Issue of August 18, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Revisited: Honoring the "Mercury 13"
2. The Future of Virtual Participation at AAS Meetings
3. Jean Bartik, ENIAC programmer
4. Advancing scientific discourse in American Sign Language
5. Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance: 'I’ll probably always live with impostor syndrome'
6. Abolish ageism in early-career research awards
7. Her Luminous Distance: The Legacies of Women Astronomical Computers at Harvard exhibition
8. When aggression is viewed as brilliance, it hurts women in science, and science itself
9. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
In the early 1960s, 13 high-flying female pilots underwent the same tests given to NASA's newly selected Mercury 7 astronauts. The women lasted longer, withstood higher stresses, and complained less. The private testing program was abruptly ended at the start of the third phase of testing.
In June of this year, U.S. Representatives Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Young Kim (R-CA), Haley Stevens (D-MI), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), co-chairs of the Women in STEM Caucus, introduced the Mercury 13 Congressional Gold Medal Act, to recognize the contributions of this group of women, the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (known colloquially as the Mercury 13), to our understanding of the simulated effects of space on women and also, importantly, their example of women in STEM fields. Motivated by their pioneering efforts, in 2018, we published a post, The First Lady Astronaut Trainees: Time for a Congressional Gold Medal.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2023/08/revisited-honoring-mercury-13.html
A meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is a vibrant celebration of cosmic discovery and a space where we catch up with old friends, find allyship and community, and form new collaborations that are the engines of progress in our field. These events are also complex, time-critical, and expensive endeavors, and they have become even more so in the past three years. In response to the global pandemic, the AAS has hosted three fully hybrid regular meetings (AAS 240 in Pasadena, AAS 241 in Seattle, and AAS 242 in Albuquerque) that were designed to allow for any last-minute pivot to a fully online format. Their hybrid design was also intended to make the conferences more inclusive, accessible, and safe by welcoming both in-person and virtual attendees.
However, we now have data demonstrating that, while our current solution for facilitating hybrid participation has worked in some ways, there have also been some critical failures for both remote and in-person attendees. Furthermore, this model is unsustainable in the long term both financially and with respect to AAS meeting team resources. Given these considerations, it’s clear we must make major changes for AAS 243, effectively pausing our ability to host a fully hybrid meeting. Thus, for AAS 243, we will offer an in-person meeting experience with limited virtual options. Meanwhile, with your input and ideas, we will explore more compelling, effective, sustainable, and high-quality alternatives for virtual components for future AAS meetings. The information in the post highlights why we have taken these steps ahead of the New Orleans meeting, why we ask for your patience and support as we identify other options, and how we are looking to get your input on how best to hold future meetings that best serve the breadth of our community.
Read more at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2023/08/future-virtual-participation-aas-meetings
Submit thoughts to comments_at_aas.org.
Jean Bartik was one of the mathematicians who figured out how to program the Eniac, the first general purpose digital computer, with reusable code for military firing tables. Read this fascinating 2001 interview with her at:
https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Jean_Bartik
Four deaf scientists — a quantum physicist, a marine ecologist, an immunologist and an organic chemist — discuss their experiences in developing scientific lexicons and the resulting shift in their science communication.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-023-00575-9.epdf
By Zoë Corbyn
"Egyptian-American astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance’s debut memoir, Starstruck, offers a window on what it is like growing up to be a scientist today as a woman of colour. Nance, 30, is a passionate communicator of cosmology, and an advocate for women’s health, after a preventive double mastectomy. The book intertwines her personal story with explanations of what we know about the universe. Nance is completing her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is studying exploding stars or supernovae."
Read the full interview at
By Katie Langin
"Many researchers of color are at a disadvantage when applying for postdoctoral positions. That’s one of the main findings of a new study of 22,098 applications for 769 scientific postdoc positions at nine U.S. universities. The results could inform long-standing efforts to diversify science faculty, as postdoc appointments are a key stage in the academic career pipeline—but notoriously difficult to track or study because they are generally managed at the level of individual principal investigators (PIs) rather than departments or institutions."
Read more at
Read the original study at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X23000091
By Center for Astrophysics
"The Harvard Plate Stacks is presenting a special exhibition, Her Luminous Distance: The Legacies of Women Astronomical Computers at Harvard, in the rotunda and dome of the Great Refractor at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Free and open to the public, the exhibition celebrates the legacy of the Women Astronomical Computers and will illuminate to audiences the various disciplines and fields of study that have been inspired by these women and the astronomical photographs that they studied."
The opening reception is Aug 24, and the exhibition will be open Aug 25 - Oct 22. Read more at:
By Thought Café
"As a young aspiring scientist, the South African cosmologist Renée Hložek, who is now an associate professor at the University of Toronto, noticed that the few female scientists she could look up to seemed to be successful in spite of – and not because of or independently of – their ‘womanness’. And, as she details in this brief animation from Thought Café, when she was getting her start, she began to truly understand the distinct barriers women faced in the male-dominated scientific culture. This includes how the process of tearing down ideas, which is fundamental to scientific practice, can be corrosive to the experience of female scientists – and indeed to science itself – when it bleeds into the interpersonal."
See more at
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