The STEM Careers Blog

Earth Day every day

2012-02-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite hobbies is imagining ways to reuse things, for the environment's sake.

Recently, my sewing basket of 20-some years failed. The wicker snapped in the back (not seen in photo) of the hinged lid. I couldn't fix it and make it look good. The parts poking out could have scratched anyone using the basket.

What if I removed the lid and saved the rest?

If it couldn't be a sewing basket any more, what else could it be?

Maybe a plant pot cover. But what plant pot would fit? Several small round ones? Would the plants look lost?

Later that day, I gathered the week's recyclables. Look what was among them:

A salad box. Yes, occasionally when life really gets too busy with family activities or good work, I'm guilty of buying salad boxes instead of lettuce.

All the box needs is a few water holes made with a hot screwdriver.

And plants.

Treating blindness with robotics

2012-02-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

Watch neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg talk about how she wants to treat some types of blindness, by hooking into the optic nerve and sending signals from a camera directly to the brain.

For more on how to do this without surgery--with only an injection and special glasses!--watch the Q&A beginning at 3 minutes.

Read the article that explains that Nirenberg's team used gene therapy to add a special protein to specific cells in the eyes of blind mice, to make them responsive to light. Next, a pair of glasses containing a tiny video camera and computer used a math recipe (algorithm) to turn images into mini light flashes, which the glasses were equipped to shine into the eye. Then the blind mice could see!

Factory balls - test of problem-solving skills

2012-02-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

Goal: paint a ball to make it look like the one on the box.

How: drag a ball and drop it on the tools, in logical order.

Click here and have fun!

Meet a world-class earthquake expert

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

Seismogram of Aug 23, 11 earthquake that shook east coast of U.S.

Her name is Lucy Jones and she's known as "the Earthquake Lady." The Smithsonian magazine calls her "one of the most influential seismologists in the world." Read about her work and fascinating career path, beginning at age eight, in her profile.

Coming soon to Olympic Games near you: high action science

2012-01-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Watch this video for a sneak peek at the most advanced Olympic anti-doping tests ever, already ready for the Summer Games in London.

More on pharmacy as a career

2012-01-19T16:06:00.000-08:00

Watch videos about pharmacy as a career at the website, Pharmacy is Right for Me.

For more, go to my initial pharmacy blog post, "Follow a hospital pharmacist," and don't forget to scroll down to the links at the bottom.

The unstoppable girl scientist

2012-01-13T08:34:00.000-08:00

The absolutely amazing high school senior Samantha Garvey is a semifinalist in the prestigious Intel science competition! No matter what happens, she's going to college. Meet her in this news clip.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dazzling: color-coded surgery!

2011-12-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

Surgeon Quyen Nguyen uses a technique that makes only cancer tumors glow--and not nearby healthy tissue, or vice-versa--to help surgeons see exactly what to remove and what to leave intact. Watch her explain it with brilliant images in this video.

Vive Madame Curie !

2011-11-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Read a Smithsonian Magazine article on Marie Curie's passion for science, despite the barriers she faced because she was a woman.

A new play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, written by the actor and director Alan Alda, debuts November 9, 2011. Read his interview.

Walk in the shoes of... paraplegics!

2011-11-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Test pilot Fernanda Castelo
Photo courtesy of Ekso Bionics

Could science and technology help paraplegics, such as the woman in the photo, walk? Watch this incredible story.

For more on the robotic exoskeletons, visit the website of the company that makes them: Ekso Bionics.

The company was co-founded by an engineer, Russ Angold, who is now its Chief Technical Officer.

See the future of bionics.

Animal rescue - tests of problem-solving skills

2011-10-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Each activity at the link below has its own mini-rules, within which you can solve the problem.

GOAL: help the rabbit reach the treat he wants.

HOW: explore each picture--point, click, drag, drop--to discover what is or is not possible, then figure out a logical way to reach your goal.

Click here and have fun!

Play Power Up! - an engineering game

2011-10-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

Save the world... of an imaginary planet from ecological devastation by engineering solutions to supply solar, wind, and water power. Play Power Up! - an engineering game developed by IBM and TryScience/New York Hall of Science.

Follow an analytical chemist who protects horses – a STEM career glimpse and puzzle

2011-07-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Horses thunder past, stretch across the finish line. The fastest one wins by a nose. Victory brings fame and fortune to the owner.

And this victory is the end result of generations of expert horsemen and horsewomen breeding generations of extraordinary horses, and of the horse’s years of hard work with fine trainers, so that the best may win on race day. At least that’s the way it should be.

