Maud Menten: Pioneering Pediatric-Perinatal Pathologist, Clinician-Scientist, and "the Most Wonderful Human Being in the World"

Maud Menten was born and raised in remote regions of Canada. She obtained her MB/MD at the University of Toronto (1907/1911) and her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Chicago (1916). From 1907 to 1916, she trained at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the Berlin Municipal Hospital in Germany, and the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital in St Louis. In 1916, she was appointed as pathologist at the Elizabeth Steel Magee Hospital, a charitable maternity hospital in Pittsburgh. She received a faculty appointment at the University of Pittsburgh (1918) and was appointed pathologist at Pittsburgh Children's Hospital (1926). In addition to being one of the first woman academic pathologists, she was likely the first perinatal, the second pediatric-perinatal, and the fourth pediatric pathologist to practice in North America. The importance of Menten's overall scientific contributions place her in the very upper echelon of 20th century pathologists. Her enzyme kinetic work resulted in the Michaelis-Menten equation, and her work in George Crile's laboratory in Cleveland provided a physiological basis for improved surgical outcomes. Her work in Pittsburgh was equally innovative, including initiating the field of enzyme histochemistry.

The shingled girl: Catherine Janet Hill and her contributions to embryology

Catherine J. Hill is best remembered for her dedication to cataloguing the comprehensive embryological collection of her father J. P. Hill. Yet, her own research, during the interwar years, is little known. She made a significant contribution to interpreting the autonomic innervation of the gut, work that was presented to The Royal Society and earned her a PhD. Working in her father's laboratory, she then set about solving the sequence of secretions from the tubal epithelium and uterine glands that contributed the two layers of egg albumen and three shell layers of the monotreme egg. She was also the first to understand twinning in the marmoset and how two embryos came to share a single extraembryonic coelom, work that often is credited to J. P. Hill. Here. I explain how that happened and explore the context in which she and other female scientists worked at the time.

Brazilian women in Bioinformatics: Challenges and opportunities

Bioinformatics is a growing research field that received great notoriety in the years of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a very integrative area, comprising professionals from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In agreement with the other STEM areas, several women have greatly contributed to bioinformatics ascension; however, they had to surpass prejudice and stereotypes to achieve recognition and leadership positions, a path that studies have demonstrated to be more comfortable to their male colleagues. In this review, we discuss the several difficulties that women in STEM, including bioinformatics, surpass during their careers. First, we present a historical context on bioinformatics and the main applications for this area. Then, we discuss gender disparity in STEM and present the challenges that still contribute to women's inequality in STEM compared to their male colleagues. We also present the opportunities and the transformation that we can start, acting in academia, inside the family and school environments, and as a society, hence contributing to gender equality in STEM. Finally, we discuss specific challenges in the bioinformatics field and how we can act to overcome them, especially in low and middle-income countries, such as Brazil.

Back to school - The teachers' worries and needs having a childhood cancer patient or survivor in their class

BACKGROUND

A cancer diagnosis during childhood or adolescence causes nursery and school absences to various degrees. Attending school and meeting classmates gives many children and adolescents some normality back. Nevertheless, it can cause fears and concerns among the teachers. We are currently lacking information about the fears and needs of teachers having a child or adolescent diagnosed with cancer or with a cancer history in their classes. With this study, we aim to close this knowledge gap and assess the teachers' fears, worries and information needs having a child or adolescent diagnosed with cancer in the class to develop a suitable information tool (flyer).

METHODS

We performed an online survey including teachers covering all grades from nursery to vocational school within the catchment area of our hospital. The survey included separate questions for experience with students still receiving active treatment and those in follow-up care. Answer options included tick boxes and open-ended questions, which we grouped thematically. We used descriptive analysis to describe the survey findings, resulting in a newly developed flyer.

RESULTS

In total 358 teachers participated in the survey, 80% were female, 63% worked in nursery or primary school. One quarter (26%) had experience with a student diagnosed with cancer. Most teachers with (81%) and without (85%) experience reported at least one concern. The top three concerns reported were: (1) how to inform the class, (2) the resilience of the student and (3) how to deal with the student and his or her family. The teachers preferred oral information by physicians or parents and written information equally. Information on resilience, guidelines with an emergency situation, and the need for cancer-specific information were considered important by about 75-94% of the teachers.

CONCLUSION

Most teachers reported concerns, which we cover in a newly developed information flyer. However, such a flyer cannot replace individual communication between health care professionals and teachers. The identified concerns are likely to be transferable to other school systems and countries.

