Scientific American Girl

linking women and science with an outlet for translation and communication

[scientificamericangirl]

The smartest age?

full article :http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/03/06/0956797614567339.abstract?rss=1

[scientificamericangirl]

Hugging strikes again!

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/26/2/135?etoc.i

hugs protect you against the cold (the sickness, not the weather sadly)

[scientificamericangirl]

EXPECTATIONS OF BRILLIANCE UNDERLIE GENDER DISTRIBUTIONS ACROSS ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

abtract: The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans’ underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses.

yes, this was published in science :)

[scientificamericangirl]

The secret to smart groups: women

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/the-secret-to-smart-groups-isnt-smart-people/384625/

[scientificamericangirl]

here here! Let's publish null results!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/upshot/to-get-more-out-of-science-show-the-rejected-research.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

[scientificamericangirl]

Too few jobs for America's young scientists - this needs to change!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/16/343539024/too-few-university-jobs-for-americas-young-scientists

It's ridiculous how few jobs there are in academia and that so many people slave away for 40 grand a year in a post-doc without ever getting a faculty position. This needs to change! 

[scientificamericangirl]

Lego science girl kit: Late to post this - but it already sold out!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/03/337565016/lego-releases-female-scientists-set-may-appease-7-year-old-critic

[scientificamericangirl]

‘I’m Not Stupid, Just Dyslexic’ — And How Brain Science Can Help

http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/06/dyslexia-brain

Awesome work from Elizabeth Norton, John Gabrieli, and more!

[scientificamericangirl]

How to get girls into coding?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-girls-into-coding.html?src=recg

[scientificamericangirl]

awesome women science outreach video: the computations of squid skin!

http://k12videos.mit.edu/squid-skin-with-a-mind-of-its-own

[scientificamericangirl]

crazy new lucid dreaming science

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n6/full/nn.3719.html?WT.ec_id=NEURO-201406

[scientificamericangirl]

Badass women scientist of the week: Lera Boroditsky

How does language shape thought? And vice versa?

For a nice summary of her amazing work:

http://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf

[scientificamericangirl]

Sex and Race discrimination starts before graduate school

"A study published on April 22 (and currently under review) looked at how likely faculty were to respond to a request to meet with a student to informally discuss potential research opportunities—a scenario picked as a proxy for the many informal events that could boost an academic career and which fall outside institutions’ formal checks and balances. They found — overwhelmingly—that professors of all groups were more likely to respond to white men than women and black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese students. Academics at private universities and in subjects that pay more on average were the most unresponsive."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-and-race-discrimination-in-academia-starts-even-before-grad-school/

[scientificamericangirl]

How to raise a moral child

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

This article made me stop and think about how slight variations in how we praise can affect the development of children. This has been shown before through work in Laura Schulz's lab at MIT, looking at how teacher instruction modifies exploration and learning (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21216395) and through work with Carol Dweck at Stanford on how different forms of parenting praise can influence implicit theories of intelligence (http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/75/1/33/). I particularly like this work because it shows how psychology research can be directly applied to real world situations (like parenting and education). It's research that people can walk away from and think, ah, I can change my behavior today and start making a difference!

[scientificamericangirl]

A new answer to the question of why we need sleep

A new article published in Science found that during sleep, brain cells shrink and there is 60% increase in the interstitial space, increasing the flow of cerebral spinal fluid and flushing out toxins like beta amyloid.

From NPR: 

"The results appear to offer the best explanation yet of why animals and people need sleep. If this proves to be true in humans as well, it could help explain a mysterious association between sleep disorders and brain diseases, including Alzheimer's."

NPR's article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/18/236211811/brains-sweep-themselves-clean-of-toxins-during-sleep

Science article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373

[scientificamericangirl]

Can we teach kids to be 'Gritier'?

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/17/290089998/does-teaching-kids-to-get-gritty-help-them-get-ahead

Grit is the hot topic right now in education reform. But can we really teach kids to be grittier? Does it really matter more than IQ? 

One quote from the article that I particularly like:

"It's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg kind of question. Passion may drive kids to be gritty, but being gritty and able to tolerate failure also enables kids to develop and pursue a passion."

What do you guys thinks?

[scientificamericangirl]

The little bookworm in your brain

Sent in my a scientificamericangirl reader

A short piece about how a part of your brain is reserved for letter processing:

http://the-toast.net/2014/03/11/gal-science-little-blind-bookworm-brain/2/