Science Cheerleader

Joanne gives a beautiful review of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes. Joanne’s Top Model doll is wearing a dress representing something a woman would wear in the mid 1840s.

Are you a 30 year-old male with the physical building skills to design inventions and create amazing gadgets?

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Visit GotCast.com by February 15!

I’m here in Pittsburgh, PA, at Carnegie Mellon University where Discover Magazine, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, is producing a panel discussion on the future of robotics! The event takes place tonight and highlights will be featured in a subsequent issue of Discover, while recorded interviews will appear on NSF.gov, the Research Channel, and DiscoverMagazine.com
Thought it would be fun to share with you all that goes into producing one of these events.
Each panelist (described here) is interviewed on camera. The screen in the background is plain now, but using “green screen” technology, the editor will drop in some cool backgrounds. Here’s MIT’s Rodney Brooks being interviewed. When asked “what would make robots better?” he replied: “Give robots the visual object recognition capabilities of a 2-year-old child; the verbal comprehension of 4-year-old; the manual dexterity of a 6-year-old; and the social understandings of an 8-year old. That’s it.”

And, here’s Robin Murphy being interviewed about her search and rescue robots.

Then Discover’s photographer take portraits of the panelists and the moderator for use in the magazine. Here’s the moderator, Discover’s editor Corey Powell, preparing for his portrait.Discover’s director of photography, Rebecca Horne, is calling the shots from the back there.

Here’s the video producer, Dan Agan, with Discover’s marketing director, Tricia Gately, talking through the on stage line up (while panelists Rodney Brooks and Javier Movellan look on).

Oh, and here’s Tank, the Roboceptionist who greeted me when I entered CMU’s Gates Building where this event will take place this evening.

Guests will start arriving at the Rashid Auditorium around 6:30 pm. Show time is 7pm!

Stay tuned for the feature article in Discover!

John-the-Tourist writes:

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas“.  Not quite true – my intrepid Science Cheerleader squad member John Ohab nabbed a snazzy Einstein T-shirt while he was recently in Las Vegas and presumably got the shirt outside the city limits.

Now, if you REALLY want to do something that you don’t want your mother to find out about, you need to be in the vicinity of a black hole, in which (as far as we know) nothing can escape.  My friend Matt (who works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) quipped “What happens in the event horizon stays in the event horizon”.  Matt’s son Owen told the joke on “CBS Sunday Morning” and Matt’s wife Robin (who is a graphical designer) turned the quip into a T-shirt (modeled by their daughter Lindsay) that you can purchase from Cafe Press. There is also a light-background version of the design.

So, be bold!  Show the universe that secrets can be kept – as long as you are within the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole.

P.S. – Don’t forget our own nifty Science Cheerleader T-shirts!  Make a fashion statement and fill up your closet!

Image source:  Matt Crawford

Tomorrow, I’m heading to Pittsburgh, PA, to prep for another Discover Magazine roundtable discussion. This time, the topic is on the future of the machine: How will robots transform industry, health care, and warfare? And will they ever be our equals? This is part of a multi-year series of Discover panel discussions sponsored by the National Science Foundation and hosted by a number of awesome institutions including: The Franklin Institute, CalTech, The Exploratorium, and Capitol Hill. This year, we’ve got Carnegie Mellon University, the South-by-Southwest Festival/Austin (see Discover’s abstract here!) and a yet-to-be finalized host.

Here’s some more information on Thursday’s event at Carnegie Mellon University:

Date: January 28th, 7pm.

Panelists:
Rodney Brooks, MIT

Javier Movellan, UC San Diego

Robin Murphy, Texas A&M University

Red Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University

Hosted by Discover Magazine’s editor in chief, Corey Powell.

I’ll post highlights here!

Hat tip to David Hartman for sending this recent article to us. David’s the former host of Good Morning America and widely sought-after speaker on all things aviation and beyond.