Engagement patterns with female and male scientists on Facebook

Social networks are becoming powerful agents mediating between science and the public. Considering the public tendency to associate science with men makes investigating representations of female scientists in social media important. Here we set out to find whether the commenting patterns to text-based science communication are similar. To examine these, we collected and analyzed posts (165) and their comments (10,006) published between 2016 and 2018 on an Israeli popular science Facebook page. We examined post characteristics as well as the relevance and sentiment of comments. Several gendered differences in commenting patterns emerged. Posts published by female scientists received more irrelevant and fewer relevant comments. Female scientists received more hostile and positive comments. These findings are consistent with results of previous research, but also demonstrate a more nuanced understanding that when female scientists write using scientific jargon (usually an unwanted feature of popular science writing), they received less hostile comments and were given less advice.

Women in Systems Science and Gender Parity: Why and How to Democratize the "Technology, Innovation, and Society Nexus"

A career in systems science offers exciting prospects as well as challenges around the world, which are often underexplored or unknown. Gender parity, diversity, inclusion, and equity are essential for knowledge production, systems science research, and innovation to be representative, democratic, and critically informed. By virtue of its focus on systems, omics science is ideally poised to understand and respond to systemic and structural issues that hinder gender parity, equity, and democracy in science and society. In this context, voices from women in systems science in resource-limited countries are often inaudible, a gap that this article aims to bridge. We present here some of the pressing issues and possible ways forward for equitable representation of women in science. We highlight emerging frontiers of systems science such as digital transformation, Industry 4.0, and cyber-physical systems where gender parity and equity are crucial. This article also examines some of the challenges faced by women scientists in Africa. All in all, much work is needed across communities and countries worldwide for diversity and gender equity in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM)-based programs. Adapting a critical lens that examines power asymmetries in STEM in Africa and around the world, and new ways of thinking for bringing women scientists in Africa to leadership positions in traditional STEM fields such as computer science and engineering where large gender equity gaps exist, is a timely and principled necessity in 21st century science and society.

Gender representation in science publication: evidence from Brain Communications

The persistent underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) points to the need to continue promoting the awareness and understanding of this phenomenon. Being one of the main outputs of scientific work, academic publications provide the opportunity to quantify the gender gap in science as well as to identify possible sources of bias and areas of improvement. Brain Communications is a 'young' journal founded in 2019, committed to transparent publication of rigorous work in neuroscience, neurology and psychiatry. For all manuscripts (n = 796) received by the journal between 2019 and 2021, we analysed the gender of all authors (n = 7721) and reviewers (n = 4492). Overall, women were 35.3% of all authors and 31.3% of invited reviewers. A considerably higher proportion of women was found in first authorship (42.4%) than in last authorship positions (24.9%). The representation of women authors and reviewers decreased further in the months following COVID-19 restrictions, suggesting a possible exacerbating role of the pandemic on existing disparities in science publication. The proportion of manuscripts accepted for publication was not significantly different according to the gender of the first, middle or last authors, meaning we found no evidence of gender bias within the review or editorial decision-making processes at Brain Communications.

Outlook of women in science: an interview with our authors

Diversity in research teams ties alternative perspectives into research projects, and this can fast-forward scientific progress. Concerted efforts have been aimed at encouraging and supporting women to pursue a career in science, yet a gender disparity can still be observed at senior positions, with fewer women in leadership roles. To get insight into how the current landscape for women in science is perceived by different career stages, we interviewed female authors of Molecular Oncology from diverse career stages and disciplines about their inspiration, challenges they have faced as scientists as well as their thoughts on how gender diversity can be further enhanced.

The community of Black women physicians, 1864-1941: Trends in background, education, and training

We identified nearly 180 Black women who earned medical degrees prior to the start of the Second World War and found information regarding their family and social connections, premedical and medical educations, and internship experience or lack thereof for many of these women. Through their collective history, we observed large-scale trends, especially regarding the importance of "separatist" medical education and declining medical school attendance among African American women in the 1910s as medicine became an increasingly exclusionary profession. While our research uncovered trends specific to Black women physicians, the implications of our research can be applied far more widely to other historically marginalized scientific practitioners. This research reminds us of the longstanding and shifting presence of Black women in science and medicine, despite the enduring popular belief that white men represent who participates in science, both historically and today.

