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]

Since we’ve recently been discussing education and girls, I saw this and had to share. Here is a mudflap I can get behind:

It’s a girl reading a book and it’s pretty awesome. The sticker is only $4, and you can buy it at CafePress.

I was a little disappointed in Pro.Con.org’s article, “Should any vaccines be required for children?” I first discovered this site while job hunting and was impressed. Unfortunately, if you check out the pro and con list for this subject, you will see the same tired and debunked arguments against vaccines, including the utter myth that thimerosal is linked to autism.

If you go, put some comments on the pro side. I understand that this site wants to present a balanced argument, but is it balanced if one side is simply wrong about their facts?

Recently, my son’s daycare updated their vaccination records, and we realized that we only had two of his required Hepatitis B vaccinations on record. I had to go to the hospital where he was born and inquire with medical records to see if he received this vaccination at birth. While I thought the HepB vaccination at birth was standard, there is some question about whether our birth hospital actually performed it. We’ll see when the records come in the mail.

We also faced having to switch pediatricians lately due to an insurance change, so I explained the situation to our new pediatrician, a grandfatherly gentleman who was nice enough to sit with us and talk about our son for a length of time defying the normal HMO visit. “I wouldn’t worry about that shot immediately,” he said, “unless your son is planning to get a tattoo soon.”

Among parents who question the standard vaccination schedule, the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth is a frequently discussed topic. I see it pop up often on Mommy chat boards. Most parents don’t really see the urgency of innoculating a newborn against a disease that is primarily transmitted through sexual contact or injection.

Joseph Albietz explains the rationale behind the US HepB vaccination schedule in a November post on Science Based Medicine. This is a concise article that clarifies the public health strategy behind the decision to vaccinate infants at birth. I read the post with great interest, but it was only my recent investigation into my own son’s HepB records that reminded to post the article here today.

To sum it up, vaccinating only a high risk population was a strategy that was tried in the US and then abandoned as not effective enough. Given that the HepB vaccine is incredibly safe, the morbidity and mortality of HepB is substantial, and that the number of cases of HepB has been dramatically reduced using the current strategy–”from 10.7/100,000 in 1983 to 2.1 per 100,000 in 2004. (25,916 total cases down to 6212 cases)”–it makes sense to vaccinate against this disease at birth. There is also the issue that although children make up a small portion of those infected, they tend to become lifelong carriers more often than infected adults.

One of the questions many parents ask (and the question Albietz is responding to in this post) is about the US vaccination strategy verses other countries, specificially those in Northern Europe. Those countries have such a low incidence of the disease that a prevention strategy like that of the US is not cost effective.

Very interesting reading. I hope you will click over and enjoy the entire post.

Maggie Koerth-Baker over at BoingBoing is doing a great series of monthly science questions from kids. This month’s question is about the color of light:

Why does a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee glow green? Why does a spark from a light socket look blue? Two different questions, but one intertwined answer.

I like that the answers are written so that both adults and kids can understand the concepts. It’s a great series. If you’ve missed any of the other questions, here are some of my favorites:

• Why is Poop Brown?
• What Do Blind People See?
• Omnivore Dinosaur

I have been saying for years that students are influenced by American society to think math is hard. People tell them math is hard, so they think math is hard, so they don’t do well in math. I even remember writing an essay on a college math final in which I ranted about this very topic.

I collected anecdotal evidence to support my theory when, as a grad student, I tried to teach elementary education majors some rudimentary physics labs. The class, which was a light version of Physics 101, designed just for elementary education majors, was required for the degree. Many of the students would put the class off until their final semester, and viewed it as a major obstacle to graduating. They had poor attitudes, because the subject was “so difficult”, and besides, “when would they ever use it”? They came into the class convinced that the subject, and the necessary math, was too hard, and they couldn’t do, and they’d never use it as a teacher. Let me rephrase that: they thought that physics, the basic science behind everything in the universe, was not only impossible, it was unnecessary, to learn. These people now teach our children.

» Continue reading “New study suggests girls learn math anxiety from their teachers”

We’ve talked a bit on RM about the great band They Might Be Giants. In case this hasn’t been posted here yet, this is a video from Time Magazine where they discuss their new(ish) kids album Here Comes Science.

[Via BoingBoing.net]

On our winter vacation, we drove from New York to Boston, and we stopped to quell some car seat antsy-ness Mystic, Connecticut. My son had this conversation with a beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium. The beluga whales were definitely a highlight of the aquarium.

Good news for hungry, pregnant women everywhere: new recommendations are evolving that may just change the tradition of “ice chips only” for women in labor.

Many women may not be interested in food during labor. However, I do know some women who were in the hospital for many, many hours and were very hungry during the process of giving birth. Traditionally, women in labor are denied anything but ice chips, so most women have to tough it out until after the baby is born.

Standard hospital policy for many decades has been to allow only tiny sips of water or ice chips for pregnant women in labor if they were thirsty. Why? It was feared, and some studies in the 1940s showed, that if a woman needed to undergo general anesthesia for a cesarean delivery, she might inhale regurgitated liquids or food particles that could lead to pneumonia and other lung damage.

But, the article goes on to mention that anesthesia practices have gotten better since this time, and it is generally considered much safer.

The research on the topic is discussed here:

Singata and colleagues systematically reviewed five studies involving more than 3,100 pregnant that looked at the evidence for restricting food and drink in women who were considered unlikely to need anesthesia. One study looked at complete restriction versus giving women the freedom to eat and drink at will; two studies looked at water only versus giving women specific fluids and foods and two studies looked at water only versus giving women carbohydrate drinks.

The evidence showed no benefits or harms of restricting foods and fluids during labor in women at low risk of needing anesthesia.

So, some OBs are now relaxing the “ice chip only” rule and allowing patients who are low-risk for anesthesia to eat what they want during labor. If you’re pregnant and are low-risk, talk to your OB about this. You never know how long your labor might take and you might need some cafeteria food to keep your strength up.

I was on the “ice chip only” program for my labors. As soon as my first daughter was born, I sent my hubby across the street to Wendy’s. It was possibly the best hamburger I’ve had in my life. Thinking back, I might have been too nervous to eat until after the birth. But, maybe not. Mmmmmm, french fries….

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Davi Napolean, a reader, sent this article to us a while ago, and I finally got around to reading it. As a theater person myself, I found it interesting. Enjoy!

And by the way, we really love it when people send us links, although I believe we are all so often busy cleaning up vomit and trying to manage naps that it might take us a while to post them.

So, it’s about 20 years ago, and one of my kids, then around 10, is in Meredith Wilson’s band at the Ann Arbor Civic Theater, learning his instrument through the Think Method. During a rehearsal break, the kids are talking about where they go to church or synagogue. Everyone but my son has something to share. He comes home, upset: “Mama, how come we don’t believe in anything?”

“We do believe in something,” I assure him. “We just don’t believe there’s a God.”

“What do we believe in?” I’ve left him outnumbered and defenseless, and I have to come up with something fast. “We believe in the theater,” I tell him. I might have said we believe in the First Amendment or in the scientific method, which would have been true, too.