time

so, for some strange reason, I have no homework right now and no research to work on because all the items I ordered have yet to come in. even solar cells class is currently without work (though I have this constant fear that I'll get an email in the next few minutes from the prof with homework attached). what does one do with spare time?

apparently:

- make dinner - the homemade pizza crust too large for my pizza stone = lots of crust!

- repaint my nails in 'eternal optimist' - which, while it took slightly less than 40 minutes this time, I went and messed up two nails right near the end :(

- climb!! climbing today, climbing tomorrow, comp on saturday at Western!

- catch up on all the TV shows I made myself not watch for two weeks - thanks solar cells class

- buy new slacks! yay GAP, thanks for making pants that fit my shape. red trousers are the best.

- see my sister's last high school home game!

- help feed tent city 3 - though my friends did all the cooking, I just drove the food down there in my mom's giant suburban (my car is in the shop :( ) such good homemade pulled pork!!

that's about 50 lbs of pork shoulder, a bag of large onions, 20ish lbs of baked beans, 200 chocolate chip cookies, a hundred buns, 6 bags of salad, and many people fed. 

- make muffins (recipe is from my favorite bakery of all time, Macrina, found here)

- and find fun things on the internet:

in which I fix my girlfriends grandparents wifi and am hailed as a conquering hero
(used to happen frequently when I visited relatives...not so much anymore for some reason)

excerpts from the safety brochure
(for all of you who want to know about NASA's plans for space tourism and colonization, please read for your safety)

and this infographic
(have I ever mentioned how much I love infographics?! so many infographics....)

apparently, before this survey, it was assumed that religious = backwards. really?! umm, some of the christian people I most admire are smack dab in the middle of technology! favorite part of the infographic was reveling how much religious people use technology - a lot.

also, today I began contemplating starting a science tumblr, strictly for all the science-y things I find on the internet, so that the poor people who are my friends on fb don't get their feeds filled up with all my posts....like this sweet NASA air traffic video!

women, tech, and the superbowl

In the post-superbowl commercial analysis, there are a few terribly inappropriate commercials are on everyone's radar because their content so explicitly objectified women in a way that needs to stop happening. However, while pursuing the twitter hashtag #notbuyingit, started by the women of Miss Representation (a film that I recommend watching) I was caught off guard by the dislike of the best buy mobile commercial:

Maybe it was just because I was watching the commercials in a room full of women who had met one of the people featured (and were very excited about it every time, understandably so :)  - it was the guy who turned text in to voice) or because I'm so used to the male-dominated tech field, that I didn't have an issue with the fact that every single developer featured was a male. Some people thought that best buy was sending the message that while men can make apps, women can only sell them. While that conclusion can be drawn from the ad, I, somewhat surprisingly, don't have a large issue with the ad, because it is such a male-dominated industry right now and men have created great technological advances. (side note, I hope that guys don't feel like their tech advances are being completely discounted because they are men and not women, in this whole conversation about women in science/tech - that is not my intention. I just want to see women given more opportunities and told that they can succeed in a currently male-dominated industry. It can be quite intimidating to be the only women in a room if you don't have support and encouragement!)

An article on a site called Jezebel pulled together a list of females in the tech industry that the author felt best buy could have included in their ad. Click the link, read the list of women. Quite honestly, Amanda Wixted, the creator of Farmville, is the only women I feel would be well-know enough by the superbowl-watching crowd to merit real consideration by the marketing team at best buy. Would you recognize Emily Chang, the woman who created a company who designs user interfaces - recognizing her product in the 3 seconds she would have been on the screen? I can't even remember the faces of the men who made Words with Friends, but I connected with the ad because I saw the image of the app on the phone screens. Maybe it's because I've been on the flip side as well, as a member of the commercial-producing crew (my uncle makes commercials and I've worked for him in the past) that I understand why the men who appeared were featured. Do any of you know about the women Women are still making great strides in the tech industry, but I'm not ready to quit shopping best buy because of this commercial. Women were not objectified and we got to see some of the faces behind some of the most well-known and useful mobile technology. And anyways, there were both men and women in the mix at the end, I'm just glad the used a female to do the talking, as it easily could have been a male 'manager' - which is the role I mentally put the woman in because she was the spokesperson. (second side note - check out the racial diversity in that group of best buy sales people and note that not all of the male developers are white males.)

