True Spies click 2x All-Female Team Keeps Hunting African Poachers as Cecil Outrage Fades by Orion Jones After the killing of Cecil the lion garnered national media attention, Zimbabwe put a (very) temporary ban on lion, leopard, and elephant hunting. That ban is now lifted and much of the initial outrage — encapsulated by 3 million tweets and 3.6 million Facebook shares — seems to have faded just as quickly. Thankfully, anti-poaching teams in neighboring South Africa have a longer memory than American Internet trolls. The Black Mambas regularly face unpredictable safari animals and heavily armed poachers. The Black Mambas are stationed at Kruger Park, a massive natural reserve the size of the state of New Jersey. Rangers who protect and manage Kruger Park say the pilot program is an incontrovertible success. Image courtesy of iStock / Marie Holding
How a Musician Unraveled the Secrets of Whale Song Whale songs are some of the most hauntingly beautiful and bizarre noises in the world. But if it hadn’t been for acoustic biologist Katy Payne, we’d probably still be dismissing them as mere sounds — like the noises our own cats and dogs make when they’re hungry, frightened, interested, or affectionate. Payne, however, realized that whales are actually composing songs, not just making noise under the sea, and moreover, she found that over time, whales change their tune. Payne’s discoveries, and ongoing research into the subject, reveal the value of cross-disciplinary collaborations. Her research helped to improve our understanding of whales and the way they interact with each other. Payne’s sharp ear for music didn’t stop with whales. Sometimes, a degree in one subject leads you in an unexpected direction.
Meet Margaret Hamilton, the badass '60s programmer who saved the moon landing Happy moon landing day! July 20, 2015 marks the 46th anniversary of Apollo 11's arrival on the moon. The lunar lander holding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at 4:18 PM eastern, and Armstrong became the first human in history to walk on the lunar surface at 10:56 PM. Huge amounts of aeronautical and hardware engineering effort went into the Apollo program from its birth in 1961 to its completion in 1972, as NASA and its partners designed the Saturn V rocket to get astronauts out of Earth's orbit, the command/service modules that orbited the moon, and the lunar modules that actually landed on the moon. But Apollo was also a major software project. The software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), headed up by Margaret Hamilton. NASA, via Steve Milan "In this picture, I am standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) source code," Hamilton says in an email.
Mary Shelley: The Teenage Girl Who Invented Science Fiction The next time someone tries to tell you monsters and scary stories aren’t for girls, quiet them down with one name: Mary Shelley, who invented the entire genre when she wrote the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at the age of nineteen. Born in 1797, Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a renowned feminist writer and philosopher — and although her mother died only a few days after Mary was born, her radical ideas about women challenging their society had a huge impact on Mary’s life. At the age of sixteen, Mary fell in love with the poet Percy Shelley, who was a radical himself and a big fan of her mother’s writing. In 1814, following their first date in the graveyard where her mother was buried, Mary and Percy ran away together to become the literary power couple of the Romantic movement. Enter Lord Byron, close friend of the Shelleys and infamous Romantic poet in his own right. Who are your favorite trailblazing literary Smart Girls?
Spent spring break teaching girls to code I learned C++ two years ago, in my freshman year of high school, and it changed my life. I decided to teach other girls the same skills. By Christina Li When I was in third grade, my brothers and I created a neon blue website in HTML, full of flashy rainbow animations, slow-loading pictures of our favorite things, and Comic Sans bold titles. It was basically every web developer’s worst nightmare. Since learning C++ in my freshman year of high school two years ago, my pursuit of technological knowledge had taken me to places I never would’ve thought possible. However, I wanted to help other students feel the same adrenaline rush, the “eureka” moment when a program suddenly works. Maybe the lack of women in computer science comes from the stereotype of a male programmer hacking the government in his parents’ basement. Whatever the reason, something needs to change to encourage more women into this exciting field. The passion amazed me.
