Funding equity for researcher-mums is called for
The T Cells: How T cells can search for tumours and destroy the immune cells in a patient’s own tumours using CRISPR gene editing
A small clinical trial shows that the use of CRISPR gene editing can change immune cells so that they seek out and destroy cancer. T cells, a type of white blood cell that patrols the body looking for errant cells, were modified to recognize the mutated proteins in tumours, which are different in every person. It is the first attempt to combine two hot areas of cancer research: gene editing to create personalized treatments, and the engineering of T cells to make them better at targeting tumours. “It is probably the most complicated therapy ever attempted in the clinic,” says study co-author Antoni Ribas, a cancer researcher and physician. we are trying to get a patient’s own T cells.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03714-4
What do scientists think about COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases? A survey of Mastodon, a scientific event site for climate science and the Nature News
Restrictions put in place to curb the spread of COvid-19 made it harder to spread other respiratory illnesses. Now, in the Northern Hemisphere, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is surging, and the hospitalization rate for influenza in the United States is higher for the time of year than it has been since 2010. “These viruses are coming back, and they’re coming back with a vengeance,” says immunologist Scott Hensley. Why are these peaks happening now? What do you think will happen for future winters? The time of COVID-19 restrictions lifting and not exposing infants at a young age are some of the thoughts researchers have.
Some scientists looking for a different way to connect are flocking to Mastodon. The main difference between Mastodon and other websites is that they are not run by a single company. Because people tend to join different servers on the basis of their interests or locations, Mastodon can make it easier for users to speak to like-minded people. It becomes harder to reach a large group of people using Mastodon, an important feature for scientists who seek to communicate their findings to large audiences.
The conference is in a difficult phase of negotiations and I will be at it with the Nature News team. We want to hear your views on climate change, the summit, and how science plays into politics. Your comments might feature in future stories or help us to shape our coverage. Please e-mail me at at [email protected].
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03714-4
Women are more likely to take on work that matters but don’t help their careers: A decade of research by women and girls in science, a case study
Four female professors conducted a decade of research and found that women are asked to take on work that matters but does not help their careers, and are more likely to volunteer themselves for such work. The authors say there is an underlying reason. We ask women more often and judge them harshly when they say no because we expect them to take on this work. Women are under a lot of pressure to say yes. Another woman is often asked to solve the problem rather than individual women saying no. The authors offer five “easy fixes” for leaders to root out the problem at the source, which revolve around assigning tasks more thoughtfully.
Heavy water — which is similar to H2O but has deuterium isotopes in place of hydrogen atoms — is difficult to separate from normal water because the two have such similar properties. Now researchers have developed a way to sieve them using tiny molecular cages.
The report finds that although the proportions of jobs held by these groups rose overall between 2011 and 2021, they remained lower than the groups’ representation in the nation’s population. For example, women make up 50% of the population but only 35% in the US Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. Roles like managers and technicians are found in the areas of the academic, industry, non-profit and government sectors.
Besides MIS, the 17 endorsing organizations behind the report include the Association for Women in Science and 500 Women Scientists, both US non-profit organizations, and the European Platform of Women Scientists, a non-profit organization in Brussels.
Some funders, who collectively control the annual distribution of billions of research dollars, are interested in working with other organizations to roll recommendations into their policies. The NHMRC, the European Research Council, the US National Institute of Health, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada are some of the funders.
She was given more rejections and fewer professional opportunities after becoming a parent, which made it hard for her to advance in her career. Staniscuaski says that he was behind when he was compared to his peers. “I thought that was really unfair. I just had a break because I was raising my kids and I didn’t lose my enthusiasm for science. She launched a non-profit organization called Parent in Science to advocate for gender-balanced policies in Brazil, as well as setting her research aside to do so.
In 2021, MIS held a conference to bring together groups studying gender discrimination in STEMM and to share the preliminary results of their global survey (the full report is expected to be published this year), which reached roughly 9,000 researcher-respondents in 128 countries, including parents and those without children.
The report also includes examples of good practices already in effect and that create a sliding scale of strategies for organizations to consider. Rolling deadlines, extensions and deferments, application formats that allow scientists to explain lapse in productivity, and unconscious-bias training for reviewers are among the easiest things to implement.
Some have criticized the report for its lack of data on people from sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+) in the STEM workforce. Ramn Barthelemy, a physicist with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, studied equity and inclusion in physics and says his research has shown concerning trends such as exclusionary behaviours and negative workspace environments. Those trends, he adds, are particularly worrisome for those in the community who also identify as women or as a person of colour. “Without proper representation in data,” he says, “we aren’t being included in metrics on diversity, equity and inclusion, further marginalizing the community.”
