Handicapping the Nobel Prizes

This year's Nobel Prizes will be announced beginning next Monday. There is no way to know for certain who is in the running, but that doesn't stop the speculation. Derek Lowe points to plausible lists of potential winners at the Wall Street Journal, which bases its predictions partially on who has received other prestigious awards, and Thomson Reuters, which lists "Citation Laureates" based on its ISI Web of Knowledge data.

Who are the women who made the prediction list?

Physiology or Medicine

Both the WSJ and Thomson Reuters listed Elizabeth H. Blackburn, professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San Francisco and Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University for "their roles in the discovery and and pioneering research on telomeres and telomerases."

Chemistry

Thomson Reuters listed Jacqueline K. Barton, Professor of Chemistry at CalTech (along with Bernd Giese and Gary B Schuster) for "pioneering research of electron charge transfer in DNA"


Personally, I think a Nobel prize for telomeres will happen at some point, if not this year then in the near future.

Barton, on the other hand, seems to be a less likely winner. There's more discussion at In the Pipeline.

Tags: Nobel Prize

2009 MacArthur Fellows: Lin He and Beth Shapiro

Recipients of the 2009 MacArthur Fellowship - sometimes referred to as the MacArthur "genius grant" - are an interesting mix of writers, artists, journalists, scientists, attorneys, entrepeneurs and physicians who have one thing in common: they have demonstrated "exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future". The 24 fellows will receive a $500,000 stipend over the course of five years, no strings attached.

This year's winners include two young women scientists:


Lin He is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the role of microRNAs in the development of cancer:

Lin He's research involves a class of small ribonucleic acid, or RNA, that are not transcribed into protein like messenger RNA. Instead, these microRNAs or miRNAs bind to messenger RNA to regulate the amount of protein produced. This entirely new level of dosage regulation in mammals was not realized until 2000, even though miRNAs were first discovered in 1993. Now, miRNAs have been shown to be involved in many aspects of development and diseases, He said.

"MicroRNAs are a mechanism to fine-tune gene expression simultaneously in many different pathways, achieving a homeostasis very much needed for many biological processes," He said. "In the case of cancer, where some microRNAs behave abnormally, detrimental effects will occur due to the loss of proper gene regulation by microRNAs."

He has shown that miRNAs play a role in a broad range of cancers, in particular those such as lung cancer that involve mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene. She is also investigating the role of miRNA in the development of B cell lymphomas.

"In an area that has generated intense effort among many leading researchers, Lin He has established early in her career the capacity to make significant advances with direct implications for the development of future cancer treatment strategies," the MacArthur Foundation noted.

More information about Lin He:

• MacArthur Fellow Profile
• Official Web Site
• UC Berkeley Press Release

Beth Shapiro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Pennsylvania State University. She is "an evolutionary biologist who integrates molecular phylogenetics with advanced computational biostatistics to reconstruct the influences on population dynamics in a wide variety of organisms." She is using the methods she and her colleagues developed to study the population history of recently extinct (like the dodo) or currently threatened species to assess the effects of environmental change on polar bear populations, an approach that will help in shaping conservation efforts. She also has been studying the evolution of RNA viruses in individual patients, an approach that may help in understanding the development of virulence in human pathogens.

Prior to joining Penn State in 2007, Shapiro was director of the Ancient Biomolcules Centre at Oxford University. She was also named one one "America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences" by Smithsonian Magazine.

Here Shapiro explains "How to Clone a Mammoth":


More information about Beth Shapiro:

• MacArthur Fellow Profile
• Official Web Site
• America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences: "How to Make a Dodo"
• Penn State Press release
  
• Wikipedia article
  

Also included among this year's recipients are two women physicians:

• Jill Seaman, Infectious Disease Physician in Old Fangak, Sudan
  
• Mary Tinetti, Geriatric Physician at the Yale School of Medicine
  

Photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation
Tags: MacArthur Fellows, Lin He, Beth Shapiro

The Sultana's Dream

'Our good Queen liked science very much. She circulated an order that all the women in her country should be educated. Accordingly a number of girls' schools were founded and supported by the government. Education was spread far and wide among women. And early marriage also was stopped. No woman was to be allowed to marry before she was twenty-one. I must tell you that, before this change we had been kept in strict purdah.'

'How the tables are turned,' I interposed with a laugh.

'But the seclusion is the same,' she said. 'In a few years we had separate universities, where no men were admitted.'

'In the capital, where our Queen lives, there are two universities. One of these invented a wonderful balloon, to which they attached a number of pipes. By means of this captive balloon which they managed to keep afloat above the cloud-land, they could draw as much water
from the atmosphere as they pleased. As the water was incessantly being drawn by the university people no cloud gathered and the ingenious Lady Principal stopped rain and storms thereby.'