Unfortunately, money is at stake, so that some people cheat to help a horse they own, or train, win races. One kind of cheating is doping by giving drugs to horses to make them run faster.

Some people give shots of blood booster drugs to horses. More red blood cells carry more oxygen to all tissues in the horse’s body, including muscles. Instead of getting tired in the last stretch, the horse can keep going full tilt. But this is cheating, therefore it is is prohibited.

How can one catch cheaters? By testing the horse for prohibited drugs: blood and urine samples are collected after races.

Lab scientists test the samples for prohibited drugs. If the scientists find one, the people responsible for that horse have broken the rules and must be punished.

But what happens when a new drug becomes available? For example, by 2008, a new and improved blood booster medicine, CERA, had become available. CERA was invented to treat humans who have serious medical problems, not to help healthy athletes or horses cheat!

Researchers in Europe invented a test to look for CERA in athletes’ samples. Sadly, they found CERA in athletes' samples, including from 2008 Tour de France and Beijing Olympics cyclists.

Fortunately for horses everywhere, Dr. Yan Chang was already working hard to fine tune a test to find CERA in horses’ samples. If there is a test, cheaters might get caught, so they will think twice before giving a horse a shot, and hopefully they will forget it.

Dr. Yan Chang

How exactly does Yan’s test work to confirm that CERA was present in a horse’s sample?

She spends three days just preparing the samples. She treats them in a special way that cuts the CERA molecules, if they’re there, into pieces. One of those pieces, “T6,” can only come from CERA, nothing else. So finding T6 proves that CERA was there. To see whether T6 was there, Yan analyzes her samples by chromatography and mass spectrometry.

Yan uses chromatography and mass spectrometry

to test horse samples for a prohibited drug

Chromatography separates the ingredients of a mixture. The mixture goes into the machine, and the ingredients come out one by one at the other end. In the example below, chromatography has separated the two ingredients in a mixture:

Yan uses chromatography to separate T6 from all the other things in the horse’s blood. Then she uses mass spectrometry to identify T6.

For an explanation of how chromatography and mass spectrometry help identify chemicals, watch my TV science lesson (part 1 – from 3:30 minutes to the end at 10 minutes) by clicking here.

How exactly does Yan read what she gets from a test—the data?

Yan reads data

First of all, she always compares the unknown sample to known samples (controls): one control known to be negative (-) (because it’s blood from a research horse who was never given CERA) and one control known to be positive (+) (because Yan herself sprinkled CERA into horse blood in a test tube).

(In my TV science lesson, I omitted the negative control for the sake of simplification, to make room for other details.)

Yan’s data look like this:

- In the picture below, for the positive control (+), Yan knows that T6 is present, and sure enough, there are two peaks. The two peaks line up on the same vertical. The top peak is bigger than the bottom peak. The top peak is three times bigger than the bottom peak. That’s what the data look like when T6 is present.

- In the next picture, for the negative control (-), Yan knows that T6 is absent, and sure enough, there is no peak.

- Yan now looks at the unknown data (?) in the picture below, and asks three questions.

- Question 1: are there peaks?

            - If not, the sample is negative

            - If yes, Yan goes on.

- Question 2: are the top and bottom peaks lined up with each other on the same vertical as the positive control?

            - If not, the sample is negative

            - If yes, Yan goes on.

- Question 3: is the top peak three times bigger than the bottom peak, like for the positive control?

            - If not, the sample is negative

            - If yes, the sample is positive for T6.

That’s the big idea, although it was simplified to avoid giving you a headache.

Now it’s your turn to be a horse-race detective. Ask Questions 1, 2, and 3 about samples A-I below. Decide which horse was doped with CERA.

A: Attahorse

B: Beeg

C: Catch Me Tomorrow

D: Desert Wind

E: Egg Beater

F: Flies Like An Arrow

G: Girl Power

H: His Goofiness

I: Itching To Run

Click here for the answers.

Yan and her teammates published the test recipe in a science journal so other lab scientists can do it too. This protects race horses from being doped with CERA.

A NOTE ABOUT MATCHING PICTURES
If you take pictures of your cat, ten in a row, you don’t expect all of them to be identical. Yet anyone can tell that it’s the same cat—there’s a match! Scientists look at data the same way: to identify a drug, the unknown and the positive control don’t have to be identical, but they have to match well enough.

ABOUT YAN CHANG

• Yan has earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Chemistry from Shanxi University (Taiyuan, People's Republic of China or PRC) and a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (Beijing, PRC).

• She now lives in California.

• When she's not working, she loves to spend time with her young daughter playing puzzles and reading. She also loves to cook.

