Women in science and medicine
terrasig | August 26, 2009[Sort of a repost from the last three years, updated appropriately - APB]
Seven years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1524 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb 13 oz (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignities on my behalf:…
terrasig | August 5, 2009
Welcome to the August 2009 edition of Scientiae, the blog carnival of "stories of and from women in science, engineering, technology, and math."
[Apologies at the outset for missing the submission from ScienceWoman, co-blogger at Sciencewomen, entitled, "Unhurried summer mornings"]
I'm honored to be the first man invited to host the carnival. The invitation means a great deal to me on a number of levels: my laboratory has run between 75% and 100% women during my years in the business, including all of my PhD students, and I have a brilliant physician-scientist wife who has given us a joyous…
terrasig | July 28, 2009[This 23rd July entry is being reposted today under the ScienceBlogs "Education" channel as its original categorization there fell victim to gremlins in the upgraded Movable Type script.]
At the outset, let me say that I have immense respect and admiration for a special commenter.
In last week's Friday Fermentable post, we took the 40th anniversary of the Apollo XI mission as an opportunity to draw attention to Buzz Aldrin's newly-released autobiography, Magnificent Desolation. In it, Aldrin describes his lifelong battle with depression and alcoholism and how he has managed both challenges.…
terrasig | July 24, 2009
Well, a week has passed since I first issued a call for posts for the August Scientiae Carnival with the 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?
And so as not to exclude our colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere (where I am fortunate to draw 5-7% of my blog visitors), why don't you take this time from your winter and…
terrasig | July 1, 2009
Dear PharmGirl,
We wanted to make this note public today because a great many of our blog friends know of your dedication as a physician, wife, and a mother.
Yesterday you finished an association with an academic medical institution where you have been for half your life. From young women with breast cancer to old men in the V.A. Hospital, literally thousands have been touched by your gifts of intelligence, remarkable clinical judgment, and, perhaps most importantly, compassion. The recognition from your patients was abundant and we were privy to the personal notes of just how much you…
terrasig | June 17, 2009Seen yesterday in the local AP feed: Looks like a great partnership to access historic images on the iPhone or iTouch to satisfy pretty much any scholar or history enthusiast:
Duke and Apple to join forces
DURHAM -- Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries to view collections of historic images can now do so by clicking on their mobile device instead.
With the launch of DukeMobile 1.1, Duke University Libraries now offer the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for Apple's iPhone or iTouch devices. It includes thousands of…
terrasig | May 19, 2009
Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community.
I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter.
Among…
terrasig | May 3, 2009Many readers of Terra Sig and the larger ScienceBlogs community likely remember former neuroscience graduate student blogger, Shelley Batts. Shelley originally launched Retrospectacle and she and I (and ~25 others) joined Sb in June, 2006, second wave. When she put the hammer down to finish her PhD at the University of Michigan (former home of Dr John Jacob Abel), she shut down Retrospectacle and joined forces with Steve/Omnibrain at Of Two Minds.
Shelley earned her PhD last December, headed off to postdoc at Stanford, and got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Luke Rumsey.
Well, while…
terrasig | April 10, 2009Congratulations are going out today to Duke women's basketball guard and Coloradan, Abby Waner, on her no. 21 selection in yesterday's WNBA draft. A solid competitor, leader, and scholar, Waner was the 2nd pick by the New York Liberty. A Highlands Ranch (CO) ThunderRidge High School standout and Colorado Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Waner contributed over the last four years to Duke's NCAA Tournament appearances, including the 2006 finals when Duke lost to Maryland in a heartbreaker.
The entire Waner family holds a special place in our hearts. Extending a little Southern hospitality to…
terrasig | April 6, 2009I was very late to the game on a DrugMonkey post last week examining the demographics of Early Career Award winners from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Drug noted that only 9 of the 50 awardees are women:
So who got lucky? See the slideshow here.
huh. anything strike you? no? lemme get a pencil here....hmmm.
2 African-American looking guys, another maybe. Six Asian guys. Maybe another four or five men who look other than standard model white guy. Nine women.
Really? That's the best you could do? Seriously? You couldn't even that gender ratio up even a little bit better than…
terrasig | March 26, 2009
Dr Geraldine P Woods (1921-1999) was inarguably the most influential scientist in establishing and promoting NIH's programs in research and research training for underrepresented groups. Therefore, I have chosen her story for my entry to this month's Diversity in Science blog carnival recognizing Women's History Month.
My interest in Dr Woods was inspired by a recent post by my friend and colleague, acmegirl, who writes the blog, Thesis - With Children. In her post recognizing the work of Duke University behavioral biologist, Dr Erich Jarvis, acmegirl noted that both she and Dr Jarvis are…
terrasig | March 3, 2009Run, do not walk, to the most recent addition to the ScienceBlogs.com family, AoMFASR, the blog of geology professor, Dr Kim Hannula.
