Twitterization (by sarah)

There was a RT (retweet) on twitter with this URL its I found myself writing a longish response to it as I was already planning to write a post about something similair. Anyway here is the response I wrote:

A new interface, a new language, a different way to form thoughts and therefore have thoughts formed - this equals more diversity and possibly leading to new innovations. Weather that is good or bad is like saying is an emotion good or bad - they are amoral it is how you choose to react/use them that holds the good or bad and as with any new system things are likely to act in a chaotic/stoccastic way leading to behaviour we can not yet predict. (At least not fully)

It is also yet another system, more information needing to be processes/learned and therefore risks ostrasization of those who can not pick it up. Then the question becomes one of accessiblity and how far should we 'dumb things down'. What I was thinking was of interest is that with the hash tags and the like it becomes easy to trace the path of memes to see how they evolve and their migration. From a sociology point of view I think that would be quiet an interesting project though it could turn into a nasty can of worms.

Perceptions (by sarah)

This morning there was an incident that shook me quiet badly and has me wondering about my reactions and what I should have done. We where in the outskirts of Cheltenham near the Morrisons when we became stuck in traffic, there was a long line of at least twenty cars but just when we considered turning around the traffic bagain to move albeit slowely.

We then saw there was a car at a 45 degree angle in the ditch, we looked and there appeared to be someone in the car but someone was talking to them and about 5 people where on phones - there were another two cars at crazy angles making the road into a sharlum.

This slowed the traffic. There were some poeple sitting on the grass shaking but again there were people on phones. I assumed that everything was under control - we were stuck in the middle of the line of traffic - when a man came up and started shouting at us for stopping to look and that one person was dead.

He mainly shouted at mum, and it frightened her, as the traffic moved again and the shouting man moved off mum kept saying he must have been in shock.

But it made me think - I had assumed that with all those people around that I would just get in the way even though I am a trained first aider but with what the man said I suddenly realised that the number off people around - they could have all come out of the cars in the accident.

I was looking to see if anyone did need help and didn't see anything obviously needing a first aider but that looking at the scene was mistaken as 'sight seeing'. But at the same time my reaction to the man shouting at us wasn't this guy is in shock which he obviously was but I thought - a nut case is attacking us.

I am also wondering now if any of the cars infront of us had offered any help? We hadn't ment to end up in line of traffic going through a chaotic accident scene but once in the narrow band of traffic there wasn't alot we could do - this must have looked really heartless and uncaring to the victims though.

I can almost see the head lines now - 'No Good Samaritian for Road Side Fatality'. I feel really bad that I didn't think to ask - I just saw people on phones and thought - oh they've got it under control and by the time I had even processed what was actually happening we were past the scene and mum was being upset.

I really hope that no one was seriously hurt 🙁

The perceptions of people in chaotic situations is so warped I don't think that anyone even with lots of training is ever going to be able to fully assess a situation like that. People seem hostile and scary, anger runs high and people are having 'knee jurk' reactions. Also when we compared 'notes' it was almost as if the three of us had seen three different things which is quiet scary in its self.

But I still should have asked 🙁

Using the Electron Mircoprobe (by sarah)

Today I went into the lab once more and place the lunar sample into the machine - this time instead of blasting it with x-rays to get element maps I was picking out specific points to hit with an electron beam and see what they are made off.

First off we picked a selection of elements that I wanted to get proportions of and then I picked the points I wanted to know about specifically. From the element maps and the back scatter image I had taken previously I knew that I apparently had several minerals (I had trudged through four large tomes of mineralogy and lunar/planetary stuff to find out what sort of things I might have lurking in the sample. I had then taken the element maps and compared them - drawn faint scetches of them and then working out what elements I had in conjection where drew on mineral areas with coloured pens onto a printout of the backscatter image. (He told me this was actually an x-ray map just not element specific so I need to check whats what with him I think).

They seemed quiet impressed that I had done this but it seemed like the only way to make things clear to me personally. I was becoming frustrated that I couldn't work out the actual proportions and therefore the exact minerals from the elelment maps and that I could only narrow things down. Fortunatly this is what today was actually about so I worked out how many samples I wanted and were to take the measurements - unfortunatly becuase there is a bad polish on the sample I had to be careful and was highly restricted in where I could take measurements.

But I selected 101 points each point was going to take about 9 minutes to analyse but I specifically went in early to get it all going and as it turned out had plenty of time.

I had also narrowed down the minerals really far more accuratly that I thought I had and I had worked out stuff about my 'dirty' quartz that that does seem to be correct which is very cool and makes me feel like I might just have a chance of doing this.

The only thing is I found myself baulkin at the interface of data and computers - there are situations that I just see no reason not to have a computer automate and I think they should be relatively easy to implement and yet there is nothing! This keeps happening every where I turn in geology and earth sciences there is just huge gaps that computers could feel reducing monkey work and increasing the amount of research that can be analysis in depth!

Other issues that I have had is finding information barred to me - this is painful when I would happily pay say £10 for an e-book of the phase diagrams I needed or even just the chapters I needed - then and there I may even have gone up to £20 but it is only avalible as a book and at around $300 which sucks big time.