LINKS & MORE

• The reference for Yan’s publication in a science journal is

Y. Chang, G. M. Maylin, G. Matsumoto, S. M. Neades and D. H. Catlin. Screen and confirmation of PEG-epoetin β in equine plasma, Drug Testing and Analysis, 2011, 3:68–73.

Disclaimer: the substance of this publication was greatly simplified in order to adapt it for the above blog post.

• Go behind the scenes at a British race track. See how an official collects a sample from a horse, in the video at this web page.

• For an overview of chemistry careers, click on “Podcast" at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a chemist, jobs, and more.

• Read a paragraph-long description of analytical chemistry

• Read a paragraph-long description of forensic chemistry (analyzing evidence of a crime), or a two-page-long description of forensic chemistry

• Read an overview of Forensic Science Technician careers at ScienceBuddies.org.

• This info-packed web page by the American Chemical Society contains descriptions of eight different analytical chemists’ jobs, in the following specialties:

- Forensic Pharmaceutical Analysis
- Product Marketing
- Entrepreneur: Analytical Chemistry
- Entrepreneur: Analytical Chemistry Systems Integration
- Bioanalytical-Related Chemistry
- Environmental Analysis
- Chemometrics/Fish Products and Food Quality

Updated January 31, 2012

Top pay for girls

2011-05-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

To help pick the right career for you, find out how much money you’re likely to make.

The article, “The Best-Paying Jobs For Women in 2011,” ranks the ten top-paying jobs for women in 2010.

Look at the graph below. It represents those ten top-paying jobs.

Each job is shown as a stack of coins. The more coins, the more pay.

The gold coins are STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math) careers. How many of the top-paying careers for women are STEM careers?

BEST-PAYING JOBS FOR WOMEN

The STEM career women who are paid the most are… physicians and surgeons! The close seconds are pharmacists.

LINK

For a quick-and-easy overview of physician and surgeon careers, listen to the podcast at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a physician or surgeon, salary info, where physicians or surgeons work, and how their employment will grow much faster than in other professions.

Follow a science writer shaping a book – a STEM career glimpse

2011-05-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

Did you know that at every Olympics, scientists work behind the scenes? I’m one of them! And I’m a writer, too. As a science writer, I wrote a book about it.

As a scientist (I'm a pharmacist and analytical chemist), I’ve been at three Olympics, working on the lab team. We test athletes’ samples for performance-enhancing drugs that are prohibited because taking them is doping. It’s cheating, it can be dangerous to health, and it’s contrary to the spirit of sports. The most talked-about doping agents are anabolic steroids, but there are many more.

Red blood cells

Blood doping is prohibited in many sports

At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, we were testing samples night after night. We never knew what would happen next. Any sample could contain a drug. Reporting it would get the athlete punished.

After we did find a drug in a sample, we spent hours double checking, asking ourselves, “How can we be sure that the test result is correct?” Lots of what if exercises and discussions.

Drawing of a molecule of EPO.

EPO is a blood-booster drug prohibited in sport.

That night, ideas were flying around like sparks between four of us. The rush of excitement made me leap off my chair and pace all over the room, feeling ready to burst. I was thrilled—as a scientist and as a writer. That’s when I thought, “Some day, I will write this story for young readers.”

So I did! I wrote an article, “The Night Olympic Team.” Cricket magazine published it first, then The School Magazine in Australia and YES Mag, the Canadian science magazine for young readers.

To grow the article into a book, I interviewed the key players. I wrote about their childhoods, career paths, and role in the Olympic story. I inserted each player’s details after the first time he or she appeared in the book manuscript. This took me a year and a half.

And just as I was finally getting this longer version done, a doubt surfaced in my mind. This doubt turned out to be a good question.

Which would be better? A longer book including key players’ profiles or a shorter book without them?

This was the most important decision I faced while writing the book.

The longer book would let readers dig deeper. The shorter book would be quicker and easier to read. My writing buddies, as well as famous author Caroline Arnold all agreed that a shorter book would appeal to more readers.

I decided to shorten the book. I couldn’t simply go back to the article version, which filled only five magazine pages. A book needed some details about the key players’ roles and background. After spending a year and a half writing the long version, it took me only two weeks to shorten it.

How exactly did I do it? I spread the pages on the floor and crossed out the characters’ profiles with a big marker. Then I entered the changes in my Word file and reprinted it. The next day, I read what I got. It felt like reading the bare bones of the story, like sitting down for a meal but being served only the bones of a fish. I had cut way too much. What to do? Add bits and pieces back in one by one, or start over?

