich chick while it is still inside the egg – and the researchers as they watch

Liveli­est wake-up call: A dawn cho­rus in trop­i­cal Queens­land, Aus­tralia is burst­ing at the seams with war­bles, squeals, whis­tles, booms and hoots

Best can­di­date to appear on a John Coltrane record: The indri, a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clar­inet

Most spines tin­gled: The incom­pa­ra­ble voice of a Com­mon Loon on an Adiron­dacks lake in 1992

Most errat­ic con­struc­tion project: the stac­ca­to ham­mer­ing sounds of a wal­rus under water

Most like­ly to be mis­tak­en for aliens arriv­ing: Birds-of-par­adise make some amaz­ing sounds – here’s the UFO-sound of a Curl-crest­ed Manu­code in New Guinea

Whether you’re an enthu­si­as­tic bird­er, prac­tic­ing sci­en­tist, or sound-sam­ple hunter, you’ll find some­thing to blow your mind at the exten­sive col­lec­tions of the Macaulay Library. Both ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al nat­u­ral­ists, for exam­ple, can acquire, visu­al­ize, mea­sure, and ana­lyze ani­mal sounds with a free ver­sion of the Cor­nell Lab’s pro­pri­etary inter­ac­tive sound analy­sis soft­ware, Raven.

And admir­ers of the aston­ish­ing vari­ety and beau­ty of the bird-of-par­adise should stay tuned for the Bird-of-Par­adise Project web­site, launch­ing this month. Sign up to receive an email when the full site launch­es. Mean­while, watch the project’s spell­bind­ing trail­er below.

Vis­it the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s YouTube page for more fas­ci­nat­ing bird videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (and YouTube)

Josh Jones is a free­lance writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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