'Really! Now I understand why there is no mud here!' said I. But I could not understand how it was possible to accumulate water in the pipes. She explained to me how it was done, but I was unable to understand her, as my scientific knowledge was very limited. However, she went on, 'When the other university came to know of this, they became exceedingly jealous and tried to do something more extraordinary still. They invented an instrument by which they could
collect as much sun-heat as they wanted. And they kept the heat stored up to be distributed among others as required.

'While the women were engaged in scientific research, the men of this country were busy increasing their military power. When they came to know that the female universities were able to draw water from the atmosphere and collect heat from the sun, they only laughed at the
members of the universities and called the whole thing "a sentimental nightmare"!'

'Your achievements are very wonderful indeed! But tell me, how you managed to put the men of your country into the zenana. Did you entrap them first?'

'No.'

'It is not likely that they would surrender their free and open air life of their own accord and confine themselves within the four walls of the zenana! They must have been overpowered.'

'Yes, they have been!'

'By whom? By some lady-warriors, I suppose?'

'No, not by arms.'

'Yes, it cannot be so. Men's arms are stronger than women's. Then?'

'By brain.'

'Even their brains are bigger and heavier than women's. Are they not?'

'Yes, but what of that? An elephant also has got a bigger and heavier brain than a man has. Yet man can enchain elephants and employ them, according to their own wishes.'

'Well said, but tell me please, how it all actually happened. I am dying to know it!'

'Women's brains are somewhat quicker than men's. Ten years ago, when the military officers called our scientific discoveries "a sentimental nightmare," some of the young ladies wanted to say something in reply to those remarks. But both the Lady Principals restrained them and said, they should reply not by word, but by deed, if ever they got the opportunity. And they had not long to wait for that opportunity.'
~ from "Sultana's Dream" by Rokeya Sakhawat, 1905

Rokeya Sakhawat (also known as Roquia Sakhawat Hussain) was an early 20th century Muslim feminist writer and social worker from what is present-day Bangladesh. She was a "crusader for girls' education", and founded Sakhawat Memorial Girls' High School - the first school primarily aimed at Muslim girls. Her 1905 science-fiction short story, "Sultana's Dream", is set in a utopian future where women rule and the men are locked away at home, very much like the Muslim practice of purdah that kept most women in the home in Sakhawat's time (and yes, today too).

I find the story particularly enjoyable because of the way in which the women took over: they studied science and developed useful inventions while the men scoffed. It was their brains, rather than brawn, that created their peaceful country. And while I don't believe that women are "smarter" than men, or that the world would be necessarily a much better place if women ruled by locking up the men, I do think that increasing the number of women scientists would indeed improve the world if only because excluding a significant portion of the population from scientific research is a huge waste of brainpower.

And even though women in Bangladesh face many obstacles - poverty is widespread and only 32% of women are literate - there are indeed a number Bangladeshi women scientists making a difference today:

• Interview with Dr. Tasnim Azim, head of the HIV/AIDS Programme and Virology Laboratory Sciences Division at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B)
• Interview with Dr. Ruchira Tabassum Naved, Gender & Reproductive Health Specialist in the Public Health Sciences Division at ICDDR,B
• Interview with Dr. Shamima Akhter, Research Investigator, Health Systems and Infectious Diseases division of ICDDR,B.
• "More Women Scientists in Bangladesh" and "What Banladesh Needs" by Hasina Akhter, UNESCO-L'OREAL for Women in Science International Fellow, 200
  

("Sultana's Dream" via Nesrine Malik in The Guardian's Comment is free)

Image: Dr. Shamima Akhter, Research Investigator, Health Systems and Infectious Diseases Division, ICDDR, B

Tags: women in science, Bangladesh

Simone Peterson Hruda: Reflections on Black Women in Engineering

This past March Rutgers University hosted the Black Women Academics in the Ivory Tower Conference. Dr. Simone Peterson Hruda, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Florida A&M and Florida State gave a lecture on "Reflections on black women in engineering":



Some of the issues Hruda talks about:

• Of 65,000 bachelors degrees awarded in engineering, 3000 are to black students, and only 1000 or 1.6% go to black women students. Only 0.4% of engineering PhDs are awarded to black women.
  
• She points out that she is only one of about 350 black women who have gotten PhDs in engineering in the US, which is fewer than the number of engineering schools.
  
• When she was a graduate student, the white women students were upset that there weren't more women role models on the faculty. She didn't have the same expectation to find black women role models or mentors because she went in knowing there wouldn't be any.
  