I started all over. This time I cut more gingerly, down to half of the original length. Then I split the story into nine chapters.

Next came the most fun part: writing the transitions between chapters! Each chapter ends at a place that leaves readers wanting to know what happens next. Each chapter then has a fact box packed with extra info. I needed to make sure that when readers turned the page and began to read the next chapter, they would know where they were in the story. Writers must figuratively take readers by the hand and never let go, so they don’t get lost. The first sentence of chapters 2 to 9 takes care of that. Those sentences were the last thing I wrote. Perhaps it was the most fun because it was quick and easy. Perhaps it was because the book was finally done, done, done!

And that’s the version that was published with minor changes.

This post is adapted from part of an interview of mine by Beckie Weinheimer, author of the novel, Converting Kate.

Caroline Hatton and Beckie Weinheimer

LINKS

• Book writers often cut big chunks out of manuscripts to shape their books. Those parts can become short stories or articles in magazines, chapters in new books, or blog posts. Three profiles that I cut from The Night Olympic Team are posted at this blog, to show glimpses of the childhoods and career paths of key players in the book: click here, here or here to read them.

• For a “glimpse” at how my editor and I came up with the book subtitle, "Fighting to Keep Drugs Out of the Games," click here.

• For a ton of links about science writing, scroll down to LINKS AND MORE after you click here.

Follow a computer graphic artist illuminating the movie “WALL•E” – a STEM career glimpse and puzzle

2011-04-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Have you seen "WALL•E," "Finding Nemo," or the Toy Story movies?

Think about your favorite one. Were you swept away?

You probably didn't stop to think of this while enjoying the movie, but it was created from scratch, image after countless image, frame by frame, by artists using complex computer programs.

And those programs are used and developed by people like Danielle Feinberg, a Director of Photography for Lighting at Pixar. When asked what she loves best, computers or art, her answer is, "programming computers to create awesome art work!" Danielle is one of several hundred team members who bring these movies to a theater near you.

Danielle Feinberg

To make a computer animated (or "digitally animated") movie, creators first dream up the story and "pitch it"--they talk big shots into seeing the possibilities. Next, they put it in writing in a short "story treatment."

Artists hand-sketch a comic-book version--the "storyboards." Actors record the characters' voices, reading scripts and improvising. The editorial team puts together storyboards and voices to create a draft--the reels of the film's sequences. .

The art department creates, with pencils, paintbrushes, paper and also computers, art work to describe the look and feel of the characters and their world. Soon everyone uses computer software to do each step. .

Model builders build the characters, sets and props in the computer as 3D (3-dimensional) objects, plotting points using the X, Y and Z axes. Modelers and articulators add controls that act like hinges so they can move parts like elbows or doors. .

The layout crew places the characters and camera in the world, and designs each camera move (or "shot"). Like puppeteers, animators create movements and facial expressions. They let the computer do the "in-betweening," filling in the movement between frames. .

Clap! Bang! Boom! From the beginning to the end of the whole process, the editorial team rearranges the shots, and adds music and sound effects to create the ever-evolving, current version of the movie. .

Shaders added to all the objects describe color, texture and how the material interacts with light (reflective, translucent, dull, etc.). Visual Special Effects artists use all kinds of physics to create fire, explosions, mist and more. The lighting team adds virtual lights and reflections that support the mood and story, and reveal the emotions in each scene. .

Finally, the rendering team sends the files that contain all of this information off to a giant "farm" of computers, where millions of calculations are done to create each pixel on every frame of the final movie. .

Imagine stopping the movie on one image or frame. As Danielle explains, a computer image is made up of over 1.5 million pixels. Think of one pixel on WALL•E's face. It's yellow because that's WALL•E's color. But if the sun is shining from the right and it's late in the day and a reflection is hitting him right at that pixel while the wind is blowing dust around, all these factors are going to affect the exact shade of yellow of that pixel, including in relationship to other pixels around it. The computer must do billions of calculations to take into account all those subtle effects--pixel by pixel, frame by frame, 24 frames per seconds, some 90 minutes per film. .

And the computer software is used, cajoled, finessed, and sometimes even "tricked" by Danielle and her team to create these images that make up a film. .

How exactly does Danielle do it? From one of the three computers at her desk, Danielle picks a shot or series of shots (a "sequence") to work on. She retrieves from the Pixar network all the information ("data") created by everyone else so far, about sets, characters, camera, animation and materials. She looks at the image ("direction") from the art department that shows the time of day, weather or mood of the lighting. Then she adds lights into the 3D world inside the computer, using 30 or 40 controls over each light (the sun, a lamp, reflections...) to build up the image to look like the art reference.