I'm curious, though, what my other feminist-minded friends thought of the commercial, did your radar pick up on the all-male developers vs women salesperson when you first saw it?

life in a lab coat.

yesterday, as I was getting frustrated with the kids in the lab that I TA, I realized just how many hours of my life I've lived in my lab coat. I should probably wash my lab coat, but I'm afraid I spilled something a long time ago that doesn't like water. Realistically, I probably haven't, but I don't want to accidentally destroy the laundry machine....

In contemplating the state of my lab coat, I realized that there are a large number of pictures of me in a lab coat floating around the internet, including this lovely image:

note - that is dry ice....I tried so hard to convince the photographer that we should represent 'real chemistry' (not that dry ice in water is not 'real chemistry,' but it feels like cheating...alas, we also had to use food coloring (!!!) he did not like my tiny bottle of blue azulene that I had worked for more than two quarters to synthesize :(

this was my expression in response to the photographer prompting: this is the coolest the reaction you've ever seen! yeah, right. food coloring in water - coolest thing ever.

(more pics here)

drawing on windows while sporting my lab coat is always fun - this was the azulene project as well.

finally, I'm so glad NASA Ames switch to more professional headshots (see my google+ prof pic), since this was my 'action shot' one year:

and yep, it now resides on the NASA website, for all the world to see....

In some ways, this lab coat is my 'suit' while at work in the lab (which, somewhat unfortunately, also requires wearing pants and flat, closed-toe shoes), and clearly, not made for a female figure. But, as men probably developed the lab coat, it fits their shape, not mine. I can't complain too much, because I'm not willing to take my coat in to be more fitted due to a safety issue - I want the lab coat material as far away from my skin as possible if I spill something on it. A narrowly cut coat could hold the chemical close to my skin, which could just cause larger problems than me having to wear a baggy lab coat!

gogglelinesforlife

exploring fath & science

I'm finally getting around to listening to Pastor Richard Dahlstrom's sermons on the relationship between faith and science. I've only made it through the first one so far - Genesis and the Environment - and was reminded of this graphic that I ran across on the internet:

(via)

Incredible.

My thoughts on the sermons will probably show up in later posts, but you should take the time to listen to them as well, unless of course you go to Bethany and already heard them :)

you should also watch Prof. Cox's TED talk below

booth babes

ommph. I would audibly express my frustration, but my roommate is trying to learn how to nap (I know, who doesn't know how to nap?!) so I'm going to write about it. I'm also putting off finishing homework, but that's nothing new.

you all know how I struggle with appropriate dressing in a male-dominated science field, but there is absolutely no reason booth babes should exist.

'Booth babes' stir controversy at 2012 CES
(for some reason, BBC won't let me have an embed code, but you should click on the link and watch the video, it's not too long)

Booth babes are insulting to women working in the tech field and only encourage gender stereotyping and inappropriate behavior. Regardless of if a women voluntarily agreed to work as a booth babe, she should not be subject to inappropriate comments and behavior from men, as seen in the BBC clip. (I also hate the way women are dressed in most video games and sci-fi books, but that's for another post.) I also finding it insulting to attendees to just assume that they would not be interested in a product if they don't have a scantily-clad model holding it. The problem only doubles when models are hired and not expected to know anything about the product. A company engages an attendee by objectifying a woman and then can't the sell the product because the rep doesn't know what she is handling - awesome marking strategy PR department (a marketing team probably all filled with men, but I won't put it past a woman to set something up at a male-heavy expo) Someone attending something like CES is there specifically to find out about new products, so I really don't see the point of hiring booth babes to introduce new products. And to the gal in the red shirt who though what they were wearing was fine because they weren't practically naked and laying across the hood of a car - if the clothing isn't appropriate for the tech workplace, it shouldn't show up at a tech conference.

Violet Blue, over at ZDNet has a humorous and pointed discussion about what it would be like if booth babes were male. also awful was the number of men taking pictures of the women without a product in her hands (link is from another gaming conference where apparently booth babes were supposed to be absent. it's quite funny, actually). If you're a guy who would go ask about a product because of the women holding it, not because of the actual product itself, I never want to work with you. That behavior quickly translates into an uncomfortable atmosphere in the workplace and I want nothing to do with it.

