Productivity loss needs to be supported by scientific institutions

The Rise of Rising Stars: Mentoring, Support, and Support for Scientists from Histoically Marginalized Groups During the COVID-19 Era

Wade will note the success of programmes that support early-career researchers, such as the Rising Stars scheme at the MIT in Cambridge, and the many similar schemes it has inspired around the world. Mentoring and support for researchers who are historically marginalized can be found in Rising Stars. The programme is based on the research of MIT biologist Nancy, who showed that women had less lab space, were paid less and received fewer grants than men. A new book, The Exceptions by Kate Zernike, describes how activism led to the change that was happening at the institute. Wade also writes and edits Wikipedia articles on scientists from historically marginalized groups. She finds that, when she creates or edits a page for a US-based scientist, very often they will have gone through a Rising Stars-style programme.

The European Platform of Women Scientists, which is a non-profit organization inBrussels, is one of the 17 organizations endorsing the report.

Some of the funders that control the distribution of billions of dollars in research dollars would like to work with the organizations to roll the recommendations into their policies. The funders include the NHMRC in Australia, the European Research Council in Europe, and the US National Institutes of Health.

Even though PAIN reduced, some people were still unable to travel because of restrictions or concerns about exposing their families to COVID-19. For instance, Japan and Fiji didn’t lift travel restrictions until February 2023 and October 2022, respectively. Many scientist mothers still have travel Problems and don’t find the support they need to progress their careers. Universities throughout the world failed to acknowledge “that it is a 24-hour job to take care of kids at home”, says Fernanda Staniscuaski, a biologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and founder of Parent in Science, a campaign group started in 2016 to support researcher parents in Brazil. She says that career break can lead to downward spiral of productivity, as mothers publish less often, earn less funding and produce less. “We need to break the cycle.”

Over 9,000 researchers responded to a global survey that was sent out to groups studying gender discrimination in the sciences, and a full report is expected to be published in this year.

The report also includes examples of good practices already in effect and that create a sliding scale of strategies for organizations to consider. Among the easiest to implement, according to Torres, are things such as rolling deadlines, and extensions and deferments for grants; application formats that allow scientists to explain lapses in productivity; and unconscious-bias training for grant reviewers coupled with an appeals process for when bias is suspected.

The agency often creates working groups of external scientists to tackle emerging issues, such as diversity and sexual harassment, and these discussions have helped to shape policies around funding scientist- parents. These and other work–life integration policies will help ensure a competitive and diverse workforce for the biomedical research enterprise in the future.

The NSERC has a dedicated committee that advises their leadership on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. The director of the research grants and scholarships portfolio says that she will work with the committee to evaluate the suggestions in the report. She notes that NSERC does not currently parse its diversity data by parental status, for example, but that doing so could help to determine whether its policies adequately support mothers.

How funders can remove the systemic barriers faced by mothers in academia. The love hormones and the three vaccines that will fight respiratory syncytial virus don’t need to be in voles’ relationships.

While prairie voles can’t detect love hormones, they still form monogamous relationships and care for their pups. The research suggested that prairie voles had strong bonds because of the way their brains express dopamine. The study might help scientists to understand oxytocin’s role in humans. It is used for conditions that can affect social attachment. There is an eerie similarity between prairie vole social behaviours and human social behaviours, says neuroscientist Nirao Shah. “Prairie voles are one of the few mammalian species that exhibit social attachment.”

The future of disease research in the US: a panel discussion on recommendations for vaccines and vaccines based on WHO reports from 1996-2019

There were 776 reports of the flu between 1996 and 2019. The researchers found 2,791 reports of World Health Organization reports that were classified as “most common.” The researchers then searched the reports into a database. It is found out by their analysis that reporting on disease outbreaks is often subjective. Researchers can look at factors such as conflicts and weather in order to understand the causes of disease outbreaks.

The future of how research with dangerous pathogens is regulated in the United States remains unclear. A biosecurity panel agreed on a long-awaited set of recommendations — but only with significant modifications — and without a firm plan to finalize the guidance. Panel members were concerned about the vagueness of some recommendations: for instance, health officials should review all experiments that could be “reasonably anticipated” to make a pathogen more transmissible or dangerous. They argued that the wording may be able to allow some studies to slip through with no review.

The vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus is being developed by Pfizer, GSK and Moderna. They are likely to have very different impacts among the two age groups most at risk from the virus: babies and older people. There isn’t as much awareness and priority for COVID-19 than for the vaccine in people over 60. There is a high likelihood that mothers and babies will be given a vaccine for the second-highest cause of death for kids aged between one month and one year.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00276-x

Fast Radio Bursts as a Tools of Scientific Power and Expansion: Analogy with Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Astronomers are turning fast radio bursts (FRBs) into a tool of “great scientific power” to measure cosmic expansion and find the Universe’s missing matter, which isn’t concentrated in galaxies. FRBs are powerful radio pulses caused by unknown astrophysical processes. Because the radio waves interact with any medium they traverse, scientists can use FRBs to study diffuse matter that is difficult to spot by other means, such as the gaseous haloes around galaxies.

A discussion of animal creativity, a great account of the universe and anenvironmentalism are some of the books Andrew Robinson will be reading this week.

I left my home country of Slovakia at the age of 18 to study in the United Kingdom with big hopes. I wanted to take advantage of opportunities that my parents had only been able to dream of growing up under a communist regime. In my dreams, I never thought that I would become a professor before the age of 35.

I got here by elbow grease — and long hours. I worked feverishly to get funded PhD and postdoctoral positions. The stiff competition for grants and positions at high- ranking universities helped me to crystallize my research ideas in my field of early education and child development. I doubled my hours to make me stand out from the crowd. I worked for months at a time, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I thought I was the exception. When I read the article, I was struck by the success of the five female psychology researchers. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 33, 763–795; 2021), I realized that this is the norm for top-performing academics. I am very fond of the interviews and share their passion for their work. I hid behind passion in order to minimize 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. I was told by my mentor that I needed to write in order to get toacademia. A doctor told me ice would ease my permanent carpal tunnel syndrome, so I typed wearing iced wrist splints.

Not being a native English speaker, I had to put in extra hours for each paper. I still experience heavy headaches and fatigue, despite the stress of conference presentations and fear of being misunderstood, because of my fear of using the wrong word.

The pressure to perform sucked me into a negative spiral. When I felt stressed, I was afraid of saying no, and I became more stressed because of it. Spending time with friends and not sleeping are things I cut back on. My then-boyfriend told me I was married to my computer and cut our holiday short when he saw me typing a paper on the beach. I was known by name by the ticket inspector because I overslept on the train. My family was not surprised when I had an illness.

After working hard and getting luck, I got a permanent position early in my career. As I have climbed the career ladder, the workload has grown heavier, with increasing requests for mentoring, article and grant reviews, departmental duties, committee memberships, and voluntary contributions of time and expertise to professional societies. If my performance is bad, it can affect several people’s salary and cost me a big grant.

International Women’s Day: The Challenge of Breaking Discrimination in Scientific Research: A Case Study in the United Kingdom and a Perspective for Women in Africa

But my survival anxiety has lessened. Starting a family and moving to Norway helped, the country has a better work life balance than the United Kingdom. Beginning to take my childhood hobby of writing poetry seriously was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. I have learned that blocking out time to write doesn’t make me feel guilty for setting out-of-office replies.

The early part of my career was very taxing for me, and it was not good for others. I wanted to make a difference in this toxic culture of overwork and that’s why I’m trying to do it.

I see my responsibility to promote definitions of academic success that are not tied to working hours as an important thing to do. In the book, I interview my colleague at University College London and she is head of career development. We openly share where we failed, what we wish we had known when we started working at a university and what those in power could do to address systemic discrimination.

It’s in that spirit that Nature asked six women researchers how they will be celebrating International Women’s Day. Martina Anto-Ocrah is an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania who researches sex and gender disparities with an emphasis on women’s health and global health, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Anto-Ocrah says she wants to celebrate the contribution of social scientists to the advancement of gender equality. She says that social scientists highlight all of the cultural issues in society that hold women back. One example is how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, publication rates for women scientists dropped more markedly than did those for men — confirming that women shouldered a greater share of responsibilities during that time, such as caring for families, leaving less time for research (E. B. Madsen et al. eLife 11, e76559; 2022).