Each morning, Danielle reviews the results of her work by watching the overnight "renders"--a single frame takes hours of computer calculations to render, anywhere from a couple of hours to 90 hours or more in extreme cases. She adjusts the lighting to get closer and closer to the desired look, and fixes the myriad of technical issues that can crop up in the complex software. This takes a week to a month or more depending on how big a chunk of movie she's working on. Danielle and the lighting artists each sit down with the director (who is responsible for the creative content) to show him or her their work, hoping for a "Final!" from the director, meaning that their work on that shot is done and ready to go into the movie.

PUZZLE: Can you spot WALL•E in the frame below, shown before lighting?

Click here for the answer, and to see the frame after lighting.
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She also works with her team to come up with new ways to create what each film needs, such as how to make the world look like it's underwater for "Finding Nemo" or how to create a messy, polluted, dusty world in "WALL•E." Using physics, geometry, a lot of math, and computer programming skills, Danielle and the other animation scientists add to the software for each movie. They make each new world or character possible. And so from one Pixar team to the next, step by painstaking, exhilarating step, vibrant characters and exotic worlds burst alive.

Finally, photoscientists record the movie in a form that can be played in the theater, as well as on televisions, computers, and mobile screens.

Then, images brimming with light tell you a story, make you gasp, laugh, or blink away tears. And now you know how, with math and science and a lot of heart, Danielle makes it happen, lighting the way on screen and in real life.

ABOUT DANIELLE FEINBERG

Director of Photography - Lighting

Pixar Animation Studios

* Danielle began her career at Pixar Animation Studios in February 1997 as a Render Technical Director (also called a "Render Wrangler") on the feature film "A Bug's Life." She quickly discovered her love for lighting and went on to light many of Pixar's feature films including "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc.," and the Academy Award(R)-winning "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille." Danielle worked as the Director of Photography for Lighting on another Oscar(R)-winning feature, "WALL•E," and is now working on the look for her next project, Disney•Pixar's 2012 summer release, "Brave."

* Danielle's love of combining computers and art began when she was eight years old, and first programmed a logo turtle to create images. This eventually led her to a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from Harvard University. Now, in addition to her Pixar work, she works with teenage girls, encouraging them to pursue math and science by demonstrating to them the same beautiful simplicity she found with the programmed art of the Logo turtle. .

Danielle (seated, in black T-shirt)

inspires girls to follow their dreams at a Tech Trek science camp.

* When Danielle is not working, she loves to travel, shoot photographs, and play sports like flag football.

LINKS AND MORE

* See Danielle when she was in elementary school.

* Watch Danielle talk about the making of "WALL•E" on the DVD Bonus Features (Disc 2, Behind the Scenes, "The Imperfect Lens").

* Another interesting "WALL•E" DVD bonus feature is "Life of a Shot."

* Take a video tour of Pixar, complete with a giant poofy armchair and play areas.

* See profiles, art work, and interviews of artists such as animators, a director of photography, and a sculptor who work at Pixar.

* See the different looks created by software for... trash in "WALL•E."

* Visit Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, a Digital Media Arts College in Chicago. It offers two-year college degrees to train arts or entertainment professionals to work on computer-based specialties such as games, recording, or animation. Tribeca Flashpoint also offers an abbreviated, Digital Bootcamp program for high school students grades 10 through 12. Students experience a taste of Tribeca Flashpoint's program and complete one portfolio piece.

They reached for the stars

2011-03-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

Women at NASA : videos and essays about dozens of them, how they pursued their dreams, overcame obstacles, and now play a vital role.

From the classroom to outer space

2011-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

If you're not sure what science classes can do for you, read Natalie Batalha's recollections of how she began to discover her own strengths once she enrolled in a physics course in college. It made her realize how much she loved science.

From that point on, her passion and career skyrocketed. Today she's an astronomer on the NASA team assigned to the Kepler mission: searching for Earth-like planets.
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Watch Natalie at work in this video, in which she and other astronomers explain the Kepler mission. Its key scientific instrument is a space telescope. Since it was launched in March 2009, it has allowed researchers to detect hundreds of planets that might be Earth-like.

At the end of the video, Natalie proudly announces a historical milestone: on January 10, 2010, the Kepler team detected the first rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun.
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Kepler 10-b, the first rocky planet orbiting a start other than our sun

A vision by artist Dana Berry

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Although it's too hot to support life, the discovery of a rocky planet (as opposed to, say, a gas planet) is extraordinarily significant because a rocky planet might host life. On a rocky planet, the most important requirement for life as we know it, liquid water, can pool and gather the substances that life needs.
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And so the scientists keep on searching for answers to soul-stirring questions. Are we alone? Or are there other Earths out there?