The History and Challenges of Women in Genetics: A Focus on Non-Western Women

"Women in much of the world lack support for fundamental functions of a human life." This truthful portrait was pointed out by Martha Nussbaum in her book "Introduction: Feminism & International Development." Throughout history, gender inequality has been persistent in many aspects of life, including health and empowerment. Unfortunately, this inequality has not been excluded from the field of science. Perpetual assumption that women's absence or restriction to secondary roles in various disciplines is an acceptable law of nature misrepresents women's contribution to science and maintains hurdles for participation in the future. According to a recent UNESCO's report, women make up only 30% of researchers worldwide. But despite all the obstacles, women made major contributions with discoveries that shaped the progress in many scientific fields. In the field of genetics, Rosalind Franklin is an example of unwittingly compromised women's scientific achievements. Franklin was an expert in X-ray crystallography; her data, especially the "photo 51," was critical to James Watson and Francis Crick along with their own data to publish the discovery of the double helix DNA structure in 1953. Her contribution was acknowledged posthumously in Watson's memoir in 1968. Barbara McClintock was a 20th century American cytogeneticist who remains up to date the only woman receiving an unshared Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock dedicated her work to cytogenetics and discovered the phenomenon of mobile genes. Her research was initially subjected to skepticism in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1960s that the community realized the significance of McClintock's discovery. The history of science is occupied with a myriad of similar tales of such inspiring women that, after tremendous struggles, thrived and achieved breakthroughs in their respective fields. It is prominent our limited knowledge of women's experience and struggle in science in non-western world. Addressing the stories of this outstanding minority is critical to expand the understanding of the gender disparity factors embedded in diverse cultures. In this article, we attempt to put the spotlight on some fascinating non-western women and their significant contributions to the field of genetics.

A Proposal to Make Biomedical Research into Alzheimer's Disease More Democratic Following an International Survey with Researchers

Background

Therapeutic research into Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been dominated by the amyloid cascade hypothesis (ACH) since the 1990s. However, targeting amyloid in AD patients has not yet resulted in highly significant disease-modifying effects. Furthermore, other promising theories of AD etiology exist.

Objective

We sought to directly investigate whether the ACH still dominates the opinions of researchers working on AD and explore the implications of this question for future directions of research.

Methods

During 2019, we undertook an international survey promoted with the help of the Alzheimer's Association with questions on theories and treatments of AD. Further efforts to promote a similar study in 2021 did not recruit a significant number of participants.

Results

173 researchers took part in the 2019 survey, 22% of which held "pro-ACH" opinions, tended to have more publications, were more likely to be male, and over 60. Thus, pro-ACH may now be a minority opinion in the field but is nevertheless the hypothesis on which the most clinical trials are based, suggestive of a representation bias. Popular vote of all 173 participants suggested that lifestyle treatments and anti-tau drugs were a source of more therapeutic optimism than anti-amyloid treatments.

Conclusion

We propose a more democratic research structure which increases the likelihood that promising theories are published and funded fairly, promotes a broader scientific view of AD, and reduces the larger community's dependence on a fragile economic model.

Women in science: a daughter's perspective

In the first grade, in one of my first classes, my teacher read us a story about a scientist. To my utter shock, the scientist was a man. After the story, I asked the teacher, 'can men be scientists?' She looked at me, bewildered, and replied: 'of course, anyone can be a scientist.' It was not until later that my teacher learned that my mother is a scientist, and the only scientists I had ever met were women, like me.

My Life in Changing Times: New Ideas and New Techniques

I describe some of the science that I have been involved in during the last 60 years and the changes in equipment that made it possible. Starting with an interest in spectroscopy and measurement of NMR parameters, I moved to work on theoretical aspects of spin systems and infrared and Raman line shapes. This morphed into using the new technique of computer simulation to study such problems. The last half of my working life has concentrated on the application of computer simulation to a number of problems culminating in pioneering investigations of the behavior of ionic liquids.

Breaking barriers? Ethnicity and socioeconomic background impact on early career progression in the fields of ecology and evolution

The academic disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) have long suffered from a lack of diversity. While in recent years there has been some progress in addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM subjects, other characteristics that have the potential to impact on equality of opportunity have received less attention. In this study, we surveyed 188 early career scientists (ECRs), defined as within 10 years of completing their PhD, in the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, behaviour, and related disciplines. We examined associations between ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, sex, socioeconomic background, and disability, with measures of career progression, namely publication record, number of applications made before obtaining a postdoc, type of contract, and number of grant applications made. We also queried respondents on perceived barriers to progression and potential ways of overcoming them. Our key finding was that socioeconomic background and ethnicity were associated with measures of career progression. While there was no difference in the number of reported first-authored papers on PhD completion, ethnic minority respondents reported fewer other-authored papers. In addition, ECRs from a lower socioeconomic background were more likely to report being in teaching and research positions, rather than research-only positions, the latter being perceived as more prestigious by some institutions. We discuss our findings in the context of possible inequality of opportunity. We hope that this study will stimulate wider discussion and help to inform strategies to address the underrepresentation of minority groups in the fields of ecology and evolution, and STEM subjects more widely.