You people already had to bear with my fawning about Colorado but you'll now get real, natural history and geological sciences info from a scientist with expertise to share with you the glory of the American Southwest.
I think it's really gneiss that Sb invited Kim to join but I think she should be prepared not to take any schist from anyone. This blog network has its faults but a great many of us are alluvial fans.
terrasig | February 25, 2009Okay people, these students in Miss Stacy Baker's biology classes and Extreme Biology blog have been rocking my world for quite some time. They've now burst onto the national media and were all the buzz of the recent ScienceOnline'09 conference.
For those not familiar with the story, Stacy Baker is a biology teacher at the Calverton School in Huntingtown, Maryland, who began a website for student activities and class notes back in 2006. With the boundless enthusiasm of ninth-graders and more seasoned AP biology students, the site has become interactive: a blog, Extreme Biology, with videos…
terrasig | February 23, 2009Welcome 4 March readers of The Daily Grail - please be sure to also click on the original post about the DMT article by my colleague, Laura Mariani.
Thanks to Dave Munger & Co's ResearchBlogging.org, I just found a fabulous neuroscience grad student blogger from Emory University: Laura E Mariani at Neurotypical?
Doctor-to-be Mariani blogged last Monday about a paper in Science where the endogenous ligand of the orphan sigma-1 receptor was identified as the hallucinogen, N,N'-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. The work originated with the group of Arnold Ruoho and colleagues at the University…
terrasig | January 4, 2009In preparing for the ScienceOnline'09 session on Gender in Science - Online and Offline, one planned discussion point will be how to enlist allies representing the dominant power structure to enhance equality and diversity in the STEM disciplines. No one ally can do it all but a combination of like-minded people can make a huge difference.
Here is a terrific example of an ally, written by superb higher ed reporter, Eric Ferreri, of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, on Dr Henry Friedman and CAPE, the Collegiate Athletic Pre-Medical Experience:
Georgia Beasley was practicing her jump shot…
terrasig | January 3, 2009I absolutely love the Scientiae blog carnival, established originally by and for women in the STEM blogosphere (but has occasionally accepted the blatherings of us with Y chromosomes).
What I enjoy most about this carnival is that the host puts out a call for posts on a specific, usually introspective topic related to being a woman in science. Since the carnival is monthly, it gives the bloggers sufficient time to really reflect and develop a solid series of wonderfully-written posts.
This month's carnival is up at Thesis - With Children, the blog of acmegirl, a graduate student whom I…
terrasig | December 10, 2008I have something like ten posts already started and none of them done due to that silly work thing. I don't know how the other people around ScienceBlogs actually get posts up with such frequency.
In the meantime, I had a thought while conversing with Alice Pawley and Suzanne Franks about their session at the upcoming ScienceOnline'09 unconference on gender issues in science where I, brave one that I am, will represent all men and discuss how we all think we boys can be allies.
In the meantime, please re-read Alice's post on the recent anniversary of the Montreal Massacre:
On December 6,…
terrasig | November 25, 2008We had one of our most active comment threads the other day when I posted my thoughts on drdrA's own superb post about what is most important to her in being a woman in science. I noted my own desire to listen to and understand as completely as possible the issues of my women colleagues and discuss, in an upcoming ScienceOnline'09 session with Zuska and Alice Pawley (Sat 17 Jan, 11:30 am, session C), how they can enlist academic allies who have the traditional power and resource structure (i.e., white guys like me) to establish partnerships in working toward fair and equitable treatment of…
terrasig | November 18, 2008DrDrA at BlueLabCoats has returned with an outstanding post, entitled, "I want you to hear me, I don't care what you see...," that she wrote out longhand during her recent travels:
In my absence I picked up a whiff of a lot of chatter about what women scientists wear to work... or talk/write about wearing .... going on in the blogosphere. . .
You see- the struggle I'm in daily in my own life and career is not about appearances, and it is not about symbolism or femininity- and it is not about who I am as a person, my likes and dislikes etc. It is a struggle to be heard and taken seriously…
terrasig | November 7, 2008Please accept my apologies for not letting y'all know in advance that I'd be off to an undisclosed location for activities that would minimize or ablate my blogging for a few days.
In the meantime, I learned of a happy surprise just as I was leaving town: that Dr Isis received an invitation to join ScienceBlogs.com. You'll recognize Dr Isis as the author of On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, previously here and now up here with her inaugural post in the new digs.
Completely serendipitously, I wrote about Isis in my last post, many moons ago, about her commentary on a recent NEJM…