I also found the model's comments on women not being interested in technology telling about what she values and how the low visibility of women in tech makes entering the filed intimidating. I don't believe girls will see science and technology as a viable career to pursue until we get more women doing high-profile awesome things in a non-exploiting manner. Which is tricky, because minds, values, and attitudes in the industry have to change now before more women will join. I'm not sure what exactly to do to help this change happen, but I think that starting by mentoring girls and showing them how they can excel in those fields and supporting women like my friend Meredith, who is blazing trails through the tech industry.

for more discussion about booth babes, there are some other articles that have popped up on the internet:
another ZDNet one
one from The Guardian - apparently women were dancing in thongs at CES....really?!!!
from The Atlantic Wire
CNET (via huffington post) posted an except of a Women in Tech Panel - and look how awesomely they all were dressed!!!

and a whole ream of photos of booth babes - can you tell what they are marketing?
oh wait - there's more
and look! some gadgets, but don't forget the booth babes.

I'm done ranting now, but if you read all the way through this, I'd be interested in hearing how you would/do respond to the idea or presence of booth babes at a conference.

Also, no relevant pictures in this post, because the only related pictures would be of scarcely clad women, and I don't want that on my blog. But I can give you a cute kitten picture!

I would totally check out a product if a marketing department used kittens to sell it.....

{young} women in science

so encouraged today - learned that the winners of Google's new Science Fair were all female.



slightly discouraged at the rate of rejection from the people the girls reached out to for assistance, but I'm not sure if the rejections were based on their age (13-18), type of experiments, or because they are female, so I won't judge the rejectors too harshly.

and nope, this contest was not targeted towards women/minorities, it just happend that these intelligent, curious and persistent women found the mentorship, support, and encouragement to continue working towards doing great and innovative science.

suits required.

“Here’s the thing about being a girlie girl. I think there was a generation before us that felt like they needed to act like men to be taken seriously, like they had to use their sexuality to take control of people. I don’t judge people for that. But I don’t want to take all my clothes off and use myself as an object. It’s part of the machine and I don’t think that necessarily pushes us forward as women. I think you can still be girlie and maintain your power. The fact that you associate being girlie with being non-threatening, that is … I mean, I can’t think of more blatant example of playing into exactly the thing that we’re trying to fight against. I can’t be girlie? Why do I need to be defined aesthetically by someone else’s perceptions of what makes me seem like someone who should be taken seriously? I’m going to wear whatever I want to wear, because I’m expressing myself, and I deserve that right. And I like the way that looks. You’re not demeaning yourself by acting girlie. I think the fact that people are associating being girlie with weakness, that needs to be examined. Not me dressing girlie. I don’t think that undermines my power at all.

“I’m not doing it to pander to people. I just always knew what I liked versus what I don’t like. I never liked things with too many zippers or spikes and stuff. That weirds me out. I like things that are pretty. And I think it’s great to be pretty. I like being feminine. I think it’s good to be feminine. We don’t need to look like men or dress like men or talk like men to be powerful. We can be powerful in our own way, our own feminine way.”  - Zooey Deschanel (source)

------

I like this; I like it a bunch. I don't however, necessarily agree with the implication that our generation of women doesn't still feel pressured to dress and act like men to be taken seriously. After watching the film Miss Representation, the one thing I left with was how all the non-artists featured were wearing menswear-esque suits. 

Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, Katie Couric and the other women who names I can't remember, but who worked in the law or politics fields, were all wearing suits. Women in the art and film industries were not in suits. They were still dressed well, but they were not in a tailored suit with square lapels and shoulder pads. Artists have always been able to get away with wearing non 'standard' clothing. Zooey Deschanel is an artist. 

In which of the following outfits would you take me more seriously as a scientist? (ignoring the setting of the pictures) 

I think, in my case, dressing girly probably undermines how seriously people consider my science and how much respect I command in my male-dominated field, regardless of how much we say we don't judge people based on their appearance and seek gender equality. Which is just too bad, because I love to wear dresses and skirts.

diodes

first, thank you to all my EE inclined friends who have been teaching me the basics of everything I probably should have learned at some point before starting a solar cell project....I'm slowly learning and absorbing all this new material.


this thursday, if someone questions my understanding of diodes when I try to explain how solar cells (p-n junctions) work, I'm just going to quote my favorite EE:

so it's like a door really

if you push it the wrong way, it won't open

and if you push it the right way, but not hard enough, it won't open

otherwise it opens and the electrons can walk right through

if you put a ton of current going the wrong way, it'll burn up

basically it's like throwing flaming bowling balls at a door going the wrong way

eventually they get through

and burn up the door in the process

then it just works as a wire

but smells bad

kind of charred

best moment during my night of panicked studying. 

is this real life?

