Galaxy Zoo blog Part 1: Grade school science has a bad image

Karen Masters of Galaxy Zoo started the “She’s an Astronomer” blog in 2009.  She interviewed female astronomers and asked them the same questions so that we would get an “overview of what lots of different (female) astronomers thought about the same issues”.  She recently wrote a post addressing why she thought the “She’s an Astronomer” series was necessary.  In this post she compiled all the answers to the question “What (if any) do you think the main barriers are to women in astronomy?”.  Masters interviewed 15 women total – 7 were professional astronomers involved in galaxy zoo, and 8 were galaxy zoo volunteers.

Masters found that there was a wide range of answers, but that there were trends with the “level of formal education/career progression in the field”.  The longer someone had worked in astronomy, the more problems they thought there to be.  In this post I’ll discuss the answers given by the 8 Galaxy Zoo volunteers, who focus in on the issue of poor presentation of science to grade school students.

The Galaxy Zoo volunteers found that science is often seen as a boring/hard subject.  One homeschooled interviewee said, regarding science, that “because it’s taught so badly at school, it shuts down any interest”.  A former teacher agreed and said that poor science education is more of a barrier than gender.  Some Galaxy Zoo volunteers expressed the feeling that the stereotype of science being a boring subject would improve with time.

One interviewee Gemma noted that “if people could see more clearly at a young age how many cool things you can do with maths and science and the sense of achievement you get from problem solving, that they aren’t dry subjects that you learn by rote and that there are still many interesting things to discover, I’m sure a lot more people would be interested, be they women or men.”

I agree – I think that science needs to be taught in a way that is more engaging to students.  My science classes were most enjoyable when I got to high school and could do exciting experiments.  This report recently published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress paints a dismal picture of K-12 science education – fewer than half of all students perform at or above the proficient level in science at all three grades tested (4th, 8th, and 12th).  This article discusses some of the challenges faced by grade school science teachers.  Many teachers don’t have the resources they need to do classroom experiments that will pique their students interest. A lot of students also come in with a negative view of science, believing that they won’t be good at it.  Elementary school students are also focusing in on math and English, in order to meet No Child Left Behind standards.  As a result, science is left in the dark.  And if elementary school science is being taught poorly, kids won’t be as interested once they get to middle school.  One other problem is that administrators often ask teachers to teach subjects they aren’t familiar with.  One former NASA biologist found herself teaching earth science, and had to take a workshop on it at her own expense.

A significant effort needs to go into teaching science better in schools, and changing the stereotype that science is boring and hard.  Students should find themselves engaged by science.  This is why projects such as Galaxy Zoo are so important.  For those of you unfamiliar with Galaxy Zoo, it provides the general public with an opportunity to participate in real scientific research.  Galaxy Zoo has you classify images of galaxies based on their shapes, for human galaxy classifications are much more accurate than quantitative classification methods.  You can read some of the scientific accomplishments here: The Story So Far.  Projects like this, that have you contribute real science, do a fantastic job at getting people interested, whether they are grade school students or not.

How do you think grade school science can be taught more effectively?  I’d love to hear some thoughts!

In my next post, I’ll be discussing some of the answers of the “She’s an Astronomer” interviewees regarding gender discrimination.

Gertrude B. Elion: Nobel Laureate, Chemist, Hunter College graduate

Today marks the birthday of Gertrude B. Elion, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in medicine.  Elion died in 1999, but her legacy is lasting.

Gertrude B. Elion

Elion was born in 1918, and attended public high schools.  After graduating she attended Hunter College.  In her autobiography, she writes, “Had it not been that Hunter College was a free college, and that my grades were good enough for me to enter it, I suspect I might never have received a higher education.”  She majored in chemistry at Hunter, wanting to become involved in cancer research after seeing her grandfather die of it.   She went on to receive a masters degree from NYU.

She eventually started working with George Hitchings.  With him, she expanded her horizons and studied biochemistry, pharmacology, immunology, and virology.  She tried to pursue her doctorate by going to school at night, but was eventually informed that in order to get her PhD, she would need to go to school full time.  She made the decision to continue working with Hitchings.  She went on to receive honorary doctorates from George Washington University, Brown University and the University of Michigan.

