ZerostarOnline.com

Washington — For women contemplating careers as science professors, the numbers are daunting. More than half of the bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering these days go to women, but they run into a high hurdle when it comes to securing academic jobs. Fewer than one in three science and engineering professors are female, and the numbers for full professors drop to one in five. So Congress held a hearing today to consider how to raise those odds.
A draft bill introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, would promote the use of workshops “to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit,” according to a news release issued by the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education. The committee has not yet released the proposed legislation, and the details of such workshops remain unclear. […]

Source: Rich Monastersky

Here’s a novel line for a Mother’s Day card: “Thanks, Mom, for loving me so much I never earned a college degree.”
Implausible as it might seem, a new study suggests that there might be some truth to such a sentiment. Based on the survey responses of more than 13,800 young Texans polled during their senior year of high school and then again a year later, the study concludes that seniors who reported having good relationships with their mothers and fathers were actually less likely than others to enroll in a four-year college.
Yep, it’s true: Parents just can’t win.
One reason such findings are counterintuitive is that a large body of other research shows that children who have good relationships with their parents do better at school. The new study — by Ruth N. López Turley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Matthew Desmond, a […]

Source: Peter Schmidt

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced this afternoon that Holden Thorpe, dean of its College of Arts and Sciences, will be its new chancellor, according to a report in The News & Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.
Mr. Thorpe, 43, is not only a North Carolina native but also an alumnus of the Chapel Hill campus. He has climbed the ranks there, beginning as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1993 and becoming chairman of the chemistry department before being named dean last summer. If Mr. Thorpe is appointed, he would succeed James C. Moeser, who announced last fall that he would step down at the end of this academic year. —Eric Kelderman

Source: Eric Kelderman

Blog years and dog years have a lot in common. They go fast, take constant care and feeding, and bring companionship and warmth into your life. Dogs force you to get up and move your body, blogs force you to get out and work your mind.
Social media are reshaping the business landscape and I’ve never found a better way of learning something than just wading in and messing with it. Under the tutelage of my blogfather Richard Carey and the folks at Justia I launched this site last May.
So what have I learned?
1. It works. 11,528 people interacting with my ideas has helped my business immensely (see stats below). As Jim Bower over at Numdeon is fond of saying - “it isn’t about eyeballs, it is about eyeballs connected to brains.” Half of my clients come from web referrals and the trend-line […]

Source: Eric Kelderman

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Princeton University Press has recalled all copies of one of its spring titles after discovering more than 90 spelling and grammar errors in the 245-page work. The book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, by Peter Moskos, was published on Thursday in an initial press run of 4,000 copies.
In what appears to be a first, the press plans to reprint the book and have it back in stores later this month, after the errors have been corrected.
Mr. Moskos is an assistant professor of law, police science, and criminal-justice administration at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. From 1999 to 2001, as part of his graduate work in sociology at Harvard University, he worked as a police officer in Baltimore.
No one alleges any wrongdoing by Mr. Moskos, nor has the book’s factual substance been impugned. The errors came to light when […]

Source: Jennifer Howard

A lecturer at California State University at Fullerton has been fired because she refused to sign a loyalty oath to “defend” the U.S. and California Constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” the Los Angeles Times reported today.
Wendy Gonaver, a Quaker and a lifelong pacifist, was set to teach American studies at the institution this academic year. She told the newspaper that she had offered to sign the oath if she could attach a short statement expressing her views, but Fullerton wouldn’t allow that.
In February another instructor at Cal State was fired because she altered the oath by inserting the word “nonviolently” before signing it. However, the news-media attention surrounding her dismissal resulted in her being rehired.
Voters added the oath to the state Constitution in 1952 to keep Communists from getting public jobs. —Audrey Williams June

Source: Audrey Williams June

Two biomedical scientists are the first women to receive the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the largest award in American medicine.
The prize was awarded this morning to Elizabeth Blackburn, of the University of California at San Francisco, and Joan Steitz, of Yale University. The award, which is presented by the Albany Medical Center, in New York, honors their molecular-biology research, which could advance treatment for a variety of diseases.
Morris Silverman created the prize in 2000 with a $50-million donation to the medical center. The prize recognizes scientists who are pre-eminent in the field and whose work has significant implications in medicine. All recipients of the award since it was first presented, in 2001, have been men. —Hurley Goodall

Source: Hurley Goodall