The National Academy of Sciences has a great online interactive tool called “I Was Wondering…“, which highlights the contributions of women in science. The site includes features on cool female scientists, a timeline of their discoveries, and games. Also, there’s a section called “Ask It!” where readers can submit their own questions.

The site, based on this series of books, is targeted toward tween girls:

What would it be like to build the first robot that could interact with people? Or to study human remains in search of criminal evidence? In Women’s Adventures in Science, readers will learn about the trailblazing women who are leaders in a variety of scientific fields, from robotics to forensics.

The site looks like a lot of fun and I hope that it inspires more young girls to embrace science.

[Via Science-Based Parenting]

(The picture is of my son’s leg after getting his vaccinations)

Andrew Wakefield kicked off the anti vaccination movement with his paper published in 1998 that claimed to show a link between Autism and vaccines. His  findings  have been proven false over and over again. It was also found that he most likely faked his data.

Last week  the UK’s General Medical Council found that Andrew Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” when doing his research. And now The Lancet (who published the paper) has issued a full retraction.

This is very good news and I hope that this will help put parents concerns about vaccinating their children to rest.

In other news, Bill Gates has committed $10 Billion (yes Billion!)  to develop and deliver vaccines to children in the developing world. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

I get a daily email from the American Council on Science and Health called “Health Facts and Fears”. In that news letter Dr Gilbert Ross is quoted as saying of Bill Gates, “We must give credit to him for taking a very effective, targeted, lifesaving approach to charitable giving as opposed to activists, who prefer to wage irrational attacks on substances that have no nexus with human health.”

I’m a Mac girl but this makes me want to buy a PC!

This is a great story. It’s about a former New Orleans Saints cheerleader who also happens to be an analytical chemist at DuPont. Surprised? We shouldn’t be. She said:

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).

I couldn’t agree more.

Many people are shocked when sexy women are also smart. In fact, the woman in the article said she almost didn’t get hired at a science job because of the NFL cheerleader line on her resume.

It’s a pervasive stereotype in our country. Admit it–you laughed at the idea of Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is Not Enough. (Well, her character’s name of “Dr. Christmas Jones” didn’t help.) So it’s nice to see some non-Hollywood examples of real brains and beauty.

[Via BlagHag]

Recently, the United States Preventative Screening Task Force released some new recommendations regarding breast cancer screening.  I heard this on the radio while driving to work, and my first thought was, “Excellent, one less thing to do this year.”

I just had my annual lady parts doctor visit, and I received my first lab slip ever for a mammogram.  And my reaction was to throw it into a file drawer and forget about it.  My reasoning?  None, really.  It’s just your basic level of personal denial.  I simply cannot believe I’m forty.  Mammograms seem like something for older people, and I’m not one of those.

The new recommendations are to start biennial screening at fifty.  This is a big change–going from an annual screening starting at forty to a screening every two years starting at fifty.  Naturally, since it is a big change, it has stirred up some controversy.

Orac explains the evidence behind the new recommendations  well, if you are interested in further reading. And Rebeca at Skepchick wrote a nice, succinct post, responding to some of the more hysterical responses to the new recommendations.

Interestingly enough, just hearing so much about this news on the radio, and reading about it on various blogs, has been enough to make me actually consider going to get this mammogram, which I apparently no longer really need.  The bottom line seems to be that you still should consult your doctor for advice about screening.  If you have a family history of breast cancer, for example, the annual screening at forty might still make sense for you.  But it looks like for a woman with no special risk factors, the extra screening doesn’t do much more good, and in fact it might actually cause harms like stress over a false diagnosis and extra unnecessary procedures.

Maggie Koerth-Baker at BoingBoing wants to know if your toddler has a science question:

I’m hoping to answer a Science Question from a Toddler once a month, though that depends on me getting questions. Which brings me to this request: If a smallish child you know has a science question–on any topic–send it to me. I’ll do my best to answer.

What a great idea! Here is the first entry: “Do Turtles Have Eyelashes?“

I spent a lot of time staring into my son’s eyes when he was born, and that’s how I noticed his left pupil was bigger than his right pupil. In dim light, the left pupil was more dilated. In outside light, there was no difference between them. I wasn’t really alarmed, until I mentioned it to my doctor, who said he should see a pediatric ophthalmologist, just to rule out a “growth.” Um, what? Did you just say my baby might have a brain tumor?

We had to wait a month for the appointment. But it wasn’t a growth; it was a normal variant. My son has physiologic anisocoria, which basically means one pupil is bigger, it’s genetic, and it’s no big deal. Apparently this affects tons of people. I’ve read ten percent and even twenty percent estimates. But I had never, ever met anyone who had one larger pupil. Or so I thought.

The day I took my son to the ophthalmologist, I came home and was telling my husband about anisocoria, and we were sitting in the dim light of our living room. I have known my husband since we were in college, but for the very first time in a couple decades, I noticed that his left pupil is larger than his right pupil. The proof is in the photo above.

Genetics, man.

Wow, look at these clean cut, fine looking young men.  These are the guys who figured out the genetic origins of the H1N1 virus, and they work at Columbia University, my alma mater.  Dudes, I’m so impressed.  I don’t even think I knew people like this worked at my old college, as I spent most of my time there hanging out with boho freaks who liked to get high and sneak into buildings at night.  But you know, I was pretty good at dissecting novels.  I don’t think I ever would have crossed paths with the likes of Columbia professor Paul Rabadan, who:

spent his early career describing black holes in outer space at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He had tired of that work about four years ago, though, so he studied biology in his free time and redirected his methods of mathematical analysis toward a poorly understood disease: swine flu.

Oh sure, get a little free time, study biology. We’ve all been there. Black holes are so boring, after all. » Continue reading “Roar, Lions, Roar!”

I thought this study was interesting, and the way the article reports the study is pretty fair:

Whether or not spanking equates with dumber kids is not known, and may never be known. That’s because the only way to truly show cause and effect would be to follow over time two groups of kids, one randomly assigned to get spanked and another who would not get spanked.

Obviously, that sort of study would not be palatable for anyone involved.  So the author of this article did a good job of making it clear that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.  Way to be.  That said, here’s what the study did find: » Continue reading “Study Links Spanking to Lower IQ”

I read about this a while ago and didn’t post a link.  But Science Based Parenting linked to this article today about PCBs in breast milk, so I guess it’s on my brain again.

Apparently a study shows that PCBs can cause developmental abnormalities in rats that are quite similar to autism.  And PCBs do show up in breast milk and are passed on to nursing babies.  This does not mean that nursing necessarily causes autism, but it does mean that more studies should be done on the effect of PCBs on human populations.  Happy reading.

Q: What do the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, and the dwarf-planet Sedna have in common with the accretion disc and event horizon of a black hole?

A: They’re all things that I first learned about through my 7-year-old son’s hobby of watching astronomy movies on the Internet.

Back when Nico first learned to navigate around YouTube and other sites with science videos, I was worried about what he might stumble onto. As we discussed here, he was confused by a weird conspiracy theory movie that looked like a science movie. But that problem turned out to be a lot less difficult to handle than I’d anticipated. » Continue reading “Nico’s favorite astronomy movies on the Internet!”