Gertrude Elion contributed significantly to the development of many drugs.  These include the first treatment for leukemia, a drug for suppressing immune responses in organ transplant cases, a drug for treating malaria, and a drug for treating viral herpes.

Elion recieved the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1988, along with George Hitchings and Sir James Black “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment”.  In 1991, she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In grad school, female astronomy students are more likely to feel like impostors

In a study done by a working group within the Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy, it was found that feeling like an impostor in the field of astronomy was more likely for female grad students than for male grad students.  A survey was sent out to graduate students in astronomy and astrophysics during the 2006-2007 school year.  They received 1,143 analyzable responses.  The survey asked students to rate the level on which they agreed with statements like “In general, people tend to believe I am more competent than I really am” or “When I succeed, it is because I work much harder than others”.

A main hypothesis was that women would feel like impostors more so than men.  They also hypothesized that impostor phenomenon could be affected by factors such as feeling mentored, length of time in grad school, citizenship, etc.

Mentoring appears to be key.  It was found that students who felt mentored were more likely to feel welcome in their department, and were more likely to think they had the skills necessary to succeed in research.  They also were more likely to think that their success was a result of high ability and were less likely to think that they had obtained their career position by mistake. The further along a student was in their graduate school career, the less likely they are to report feeling mentored.

Female astronomy graduate students were found to be more likely than males to exhibit characteristics indicative of impostor syndrome.  Females were less likely to report that their department was welcoming.  They were less likely to say that their success was a result of high ability and were also less likely to feel confident in their ability to achieve success in their field.  They might be more likely to feel that they have to work harder than others to achieve success.

Summary Points

• Female astronomy graduate students are more likely than males to show traits indicative of impostor phenomenon.
• The longer a student has been in graduate school, the less likely they are to feel mentored
• Students who feel mentored are more likely to feel welcome  in their department and feel confident in their ability to become a good researcher.
• Students who feel mentored are less likely to display characteristics of the impostor phenomenon.

The information in this post comes from “Women in Astronomy and Space Science: Meeting the Challenges of an Increasingly Diverse Workforce”, a book of proceedings from a conference held in October 2009.  The talk given was entitled “Mentoring and the Impostor Syndrome in Astronomy Graduate Students,” and it was given by Rachel Ivie and Arnell Ephraim.

How to give effective oral presentations

While I was at AAS, I attended a professional development workshop about giving effective oral presentations.  The instructor was Jean-luc Doumont, author of the book Trees, Maps and Theorems: Effective Communication for Rational Minds, and an engineer who has a PhD in applied physics from Stanford.  He went over how to structure your talks, how to get your message across, how to construct a good powerpoint, how to build confidence, and how to answer difficult questions.  Giving effective oral presentations is something that many people, including myself, struggle with.  I wanted to share some of the tips he gave; I found them extremely useful, and I am actually excited to give an oral presentation so I can put these tips into action!

The “What” vs. the “So What”: Doumont stressed the idea of getting across your message.  He differentiated the message from the information.  The information can be thought of as the “what”.  The message is therefore the “so what”.  One of the most useful things he said was to “maximize what the audience gets out of the presentation, not the information you put it.”  I think it can be really tempting to put as much information into your presentation as possible, but it is more effective to parse out unnecessary information and concentrate on the “so what”, the motivation for your work.  Your talks should always have a message.

The three rules of communication:

1. Adapt to the audience: You need to be aware of who your audience is.  Understand who you are addressing – is it a group of people in your field or a group outside your field?
2. Maximize the “signal to noise” ratio:  You want to maximize your message and get rid of noise.  Noise can be things like fidgeting, cluttered powerpoints, too many “likes” or “ums”, or unnecessary graphics.
3. Use effective redundancy (verbal and nonverbal):  Don’t be afraid to make the same point a few times.  In all likelihood, this will drive the point home, and not seem unnecessarily repetitive.  Use both verbal and nonverbal methods to drive home your main message.  Nonverbal methods includes writing it on your powerpoint, showing graphs, etc.