Can anyone tell me what the restrictions would be on me finding data in papers and ploting my own graphs/diagrams and then putting them on the internet for free so that people like me don't get stuck like this? I just needed a guid to see if I was on the right path. The question of science on the net has been interesting me alot in the past year and I wonder lots about hwo things are going - I like sharing info and I think it helps move projects and science as a whole on but there are those who tell me that I sholdn't talk about my projects and ideas incase they are published by other first.

Also there is the question of funding and where the money is coming from to do the research - I find myself pondering over the wole peer review system and how a nice fast version could apply to articles on line - making the turn around of science much faster without loosing the reliablity.

It is a thorny problem and I feel slightly swamped in it.

Oh well I'm sure I'll sort it all out eventually 🙂

The only scary thing about todays stuff was that if I want to go out of the lab I have to remember to press a button that puts an alunium or copper block infront of my electron beam so that it doesn't burn a whole in the sample - this made me quiet nervous!

Ada Lovelace Day – A Review (by sarah)

Yesturday me and Alaric took part in the first ever Ada Lovelace Day which was a day of international blogging about women in tech who have inspired you or that you admire.

He produced two posts and I produced two:

For this blog Alaric blogged about his Aunt Barbara who pioneered the use of computers in translation.

For Web-Empire he blogged about Grace Hopper the origonator of the COBOL language.

For Salaric Craft I blogged about Mary Dixon Kies the first woman to be awarded a patent in her own right - she had invented a weaving techniques for straw hats.

And last but in my mind not least I blogged about Monica Grady on my Astronomy blog.

There were also lots of fun things happening yesturday like Ada appearing at the Science Museum 🙂

There has even been a webcomic produced for the event 🙂

However, there are some sinister things that I came across whilst trying to encourage my friends to take part in this event - namely that my male friends were far more enthusiastic and my female compatriots are all disillusioned with the world of science and technology.

This is a subject on which I have posted before and I have several drafts I am working on - about glass ceilings that I really hadn't thought were there until I hit them.

But there is another issue - one friend after doing her PhD with a bad supervisor felt that women in science were bitches and this I have to say is something I personally have come across. My biggest hinderance wasn't the letcherous old guy who thought women should be at home but rather other women who had it in their heads that in order for them to help you, you had to be twice as good as the men/boys around you.

Help offered freely to them was denied and an active discuoragement took place - I don't know if this was being done in a 'kind' way with the idea that women have to be tough to survive the field or what.

But like the early feminists found - the biggest barrier to women succeeding does appear to be other women.

This is a sad sad state of affairs and one I hoped was unique to my own experiences. It was so refreshing for me when I went to the Natural History Museums Mineralogy department to find that they just went out of their way to enable everyone reguardless of gender, dissability or anything else that could act as a barrier.

I have seen and am seeing several friends leaving the world of sciecne that they worked so hard to get into becuase they feel so deflated with all of this. In some ways this is probably a bigger issue than getting girls interested in the first place - how do we retain them within the science and tech sectors?

The other thing I didn't appreciate until I tried to do stuff in the 'coporate' world was just how much stupid prejudice still exists. I am in a heavily male subject but as the head of UCL's earth science's himself said to me - this is changing - they did a drive (around the time I was choosing what to do at university) to get women into earth scientists. And slowely the girls from that drive are filtering in to post docs and he hopes with eventually end up in the facalty staff.

My year was the first 50:50 split year ever and this trend is following the year as it progresses. So I am hopeful that things can change with time as long as we can stem this hemorrage of females leaving.

I could write reams and reams on this and I probably will but right now I need to go and read up on lunar mineralogy for tomorrow!

I just thought this was an issue I should raise.

Join me blogging for Ada Lovelace Day (by sarah)

Tuesday the 24th of March is Ada Lovelace Day - this is a day of blogging about women in Technology, ones who have inspired you or that you admire.

Ada Lovelace is known as the first computer programmer in history though she didn't actually have a computer to run them on. She made them all from the description of Babbage's machine which he never finished.

She also saw far more potential in the machine than even he did and was well ahead of her time. Now I am posting this becuase a) we are obviously going to be doing write ups on this for this blog, my astronomy blog and web-empires blog - I'm not sure I can find relevent technology craft/art and cooking cross overs in time for the Salaric blogs but I will try. b) I'm hoping that alot of you lovely people will take up this challenge - from a personal point of veiw it would be nice to see the science side of technology and not just computing to be recognised - so geologists, chemists and astrophysists pull your fingers out, oh and anyone else who wants to off course! c) this will raise the profile of women in technology so that hopefully young women choosing careers paths and those debating weather to rejoin after a the whole 'career break'/having baby/looking after sick people can see that they are not alone and that both currently and in the past there female role models without whom medical advancements and the like may never have been made. (Or at least taken twice as long as there is an idea that you just need a saturation point for idea nucleation sort of thing).

I contacted the organiser and asked what they ment by technology and they said it is perpusfully broad and would include science etc... 🙂

There is a pledge page where you can add yourself to the list of people who will blog. You can follow it on twitter and it has a face book presance. There is also a mailing list and to find tweets about it on twitter its designation is #ALD09.

I am probably far to excited about this and I think you will all be suprised by the one we have on here 🙂

So you lot lets get writing 🙂