Misty Copeland makes history as first black female principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre - The Washington Post The American Ballet Theatre soloist makes history with Swan Lake. (Lillian Cunningham, Jayne Orenstein, Randolph Smith and Julio Negron/The Washington Post) Misty Copeland made history on Tuesday when she was promoted to principal dancer of the prestigious American Ballet Theatre, becoming the first African-American ballerina to reach the elite dance company's top rank. Copeland, 32, has become one of America's most famous female athletes, revered for her unlikely ascendance in an art world notorious for showcasing only lithe, white ballerinas. And her star power has stretched far beyond dance, yielding larger and larger business opportunities off stage as her preeminence onstage has grown. "Bringing on Misty Copeland is the best decision we've ever made," said Adrienne R. Earlier this spring, Copeland made her U.S. debut in the lead role of Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake" at the Kennedy Center. [Read the full interview with Misty Copeland | Listen to the podcast conversation] Read also:
Women Scientists You may not have heard about All week I’ve been intrigued and inspired by posters appearing in my department that depict truly great scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Few of them were known to me or my fellow students, yet their achievements include revolutionising algebra, developing the first treatment for leukaemia, and discovering fundamental processes in physics. Their only common characteristic? They are women, and their appearance on the walls marks International Women’s Day. So here are five women whose amazing discoveries and contribution to science should be as well-known and respected as those of Marie Curie. Rosalind Franklin – Crystallography Rosalind Franklin. Only now is Rosalind Franklin’s (1920-1958) reputation recognised: a chemist, she was responsible for much of the X-ray crystallography research that was critical to the discovery of the famous double helical DNA structure. Lise Meitner – Nuclear Physics Lise Meitner in 1906. Mary Anning – Paleontology Mary Anning. Gertrude Elion. Inspiration
"Students wrote to their favorite authors. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one who responded, writing this beautiful & humorous letter." What a badass. I want every child to read this letter. It has such an important message: Create, create, create. Fail, fail, fail—and maybe succeed. Don’t do it for anyone but yourself. A reader comment: “Years ago, in the mid-80s, when I was in high school, a friend and I were amusing ourselves by calling directory assistance and asking for phone numbers of famous people. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut Relephant: Love elephant and want to go steady? Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters! Photo: Imgur About Rachel Nussbaum Rachel Nussbaum is a yogini and craft beer enthusiast, living in Boulder, Colorado.
A Mighty Girl - Photos du journal The Top 25 John Lennon Quotes 1. “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” 2. “As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.” 3. “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
8 great lessons from Mister Rogers that are still true when you're an adult. Like This Post On Facebook It can still be a beautiful day in the neighborhood if we take Mister Rogers' lessons as seriously as *he* took *us* when we were growing up. We can live in Mister Rogers' neighborhood. We can do it. Just listen to me talk about everything he did that was so cool. Volcanoes of cool. I looked into the lessons he was trying to teach us, and I think I found some things we just might need. Lesson #1. Think: What would Mister Rogers do? Lesson #2. For example. "The rain may go down, But you can't go down. Lesson #3. Mister Rogers went to *CONGRESS* and talked about his feelings. He was like, "By the way guys, people can't deal with their feelings and they're hurting each other." And then he straight up was like, "Hey congressmen, can I sing you a song?" And that's how he won over a grouchy old senator and got millions of dollars of funding for his show. Lesson #4. It's OK to be comfortable. Here's some more of his beautiful song: Back to the lessons. Lesson #5. Yes.
'If We Left, They Wouldn't Have Nobody' Maurice Rowland (left) and Miguel Alvarez were working at an assisted living home last fall. When it shut down, Maurice -- the cook -- and Miguel — the janitor -- stayed to take care of the residents left behind. StoryCorps hide caption toggle caption StoryCorps Maurice Rowland (left) and Miguel Alvarez were working at an assisted living home last fall. StoryCorps When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go. The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor. "There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, 'What are we going to do?' "If we left, they wouldn't have nobody," the 34-year-old Alvarez says. Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed round-the-clock care. Rowland, 35, remembers passing out medications during those long days.