Women’s March on Washington- Unsplash Feminists have challenged sexism in many levels of society, particularly in terms of exploitation, harassment, and objectification of women. Many of these violent experiences women face can be traumatizing. Feminism, in terms of resistance to patriarchy, often occurs in subtle and individualistic ways. However, collective resistance is another way for many women, who identify as feminists, to challenge societal norms and power structures that challenge sources of male privilege. Feminism today is the result of a long, arduous struggle of women using diffe ..read more

  About the Author CurieousGirl84 is a 9-year-old explorer living in Raleigh, NC. She practices anime-inspired drawings and the kawaii style of drawing cute anthropomorphic objects.  She reads voraciously and likes discovering famous women in STEM fields. Her current D&D character is a Half-Elven Bard named Eveneer. She’s also a Minecraft gamer who received her first parent-issued ban for a month at the tender age of 6. At 7, she won 3rd place in a chess tournament that her dad dragged her to and made her first and last instructional chess video on YouTube. She also plays the pi ..read more

Have you ever been amazed by a dog’s incredible sense of smell? Probably…but how about an ant’s? A recent study from Sorbonne Paris North University found that the common ant species Formica fusca learned to differentiate specific olfactory cues rapidly, and succeeded in detecting urine samples from mice that received a graft of human breast cancer tissue. Chemical analysis of the mouse urine used in this study revealed a difference in odor between the cancerous and non-cancerous mice. The ants spent about 20% longer around cancerous mice’s urine samples than noncancerous mice, demonstrating ..read more

I learned a lot during my PhD program. I learned how to perfectly pour an agarose gel to get the cleanest image of my PCR bands, how to synthesize delicate RNA strands in vitro, and how to write complex scripts to automate my RNA-seq analyses. I learned to balance the needs of my advisor and my students, how to fit in an extra experiment in between laboratory teaching sections, and how to read scientific papers on public transit without getting carsick. But what I didn’t learn was how to get an actual, real-life, adult job. Being in graduate school comes with the seeming benefit of delaying t ..read more

  Content warning: This article talks generally about animal research, including animal euthanasia as part of scientific experiments. If this topic makes you uncomfortable, we suggest skipping the below material.   Being an animal lover is one of the most intrinsic parts of my personality. I’ve been a horse-girl, dog person, cat enthusiast, and nature admirer for my entire life. When I couldn’t choose a major in undergrad, I looked down the list and picked Animal Science because nothing sounded more familiar and safe than getting a college education studying my favorite non-human co ..read more

(Abuse. Ongoing trauma. Low self-esteem. Boxed in by pain. Fragile hearts, broken and darkened. Image Credit:Unsplash) Everyone has a story to tell, growing up I have heard many traumatic incidents my friends and people closest to me have faced. I have witnessed my friends dealing with trauma and continued stress as part of their daily experience. Visibly seeing my friends go from being a confident, socially infectious young woman, to being isolated, avoidant, and hopeless is painful to witness. Today, social media has become a platform for all of us to talk about mental health and hopefully ..read more

“Relaxing brings weakness, when done by a muscle; but brings strength, when done by a person.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana The Yerkes-Dodson Law is a popular, if not slightly outdated, psychological theory relating the amount of stress an individual experiences to their productivity. The idea – which was established in 1908 by two American psychologists unsurprisingly named Yerkes and Dodeson – is simple: There is an optimum amount of stress that produces maximum performance output. Go above this level and you will find yourself unproductively spinning your wheels in a loop of anxiety, and below it ..read more

“When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” ― Eloise Ristad  I’d like to consider myself a science-minded, rational person who can rise above the broad generalizations described in horoscopes. However, even I have to admit that when you look up the description for Virgo, my zodiac sign, I fit the outline to a T. “Worrier, perfectionist, prone to self-criticism.” That’s pretty much as accurate as it gets, and needless to say does not set me up well for dealing with inevitable failures that come with scientific work. As unique as I ..read more

The Fight for Iranian Women’s Rights Mahsa Amini was murdered on Sept 16, 2022 by Iranian state morality police for not properly wearing her hijab. In response, Iranian women and men have taken to the streets in protest, chanting “Women! Life! Freedom!” and fighting for women’s right to live. These protests have lasted for months and continue despite growing threats from the Iranian regime. The ongoing government backlash has resulted in the murder and imprisonment of hundreds of protestors, including a death sentence for one activist. It is horrific. R ..read more

If there are a million mysteries still remaining about how the human body works, there are millions more about how animal physiology works. And while most of us probably don’t spend our time thinking about the intricacies of cetacean vasculature, Margo Lillie and her team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver certainly do. In particular, whales and dolphins have been known to possess a very distinct network of blood vessels in their brains. They’re called retia mirabilia, which means “wonderful nets” in Latin. We aren’t quite sure why these networks are so entangled ..read more