Just heard a great talk on #education in @doughenwood "Behind the news" #podcast. Reminded me that teaching is a profession that was subjected to a F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) campaign by #whitesupremacist#broligarchs because it was largely female and human centered. I'm embarrassed that I thought teaching was easy. I remember all of the great #teachers I had in #Montclair and at #HowardUniversity. My mother was master early childhood educator. Thanks Mom.
🚦🧊 The traffic lights on our streets and the refrigerators in our kitchens exist thanks to the work of inventors like Garrett Morgan and John Standard.
The #Indianapolis Recorder looks at the history of American #infrastructure that highlights the Black innovators who designed the everyday tools we often take for granted.
🐉🐸 Nearly two millennia ago, Chinese inventor Zhang Heng designed a bronze vessel that dropped metal balls to signal distant #earthquakes. Modern researchers in #China have used replicas to prove this ancient #engineering was surprisingly accurate.
🧠💪 Your #brain isn't just a static organ – it's a dynamic system that "remodels" itself based on use. Just like lifting weights builds muscle, pushing your brain into the "discomfort zone" with unfamiliar tasks builds new neural connections that protect your cognitive #health as you age.
Paper bags and color-changing RGB LEDs are a great combination 😍 So simple to make a lampshade for my Book Lamp project but the same process can certainly be used for other light-up projects.
🤧🚫 Researchers at the University of #Maryland locked #flu-positive students in a room with healthy volunteers, expecting a total spread. Instead, zero people caught the #virus.
The data suggests that simple air movement from a heater and dehumidifier diluted the virus clouds so effectively that even close contact wasn't enough to pass it on.
One of its standout features is #Maxima (but also #Python, #R etc.) integration—you can create #notebooks that combine text, #LaTeX, Maxima commands, and plots, making it easy to produce scientific documents with live calculations and results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_West
"Before GPS became an everyday utility, it was a hard mathematical problem.
In the 1950s–70s, Gladys West, a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, worked on one of the most difficult challenges in satellite navigation: accurately modeling the Earth itself.
Modern GPS accuracy depends on:
• Precise satellite ephemerides
• Accurate gravitational field modeling
• Correct Earth reference frames
West’s work directly advanced all three.
Her contributions weren’t widely recognized at the time. In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame—decades after GPS reshaped global navigation, logistics, finance, defense, and mobile computing...
Before GPS could tell us where we are, someone had to define what the Earth actually looks like—mathematically…” #Engineering#GPS#Geodesy#STEM#TechHistory#WomenInTech#DataScience#Infrastructure#WomenInGeoSpatial
H/T Evan Kirstel
photo with caption - Gladys West at her desk, no (!) computer, working on a geodesy problem...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_West
Honey, the entomology community is abuzz as state does first bee count since 1962, when they had only 98 documented species. The state now has 352 species, and discovered 9 new ones
Sitting with Odin outside the local polling place because (unlike my husband) neither of us gets to vote in Dutch elections #netherlands#amsterdam#stem
Odin the Newfie unflapped by his lack of franchise
👩🏻💻🇬🇧 In 1842, Augusta Ada Lovelace of #London created the world's first computer algorithm for Charles Babbage's theoretical Analytical Engine, envisioning #machines that could compose #music and create #art over a century before #computers existed. Her work was forgotten until British scientist Bertram Bowden featured her contributions in his 1953 book about electronic computers, leading to renewed recognition of her pioneering role in programming.
"Babbage saw the analytical engine as a mathematical device. After all, it primarily stored and operated on numbers. But Lovelace recognized that a machine designed to crunch numbers could do much more if the numbers represented other things.
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”"
For #ScienceWeek, Tog Hackerspace is hosting a special hands-on workshop:
🧰 Build Your Own Air Quality Sensor
📅 Friday, 14th November | 7–8:30 pm
📍 Tog Hackerspace, Dublin 8
Learn how to measure local air pollution, explore IoT tech, and join the Sensor.Community
citizen science network.