LINKS AND MORE

* Hear Natalie's thoughts on the historical rocky planet discovery, in this video.

* See a movie about Natalie's career path.

* Read a brief description of astronomy.

* Go on a virtual field trip to the Palomar Observatory in California.

* FAQ for high school students.

* "The Ultimate Astronomy Career Guide" is an annotated compilation of carefully selected links to excellent career guides, overviews, interviews, day-in-the-lie, articles, and info on specialties.

* Reference for the details in this post about rocky planets, and a great read: Planet Hunter - Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths by Vicki Oransky Wittenstein.

Geoff Marcy is one of the Kepler astronomers. He appears in the video about the mission.
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* Listen to podcasts by astronomers about lots of topics such as multiples universes, our explosive sun, black holes, and more. This is offered by the Astronomy Society of the Pacific.

Updated October 8, 2011

Life tip: a weight control trick

2011-02-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

It's hard for me to avoid gaining weight, but I manage to do it by being active enough and by not eating (too much) more than I should. In fact, "Stop eating when you're full" is one of the heatlthy-lifestyle tips I give in my science book, The Night Olympic Team. But it's easier said than done!
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To be able to follow my own advice, I use a trick. Before sitting down for dinner, I plan an irresistible fun thing to do afterwards, so I can't... resist doing it--instead of having seconds. It's often a craft activity.
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For example, I just finished making a birdhouse pin. First, I sketched it on scratch paper. Then I made it out of modeling clay (the brand name is Sculpey). This took several sittings. After making sure I liked the birdhouse, I hardened it by baking it in the oven (pencil shown for scale):
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Next, I painted it with acrylic paint:
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Finally, I glued the hardware (available from bead shops, craft supplies shops, or jewelry supplies shops) on the back.
Chirp!

Guess who this girl grew up to be in my book, The Night Olympic Team

2011-02-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Readers of my science book, The Night Olympic Team, ask me for glimpses of the childhood and career path of key players in the book. Here's another one. .

Doesn't she look like she was born to play? .

Her science career started with a bang! At age twelve, she and a friend combined all of the glassware and products from their two chemistry sets, then heated the flasks to make something happen. Multicolor products started racing around. Bubbles overflowed. Then... BOOM! It splattered stinky brown ooze everywhere. Both girls let out a gasp and a giggle. There were no casualties, except for the kitchen, which had to be repainted. The girls got in big trouble for their recklessness. They could have been injured or even killed. .

As a kid growing up in France, she loved to read about biology to learn how living things work. She went to medical school to learn how the numan body can get out of whack and get sick, and how to fix it. skip line . .She signed up to do a research project. She was scared, because everything was new to her, but she did O.K. and she liked working in a lab. By the time she became a doctor, she had published her first scientific article in an international journal. skip line. . She never became the kind of doctor who sees patients. Instead, she did research. Her task was always to make a lab test work. But in truth, "All the science work I've ever done was to satisfy my hunger for play," she says. "I love to play computer sleuthing games, to figure out whodunit in crime novels, and recently I developed a passion for genealogy [that's family tree science], which is detective work into the past." . . WHO IS SHE? . .

* Caroline Hatton (that's me, your blogger), scientist (I help test athletes for prohibited performance-enhancing drugs) and author of The Night Olympic Team? . . * Francoise Lasne [pronounced fran-swahz lahn], scientist, who perfected a test to find prohibited drugs in athletes' samples? . . IF YOU GUESSED FRANCOISE LASNE, YOU WERE RIGHT! . . She's a scientist who catches sports cheaaters nd defends honest athletes who compete drug-free. Read about her work in the book, The Night Olympic Team. She is the current Director of the French national anti-doping laboratory (AFLD Departement des analyses). .
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It's a bird! It's a cat! Test your visual skills

2011-02-07T16:48:00.000-08:00

This National Geographic interactive puzzle times how long it takes you to arrange shapes (such as triangles and squares) to cover a picture (such as a cat design).

