Women in Science: A flickr Set

Mildred Fenton, by the Smithsonian Institute, no known copyright restrictions.
The Smithsonian institute archives released women scientist and engineer images in March this year.

The Smithsonia Institute photography blog is The Bigger Picture. Some of the collection were used in the exhibition Women and Science at Science Service.

Would you find out the gender of your unborn baby? IntelliGender is about to be in New Zealand.The kit sells for $125 and works at 90% accuracy. Opponents argue that this product facilitate selective abortion. This cultural practice has skewed male to female ratio in many countries.

There are other methods to determine gender, such as sonography and amniocentesis, but invasive procedures increase the risk of miscarriages and birth defects. This chemical test is a non-invasive option using urine.

Parents carrying the genes with serious genetic disorders could benefit from this test. The genes that cause some life-threatening diseases only appear in one gender.

Original article from Stuff.co.nz.

I have a healthy fear of spiders. Ed Yong from Not Exactly Rocket Science wrote that the arachnid Myrmarachne melanotarsa gather to pretend to be ants. I did not know they needed to be more aggressive.


Another post by the same author discussed gender gap in maths. This problem also applies to science, technology and engineering. Janet Hyde and Janet Hertz argued that the gender gap is due to social and cultural factors. Some of the resistance encountered were:

• Lack of attention or encouragement,
• The effects of stereotypes,
• Lack of female role models,
• Willful misogyny,
• Unconscious biases, and
• Hostile work environments.

On the opposite end of the scale, I prefer species getting along. My favourite in that post was the rabbit and the dog. Although I have seen rabbits bite dogs where it hurts most on TV.