Prepared wolf guts, sun-bleached dog faeces, coffee, and an overseas human mummy. These are just some of the things you could find in an Estonian pharmacy in 1695.
This particular pharmacy is still in business. Records of the Raeapteek in Tallinn, Estonia, go back to 1422, when it was already on its third owner. With records going back to the middle ages, it is believed to be the oldest continuously running pharmacy in Europe.
Barbie dolls are not real people. The pictures of actors and models in magazines are barely real people (thanks to Photoshop). The actress in this car commercial is not a real scientist.
It does, however, show anyone watching commercials during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament a stylish woman of color driving a nice car and doing complex-looking mathematics* in her head.
It shows someone who is not white, not male, not bearded, not with crazy hair, not with disheveled clothes, not with sub-par social skills doing complex-looking mathematics* in her head.
As we increasingly recognize that recruiting and retaining a diverse STEM workforce requires presenting individuals in that field with whom they can identify, we have a car company showing us that. This actress may not be a real scientist, but my four-year-old daughter won’t know that her concepts of who can be a scientist will have been expanded positively by a commercial while Daddy watched Duke play basketball on TV.
*I do not have the gift for going “oh, that is X equation” on sight. So, I will leave it up to you, dear readers, to evaluate the actual complexity and accuracy of the mathematical imagery.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko lifted off Friday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to spend almost a year on the International Space Station. Kelly’s long sojourn in space will beat the U.S. record for longest-duration spaceflight by more than 100 days. Kelly and Kornienko will be closely monitored for studies aimed at determining the effect of long-term spaceflight on the human body. Former astronaut Mark Kelly, Scott Kelly’s identical twin, will be monitored on Earth as a control subject for the unusual yearlong experiment.
Still no word on when a cat will get a chance to go to space, and from the looks of Commander Kibble (above), the technology and funding are still lagging for this important scientific endeavor.
This week we’re looking at the contentious practice and history of circumcision. We’re joined by Sarah B. Rodriguez, medical historian and lecturer in global health and bioethics at Northwestern University, to talk about about her book Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment. We’ll also discuss the medical and ethical implications of infant male circumcision with Brian Earp, University of Oxford Research Fellow in Science and Ethics.
*Josh provides research & social media help to Science for the People and is, therefore, completely biased.
The Finch and Pea 