I just looked at my calendar - I'm flying on 7 planes between now and Christmas day. 

I'm going to be in Seattle for a grand total of 4 more days before December 25th. 

Tonight, I'm thankful that I'm getting paid to go to graduate school and that my profs don't believe in in-class finals :)

Tomorrow, I head to Albuquerque, Monday I'm giving my 'how to apply for graduate school' presentation to the students at NMSU and speaking on a panel about my NASA internship experiences. Apparently it is going to be cold in Albuquerque....hopefully no snow though!

Tues-Thursday are going to be crazy days. don't expect to hear from me. don't worry, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, I'm just going to be hiding in different spaces cramming everything in for my advisor (final + paper + presentation). 

But then Friday I'm going to NYC! and Boston! To visit these fantastic people:

Yay!

And since my sol-gel class is finishing with a take-home final, a paper, and 'presentation' (but we just send our prof our slides, we don't actually present.....) I'm going to stay in NYC until Thursday!

Everything gets turned in Friday morning and then I'm DONE for the quarter! Hopefully I'm alive enough to go ice skating with my roommates and friends that evening......

And finally, Saturday I'm getting on another plane to Palm Springs with my family + family friends for a whole week of SUN. I am so excited to see the sun. So. Excited. I think I've forgotten what it looks like.....

(solar flares are cool)

{diversity in science}

This Sunday, I'm flying out to Albuquerque, NM (good thing I don't actually live there, I would never ever spell that town correctly without spell checker....) to give a 'how to apply to graduate school' presentation to underrepresented STEM students at New Mexico Sate University. I gave a similar talk to the NASA MUST program students at our symposium this past summer and was asked by my program coordinators to give a similar talk at NMSU. (If you or someone you know is applying for grad school, you can check out my handout here - any feedback is greatly appreciated :) )

Preparing for this presentation has made me notice the diversity present in my department and in my group. Compared to what I saw at my undergraduate university, the UW is seems much more diverse. SPU felt much less diverse, though apparently we're up to ~25 % minority students in the newest incoming class. My little group of 3 BS Chem students were all Caucasian and all our profs were Caucasian (and only one was female).

Now, in my MSE department, I'm surrounded by people of all backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, etc. In my windowless office, there are five of us - me, one kind of really awkward caucasian guy, two asian females and one asian male (I'm not sure where exactly they are from). In my group, where my PI is from India, there are three Chinese guys, one Iranian guy, one Indian guy, and one caucasian guy (well, two if you could the senior undergrad who just joined our group this week). Though, I must say, there is still a large number of caucasian males.

In a strange way, the diversity present in my department at the UW is divisive. I don't see much reconciliation between people of different backgrounds, even with the commonality of science. (But, maybe I shouldn't expect much reconciliation at all apart from Christ?)

though it wasn't consciously intentional, the other grad students I have begun to become better friends with are all caucasian. the large number of chinese students (I think - could be another asian nationality, I'm really bad at being able to tell them apart.) typically tend to group together, speak their native language, and not mix with the other grad students. Even in our lab group I've noticed this, even though it could be partially due to the fact that all the Chinese students are working on closely related projects.

I've tried to imagine how I would interact with other students if I was the visiting student and didn't speak the national language. I'm sure that I would probably feel most comfortable with other American students, but I should hope that I would not exclusively interact with them. I suspect that going to Sweden one of these summers will be a bit different experience than if I were to go to an Asian country - even though their national language is not english, Swedes are pretty white :)

Should we be satisfied with the current drive for 'just' increasing the number of diverse students in our schools and communities? how do we interact with each other well, learning from our differences, celebrating our respective cultures and build collaborations? I want to become a more global scientist, and right now, to me that means learning work with people of all backgrounds and cultures. So far, I'm afraid I've not been too successful, and I'm not sure how to change that.

but for now, I should go back to studying for my one in-class final next week. it's all about symmetry. I can break down the pretty Hungarian needlework below to a variety of symmetry elements....

