MsWildEngineer

Hey! Good for you. 

My advice for college in general is to enjoy it - not just parties or whatever, but the opportunities you’ll have to meet and hang out with likeminded people. When I moved away to college it was the first time in my life I got to meet people who I felt shared kindred spirits, as opposed to most kids I grew up around and with whom I was unable to identify. I got to be in control of selecting my awesome friend group (and they’re still my friends today!). College will be one of the richest intellectual environments you’ll ever be afforded, and it’s great because you just sit there and people will lecture to you about awesome stuff you’ve never known about or considered before and your mind will be blown. If it’s not, branch out and try some other courses. Embrace that. You’ll miss it when it’s gone. 

Giving advice for “being a woman and going into science” is harder, because, for one, I didn’t study science in college so I can’t even speak from personal experience. I will say that right now at this moment in time, being a woman – or as any gender nonconforming person for that matter – in science is better than it has ever been in terms of awareness from others about gender discrimination, unfairness, and biases. I’m not saying things are perfect or that there’s nothing left to improve because that’s not the case… but that today, there are more advocacy and awareness groups available to provide resources and support for those who need it, which I hope can give you some peace of mind. Also, not everyone is going to struggle or face gender-based adversity in their academic or career paths, so be aware of that, too. 

I get this question a lot and it made me think of one of my favorite moments from VidCon last year. I wrote this back in July and didn’t post it then, but now seems appropriate:

A female scientist uses a gauge interferometer to measure the length of light in wave-lengths at the Metrology Division of the National Physical Laboratory in Middlesex, England, 1944. Imperial War Museum Archives

Hoover Dam 

Hoover Dam spans the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizona and Nevada. The dam was constructed back in the 1930s with concrete arch-gravity structure. Such sturdy structures are aimed to prevent flooding as well as to provide irrigation and hydroelectric power to arid regions of states such as California and Arizona. Hoover Dam is also known as Boulder Dam. It was, however, renamed in 1947 in honor of Herbert Hoover (U.S secretary of commerce and the 31st U.S president proved instrumental in getting the dam built). 

Hoober Dam is 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long. It is one of the largest man-made structures in the world at the time of its construction, and one of the world’s largest producers of hydroelectric power. 

For more info, click the link below:

As we remember actor Leonard Nimoy today, we wanted to share this from our Museum of American History’s collection. They’re ear tips Nimoy wore as Mr. Spock in the 1982 movie “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.” The authentication card is signed in green ink by Leonard Nimoy.

For the First Time, Direct Observations Show Increasing Greenhouse Effect

The rising concentration of carbon dioxide at the Earth’s surface is increasing the amount of heat the air can absorb, measurements taken by scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab have shown. 

This phenomenon, they say, is being caused by rising CO2  levels from burning fossil fuels and fires, and the data fits with models that take into account the effect of human activity on the atmosphere.

“We see, for the first time in the field, the amplification of the greenhouse effect because there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb what the Earth emits in response to incoming solar radiation,” said Daniel Feldman, a Berkeley Lab project scientist who specializes in comparing climate models with actual instrument observations. He is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Nature on Feb. 25.

Getting people to care about museum collections might not be exclusively a top-down effort, but getting a person like me in the position to begin communicating those values is totally something that comes from The Powers That Be — the people who make decisions about budgets and expenses, like a Board of Trustees, or the executive directors. 

You know who got me hired at The Field Museum? Our President, Richard Lariviere. It was his decision to get me on board, and since he basically calls the shots it went through as an executive decision. My hiring came at a fortuitous time as a result of the Museum’s overall mission commitment to broadening our educational digital reach. 

One major setback seems to be identifying people who qualify as Chief Curiosity Correspondents; those with video and communication experience, an established audience, a background or intense interest and comprehension of scientific research, and a willingness to work in a collection or for an institution that may have never thought in a million years that you would be their spokesperson - so, you’ve got to be flexible, gracious, and humble. 

Museums are eager to hire for similar programs, but it is still seen as a major risk to finance a project like ours if there’s no clear way of measuring its success. For example, I assume our Board finds value in the numbers of people we’re reaching based off of video views, but how do those views translate to Museum visits, donations, or funding for The Brain Scoop? 

I don’t usually do this, but I saw this on my facebook page today, and just can’t stand by and let this happen.  »This is from the fb page of the new museum opening in Florida. «

This is absolutely egregious. Artists, especially scientific illustrators are some of the most skilled people out there. It’s a craft that takes a lifetime of study and draftsmanship to master. Scientific Illustrators offer an invaluable service to all fields of science.  Sure, it’s just a coloring book….of anatomical illustrations. They cant be that hard to make…. what of it? The exploitation of artists in science is HUGE problem.

In the past 15 years, underpayment and non-payment for commercial work has single-handedly destroyed the paleo-art as a field. The artists responsible for the iconic dinosaur illustrations of your childhood now struggle to make ends meet. Many of them cant even make it to conferences anymore because they don’t have the funds.  Museums, as an institution have increasingly come to expect more and more of artists for less and less. 

UPDATE: Just checked their page again myself, and the post now has been changed into this: