A recent article in Academe Online had some startling numbers that I had long suspected, but wasn’t able to back up with data until now.
Over half of scientists surveyed–regardless of gender–reported they work 50 hours a week or more. This work-intensive lifestyle is one of the most frequent topics students (grad and undergrad) ask about when they see how haggard all their professors look.
I think this statement from the article is quite true:
Universities have developed over the past two hundred years to fit men’s lives, both as faculty members and as students. From the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, university professors were predominantly men—with stay-at-home wives who organized and cared for the household.
One of the reasons I jumped off the tenure track was that it was not a healthy choice for me, a person with a disability. I don’t, frankly, think it’s a healthy choice for very many people, aside from a few superstars who thrive on stress. An academic life can be wonderful…but too often it’s a toxic environment.
Too much work/too little time is a problem with academia, and also a problem for Americans in general, since Americans have little or no vacation time, compared to other developed countries. The Academe Online article caught my eye because it actually was about the role of housework in adding to the burdens of female scientists:
“female scientists do nearly twice as much housework as their male counterparts. Partnered women scientists at places like Stanford University do 54 percent of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in their households; partnered men scientists do just 28 percent. This translates to more than ten hours a week for women— in addition to the nearly sixty hours a week they are already working as scientists—and to just five hours for men.”
This pretty much validates what I’ve been hearing from friends for many years. While some women have wonderful husbands that help with parenting and housework, most of them still do the heavy lifting around the house.
When you combine this information with the recent National Academies publication “Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty“, you realize just how important home/house work can be.
In every science field they measured, the proportion of female applicants for tenure-track jobs was significantly less than the number of women completing PhDs in that field. Women received 45 percent of the Ph.D.s in biology awarded from 1999 to 2003, but they accounted for only 26 percent of applicants to tenure-track positions. Same story in Chemistry –36% of PhDs earned, 18% of applicants for tenure-track positions.
In every field, women were underrepresented among candidates for tenure relative to the number of female assistant professors. In chemistry, for example, women made up 22% of assistant professors, but only 15% of the faculty being considered for tenure.
I hear–often–from grad students “I don’t want to work in academia because I want to have a life/family/kids.” I hear it from both men and women.
What does it mean for Academia that some of our best and brightest see it as a machine that grinds up lives and spits out bitter, tenured dead wood?
Interesting details of more pro-DDT Asshattery, this time in Canada. From an interesting new book that covers the DDT propaganda machine. I’ll review it if someone sends me a copy….*cough*
*In case you are interested, Mr. Bug and I are splitting up, and the person that left me the dead deer head has reappeared. And there is all sorts of strangeness over the Skepchicks.
I cover a lot of art-insect stuff here, but this one has simply reduced me to one word: WANT.
Julia Stoess apparently works at a German museum, and has perfected the art of making very large (30:1 or bigger) insect models. Check out her site for a gallery of some of her work; she also has photos of the process of making a tiger beetle.
Her comments:
“I have the privilege of working together closely with the Zoological Institute in Hamburg and various entomologists, to ensure that my models are scientifically correct.
After sketching and modelling the individual parts of the body, I take silicone moulds which in turn are cast in resin or laminated. Meticulous selection of the corresponding materials (ageing resistance, UV/synthetic light resistance) guarantees a practically unlimited service life for the model.
I attach particular importance to details such as characteristic hairs and bristles, specific veining in the wings and original colouring.
The aim of my work is to achieve the greatest possible correspondence with the living animal.”
Yay, and congrats on her recent achievement of a World Taxidermy Award!
I’ve mentioned it a few times before at the Bug Blog, and in these days of MRSA bacteria, diabetic ulcers, and a whole host of other nasties, this ancient way of cleaning wounds is making a comeback.
Maggots are used in wound debridement–which is a fancy way of saying that when a wound is seriously infected, tissue begins to die (become “necrotic”) and has to be removed. When doctors debride with scalpels, a lot of healthy tissue can be lost, and it leaves a big hole behind. It is not pretty.
This is why I am choosing to link to photos, and let you decide just how curious you are about this entire topic before you click.
While the idea of maggots on open wounds gives some the squicks, the results are amazing. It’s basically microsurgery by thousands of tiny crawling doctors. Um, tiny crawling doctors who eat decaying tissue.
When antibiotics fail, or ulcers develop, or the patient’s immune system just isn’t able to cope– that’s when maggots get the call to save the day.
Medicinal maggots have several beneficial effects on wounds: debridement, (removal of necrotic tissue) is a primary use. Left untreated, gangrene and amputation are the usual result for wounds that have become septic. This may help explain why patients are willing to spend several days pretending that there are not thousands of tiny legless animals crawling around in their body, eating their flesh.
Maggots also produce a variety of salivary proteins that actually disinfect the wound through microbial killing. These secretions also seem to actually decrease wound healing time. (Out of curiosity, please report back how many times you experience intrusive thoughts about the healing properties of maggot saliva today.)
You can see some before/during/after maggot treatment photos in this journal article. The results of the maggots are astonishing– I would not have predicted the first patient’s hand could have been saved at all, much less partially reconstructed.