Steps to constructing a presentation:

1. Planning: Gather your thoughts.  Ask yourself the following questions.  Why – What is the purpose of my presentation? Who – Who is my audience? When/Where - What are my time/space constraints? What – What did I do/What is the content of my presentation?
2. Designing: Define the structure of your presentation.  Start with an attention getter, i.e. something funny but relevant, an anecdote, picture, question.  Tell the audience the motivation for your work up front.  If they recognize the importance/the need for your work, they’ll be more likely to pay attention.  Tell the audience what you did to address this need.  Then put in the main message, the one sentence you want your audience to remember.  This way, they will be aware of what they should be getting out of the presentation and will keep it in mind throughout your powerpoint.
3. Creating your slides: Make slides for the audience, not for yourself.  Only put one message per slide.  A bad slide is worse than no slides; if it is a last minute presentation, forget the slides.  Show stand alone slides, so that someone deaf could get the point.  At the same time, speak a stand alone text, so that someone blind could get the point.  Rehearse everything without slides.  Make sure that you include the message for slides with graphs (i.e. why is this graph important?).  Be concise.
4. Delivery: Master all channels – verbal, vocal, and visual.  Memorize the outline, but not the wording.  Verbal - Eradicate filler words, and learn to value silences.  Don’t be afraid to pause to gather your thoughts.  Vocal - Adjust your tone, rate, and volume.  Modulate to convey meaning, complexity, and importance.  Visual – Project confidence by controlling your body.  Ensure presence through strong eye contact.
5. Questions: When taking questions, do not rush.  Listen, repeat/rephrase, think, then answer.  Be honest – if you don’t know the answer, say so.  Also be helpful – tell them you will try to find the answer.  If you get an aggressive question, take a pause to quiet the atmosphere.  Then acknowledge their concern, but disagree with the opinion at the intellectual level.

Nervousness:  Accept nervousness as a good thing!  The adrenaline rush can actually make for a better presentation, since you are more aware.  Nervousness comes from a fear of the unknown, so try to eliminate as many unknowns as possible.  Make a connection with someone in the audience.  Familiarize yourself with the room before presenting.  Focus during the presentation – pace yourself, and breathe slowly.  Finally, have a positive attitude, and visualize yourself succeeding!

I hope you guys find these tips as useful as I did!  There are some online references on Jean-luc Doumont’s website, including webcasts, videos, slides, and handouts.

Friend’s Blog: Astrology the Pseudoscience

Hello all! I wanted to link to a really cool blog post written by my good friend Dan, who writes the blog “Science for Dessert.”  He posts about really cool things in science in a way that is easy for non-scientists to understand.  It is informative, funny, and even includes drawings.  I highly recommend checking it out!

Recently he wrote an entry that I wanted to share with you guys.  It is entitled “Astrology the Pseudoscience“, and it addresses some of the recent upset surrounding the new zodiac signs, and talks about why astrology is, and always has been, totally fake and not science-based in the least.

AAS 217 Highlights

I’ve spent the better part of this week in Seattle at the American Astronomical Society Conference in Seattle, so I decided to write a post about some of the highlights.

I got to attend lots of great talks at the meeting.  Here are some summaries:

• “Cassini Eyes the Rings of Saturn“, a talk given by Carolyn Porco, discussed some recent discoveries by the Cassini spacecraft, which is orbiting Saturn.  Little moons embedded in Saturn’s rings can actually clear spaces in the rings (360-degree gaps or partial gaps).  This is the first time moons have been tracked while inside disks.  It is believed that ~100 large bodies are currently in orbit inside Saturn’s A ring.
• “Chandra’s First Decade of Discovery”, given by Harvey Tananbaum, talked about some important findings made by the space based Chandra X-Ray Observatory since it started operating.
• The session “Super Earths and Terrestrial Planets” contained several mini talks about recent discoveries by the Kepler space-based telescope.  In a talk given by William Borucki, it was announced that Kepler has recently discovered its first confirmed rocky planet! The planet, Kepler-10b, has a radius 1.42 times that of Earth, and has a temperature of 1833 K.
  

