Girl Scientists Aren't Mannish At All

Meet Mary Summerfield, Ph.D. In 1956, she was one of what American Girl magazine called "thousands of girls now serving as professional scientists." Dr. Summerfield thought more young women (er, girls) would consider science as a career but were afraid it would render them unfeminine spinsters. That's why the caption on her picture stressed she was a "research physicist--and homemaker" who thought "Cosmic rays and cake baking are both lots of fun."

Here's how some other women's mags from the 1950s proved that careers in science could be downright girly.

(Side note: io9.com is suddenly my way favoritest site ever. This totally has nothing to do with why.)

Double Einstein Rings

This picture from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the double Einstein rings formed when three galaxies are almost exactly lined up as seen from Earth. The gravitational field of the nearer galaxy (3 billion light-years away) bends the light from the ones behind it (6 and 11 billion light-years away) so they appear in multiple, arc-like images. See NASA for more details and an enlargement with the light from the central galaxy suppressed. NASA report Jan 10, 2008.

The Second Coming of Shark Jesus

A Hungarian aquarium has recently announced the “second coming” of a virgin birth.

Unfortunately for those hotly anticipating the end times, it’s a shark virgin birth.

A seven year old white-tipped reef shark is known to have never come in contact with a male. She has been in a tank without any other sharks since being born in the Nyiregyhaza Centre in 2001. Despite that, she recently gave birth.

Unsurprisingly, the aquarium’s staff was shocked by the event. Atilla Varga, director of the Nyiregyhaza Centre, said: “When I saw the baby shark lying on the bottom of the tank I thought it was a joke. I was amazed when I realised it was a real shark. The mother is very protective of her pup, but as soon as we can, marine biologists want to get a DNA sample from both.”

Managers are thrilled with the new visitors flocking to the aquarium, but are worried about the size of the tank housing the sharks. The tank is not large enough for two, and they do not want to send the baby elsewhere. Varga said: “We are planning to build her a bigger tank, find her a male and then hopefully next time round she can have a baby properly.”

Virgin birth is known as parthenogenesis in the scientific community. It’s been commonly observed in lower animals, such as several types of insects, but wasn’t thought to occur in more complex animals such as sharks.

New research and events are suggesting that it may be more common than originally thought. In fact, this is the second time in a year an aquarium has reported a case of shark parthenogenesis (hence the “second coming”).

Last year, a US zoo reported the virgin birth of a hammerhead shark pup. In that case however, the pup was killed by a stingray before it could be removed from the tank.

my fave

Purple Nurple Optical Illusion

Optical Illusion by Walter Anthony
Copyright 2007
Used w/permission

Note it is a binocular phenomenon. But ????

Source: Omni-Brain.

How to Develop a Mindset for Math | BetterExplained

How to Develop a Mindset for Math

Math uses made-up rules to create models and derive relationships. When learning, I ask:

What relationship does this model represent?
What real-world items share this relationship?
Does that relationship make sense to me?
It’s simple, but it helps me understand. If you liked my math posts, this article covers my approach to this oft-maligned subject.

"Prospective memory" in action

"What you are looking at is an pictorialized overhead view of a rat coming to a choice point in the maze. The rat is indicated by the white circle. The colors indicate the firing rates for hippocampal neurons with place fields on the maze with reddish parts indicating high firing rate."

"At the choice point of the maze ... the recorded hippocampal neurons do something very odd. What the rat will do is look down the maze in the direction of each of its two choices. When the rat looks down in one direction place cells that correspond to position down that path will activate. When the rat looks down the other direction place cells corresponding to position in that part of the maze will activate. The important part is though that the rat has not reached that point in the maze yet; the choice point causes a dissociation between the location of the animal and the firing of the place cells. More interestingly, it is as if the rat's brain is simulating what is going to happen if the rat runs in that direction."

From Science Blogs. More good stuff here. Picked up from Andrew Sullivan.