There are a fair number of interesting online videos–you can see the doctors, patients, and maggots at work:
There is a more disturbing video here, mostly because they use time-lapse video of maggots in their natural habitat–decomposing corpses. You don’t use just any old maggots for this type of wound treatment; only a few species have the proper behaviors and will stop at eating just the decaying bits of you. Also, medicinal maggots must be reared under sterile conditions so they don’t introduce any new infections to the one they are trying to cure.
Ronald Sherman has really pioneered maggot therapy in the last 20 years, and you can read his book online via Google books. He also publishes peer-reviewed research regularly, and runs a company that supplies sterile maggots for medical use. He is the lead author on a very nice review article about medicinal maggots in general, which I have linked below.
Sherman, R. (2003). Maggot Therapy for Treating Diabetic Foot Ulcers Unresponsive to Conventional Therapy Diabetes Care, 26 (2), 446-451 DOI: 10.2337/diacare.26.2.446
Sherman, R., Hall, M., & Thomas, S. (2000). Medicinal Maggots: An Ancient Remedy for Some Contemporary Afflictions Annual Review of Entomology, 45 (1), 55-81 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ento.45.1.55
Jukema, G., Menon, A., Bernards, A., Steenvoorde, P., Rastegar, A., & van Dissel, J. (2002). Amputation‐Sparing Treatment by Nature: “Surgical” Maggots Revisited Clinical Infectious Diseases, 35 (12), 1566-1571 DOI: 10.1086/344904
LayScience covered the first reports in peer reviewed journals of Maggot Therapy as reported during WWI.
I surf around on WordPress every now and then and see what other people are writing about insects. Good news: Are you troubled by dreams of ectoparasites? Now there is a solution!
Generally, the more florid my dreams, the more likely that I’ve eaten something regrettable just before bedtime. (Burritos before bed–not a good idea.)
Dreaming of lice perhaps means that you are concerned for your health, or that you saw something on the news that made you fear them. Head lice are a pretty common occurrence in kids, and it’s a majorproblem I’ve coveredbefore. But — a spinal condition? Overwork? From her post:
“When Lice come to our attention in our dreams, it can be an indication that our subconscious is trying to tell us to let go of some pesky people or ideals in our lives. When we are being “sucked dry” by too many responsibilities, too many obligations, or torn in too many directions by well-meaning people, the Louse will come to our attention as a message to withdraw ourselves and resist being pulled into situations we do not wish for ourselves.
The fact that you were dreaming of Lice around your head and down the spine indicates that you may be dealing with some challenging thoughts (the head & spinal cord being symbolic of the nervous system & the origin of thought), that there are many choices before you – and all of them may be “bugging” you.”
This seems a little over elaborate. How about just “you’re freaked out your kid will get lice. They are creepy”?
From farther down in her lice post:
Furthermore, the Louse never takes more from its host than either can handle (for to do so would destroy its own livelihood). This is a message that we can all learn from. Sometimes when Lice are in our dreams it indicates that we are either asking too much from our loved ones, or they are asking too much of us.
That is not true. Exanguination by lice doeshappen, although it’s usually limited to small animals. This idea that nature is in balance and as it should be is overly romantic, and a common mistake in New Age-y types.
My grandparents had Edgar Cayce’ dream books when I was a kid, and I spent some time thinking about his system of symbolism. Carl Jung also mentioned insects occasionally; but mostly in a way to relate to synchronicity. Which… is completely unsupported by evidence. Like this dream interpretation stuff. Eventually, I rejected it all.
There is a fairly large body of work about dream interpretation that has a more scientific background. Some of the coolest insights comes from neurological work on dreaming deficits in brain-damaged patients; it’s helped locate a lot of the actual brain structures involved in dreaming.
Generally, bizarre dreams are hugely over reported; most dreams are simply the same as everyday experiences. From a scientific review paper:
“Taken together, these detailed descriptive studies provide a consistent picture of REM dream reports as portraying a reasonable simulation of the dreamer’s waking world. The dream scenario is original, but not usually fantastic, and the emotions are generally appropriate to the situation when they are present….
Despite the originality and creativity that is displayed in the cognitive production of dreams, and even given the aspects of dream content that are not understood, most dreams are more realistic and based in everyday life than is suggested by any traditional dream theory. In addition, much dream content seems more transparent than might be expected by clinical theories that emphasize disguise and/or symbolism in understanding dreams.” [emphasis mine]
Feel free to offer up your more interesting insect dreams in the comments!
S. Schwartza, T. T. Dang-Vuc, A. Ponza, S. Duhouxa, P. Maquetc. (2005). Dreaming: a neuropsychological view. SCHWEI ZER ARCHIV FÜR NEUROLOGIE UND PSYCHIATRIE 156: 427-439.
You might remember I covered this artist last year when she had a show in Brazil. Well, she’s got a show in the US right now, and the gallery director was kind enough to send me some photos of the actual installation.
The exhibition at Moore features five major site-specific installations by internationally-renowned artists who employ printmaking in patterning and ornamentation of their work. Regina Silveira’s (Sao Paulo, Brazil) patterns of oversized insects will swarm across the floors and walls of the Goldie Paley Gallery.
Here’s the installation: click the photos to enbiggen.
The show runs January 29 – April 11, 2010; You can find all the details here. it’s FREE!
I wish it was a little closer; Philly is a long drive for me. And the ESAreally needs to get this woman to do a show for the next annual meeting!!
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