  Panel about Kepler-10b from the Kepler booth at AAS

• “The First Supermassive Black Holes”, given by Mitchell Begelman, was dedicated to discussing two different schools of thought about supermassive black hole formation.  One theory is that they formed from Population III stars.  The alternate theory discussed was that they formed from the direct collapse of gas clouds.
• My favorite talk was “New Science with Old Stars” given by Anna Frebel, this year’s recipient of the Annie Jump Cannon Award.  Anna Frebel does high resolution spectroscopy, and she has discovered the oldest known star, and the most metal-poor star.  She researches these extremely old stars to try to answer questions about the formation of our galaxy.  Metal poor stars, having formed before the universe was significantly enriched with metals by supernovae, can help us put together the history of our galaxy’s formation and aid us in understanding the origin and evolution of chemical elements.  The metallicity of a star is defined as its iron to hydrogen ratio.  The most metal poor star has an iron to hydrogen ratio that is 1/250,000 that of the sun.  The oldest known star is dated at around 13 billion years.

While in Seattle, I also got to do some sightseeing, which was exciting since I’ve never been there.  My friends and I went up to the top of the Space Needle, but it was so windy that we couldn’t stay out very long.  We could even feel the building swaying back and forth.  Apparently it sways about an inch for every 10 mph of wind.

The Space Needle

The poster sessions where people display their work on posters are also a lot of fun to go to.  Various organizations, telescopes, and companies have booths at the poster sessions, and some are pretty elaborate.  They also give away wall posters, pens, pamphlets, and things like that, so now I can cover my wall with posters of galaxies and stars.  Overall, I had a great time in Seattle; I learned a lot and got to see a lot of great talks and posters.  I can’t wait for next year’s AAS!

From a display at AAS

Annie Jump Cannon

Turns out I have wifi on my flight! Since I have about four more hours until my first flight lands in San Francisco, I have lots of time to kill.  In light of the American Astronomical Society Conference, I thought I’d write a short biography of Annie Jump Cannon, the astronomer who developed the Harvard Spectral Classification scheme for stars.

For those of you who are not familiar, the Harvard Spectral Classification scheme is arguably the most used scheme for classifying stars.  At the time it was developed, it contained 7 spectral types, O,B,A,F,G,K, and M.  Spectral type “O” corresponds to the hottest stars, with temperatures roughly above 30,000 K.  Spectral type “M” corresponds to very cool stars, with temperatures below 3,500 K.  Since even cooler stars have been discovered, the L and T spectral types have been added.

Annie Jump Cannon

 

Annie Jump Cannon (1863 – 1941) developed an interest in astronomy through her mother, who would show her constellations.  Annie attended Wellesley College, where she was a physics major.  While there, she also learned how to make spectral measurements and did observing.   In 1894, Annie became a junior physics teacher at Wellesley and studied astronomy at Radcliffe.  In 1896, she was hired by Edward Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory.  She was one of many women to be hired by Pickering. Known as “computers”, they were hired to reduce data and do calculations and classifications.  Nettie Ferrar had started developing a classification system, but only stayed at the Harvard Observatory for a few months.  Her work was picked up by Williamina Fleming, who developed a scheme that had classes A through Q.  Another woman, Antonia Maury, who did theoretical work, developed her own independent scheme.  Annie Cannon worked off of these schemes to develop the OBAFGKM scheme, which was theoretical like Maury’s, but simplified and elegant.

In addition to developing this classification scheme, Cannon published information about over 200,000 stars to the Henry Draper Catalog.  She later published the Henry Draper Extension, which brought her total number of classified stars to about 350,000.  She also discovered 300 variable stars.

Annie Jump Cannon was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University.  She also received honorary doctorates from Wellesley College, Mount Holyoke College, Oglethorpe University, the University of Delaware, and Groningen University.  Harvard finally awarded her a professorship in 1938, 2 years before her retirement.

(Sources: Wellesley College, Harvard, San Diego Supercomputer Center)

American Astronomical Society Conference

So, tomorrow morning I’m off to Seattle for the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. I’m pretty excited – I went last year and I loved seeing all the talks and posters. I’ve never been to Seattle either, so I’m looking forward to exploring the city a little bit. I hope I’ll be able to post something while I’m there, but if not, I’ll definitely be posting some interesting things when I get back!