A physicist from SESAME, which is based in Jordan, will be celebrating breaking barriers. “There is progress,” she says. There is a chance that we can break the extremes in cultural and religious traditions that are imposed on women by society.

Women who have been successful in their roles despite facing significant challenges will be honored by a senior scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre. One of the challenges is wars and conflict in Tigray, a region of Ethiopia that has been at the forefront of a devastating conflict. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has published Earth, Oceans and Skies, an open-access anthology of writing from and about African women scientists (including Gebrekirstos). The book is honest about the hardships women have endured “to reach where we are”, Gebrekirstos says. Today, tomorrow and every day after that, take a moment to acknowledge those struggles and advance equity.

We got positive responses from our editors and authors about the opportunity. The special issue was a collection of papers from early-career mothers who were doing top-quality science by any objective measure. Their work is impressive due to the fact that they produce papers while dealing with the challenges of caring for their kids during the Pandemic.

When we drafted the paper, we had Zoom meetings with our kids during the day and at night. We came up with a number of suggestions that we thought would be useful for universities, publishers, funding agencies and mentors. For example, they could give women relief from having to serve on committees, as well as provide a place for mothers to write review articles and serve on editorial boards. We also recommended changes that didn’t cost much to implement, such as asking supervisors to be flexible about timelines. If you really care about giving support to scientist mothers, then you’ll need some money to do it.

When I first became a mother, my daughter’s needs were my priority. I asked if she could be present in my meetings and tag along with me when I went to the lab. I was surprised that most of my colleagues were supportive of my requests, as I had never seen any other women do what I was doing at work. Do what is best for you and your children no matter what, and be unafraid to ask.

There was this big decline in the number of women, and moms in particular, submitting papers and proposals. There is a lot of things that a human can do.

Home-Schooling My Children: How I Meteorized During COVID-19, when I was with My Grandparents, and During Lockdown

During the time I was in Australia, there were times when I was home-schooling my children. I realized that my colleagues were struggling with not having enough hours in the day when I spoke to them.

I found a paper3 published by Fulweiler and her colleagues about supporting academic mothers during COVID-19 and beyond. One of the suggestions for what institutions could do was for publishers. As an editor of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, I thought I could use my position at the journal to do something useful.

I have three kids, who are eight, four and one-and-a-half years old. I got involved in their education because of Lockdown. We all had a laptop. When it was time for them to join a Zoom class for school, I had to leave what I was doing to give them the laptop. I would be able to catch up on everything I missed during the day at night.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00888-3

COVID-19, Governance Policies and Faculty Mentorship (with an Emphasis on Staff and Faculty) – An Overview from a Mining Company Case Study

Once I could start travelling for work again, I did some training for a mining company to teach their workers how to use a geographic information system to collect and analyse data. I told them I had a baby, and they provided hotel rooms for me and my nanny during the first phase of the training. During the second phase, we spent time at a mining site that did not have a stove or microwaves in the rooms. I explained to them that I needed to be able to prepare food for my baby, and they quickly gave us access to a stove, fridge and everything else we needed. The company was doing everything it could, but other institutions can do more.

At the University of Maryland, we’ve instituted a lot of new policies, particularly regarding tenure and promotion. We send external promotion reviewers a statement about the impacts of COVID-19, and candidates can also write a COVID-19 impact statement that is reviewed internally. An ongoing disruption is what the Pandemic is about, it isn’t a thing that happened a few years ago.

Productivity is often measured by the number of papers you published, grants you received and classes you taught. Informal mentoring, as well as all the emotional and invisible labour of faculty members, are missed by those metrics. Faculty members must be invited to provide a detailed account of the emotional labour they provide, as well as documentation of their mentorship efforts.

As administrators we need to think about how to support faculty members in meeting expectations. Is it possible that we are giving access to caregivers? Do we provide funding to hire another graduate student? Is granting sabbaticals, releases from teaching courses or service responsibilities giving us more time?