Creating an environment of opportunity
With a global increase in demand for female researchers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), Tokyo Tech is working hard to ensure a study and research environment where all women can freely immerse themselves in their interests. The percentage of female Tokyo Tech students is gradually increasing, currently standing at 12% in the Department of Chemistry, 25% in the Department of Biotechnology, and 30% in the Department of Architecture and Building Engineering (as of May 2015).
Most of these students go on to secure research or other positions at educational organizations, research institutes, and private sector companies. The Institute s Gender Equality Center
April 12th, 2021, 9:32AM / BY Samantha Thompson
Vera Rubin and Kent Ford (white hat) setting up their image tube spectrograph at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. (Photo: THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE)
In March 2020, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory sat partially erected, perched on Chile’s Cerro Pachón in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. The Observatory had halted construction of the 8.4-meter telescope and its associated buildings due to the coronavirus pandemic. By October 2020, with safety precautions in place, construction teams began to slowly return to the mountain. Earlier this month, just one year after its unexpected closure, the Rubin Observatory reached a major milestone when crew used a crane to lower the top end of the telescope, weighing approximately 28 tons and measuring 10 meters in diameter, through the observatory’s open dome and into its place on the telescope. This was one of the last remaining heavy pieces to be
Women Shaping Agriculture: interview with Megghan Honke Seidel
April 1, 2021
Women Shaping Agriculture is an initiative in which MSU Extension educators host conversational interviews that enable women to share their experiences and perspectives about their diverse roles in Michigan agriculture.
Megghan with calves. Photo courtesy of Megghan Honke-Seidel
This article is part of the Women Shaping Agriculture initiative - a series of conversational interviews that enable women to share their experiences and perspectives about their diverse roles in Michigan agriculture.
For more than 16 years, Megghan Honke Seidel has served the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Michigan State University Extension, where she helps coordinate events and programs of all sizes and manages the college’s events management system. In addition to her role at MSU, Megghan, her husband, Bruce, and brother-in-law, Mike, own and operate a 1,000-head beef feedlot and 1,500 acre cropping ope
Expansive Study Shows Seagrass Meadows Can Buffer Ocean Acidification
by Kat Kerlin
March 31, 2021
Spanning six years and seven seagrass meadows along the California coast, a paper from the University of California, Davis, is the most extensive study yet of how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification.
The study, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, found that these unsung ecosystems can alleviate low pH, or more acidic, conditions for extended periods of time, even at night in the absence of photosynthesis. It found the grasses can reduce local acidity by up to 30 percent.
“This buffering temporarily brings seagrass environments back to preindustrial pH conditions, like what the ocean might have experienced around the year 1750,” said co-author Tessa Hill, a UC Davis professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Bodega Marine Laboratory.
The gender gap is even wider among students in post-secondary STEM courses. The STEM Equity Monitor reports:
When considering university and VET together, in 2018 women comprised only 21% of total STEM course enrolments and 23% of total STEM course completions. In comparison, women comprised 60% of total non-STEM course enrolments and 61% of total non-STEM course completions in 2018.
One explanation commonly offered for this gender gap is a lack of confidence among girls and women in their technical skills and STEM career prospects. However, our research, including a survey of thousands of Australian university students, has found women in STEM courses are often more confident than men.