Other agencies have committees that advise them on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. The director of the research grants and scholarships portfolio at the agency says she will work with the committee to see if any of the suggestions can be used to better the agency. While the diversity data is not currently used for parental status, it could be useful to determine whether or not the policies adequately support mothers.
How much does it take to lose a PhD? When I discovered my passions for research and what I wanted to do about it: The case of Alexander et al
I left my hometown of Slovakia at the age of 18 to study in the UK with a small suitcase and big hopes. I wanted to use the opportunities that my parents had been given by the communist regime. But never in my wildest dreams did I think I would become a professor before the age of 35.
More hours meant more results. Seeing my studies on digital reading translated into apps for children or family websites motivated me to do more. I put my work on a pedestal, often at the cost of my health and social life.
I thought I was the exception. But when I read an article containing interviews with five successful female psychology researchers (P. Alexander et al. Educ. I realized that this is a norm for top-performing academics. The people I admire the most are the people with their passion for their work. But I now realize that, by hiding behind passion, I was excusing my contribution to a toxic burnout culture in research. And for me and many others like me — female, immigrant, non-native English speakers — the pressures are even greater. It is time to speak out.
I made the greatest sacrifices during my years on temporary postdoc and lectureship contracts, when not publishing an extra paper could have cost me the grant I needed to secure next year’s salary. My mentor said that the passport to academia is publications, so I made every spare moment with writing. I wore ice wrist splints because the doctor said it would ease my carpal tunnel syndrome.
I had to work extra hard for each paper because I wasn’t a native English speaker. The fear of being misunderstood by using the wrong word added to the stress of conference presentations and translated into regular pounding headaches and fatigue, which I still experience.
I was sucked into a negative spiral by the pressure to perform. I was worried about saying no, overcompensated by saying yes, and became more stressed when I felt stressed. Spending time with friends is cut back on by me. My boyfriend cut our holiday short when he saw me typing a paper at the beach because he knew I was married to my computer. The ticket inspector on the late-night commuter train knew me by name because I regularly overslept my stop. The family was not surprised when I had a bout of illness.
Through a combination of hard work and luck, I got a permanent position early in my career. As I climbed the career ladder, the workload went up with more requests for mentoring, article and grant reviews, departmental duties, committee memberships, and voluntary contributions of time and expertise to professional societies. If my lower performance causes a large grant to take longer to be given, then I have higher costs of making a mistake.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00241-8
The Exceptions: The Emerging Roles of Women and Men in Science and the Challenges It Takes to Make Sense of Women in Higher Education
But my survival anxiety has lessened. Norway is known for its work–life balance than the United Kingdom, and starting a family in the country helped. The best thing I have ever done for my mental health is begin to take my hobby of writing poetry seriously. I’ve learnt to manage my calendar better so I don’t feel guilty for setting out-of-office replies.
The early career workload was too much for me, and it was also too much for others. I want to undo my contribution to this toxic culture of overwork, especially for groups that are disproportionately affected.
In The Exceptions, journalist Kate Zernike details Hopkins’s journey from a young student convinced that academia was a meritocracy to a seasoned faculty member who saw that the opposite was true. Zernike’s account details more than just the journey of one scientist — it provides a deeply researched dive into the history of gender discrimination in US higher education. The ‘exceptions’ of her title are the exceptional women who pushed through discrimination in science to have accomplished careers, as Hopkins did. Even though the main events transpired decades ago, they remain remarkably relevant today given the sexism, racism and other injustices that still permeate academia.
In Argentina, the National University of Crdoba has an ecology lecturer named Sandra Daz who is a member of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy platform on biodiversity and network services. Daz wants to celebrate women who are science leaders. Although they make up far from half of the researchers running major laboratories or winning big awards, women are increasingly realizing that they can be at the cutting edge of discovery and knowledge production, Díaz notes. “More and more women take leading roles in coming up with groundbreaking ideas, spearheading really risky scientific endeavours, or leading large science-policy bodies.” She says girls are learning that, for a woman, engaging in a scientific career does not necessarily mean working in the shadows as a follower.
The study does not look at accomplishments beyond publications and citations that could help set female scholars apart, according to Card. It is possible that consideration for academy membership could result in an increase in female membership. “If you control for publications and citations, women are a little bit more likely to be brought in in all three fields” of maths, economics and psychology, says Card. He says that it is obvious that the academies want more gender equality in nominations.
The NAS advises the nation on science and technology matters, whereas the American Academy honours research excellence. A researcher who is elected to the academies is one of the highest honors a researcher can receive.
