Friday, November 1

SCIENCE

Common Networking Activity – Fishing, Strip Clubs And Golf: How Networking In Medicine Blocks Female Colleagues From Top Jobs
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IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE

Common Networking Activity – Fishing, Strip Clubs And Golf: How Networking In Medicine Blocks Female Colleagues From Top Jobs

Women have been entering academic medicine at nearly the same rate as men for decades, but very few women reach the top levels of leadership. For example, as of April 2022, of the 71 U.S. cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute, only seven are directed by women. In 2018, women accounted for 16% of medical school deans, 18% of department chairs and 25% of full professors. To this day, women are still less likely than men to become associate or full professors of medicine or to be appointed as chairs of university medical departments – and there has been no narrowing of this gender gap over time. I am a cancer researcher, physician and surgeon, and I also study gender inequity within medicine. In my most recent research, I interviewed more than 100 people in medicine to b...
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A Dwarf Planet – What Is It?
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IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE

A Dwarf Planet – What Is It?

What is a dwarf planet? – Myranda, age 8, Knoxville, Tennessee The word “planet” came from the ancient Greek words that mean “wandering star.” That makes sense, because for thousands of years, people have watched planets change position in the night sky – unlike stars, which appear fixed and unmoving to the naked eye. That’s how the ancients discovered five of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Astronomers using telescopes found Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930. Solar system leftovers I’m a space scientist with a passion for astronomy and the exploration of the Solar System. I received my Ph.D. in physics in 1994, about the time astronomers began to find more and more objects beyond Neptune, in the Kuiper belt. That’s a place in space that holds the ...
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When It Comes To Heart Disease The Sex Of Your Cells Matter
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SCIENCE

When It Comes To Heart Disease The Sex Of Your Cells Matter

Most mammals, including humans, have two sex chromosomes, X and Y. One sex chromosome is usually inherited from each parent, and they pair up as either XX or XY in every cell of the body. People with XX chromosomes typically identify as female, and people with XY chromosomes typically identify as male. The genes on these chromosomes play a key role in development and function – including how heart disease develops. Before I became a biomedical engineer studying how sex chromosomes affect the heart, I learned about one curious function of X chromosomes in my high school science class, with the calico cat example. Female calico cats almost always have orange and black splotches of fur, because the gene that defines coat color is found on the X chromosome. When an orange cat mates with a bl...
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A Material (Nickel Oxide) Can ‘Learn’ Like Animals And Could Help Further Artificial Intelligence Research
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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

A Material (Nickel Oxide) Can ‘Learn’ Like Animals And Could Help Further Artificial Intelligence Research

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea A unique material, nickel oxide demonstrates the ability to learn things about its environment in a way that emulates the most basic learning abilities of animals, as my colleagues and I describe in a new paper. For over half a century, neuroscientists have studied sea slugs to understand basic animal learning. Two fundamental concepts of learning are habituation and sensitization. Habituation occurs when an organism’s response to a repeated stimulus continuously decreases. When researchers first touch a sea slug, its gills retract. But the more they touch the slug, the less it retracts its gills. Sensitization is an organism’s extreme reaction to a harmful or unexpected stimulus. If researchers then shock a ...
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Treat The Problem Like A Game – The Best Way To Protect Personal Biomedical Data From Hackers
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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

Treat The Problem Like A Game – The Best Way To Protect Personal Biomedical Data From Hackers

The best way to protect personal biomedical data from hackers could be to treat the problem like a game. The big idea Game theory, which tries to predict how the behavior of competitors influences the choices the other players make, can help researchers find the best ways to share biomedical data while protecting the anonymity of the people contributing the data from hackers. Modern biomedical research, such as the National COVID Cohort Collaborative and the Personal Genome Project, requires large amounts of data that are specific to individuals. Making detailed datasets publicly available without violating anyone’s privacy is a critical challenge for projects like these. To do so, many programs that collect and disseminate genomic data obscure personal information in the data that coul...
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Here Are 3 Reasons Black Holes Are The Scariest Things In The Universe
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IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE

Here Are 3 Reasons Black Holes Are The Scariest Things In The Universe

Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole. Black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape – are a hot topic in the news these days. Half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose for his mathematical work showing that black holes are an inescapable consequence of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel shared the other half for showing that a massive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy. Black holes are scary for three reasons. If you fell into a black hole left over when a star died, you would be shredded. Also, the massive black holes seen at the center of all galaxies have insatiable appetites. And black holes are places ...
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A Complex Systems Scientist Explains: What Is Chaos?
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SCIENCE

A Complex Systems Scientist Explains: What Is Chaos?

Mitchell Newberry, University of Michigan Chaos evokes images of the dinosaurs running wild in Jurassic Park, or my friend’s toddler ravaging the living room. In a chaotic world, you never know what to expect. Stuff is happening all the time, driven by any kind of random impulse. But chaos has a deeper meaning in connection to physics and climate science, related to how certain systems – like the weather or the behavior of a toddler – are fundamentally unpredictable. Scientists define chaos as the amplified effects of tiny changes in the present moment that lead to long-term unpredictability. Picture two almost identical storylines. In one version, two people bump into each other in a train station; but in the other, the train arrives 10 seconds earlier and the meeting never happens. F...
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Attribution Science Says Yes, Climate Change Is To Blame For Some Extreme Weather Events – Here’s How It Works
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ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE

Attribution Science Says Yes, Climate Change Is To Blame For Some Extreme Weather Events – Here’s How It Works

SCIENCE Xubin Zeng, University of Arizona Extreme rainfall and flooding left paths of destruction through communities around the world this summer. The latest was in Tennessee, where preliminary data shows a record-shattering 17 inches of rain fell in 24 hours, turning creeks into rivers that flooded hundreds of homes and killed at least 18 people. A lot of people are asking: Was it climate change? Answering that question isn’t so simple. There has always been extreme weather, but human-caused global warming can increase extreme weather’s frequency and severity. For example, research shows that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are unequivocally warming the planet, and we know from basic physics that warm air can hold more moisture. A decade ago, scientists weren’t able to...
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20 Years After The First Stellar Tourist Space Tourism Is Here – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Plans To Send Civilians To Space
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SCIENCE

20 Years After The First Stellar Tourist Space Tourism Is Here – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Plans To Send Civilians To Space

For most people, getting to the stars is nothing more than a dream. But on May 5, 2021, the 60th anniversary of the first suborbital flight, that dream became a little bit more achievable. Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson on the International Space Station with a view many more are likely to see soon. NASA/Tracy Caldwell Dyson/WIkimediaCommons The space company Blue Origin announced that it would start selling tickets for suborbital flights to the edge of space. The first flight is scheduled for July 20, and Jeff Bezos’ company is auctioning off one single ticket to the highest bidder. But whoever places the winning bid won’t be the first tourist in space. On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito, a wealthy businessman, paid US$20 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to be the first tou...
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What A Massive Flare Seen On The Closest Star To The Solar System Means For Chances Of Alien Neighbors
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SCIENCE

What A Massive Flare Seen On The Closest Star To The Solar System Means For Chances Of Alien Neighbors

The Sun isn’t the only star to produce stellar flares. On April 21, 2021, a team of astronomers published new research describing the brightest flare ever measured from Proxima Centauri in ultraviolet light. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the solar system and is home to a potentially habitable planet. Hubble/European Space Agency/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA To learn about this extraordinary event – and what it might mean for any life on the planets orbiting Earth’s closest neighboring star – I spoke with Parke Loyd, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and co-author of the paper. Excerpts from our conversation are below and have been edited for length and clarity. Why were you looking at Proxima Centauri? Proxima Centauri is the closest star to this solar system. A couple...
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