Guess who this kid grew up to be in my book, The Night Olympic Team

2011-01-31T17:49:00.001-08:00

Readers of my science book, The Night Olympic Team, ask me for glimpses of the childhood of key players in the book. Here's another one.
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He grew up in the jungle, deep in the wilds of West Africa, running free with his playmates. Where he lived, way out in Liberia and far from any city, there weren't any schools.
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"My mother taught me to read and write, that was it," he recalls. I always liked reading. I read whatever was available, from books to Reader's Digest, anything that came by."
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As the son of missionaries from Sweden who built leper colonies, Swedish was his first language. He also spoke the local, African dialects with his friends, and picked up pidgin English--a regional jargon.
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Where he grew up there was no television, no radio, no newspapers. Only books. He found out about ongoing world events by reading about them in Reader's Digest two years later.
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Except for his parents, people around him looked nothing like him. They were black. "Most people around me, very nice people, whom I liked very much, were illiterate rice farmers." Considering that he's become a big shot on the international scene in his profession, he muses, "I had to have an idea at some point that perhaps I would go to school."
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He did eventually go to school, but not until age thirteen! His parents sent him to America where he went to high school in Monrovia, a suburb near Los Angeles.
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Was it hard to go to school and speak English? "I don't remember that it was," he says. "I think I probably talked a bit funny to the other kids. But people were very nice and very welcoming."
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After high school, he went to college at Harvard, then to Yale to study what he does now. He had settled in Paris, France, to practice his profession, when he became involved in The Night Olympic Team story.
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WHICH ONE OF THE KEY PLAYERS IN THE NIGHT OLYMPIC TEAM IS HE?
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In order of appearance:
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Jeff Gorzek, scientist, who tests athletes' samples for prohibited drugs?
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Don Catlin, scientist and lab director, whose team found a prohibited drug in athletes' samples? The drug was a blood-booster medicine invented to treat medical patients, not to help healthy athletes cheat by boosting their endurance!
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Steve Elliott, scientist, who invented the medicine?
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Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee?
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Jan Paulsson, lawyer?
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Zac Douglas, lawyer?
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IF YOU GUESSED JAN PAULSSON, YOU WERE RIGHT!
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As a lawyer, Jan works on cases based on science, so he needs a pretty deep understanding of the science. It is not rare for people to have noth science and law degrees.
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Jan says that going to law school leads to lots of choices of things to work on. Examples include sports, medicine, the environment, and specialties without science.
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He adds, "People who are good lawyers have it in their genes." He claims that you can observe children and predict which ones could become good lawyers. "They argue about things. They'll say, 'Oh yes, I know you told me not to eat all the cookies, but that was on a Tuesday and today's Wednesday and I didn't realize that it was every day.' You find children who naturally see the world that way." Was Jan like that as a kid? Absolutely!

Fun in black and white - test of observation skills

2011-01-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

What do you see (or what do you think you see) after clicking here?

Guess who this kid grew up to be in my book, The Night Olympic Team

2011-01-12T19:00:00.000-08:00

Readers of my science book, The Night Olympic Team, ask me for glimpses of the childhood and career path of the key players in the book. Here's one.
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They could not keep him from tinkering forever. When he was in third grade, he walked past their hobby shop on the way to school. What he wanted was not model airplanes, but the vials lined up on a shelf, full of colorful stuff: salts, minerals, chemicals. He knew they would make for great experiment. He asked the shop people "how to make something cool happen--catch on fire, maybe blow up?" But instead of helping him, they refused to sell vials to him. Imagine that!
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Despite this setback, he grew up to be a scientist who would use recombinant DNA technology (a way to cut and paste DNA) to invent a supermedicine. While in college at the University of California at Irvine, he fell in love with DNA. He thought, "Cool! That's what I want to do. Work on that."
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He started doing research for the professor who had inspired him. He earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences, then a doctoral degree in molecular biology and biochemistry. For years afterwards, he studied how DNA programs a cell's life and death.
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He went to work for a company which uses biotechnology (one kind of DNA science) to discover medicines to improve people's lives. He started to do research on a protein that's a natural hormone in the body. Soon the company began selling as a medicine an artificial version of the hormone.
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Then there was no need to do research on it any more, right? Wrong! Our mystery man explains why his company continued to study the medicine: "Here we market this wonder drug--we simply must know all about it, understand everything about it."

Working on this medicine year after year, he could picture every bit of it in his sleep. Studies showed that the more sugars on the molecule, the better it worked. Logically, our mystery man set out to put as many sugars as he could fit on the molecule, and began creating new versions of the medicine.

Some said, "It won't work." Their thinking was that nature had improved this hormone for millenia. Nature had already made the hormone the best it could be. How could humans possibly make it better?

Our mystery man said, "How do you know unless you try?"

For a kid not allowed to tinker with colored powders, he was having some fun now. He made hundreds of new versions.

He worked on the project after hours, on the side, because it was not a "sanctioned" (official) project. His company already made the wonder medicine of all ages. What could top that? Why bother to try? Especially he, who was already a successful scientist by any measure imaginable--working at a world-famous company, published, respected. But he was determined. His enthusiasm got others interested in helping him. They also stayed after hours, testing each new version. Some didn't work, but some worked better, one of them especially.