Earth, Oceans and Skies : How scientists can help promote equity and inclusion in the U.S. Embedded research institute for physics and medicine
Lead author David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the boost does not seem to be due to an analogous increase in the number of potentially qualified female candidates for membership.
One of the people celebrating breaking barriers is a physicist at SESAME, the Synchrotron- light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East. She says there is progress. It is important to break the extreme cultural and religious traditions and rules that are made by society and forced on women.
Aster Gebrekirstos, a senior scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, will be marking women who have succeeded in their roles despite facing significant challenges. These challenges include wars and conflict, says Gebrekirstos, who is from Tigray, a region of Ethiopia that has been at the centre of a devastating conflict. Earth, Oceans and Skies is an anthology of writing from and about African women scientists. The book is honest about the hardships women have endured “to reach where we are”, Gebrekirstos says. Take a moment to acknowledge those hardships and to advance equity — today, tomorrow and every day after that.
A report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines how universities and other firms in the US science sector can do more to foster a safe and inclusive community. The report calls for systemic change across multiple levels to account for the lengthy history of discrimination against people of colour and members of marginalized communities in the United States.
Under-representation in STEM could result from a scarcity of role models, says Johnna Frierson, associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion for the basic sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. The problem is a cycle in which there is lack of representation. She says if an environment does not have robust diversity in representation, it can send an implicit message that under-represented groups are not suited for those spaces.
For Jesse Lee, a fourth year PhD student in Gregory Beatty’s cancer-immunology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, this type of group structure has led to one of the more healthy lab environments he has been a part of. Several technicians collaborating on a project with students will help teach them how to use the specialized techniques in the lab. Lee says that Beatty’s hands on approach to mentoring means that “you’re constantly working together and coordinating how your stuff run through each team”. Everybody knows a little about everybody’s projects and they all have their own projects as well.
At an HBCU in Montgomery, Alabama State University, the provost for academic affairs said that he began reaching out to potential students at a young age. ASU has also developed a pipeline to recruit students from community colleges that offer two-year associate’s degrees. AtASU, students receive mentoring not just from faculty members but also from their peers. Pettis says that ASU is always looking for new partnerships and that the report recommends that universities team up with HBCUs. There was a time when bigger institutions were just reaching out to show a little diversity in their proposals. “Now, you’re signing on with an HBCU because they are a quality partner and they provide quality students.”
How Do Disabilities Disrupt Science and Engineering Careers? An Employer Perspective from a Multi-Analytical Survey of the STEM Workforce
Only onefifth of the science and engineering workforce identifies as Asian, 8% as Hispanic, 8% as African American and 0.4% as American Indian or Alaskan Native. Although people with at least one disability represent about one-quarter of the US population, they accounted for only 3% of those in science and engineering positions. The proportion of these workers in the general STEM workforce has remained unchanged in the past decade.
Bonnielin Swenor is the director of the Disability Health Research Center at the JohnHopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She found that barriers for scientists with disabilities were much more difficult to overcome. She says that the views of people with disabilities don’t belong in science, technology, Engineering and math, as well as being overlooked as STEM leaders, is a cause and consequence of the disparity.
The NSF report also finds that earnings disparities in science and engineering (S&E) positions persist between different groups. In 2020, the median annual wage for all employees in the sector was US$89,990. But men in these fields earned around $25,000 more than their female counterparts ($99,923 versus $75,562). White S&E employees received a median salary of almost $100,000. For Asian S&E workers, it was over $100,000.
The agency hopes that it will be able to publish its analysis of the data in a few years, and that it’s integrating questions about the LGBT+ community into its surveys.
A tale of three women on the MIT campus: How many women were there? The late-night episode, by J. Hopkins, and the first 100 years of discrimination
This might have remained just one dramatic late-night episode, were it not for Hopkins joining forces with 15 other women on the MIT science faculty to bring the discrimination to light. They went to the science dean and, with his encouragement, produced the 1999 report on the status of women at MIT. The study concluded that the discrimination had persisted for generations of female faculty members. Within a few days, he was giving interviews around the world.
The few women at MIT had a hard battle. Campus housing was nonexistent at first; a women’s dormitory was added in the 1960s, but it was still insufficient. Women were propositioned while trying to work and study. When I entered MIT as an undergrad in 1985, pornography was shown in large auditoriums as a start of semester tradition.
It is a single story acutely told, with a historical context that enriches and deepens its narrative. Zernike does not tackle gender discrimination at other institutions or include context from outside the US. Issues of intersectionality, in which gender, race and other factors combine to amplify discrimination, are explored, but not at length.
