Science During Inauguration Weekend

Presidents and science have been a fantastic combination over the years. As I mentioned in a previous post, presidents have served as scientific proponents by helping to pass laws as well as speak publicly on the importance of science education for our country and the world.

The Obama inauguration festivities continue this trend by including a life size model of the Curiosity rover in the post-inauguration parade. In addition, there will be a model of NASA's Orion capsule which is being built for longer space travel.  Astronauts, engineers and scientists involved with both projects will also be in the parade.

For a cool set of images of NASA's parade stuff, check out the NASA Flickr photo album!

I'm very excited that science is being prominently featured in one of the largest American celebrations . Now if only I can decide if I'm actually heading down to the madness that will be DC this weekend ...

Source: NASA

Scientists Are The New Rockstars: 2012 Edition

It should be obvious that I love science, but I understand and respect that everyone doesn't.  Still, people that excel in their craft should be recognized the same way that entertainment stars are.  I'm not saying that we should have a "Real Housewives of Science" reality show or have a Kardashian scientist stumbling around labs, but it wouldn't hurt to share in some of that publicity.

To that end, let's check out some of the top scientists of 2012, as reported by the scientific journal Nature. Here is an excerpt that was news to me:

While it's no surprise that women are underrepresented in science, pinning that to discrimination, rather than gender differences in aptitude or interest, has been tricky. But when Yale University microbiologist Jo Handelsman showed that researchers offer fictitious female job applicants about $4,000 less in salary and rate them as less competent and worthy of mentorship than male counterparts, she produced strong evidence for sexual bias. Handelsman says she hasn't personally experienced strong bias, but became motivated to speak out about it when other women scientists described their experiences with sex discrimination.

It's common news that job applicants with ethnic sounding names (hello Shareef Jackson!) get called less for interviews, but it is extremely worrisome that this applies within the science field. Gender discrimination is real and it exists.

To see the full list, check out the entire article on the Mother Nature Network.

Merry PiXmas!

Happy holidays! Yes, this is a Christmas stocking in the shape of the math symbol Pi. I got it from ThinkGeek.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson & the GZA

I grew up on hip hop and science, so I was thrilled to see The GZA appear on an episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk. It's fun to watch because they are both fans of each other.  The genuine interest and respect for one another's work is incredibly apparent. My favorite part is around 16 minutes, when they talk about how current hip hop isn't "literate" and how many artists nowadays don't have a muse. A little later, during a great conversation about violence in hip hop , Tyson compares the artful use of lyrics to one of the film masters, as "Hitchcock forces you to fill in the blanks". Check it out below! 

If you can't see the video below, click here.

NASA's Year of Awesome

2012 was an amazing year for space exploration. NASA has put together a great interactive infographic showing all of their accomplishments from the Mars Curiosity Rover to the GRAIL moon exploration. To check it out, click here!

Also, check out an amazing video of how the Hubble Telescope. Jannik Hansen from Google+ puts its best:

Imagine taking a picture of an empty area of space no bigger to you than a grain of sand held out at arms' length. Through enough exposure, however, Hubble revealed that this miniscule are of space holds a multitude of galaxies never seen before. 

If you can't see the video below, click here.