Gender, culture, and mathematics performance

The paper “Gender, culture, and mathematics performance” was published in 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The paper sets out to answer three questions:

1. Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population?
2. Do gender differences exist among the highly mathematically talented?
3. Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent?

After addressing these questions, the paper talks about the effects of sociocultural factors on observed gender differences.  I discuss their answers for each question below:

Question 1: In studies published in 1966 and 1974, a developmental psychologist found that gender differences in math performance were well established, and that males scored higher.  She noted that, while their elementary school performance was similar, boys’ skills began to increase faster than girls’ around age 12/13, which created a large gap by the time they reached high school.  In a recent study based on No Child Left Behind data (representing over 7 million students), it was found that gender differences in mathematics performance were close to zero in all grades, including high school.  This pattern was found for all other ethnic groups studied.  Thus, the gap that was found in previous decades has now disappeared.  However, the No Child Left Behind data was not able to shed light on a possible gap in complex problem solving.  For this, the researchers looked at data from the National Assessment of Education Progress, and found that the gender difference was trivial.  The math skills of girls are equal to those of boys.

Question 2: In 1984 it was hypothesized that the variability of intellectual abilities was greater among men; this would mean that there are more men than women at both the low-achieving and high-achieving ends of the spectrum.  To test this hypothesis, they use variance ratios.  A variance ratio greater than 1 would indicate greater male variability in math skills.  Data from state math assessments found variance ratios slightly higher than 1.  They found that the ratio of males to females scoring at the 95th percentile was 1.34, and the ratio at the 99.9th percentile, the ratio was 2.15.  However, this varies greatly from country to country.  For example, as many girls or more girls than boys scored in the 99th percentile in Iceland, Thailand and the United Kingdom.  This challenges the greater male variability hypothesis, which one would expect to hold for all populations.  In another study, it was found that some countries have no difference in variability, and others even had more female variability.  This paper suggests that greater male variability is due to sociocultural factors, rather than biological differences.

Question 3: Of course.  Females with great mathematical talents definitely exist.  The scarcity of women mathematicians in the 20th century is due to a severe lack of opportunity for women who wanted to pursue math and science fields.  The paper cites many superb women mathematicians, such as Ada Lovelace, who is regarded as the world’s first computer programmer, and Grace Hopper, who developed the first compiler for a programming language.  You can find a large list of women mathematicians here.  Just because women mathematicians find themselves in the spotlight far less than male mathematicians doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

From this paper, we can conclude that sociocultural factors have more of an effect on the gender gap than innate biological differences between males and females.  One study listed in the paper concluded that there was a strong correlation between “a country’s measures of gender inequity and the size of the math gender gap both at the mean and the right tail of the distribution.”  The paper concludes that “gender inequality, not greater male variability, is the primary reason fewer females than males are identified as excelling in mathematics and the high and highest levels in most countries.”

Gender inequity can take many forms, including people advising females against taking STEM courses, mathematically talented girls not being supported, a lack of female role models in mathematically based fields, hostile work environments, teachers paying more attention to boys, and more.

(Source: Gender, culture and mathematics performance, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009.)

10 yr. old girl becomes youngest to discover a supernova!

Kathryn Gray, age 10, discovered a supernova in an image taken by amateur astronomer David Lane.  The supernova is in the galaxy UGC 3378, which is 240 million light years away.  Kathryn began searching for supernovae last year after she learned about a 14 year old who had discovered one.  Lane had sent images to Kathryn’s father, and she found it when checking over the images.  (Source: cnn.com)

The recently discovered supernova.

Supernovae are generally classified into one of two types.

1. Type Ia: These supernovae occur in a binary system consisting of a white dwarf and a companion star.  The white dwarf accretes matter from its companion star.  As the white dwarf gets more massive, its temperature rises, and uncontrolled fusion of carbon and oxygen occurs, detonating a supernova.
2. Type II: These occur in stars that are about 8 times as massive as the sun.  These stars are capable of fusing elements up to iron, and thus have iron cores.  When the iron core reaches the Chandrasekhar Limit (1.4 solar masses), the electron degeneracy pressure can no longer support it, and it collapses. As outer layers collapse inward, a shock wave rebounds and the star explodes in a supernova.

(Source: NASA)