About information, and science today

I read an interesting interview in Salon this weekend entitled, “Are We on Information Overload?“

Like so many today, the author being interviewed (David Weinberger, senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who has just published Too Big to Know) questions the changes in learning over the last 10-100 years and contemplates how our inventions are changing us – even the way we think.  The discussion is pretty standard until Weinberger is asked about Darwin and the claim that his science would be done very differently today:

[Darwin] was so reluctant to write; he remained relatively private about his theory for decades and published only when somebody else, Wallace, was on the verge of beating him to it….  Darwin today would not be operating this way. He would very likely be tweeting from the Beagle. He would be announcing his findings and initial ideas online, and people would be arguing with him all along, taking his ideas, applying them elsewhere, pushing back, criticizing him deeply — all of the things we do on the Web. That work has revolutionary, incredible value, but put into the Web, it gets teased out, amplified, corrected, as well as misunderstood and degraded. Nevertheless, that Web itself has more value than the individual content, so I would expect that Darwin today would be gathering his data from clouds of linked data, trying out ideas on the Web, and drawing those ideas in the tussle. The old rhythm of knowledge and science not coincidentally is the rhythm of publishing. The Web has completely broken that rhythm.

This surprises me.  Does it surprise you?  Has your way of doing science changed in the past decade (other than the typical maturation path)?

Why or why not?

Lego Friends – for the girls

Interesting article about how Lego is bringing a line out called Lego Friends that is aimed at girls aged 5 and up.  Previously, Lego solely focused on “boy interests”.  Now they want to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children.”  New colors, 29 new mini-figures of girls of different nationalities, and model backdrops that include such things as a salon, a horse academy, a veterinary clinic, and a café. 

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories#

What do you think about this?  Is this great news for girls, that it might encourage them to build and create more? 

These toys won’t be out until after the holidays in the US, and roll out on Dec 26th in the U.K. but should be on the shelves already in France.

Happy holidays everyone!

Ah, December….

… Finals and grading and holiday cards, oh my!

As you finish your 2011 goals and open your 2012 datebooks, don’t forget these deadlines, just around the corner:

• Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (19-23 March 2012) – abstracts due 10 January 2012;
• AbSciCon (16-20 April 2012) – abstracts and student travel grant applications due 31 January 2012;
• Solar System Exploration @50 Conference (18-20 October 2012) – abstracts (and vita) due 1 February 2012;

Students, check this out too, if you’re not already involved in NASA research:

• NASA Internships, detailed in “How to apply for a NASA Internship,” brought to you by the Oregon Space Grant Consortium blog – with over 100 comments since it was featured on Freshly Pressed this morning! – due date for most opportunities is 1 February 2012.

What other conferences are you putting on your schedule this year?

Lynn Margulis

Dr. Lynn Margulis, a luminary in the science of the origins and evolution of life, including astrobilogy, died yesterday. Though I’m not a biologist, I’ve always admired Dr. Margulis. She led her life on her own terms, balancing work, family, and life as she saw fit, not as society dictated. I love this article about her – it brings up so many issues she had to work through as a pioneering woman in science. Hope you enjoy it.

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0402/features/speed-print.shtml

MentorNet opens its doors to anyone with a .edu e-mail

The e-mentoring program MentorNet recently made its services available to all STEM students, especially woman and minorities, from any campus.

MentorNet is an award winning e-mentoring program that matches proteges and mentors based on the preferences they list.  You may not get a mentor exactly in your field, but usually that gives you a helpful perspective.  You commit to an 8-month relationship, and the protege and mentor agree on the desired frequency of communication.  Basically they give you the infrastructure needed to find a mentor, and suggestions for how to take advantage of your mentoring relationship.   The program is also flexible enough to make your mentoring experience into the one that works best for you.

• Please help spread the word about this valuable free program, and also consider signing up as a mentor!  We need more planetary scientist mentors on MentorNet!

If you know a woman or minority student who wishes to find a mentor in their chosen field, tell them to go to www.mentornet.net, and hit JOIN NOW or FIND A MENTOR. As long as they have an .edu address and intend to enter any STEM field, they will be eligible.