{art + science}

Probably most of the people who read this blog know that I love when art, design, and science come together - the results are both both beautiful and technically interesting. While I was aware of national SEM image competitions, recently I came across the 'Art of Science' competition from Princeton.

Would you believe this image represents the reversals of the Earth's magnetic field?

Or that this image models population dynamics?

This image captures some of the dynamics of a surfactant (soap) at a thin-film/silicon wafer interface: 

my new grad school goal: find out if the UW does anything like this and if not, make it happen. We even have an art museum on campus!

{I linked some of them above, but I've posted a bunch about art/fashion + science/tech on my other blog}

women in science.

As I've mentioned before, there are very few women in my MSE department here at the UW, which just follows the general trend in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

After reading The Disappearing Spoon, (a really good book - I highly recommend it!) I was slightly encouraged about the current status of females in STEM - in the recent past, women did all the work and their male counterparts got all the credit. (This is not a story confined to science, I'm sure.) At least, now women can author papers and are recognized for their work!

However, from all the lecture's I've attended, from the books that I have read, and from my own experiences, I still don't see women as a whole fully supported in STEM. (disclaimer - even though I'm the only women in my research group, I don't perceive any difference in the way I am supported by my advisor.) I don't know what it is going to take to change the fundamental cultural belief that women aren't as capable in the sciences as their male counterparts, just as I don't know what needs to happen to change the perception of scientists as a whole. (I do have some stories to share about my experiences thus far as a female scientist, but I'll save those for another post, this one is already kind of long....) I may be the lone voice here, but sometimes I get frustrated that scientists are presented so one-dimensionally as people who stereotypically lack social skills and don't dress well. I've already ranted about this on my other blog, so I won't repeat it here, but if you're interested, you can read it here.

Someday, I'd like to create a documentary about women in science. I'm sure it's probably been done before, but I'd like to create an exciting, yet holistic, picture of female scientists, not just reproducing the stereotypical perceptions of women in STEM. Recently, I saw a clip for First Robotics filled with celebrities encouraging students to participate in the robotics competition and to pursue science/engineering/math as a career. There was only one female - Miley Cyrus. (I don't have anything against her, but I feel like the editor didn't cut her sections well.) Even the famous scientists they highlighted through the clip were all male. Sure, Albert Einstein was a genius and, arguably, modern science would not be where it is today without his work, but  without the female scientists throughout history, we wouldn't know the structure of DNA or fundamentals of radiation.

{Rosalind Franklin - fundamental DNA structure work via x-ray crystallography}

{Marie Currie - fundamental knowledge of how radiation occurs}

(though I'm sure that if you're reading my blog, you already know about these women :) )

more recently recognized women: 

{Françoise Barré-Sinoussi - fundamental HIV research; Nobel prize 2008}

{Barbara Liskov - (first female US PhD in Computer Science; object-orientated programing}

I did find this video - but let's be real, what was more exciting/inspiring: the video on women in science or the one  with celebs for FIRST? And that was the best looking video I quickly found on YouTube....

So. What can I do now? How can we get more women in STEM? I'm still not sure, but I'm going to do my best to encourage and support every female I work with. I'm headed to NM in a week and a half to give a presentation to underrepresented students in STEM - hopefully my story can encourage them to continue STEM careers.

I've also picked up Right Stuff, Wrong Sex recently from the library, all about the first female astronaut candidate. I can't read it until break, but I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm also on the hunt for other books/media on women in science - so if you have any suggestions, let me know!

(on an slightly unrelated note - I changed my blog theme - what do you think?)

cômmuter

midterms = no posts for a while.
midterm over = posting again :)
(if you want to know, midterm did not go as well as I would have liked. 1/10 of the points were on a topic I've never studied before, there was no homework covering it and we only spent 10 minutes and one slide on in class on it. we covered 150+ slides.)

my roommate's feelings about my mysterious disappearance into homework/study mode this past week:

you'd think they'd remember being a student! It has only been 5 months!