• She has found that there are graduate students who prefer not to work for black women professors.

And there's a lot more about mentoring and teaching and how engineering is for anyone who is curious about how things work.

The Q & A session after the lecture:




Watch video of all the presentations and panel discussions on YouTube.

(via Prometheus 6)

Tags: women in engineering, black women in engineering, Simone Peterson Hruda

On Being Inspired by Women Scientists

I was reading an interview with Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barret, and his description of cool woman astrophysicist who inspired him in high school made me smile:

Well, believe it or not, I was inspired in high school, by my astronomy class, to become an astrophysicist, which I kind of laugh at now. I knew an astrophysicist. And learned -- remember, this is the mind of a teenager -- I knew a lady who worked at Mt. Wilson [Observatory]. She was an astrophysicist. And while she was taking readings at night looking through a telescope, during the day she would chop hot rods and rebuild them and she had this amazing gun collection and flame throwers and she would go to festivals and stuff. I put the two together and thought, “You can be smart AND cool.” And so I figured I could do both. So I thought being an astrophysicist would be cool. Unfortunately, three years into calculus and physics, I realized that it might not be my forte. So I had had a backup, which was photography, and I had been pursuing that in an amateurish fashion ever since.

Amazingly, women don't always have to be wearing cheerleader outfits to interest dudes in science. Even though Roddenberry didn't pursue a career in astrophysics, he has collaborated with NASA, The Kennedy Space Center and other groups to promote space travel and astronomy.

Roddenberry doesn't name the astrophysicist, but she is almost certainly Sallie Baliunas, who indeed has fixed up cars into hot rods and was a friend of Majel Barrett Roddenberry. She also has been involved in some Star Trek-related geekery.

Baliunas is a former Deputy Director of Mt. Wilson Observatory and is currently affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She has gained recent notoriety for her strong skepticism of human causes for global warming.

Tags: astrophysics, Rod Roddenberry, Sallie Baliunas

New Scientiae Carnival @ Terra Sigillata

Abel Pharmboy has posted the August Scientiae Carnival at Terra Sigillata. This month's theme:

Summer days, driftin' away. . .

Consider how you balance the demands and pleasures of this season. Have you found ways to make progress on your must-dos while also taking time for your family, friends - and yourself - and being in the moment of this time of year? Or are July and August just another month for you?

He found that for most of the contributors this isn't just holiday time:

Well, sadly, the vast majority of contributors were in various states of juggling catch-up and preparation for the academic year, many putting work well ahead of themselves and their loved ones at what is supposed to be the time of relaxation and renewal in the Northern Hemisphere. But they are not all tales of woe and frustration. Even those pushed to their limit still wrote about little things they remembered about why they loved summer so much at one time.

Go read more about what women scientists are doing this summer.

Tags: women in science, scientiae carnival

Women of the Apollo Program

Last month was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's historic moon landing. Watching the footage of of the landing makes it look like the Apollo program was men-only. But it was more complicated than that.

As Echidne points out:

But the absence of women astronauts in the program has a much more concrete reason: They were excluded from it. Books have been written about that: Margaret A. Weitekamp's Right Stuff, Wrong Sex and Stephanie Nolen's Promised The Moon.

And there were women involved with the project itself as described by Robyn C. Friend in The Women of Apollo. You can hear one of the original engineers, Ann Dixon[sic], speak about her experiences here:

Ann Dickson says she was "convinced that someday she was going to be an astronaut." Unfortunately that didn't happen, in part because she didn't have 600 hours of flying time.*

Ann Dixon wasn't alone in the Apollo program as this 1969 AP article explains:

Frances "Poppy" Northcutt, for example, is a 25-year-old Dayton, Tex., native who is a member of the flight dynamics support staff in mission control at the Manned Spacecraft Center. The tall, blonde mathematician is one of the first women to serve in an operational support role in mission control.
"There's less discrimination against women here than in any of the professional areas," she said.

The article goes on to mention Larue Burbank, designer of the visual displays used for real-time monitoring of spacecraft, and Dorothy Lee, an engineer who worked on the re-entry heat shields.

In a 1999 interview, Lee recalled being recruited by NASA (pdf):

... math was very easy for me just happened to be the easiest subject, and that's the reason I majored in math. Then when we were recruited - I say "we." There were several girls - I was from Randlph-Macon [Woman’s College, Lynchburg, Virginia]—who went to work for NACA at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], and again I was put in the best division there. It was called PARD, Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. We had the exciting opportunities to launch vehicles, to test different configurations, and how those configurations would [ultimately design] spacecraft by virtue of the shape of the nose. We went from cones to blunt bodies. You see today your different vehicles are all blunt bodies. So I was right there and enjoyed it. It was fun.
[. . .]
Of course, today, NASA recruits all over the country, but back in 1948, which is when I graduated from college, and there were not many gals, we were hired as "computers." Computers didn't exist, you understand. We had calculators. They gave us civil service exams, and I was fortunate enough to pass the exam at a couple of grades higher than I was hired in, so I got raises.

But the thing that I would like to tell has something to do with Dr. [Maxime A.] Faget. Working as a computer, [later] we were classified as mathematicians. One day my project was to solve a triple integral for an engineer, so it didn't require using my calculator. I could just do it at my desk. Max's secretary was going to get married, and so I was asked to be his secretary for two weeks while she was on her honeymoon. [. . .] I would answer the phone, distribute the mail, and work my triple integral. I did this for two weeks. [. . .]
This Friday, the end of my two weeks, Max said, "Dottie, how would you like to work for me all the time?"
I thought he was being funny, because I don't type, and I knew that this was the last day and Shirley was returning Monday. I said, "Sure," in a very flip way. He gets up, goes downstairs to talk to the division chief, and he returns and he says, "Dottie, you start working for me Monday."
Well, I looked at him like, "All right," you know. So they found me a desk, and I was put with some engineers who were beautiful and taught me how to be an engineer. I learned on the job.

But not surprisingly, it was tall blonde Poppy Northcutt** who got attention in the press, particularly when she turned out to be the only woman working at Mission Control during the Apollo 13 emergency. And also, not too surprisingly, the article uses almost as many column inches asking her social life as it does talking about her work with the Apollo computer systems .

So yes, there were indeed a number of women mathematicians and engineers who played important roles in the Apollo program, even if they weren't astronauts.

That doesn't mean that they earned everyone's respect, of course. See, for example, this 1987 article in Popular Mechanics about the Space Shuttle program in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster in which retired Mercury and Apollo 7 astronaut Wally Schirra complains about women scientists and non-test pilots in the program (who he seems to equate with engineers):

To get ready for a serious relaunch, NASA will have to go back to using qualified test pilots only for the foreseeable future. It is ludicrous at this early stage of space exploration to allow a virtual passenger on the Shuttle to become known as an "astronaut." Such people have little to offer at an engineering skull session. I was appalled to see young women scientists in mission control acting as liaison with the Shuttle mission commander. This is not a job for a "show-and-tell" celebrity.

After that gratuitous swipe at women scientists (gratuitous because it's unlikely that the men scientists in mission control were pilots either), Shirra goes on to explain how Sally Ride is totally NOT an "engineering test pilot", so she should totally stop talking about "flying" the Space Shuttle.

But now, 40 years after Apollo 11, there are indeed women test pilot-astronauts, such as Eileen Collins, Pamela Melroy, and Susan Still Kilrain, along with many scientist and engineer-mission specialists like Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Karen Nyberg, Megan McArthur, Julie Payette, Stephanie Wilson, Joan Higginbotham, Kalpana Chawla (killed on Columbia), Sandra Magus, and many many others.

Now if only we'd finally return to the Moon, or head out to Mars . . .

Further reading and watching :

• Watch more Women of Apollo-related videos
• NASA Oral History: Dorothy B. Lee, engineer (pdf)
• NASA Oral History: Jeanne L. Crews, aeronautical engineer (pdf)
• Society of Women Engineers Oral History: Ivy Hooks, aerospace engineer
• Houston Public Library Oral History: Francis Miriam "Poppy" Northcutt, "computeress"
  
• Official Site: The Women of Apollo
• Historiann "Feminism and whig history" (via Academic Ecology)
• Paul Campos "And the stars look very different today" (be sure to read the comments)

* In looking for info about women in aviation I learned that in 1979 (10 years after Apollo 11) only 110 of 45,000 airline pilots were women. Even women who might otherwise be qualified for the astronaut program would likely have a hard time getting enough hours in the air to qualify.

** And cutely they named "Crater Poppy" on the moon after her. Later Northcutt entered politics, helping organize the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston (watch the excellent Sisters of '77 documentary to get a sense of the historical importance of that event), and got her law degree.

Photo: "In 1959, Langley [Research Center] employed six women who were classified by NASA as "scientists." During the Apollo era, women made up 3 to 5 percent of the professional work force agency-wide. The percentage of African American professionals was significantly smaller, from 1.5 to 3 percent. These percentages rose slowly for both groups as the decade proceeded". Source: NASA

Tags: Women of Apollo, women astronauts, women in engineering