Women @ NASA web site

I think we’ve talked about the women@nasa website before. It seemed to have lapsed, but a press release today shows that it’s back up, and it’s got some pretty nice content. My only grouse is that of the “science” section, none of the women are working scientists – they are all engineers.However, our own Woman in Planetary Science, Jen Heldmann, is a face on the front page!

Personally, I’d love to hear if you all have any feedback on this site or its utility. What are websites like this used for? Do women get inspired because they see these faces on a webpage like this? Should we be showing it in EPO activities?

NASA EXPANDS WOMEN@NASA WEBSITE TO ENCOURAGE GIRLS TO PURSUE STEM CAREERS

WASHINGTON — NASA has expanded its Women@NASA website to include
Aspire 2 Inspire, a new feature aimed at helping middle school girls
explore education and careers in science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The site features four short films and one overview film that explore
the careers and backgrounds of early-career women who work for NASA
in each of the STEM areas. A list of community organizations and
NASA-affiliated outreach programs with a STEM emphasis also is
available.

The site also features four Twitter feeds where visiting girls can
interact with and submit questions to the young women featured in the
films.

“We have an opportunity to reach out to the next generation and
inspire today’s girls to pursue science and technology careers,” said
Rebecca Keiser, the agency’s associate director for agency-level
policy integration and representative to the White House Council on
Women and Girls. “Expanding opportunities in these fields will give
our country perspectives and expertise that will help us
out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the world. It’s key to our
future.”

Visit the website at:

http://women.nasa.gov/a2i/

Journal access

One of the issues for planetary scientists with affiliations outside of the large research universities continues to be lack of access to journals to which their institutions do not subscribe.  In talking with colleagues just last week, this issue came up for a scientist at a NASA Center – and this worries me, as we want all of our planetary science colleagues to have access to the journals that they require for their research.

Is this a problem for you?  Does last week’s letter to the community from Max Bernstein, or the original OSTP request, hint at any ideas for solving this problem, at least as far as NASA data and NASA grant-supported-publications are concerned?  I *think*that  the time for reaching a solution may be close, now that OSTP and NASA are interested in this issue — but for OSTP to take action, they will need to be convinced that this is a problem for NASA-funded researchers.  They are asking today for input from you — is this a problem for our community?  In what circumstances?  Would making these publications and/or digital data publicly available solve the problem or improve journal access significantly?

OSTP is asking.  Max Bernstein and NASA are encouraging you to answer them.  Will you act, by sending in responses to the RFIs on publications and digital data?

Dear Colleagues,

This is the letter from SARA, a short update for NASA scientists. Today I
want to tell you about two important requests for information released
recently that will allow you to set the direction for research publications
in the coming years. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
(OSTP, an office of the President) recently released two requests for
information about increasing public access to results of federally funded
research, specifically, peer-reviewed publications and digital data
resulting from federally funded scientific research. The idea is that OSTP
is trying to assess what information should be accessible to the public,
when, and how. For example, peer reviewed publications from NIH funding are
available to the public in manuscript format a year after publication (via
PMC (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/public-access-info/), with links
back to the official journal version. There is no such public electronic
library for NASA (or any other Agency). Thus, access to articles depends on
the publisher. For example, articles published in some journals e.g., The
Astrophysical Journal (ApJ http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X), become
available after a year, even to those who don’t have subscriptions. Those in
some other journals never become available to those who don’t have
subscriptions. Since publishing papers and generating data are the major
tangible products of the grants given by SMD we want to encourage our
grantees to know about and respond to these RFIs.

For your convenience I have created these tiny URLs:

Publications RFI: http://tinyurl.com/3t66vtn
Digital Data RFI: http://tinyurl.com/434ln62

For more information on this topic see the links at the SARA science matters
page at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/science-matters/

Max Bernstein
SARA@nasa.gov

To join the R&A update mailing list, please submit the form at https://lists.hq.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/r-and-a-update.

Additionally, if you have input that you would be comfortable sharing with the community before or concurrent with your submission to OSTP, please feel free to post it here (or email it to us privately with a request to post) so that your colleagues can also be made aware of where the problems lie, and perhaps sign on to your letter in support (if you wish).

How is NASA communicating with the public?

From the National Academies weekly alert, 21 November 2011:

On November 8-10, 2010, the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board (SSB) held a public workshop on how NASA and its associated science and exploration communities communicate with the public about major NASA activities and programs.