*warning - this blog post gets a bit nerdier than the past ones*

mainly because I've been charting my average cycling speeds to and from school each day!

see?! my average is increasing! Okay, it's barely increasing, but it's something! Also I find it interesting that the slopes seem to parallel....that probably means that if I factored out the extra speed I get coming down the massive hill right outside my house, I would get roughly equal average speeds each way. hmm.

Buying my new bike was probably the best decision I made about bike commuting - it may still be tough to wake up and get out of the house before the sun rises every morning, but then I get on my bike and remember why I signed up for this :) The hill home is still not fun, but I make it up consistently now. And as pictured in the picture below - I'm getting better at tweaking my bike. I added the back rack all by myself! (Well, I also put on the waterbottle holders and bike lights, but those are easy. Taking apart the brake and pin from the wheel - a bit more tricky for me!)

Second best decision - getting a bike locker. No one knows my bike is locked in it and it stays dry! (well, the asphalt sometimes gets wet from creeping water, but my actual bike stays dry) So, I can bike to school, and if I am too tired, too sore or it gets too late, I can grab a bus home and not worry about my bike. Best ever.

And all the time I spent researching for an excellent pannier has paid off. (I spent close to 2 weeks searching the internet) Mainly, most of the waterproof backpacks and panniers are not very attractive. I don't know who decided that waterproof = poor color choice and only square shaped bags with strangely placed straps, but Knog did not listen to them.   I love love love my Knog Dry Dog pannier!!

(sorry if you don't care about my pannier, but I'm going to write a baby review here because I could only find one online and I think it deserves way more!)

Firstly - the 17" bag is HUGE. Like, super-duper large. I lose things all the time to the bottom of the bag and half the time I stick my head in the bag to find something. It's like a giant black hole. or Mary Poppin's carpet bag - but better, because it's absolutely WATERPROOF.

(it's about as big as my torso!)

The way the Dry Dog closes is one of the best techniques I found online. It may be similar to the Ortlib bag, but not really from what I can tell. Here you roll the top down and then bring the clips together in the middle, which really keeps the water out (and air in if you're not careful!) but then the over-the-top flap is shaped to get envelope the whole opening, doubling the waterproof-security. And it clips down, unlike the ortlib one I was looking at, which used velcro. I love velcro, but I have more faith in clips/snaps. I recently rode through a decent rainstorm and nothing got wet. I was soaking, but my books and computer were dry!

(twist-and-clip)

(even the front stripes are reflective!)

The pannier has a board on the backside and the Klickfix system attaches to it. It also supports your computer, which can hang out in your pannier in the built-in pocket. I still keep my computer in my sleeve when I'm not using it, just for extra protection. The built-in pocket is super padded, but conveniently keeps your laptop out of the way in your bag. And there is a mesh pocket with an elastic top halfway down the front of the computer pocket, which is a great place for keys, headphones, wallet, etc. Otherwise the little items will get lost in the bag!

(easy, yet secure, clip on and clip off)

And, this pannier easily converts to a messenger bag, courtesy of the wide, soft and comfortable strap attached. I use this as my only bag around campus, as it still keeps the rain out when I'm walking! :) It is really easy to adjust the strap length, but if you don't have it at the right height, sometimes the back rack attachements can get caught on your pants, jacket, shirt, etc....

(strap adjustment + reflective half circles on each side!)

Overall - awesome awesome bag and it's totally worth the price and shipping costs! They have a 13" option, but I'm not sure if it comes with the Klickfix system, as they call it a 'bag', not a 'pannier'.

Now all I have to do is figure out how best to dry my bike clothing out on rainy days....I hate wet socks :)



In the meantime, this is what's on my plate for the week - thesis proposal outline + filling it all in.....

{summer interruption}

I planned to video blog through the summer, completing my final internship at NASA Ames in CA...

Take a look how many blog posts happened from June - Aug... Zero. Whoops. Apparently, I was too busy to blog, but that doesn't mean I didn't keep taking pictures and videos!

So, after about 2 months of sitting in pieces on my computer, here are highlights from the entire summer in one video! (Covering 10 weeks of fun means it's kind of a longer video and has lots of titles...)

Done. Summer adventures blogged :)

Thanks friends for a fantastic summer!

Art + HP = Wordle

You didn't even have to read the 22 pages and now you know all about my honors project :)