A Different Kind of Medicinal Chemistry Toolbox

To attract and retain women in medicinal chemistry, a toolbox of resources and opportunities is suggested. Scientific meetings, books, affinity groups, training courses, and networks all can provide support and strategies to help increase the percentage of women in the field.

Career choices of underrepresented and female postdocs in the biomedical sciences

The lack of diversity among faculty at universities and medical schools in the United States is a matter of growing concern. However, the factors that influence the career choices of underrepresented minority and female postdoctoral researchers have received relatively little attention. Here we report the results of a survey of 1284 postdocs working in the biomedical sciences in the US. Our findings highlight possible reasons why some underrepresented minority and female postdocs choose not to pursue careers in academic research, and suggest interventions that could be taken in the early stages of postdoctoral training to prevent this attrition of underrepresented groups.

Power analysis

After acknowledging that power differentials exist, can scientists find inspiration to persevere anyway?

Empowering Women: Moving from Awareness to Action at the Immunology of Fungal Infections Gordon Research Conference

Despite the high prevalence of women in graduate degree programs and equal or more women earning PhDs, MDs, and MD/PhDs, and despite efforts at individual and institutional levels to promote women in STEM fields, there remains a disparity in pay and academic advancement of women. Likewise, there is a paucity of women in top scientific and academic leadership positions. The causes of this gender disparity are complex and multi-factorial and to date no "magic bullet" approach has been successful in changing the landscape for women in academic and scientific fields. In this report we detail our experiences with a novel mechanism for promoting discussion and raising awareness of the challenges of gender disparity in the sciences. The Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) launched the Power Hour at its meetings in 2016: a dedicated, scheduled session held during the scientific meeting to facilitate discussion of challenges specific to women in science. Here we share our experience with hosting the second Power Hour at the 2019 GRC Immunology of Fungal Infections (IFI) meeting held in Galveston, TX. We will discuss the overall structure, key discussion points, and feedback from participants with the aim of supporting future efforts to empower women and underrepresented minority groups in science.

Are we there yet?

Traveling to conferences with children presents a number of logistical and financial challenges.

Unravelling the gender productivity gap in science: a meta-analytical review

Women underrepresentation in science has frequently been associated with women being less productive than men (i.e. the gender productivity gap), which may be explained by women having lower success rates, producing science of lower impact and/or suffering gender bias. By performing global meta-analyses, we show that there is a gender productivity gap mostly supported by a larger scientific production ascribed to men. However, women and men show similar success rates when the researchers' work is directly evaluated (i.e. publishing articles). Men's success rate is higher only in productivity proxies involving peer recognition (e.g. evaluation committees, academic positions). Men's articles showed a tendency to have higher global impact but only if studies include self-citations. We detected gender bias against women in research fields where women are underrepresented (i.e. those different from Psychology). Historical numerical unbalance, socio-psychological aspects and cultural factors may influence differences in success rate, science impact and gender bias. Thus, the maintenance of a women-unfriendly academic and non-academic environment may perpetuate the gender productivity gap. New policies to build a more egalitarian and heterogeneous scientific community and society are needed to close the gender gap in science.

Planning during pregnancy

Colleagues, funders and institutions can support pregnant researchers in a variety of ways.

Illuminating Women's Hidden Contribution to Historical Theoretical Population Genetics

Through careful review of one eminent journal over the 1970s and 80s, Dung et al. found a surprisingly high proportion of the computational work was carried out by women. Consistent with authorship norms of the time...

While productivity in academia is measured through authorship, not all scientific contributors have been recognized as authors. We consider nonauthor “acknowledged programmers” (APs), who developed, ran, and sometimes analyzed the results of computer programs. We identified APs in Theoretical Population Biology articles published between 1970 and 1990, finding that APs were disproportionately women (P = 4.0 × 10⁻¹⁰). We note recurrent APs who contributed to several highly-cited manuscripts. The occurrence of APs decreased over time, corresponding to the masculinization of computer programming and the shift of programming responsibilities to individuals credited as authors. We conclude that, while previously overlooked, historically, women have made substantial contributions to computational biology. For a video of this abstract, see: https://vimeo.com/313424402.