Download the summary of this workshop in brief or in full as a free .pdf file or read it online, chapter by chapter.  The National Academies post many free workshop summaries, recommendations, and other reports online free each year; I like to download them onto my e-reader so I always have something handy to read – you never know what will spark an idea!

APS 2012 Professional Skills Development Workshops for Women

The American Physical Society (APS), with support from NSF, will host two Professional Skills Development Workshops in 2012 for female scientists.  Postdoctoral associates and senior-level faculty and scientists are invited to apply for the February 26, 2012 workshop in Boston, MA (Application Deadline:  November 18, 2011).  Postdoctoral associates and early-career faculty and scientists are invited to apply for the March 30, 2012 workshop in Atlanta, GA (Application Deadline:  December 16, 2011).  Senior graduate students are also welcome to apply.

Applicants affiliated with a US institution/facility are eligible for travel and lodging funding consideration.  Those needing funding assistance are encouraged to apply early.  The deadlines for the workshops and a link to the online application can be found at: http://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/skills/

Announcement posted at the request of the American Physical Society

Two positions open at JPL

The Planetary Exploration Newsletter announced this week two job openings in the Asteroid, Comets, and Satellites group in the JPL Science Division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Both appear to be research scientist positions, with one connected to the MIRO experiment on the Rosetta spacecraft and the other more generally researching comets, asteroids, or other small primitive bodies in the Solar System.

For more information on these positions and to apply, please visit  http://careerlaunch.jpl.nasa.gov and look for Requisition #10483 and #10484.  This notice is provided here because there may be two positions open and, as we have recently learned, 32% of women in planetary science are married to men working in planetary science.

Good luck!

Women and Mars (media coverage)

At least three Women in Planetary Science bloggers attended the Women and Mars Conference last week in Washington, D.C.  I was invited to speak on the first panel, and it was a very interesting one.

Dr. Colleen Hartman, Assistant Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, moderated the panel, asking us questions about our own background as well as planetary science at large.  Linda Billings from George Washington University contributed statistics on recent Mars missions, noting the gender distribution in various areas.  Cassie Conley, NASA SMD’s Planetary Protection Officer, spoke about planetary protection and its importance for future Mars missions.  Tiffany Montague from Google showed Google’s contributions to providing access to space exploration achievements in innovative ways.  I spoke about the current situation for women in planetary science in particular, calling out several issues and providing some recent statistics that I’d be happy to share with you if there is interest.

Media coverage of the conference was overshadowed by NASA’s announcement of MSL’s launch readiness, but the Agency French Presse did put out an article that was picked up by newspapers and media outlets around the globe, including Cosmos Magazine, France 24, The Times of India, Daily Mail (UK), Hindustan Times, Sri Lanka Daily News, and Emirates 24/7.  Here’s a link to one appearance of the article, published on the web site for Cosmos Magazine.

Did you watch any of the conference in person or (now archived) on Livestream?  What intrigued you, or made you curious to learn more?

Susan Niebur wins NASA Public Service Award

After today’s panel on “Why have so many women become involved/interested in Mars exploration?” at the Women and Mars Conference, a surprise visit by Jim Green was announced to present an award. Today’s award recipient was our own Susan Niebur!

Susan was awarded the Public Service Award from the NASA Planetary Science Division. The text of Jim Green’s acknowledgement was as follows:

NASA’s Planetary Science Division on very special occaisions really recognizes key individuals for their outstanding role model, their ability to work with the community in many different ways, it’s not just all about science, it’s a lot of the other aspects that we want to recognize. We have our highest honor, it’s where we give back to the community, and that is our Public Service Award and I’m here today to recognize Doctor Susan Niebur. Susan, your exemplary leadership abilities have helped many women in the field, both planetary and astrophysics, and by helping them figure out ways to cope with the specific issues and concerns when blending family and career, you richly deserve this award. And it’s really important for us, and for you to know, that you have made a difference. So Susan, let me give you the Planetary Science Division’s Public Service Award.

There’s a fabulous quote on this, it’s from Ruth Benedict, and I’d like to read it. “I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. They have made of their lives a great adventure.” Susan, you are the strongest woman I know.

Congratulations to Susan!