The article calls attention to a report in yesterday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which a study of first- and second-graders “suggests female elementary school teachers who lack confidence in their own math skills could be passing their anxiety along to the girls they teach.” Lead researcher,  Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago, says because young students “tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls.” (Maybe moms who fear math should teach preteens, because it’s been my experience that daughters model the exact opposite preferences of their moms. But I digress.)

It’s worth noting that the math gender gap is narrowing and in fact some say there’s no such thing as a “math gender gap”. So how do we explain the fact girls and boys score roughly the same on standardized math tests until they reach high school? Until recently, girls in high school weren’t taking the same rigorous math courses that the boys were. Now that they are, scores are evening out. Yup, it’s that simple. Check out this piece from Time.

And remember what Rita-the-Eagles-Cheerleader/Mathematician taught us:

“2-4-6-8!”

“The sum is 20.”
Cheers!

Meet Michelle C.  Today, she’s an Analytical Chemist at DuPont. Not too long ago she was a New Orleans Saints cheerleader. Surprised? For crying out loud how many times have we told you about the pro-cheerleaders-turned-scientists? Wait until you see how many more we’ve uncovered! I still think my home-town Eagles cheerleaders would win a Cheerleaders-as-Scientists Superbowl.

Back to Michele C. Here’s her story:

“Why chemistry? I can’t explain it but I just fell in love with chemistry in high school and by the time I was in college, I looked forward to going to chemistry labs. I didn’t care how much time I spent in the labs, I loved it! I did so well in my first couple of labs that the professor approached me and asked me if I ever considered getting a degree in chemistry. (At the time I was planning to go to pharmacy school.) When she told me I could get a job doing lab work analysis and instrumentation it caught my interest. I went home and discussed this with my Dad who worked in a chemical plant and he explained to me that there were chemists who worked in the labs at his plant. Before this, it wasn’t clear to me what a chemist did.

Once I approached my final year of college I applied for a co-op program with a local chemical company. Many people suggested I add “NFL Cheerleader” to my resume because it would demonstrate that I was able to earn good grades, manage a job, and find time to handle the responsibilities that come with being a cheerleader.

Well, it almost cost me my first job! I found out later that one of the chemist was dead set against interviewing me because he didn’t think I’d be smart enough and I’d be “too worried about my hair and makeup” as he later told me. Fortunately for me, he was out the day I was interviewed and offered the job. Turns out the company extended my employment beyond the traditional term of one semester.

I will never forget my “farewell” gathering. The chemist who was dead set against hiring me stood up and told me he owed me an apology. He said he immediately stereotyped me as a “dumb cheerleader” and assumed I would be an awful chemist – he said I proved him wrong and he said I was one of his favorite and best students to ever come through the program. I just smiled. Knowing that I helped break a stereotype made me feel great. (Although still today I get “wait, you were an NFL cheerleader? And you are a chemist? That just doesn’t sound right”. )

I danced with several girls who had their PhD’s, Masters etc and it’s our obligation to share this duality with the public in an effort to help young girls feel comfortable following all of their dreams (and to help them understand how important education is and frankly how much fun science can be).
GOOOO Science and GOOOO Saints!

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), an international conference that brings together designers, developers, manufacturers, and distributors of consumer electronics products. CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry, and enables consumer innovations to grow and thrive. It was quite an amazing experience, full of new e-readers, 3D TVs, holographic displays, multi-touch screens, and some of the hottest new tech gadgets around.

Still, I couldn’t help but be most proud of this glorious yellow Albert Einstein t-shirt that I nabbed at the Promise Technology booth.  It was well worth the 20 minutes of technical jargon I had to endure while listening to a pitch for the company’s new Smartstor Zero network storage device.

Hot diggity-DOG! After years in the making, my partner, Michael Gold, and I–with generous support from Science House–have officially unveiled the beta version (that means this is still a work-in-progress) of ScienceForCitizens.net . Science journalist, Carl Zimmer, who frequently writes for Discover and Time Magazine, said “It’s like Amazon.com for all sorts of possibilities for doing cool citizen science”. We’ll take that!