Exploring the YouTube science communication gender gap: A sentiment analysis

YouTube has become the second most popular web search engine (see Alexa.com ) and the primary website for individuals and organisations to freely distribute video content. Popularity statistics indicate that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics-related content is of significant interest to YouTube audiences, yet analysis of the 391 most popular science, engineering and mathematics-themed channels reveals a conspicuous absence of female communicators, with the hosts of just 32 of these channels presenting as female. To help understand potential causes of this gap, analysis was conducted on popularity indicators and audience sentiments of 450 videos from 90 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics-related channels. Female hosted channels were found to accumulate more comments per view, and significantly higher proportions of appearance, hostile, critical/negative and sexist/sexual commentary.

STEM/Non-STEM Divide Structures Undergraduate Beliefs About Gender and Talent in Academia

Research and popular debate on female underrepresentation in academia has focused on STEM fields. But recent work has offered a unifying explanation for gender representation across the STEM/non-STEM divide. This proposed explanation, called the field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis, postulates that, in combination with pervasive stereotypes that link men but not women with intellectual talent, academics perpetuate female underrepresentation by transmitting to students in earlier stages of education their beliefs about how much intellectual talent is required for success in each academic field. This theory was supported by a nationwide survey of U.S. academics that showed both STEM and non-STEM fields with fewer women are also the fields that academics believe require more brilliance. We test this top-down schema with a nationwide survey of U.S. undergraduates, assessing the extent to which undergraduate beliefs about talent in academia mirror those of academics. We find no evidence that academics transmit their beliefs to undergraduates. We also use a second survey "identical to the first but with each field's gender ratio provided as added information" to explicitly test the relationship between undergraduate beliefs about gender and talent in academia. The results for this second survey suggest that the extent to which undergraduates rate brilliance as essential to success in an academic field is highly sensitive to this added information for non-STEM fields, but not STEM fields. Overall, our study offers evidence that, contrary to FAB hypothesis, the STEM/non-STEM divide principally shapes undergraduate beliefs about both gender and talent in academia.

Patterns of authorship in ecology and evolution: First, last, and corresponding authorship vary with gender and geography

The position of an author on the byline of a paper affects the inferences readers make about their contributions to the research. We examine gender differences in authorship in the ecology literature using two datasets: submissions to six journals between 2010 and 2015 (regardless of whether they were accepted), and manuscripts published by 151 journals between 2009 and 2015. Women were less likely to be last (i.e., "senior") authors (averaging ~23% across journals, years, and datasets) and sole authors (~24%), but more likely to be first author (~38%), relative to their overall frequency of authorship (~31%). However, the proportion of women in all authorship roles, except sole authorship, has increased year-on-year. Women were less likely to be authors on papers with male last authors, and all-male papers were more abundant than expected given the overall gender ratio. Women were equally well represented on papers published in higher versus lower impact factor journals at all authorship positions. Female first authors were less likely to serve as corresponding author of their papers; this difference increased with the degree of gender inequality in the author's home country, but did not depend on the gender of the last author. First authors from non-English-speaking countries were less likely to serve as corresponding author of their papers, especially if the last author was from an English-speaking country. That women more often delegate corresponding authorship to one of their coauthors may increase the likelihood that readers undervalue their role in the research by shifting credit for their contributions to coauthors. We suggest that author contribution statements be more universally adopted and that these statements declare how and/or why the corresponding author was selected for this role.

"Her Joyous Enthusiasm for Her Life-Work …": Early Women Authors in The American Naturalist

Women have long been underrepresented in the natural sciences, and although great progress has been made in recent decades, many subtle and not-so-subtle barriers persist. In this context, it is easy to get the impression that the early history of ecology and evolutionary biology was exclusively the domain of male researchers. In fact, a number of women made very substantial contributions to The American Naturalist in its first decades. In a follow-up to a series of retrospective essays celebrating 150 years of this journal, we highlight the scientific contributions of the women published in it during its first 50 years (1867-1916). We also discuss the diverse paths that their scientific careers took and the barriers they faced along the way.

Julius von Sachs' forgotten 1897-article: sexuality and gender in plants vs. humans

One hundred and fifty years ago, Julius von Sachs' (1832-1897) monumental Lehrbuch der Botanik (Textbook of Botany) was published, which signified the origin of physiological botany and its integration with evolutionary biology. Sachs regarded the physiology of photoautotrophic organisms as a sub-discipline of botany, and introduced a Darwinian perspective into the emerging plant sciences. Here, we summarize Sachs' achievements and his description of sexuality with respect to the cellular basis of plant and animal biparental reproduction. We reproduce and analyze a forgotten paper (Gutachten) of Sachs dealing with Die Akademische Frau (The Academic Woman), published during the year of his death on the question concerning gender equality in humans. Finally, we summarize his endorsement of woman's rights to pursue academic studies in the natural sciences at the University level, and conclude that Sachs was a humanist as well as a great scientist.