We’re seeking your feedback on ways we can make the site a phenomenal resource for all who use it. And, consider registering as a new member you can can explore the many citizen science projects out there, add your own project, create a personalized blog, or just meet up online with folks who share your interests.

I had the opportunity to unveil the site during the increasingly popular Science Online 2010 conference in Durham, N.C., this past weekend where I was invited to speak about citizen science, adult science literacy, and science in the media to a captive audience of science writers and bloggers. [I think my family and local friends were relieved to finally catch a break from me yapping about these topics every chance I get. Break's over folks, sorry ]

Here’s more about the Citizen Science session and the launch of ScienceForCitizens.net . Soon, I’ll post a report here on some of the most interesting issues sifted from some of the other sessions at Science Online 2010,  including: Adult Science Literacy, Science in the Media, Blogging 102, and more. For now, here’s a picture taken at the conference, of me (left) with uber science communicators: Dr. Kiki Sanford, Rebecca Skloot, and Joanne Manaster.

Steady as She Goes? Three Generations of Students through the Science and Engineering Pipeline

In October 2009, Rutgers University released an important (if not provocative) report that didn’t make the headlines and was barely mentioned by the usual STEM chest-pounders (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). I mean that in a good way–we need those folks. Wait, I’m one of them.

But why haven’t we heard much about this report? It may have something to do with a key finding that, in some ways, seems to contradict some of the common pull quotes of STEM-related press releases where we often hear about the need–and, more recently, read about the financial investments–to turn more kids onto STEM careers. Rightly so, especially given the fact that the number of STEM graduate degrees earned in the U.S. in 2006 ranked among the lowest of the G-8 countries. (Digging up recent stats now. If you have info, would you kindly send it to me?)

Here’s where the confusion sets in. Based on the findings of the Rutgers report, a HUGE problem is being dissed. From the report:

Yet, is there evidence of an actual long-term decline in the proportion of American students with the relevant training and qualifications to pursue STEM jobs? We have argued elsewhere that the United States actually supplies more than enough students prepared for STEM jobs and that there is little evidence of a current domestic supply bottleneck (Lowell and Salzman, 2007).1 We found that universities in the United States actually graduate many more STEM students than are hired each year. We also found that the U.S. education system produces large numbers of top-performing science and math students.2

But….?

“Highly qualified students may be choosing a non-(science, technology, engineering and mathematics) job because it pays better, offers a more stable professional career, and/or perceived as less exposed to competition from low-wage economies,” writes Georgetown University demographer Lindsay Lowell and colleagues, in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded study. “The problem may not be that there are too few (science) qualified college graduates, but rather that (science) firms are unable to attract them.”

In an April speech at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), President Obama seconded years of concern over the U.S. scientific workforce, particularly a 2005 NAS report, by calling for more engineering and science graduates from U.S. colleges.

However, the supply of technically-capable students has remained level over the last three decades, find the researchers, producing “many more” science graduates than are hired by industry. Turning to federal surveys from 1972 to 2005, they instead find that the best students are moving out of science and engineering careers, “at a substantial rate, and this decline seems to have come on quite suddenly in the mid-to-late 1990s.”

Many of the  best STEM graduates follow the money, at least they did in the  90s, per this report. And, there was a lot more money to go around back then, in non STEM areas. Regardless,  this paper provides a nice argument in support of raising salaries for STEM-related positions. Now. Industry: are you listening? I know you like to hire cheap labor overseas but…”Wo jue de ni yao ting wo shuo!  Zenmeyang? Xie, xie, ni.”

On the bright side, it’s possible this bad economy will be good for STEM. Money’s not what it used to be in the investment banking world these days. In fact, current currency among the leaders in that realm is traded in Marlboro cigs if my sources are correct.