He had succeeded at what some said was impossible. He had created a supermedicine that lasted longer in the body.

How had a human mproved upon something that nature had already improved over millenia? Nature refined the hormone to be made whenever the body needs it. The difference with its use as a medicine is that patients get shots. Fewer shots are possible because the benefits last longer--and that makes life easier for the patient. Not bad for a medicine that Steve was not supposed to work on officially.

From his lab freezer, he pulls out a white plastic tray packed with vials--his very own grownup collection. "Mutants," he says, his voice resonating with pride. In the palm of one hand, he holds the fruits of years of labor.

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By trailblazing where nature had no plans to go, he made something cool happen for millions of patients.
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WHICH ONE OF THE KEY PLAYERS IN THE NIGHT OLYMPIC TEAM IS HE?
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In order of appearance:
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Jeff Gorzek, scientist, who tests athletes' samples for prohibited drugs?
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Don Catlin, scientist and lab director, whose team found a prohibited drug in athletes' samples? The drug was a blood-booster medicine invented to treat medical patients, not to help healthy athletes cheat by boosting their endurance!
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Steve Elliott, scientist, who invented the medicine?
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Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee?
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Jan Paulsson, lawyer?
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Zac Douglas, lawyer?
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IF YOU GUESSED STEVE ELLIOTT, YOU WERE RIGHT!
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Steve is a Scientific Director at Amgen, a therapeutics company in Thousand Oaks, California. He worked on EPO, the body's natural blood-boosting hormone. He led the team that invented NESP (also called Aranesp or darbepoetin alfa), a longer-lasting version of EPO. He plays a key role in The Night Olympic Team.
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MORE ABOUT STEVE
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Steve loves to play golf... before going to work.

Kids publish report in science journal

2010-12-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

A group of eight- to-ten-year-olds in England designed a study of how bees see colors, conducted it, and published the report in a prestigious science journal. See the colored-pencil figures. Read the young authors' conclusions that bees can see colors and patterns, and that "Science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before."

Follow a science writer and editor crafting a book subtitle – a STEM career glimpse

2010-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

by me, your blogger, Caroline Hatton
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If you love words and science, you can live happily ever after as a science writer.
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Science can transport me into whole new worlds. So can reading. But when I write, I have the power to take readers into another world.
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Capturing science book ideas

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Most science writers are scientists who love writing (like me) or writers who love science.
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Science writers must be capable of learning about at least one area of science, and they must write well enough to make it clear and infect readers with passion.
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I have two science degrees: a pharmacist degree and a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy, a doctoral degree) in Chemistry. As a scientist, I help test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs that are prohibited in sports because using them is cheating, it can be dangerous to health, and it's contrary to the spirit of sport.
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While working at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I was on the team of scientists that caught three athletes on a prohibited drug. They had won a total of eight medals. We scientists helped officials and lawyers determine that the right thing was for the athletes to return all their medals, so they could be awarded to the rightful winners.
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I'll never forget the night, the instant when the thought flashed through my mind, "Some day, I will write this story for children."
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So I did!
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My article, "The Night Olympic Team," got published in Cricket in the United States, then in The School Magazine in Australia and YES Mag, a children's science magazine in Canada (under the title, "Finding Gold for Canada").
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I spent two years growing the article into a book. When I submitted my book manuscript to editors, the title was The Night Olympic Team and the subtitle was Inside a Drug Scandal.
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For nonfiction books, I like when the title is intriguing and the subtitle crystal clear. That way, the title grabs me and makes me itch with curiosity. But the subtitle had better tell me exactly what the book is about.
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The Night Olympic Team is a title that I had tried to use since the Fall of 2000. My longtime boss, beloved friend and a pioneer of drug testing in sports, Dr. Don Catlin at the UCLA Olympic Lab where I worked, had just come home from the Summer Olympics in Sydney. He had been asked to write a report for a campus newspaper, UCLA Today.
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As his ghost writer, I often created drafts for him--internal university memos, manuscripts for scientists, lawyers or lay readers, international correspondence, and proposed protocols and policies for drug testing in sports. My words jumpstarted his thinking. Can you imagine how much more you could get done if someone drafted your homework for you?
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Sometimes Don Catlin signed the letters I printed for him. Other times he threw out all my words and ideas, and wrote his own piece. Between these extremes, we spent many hours and days of our lives revising, debating, bickering, arguing, or avoiding one another, all for the sake of helping one another and fighting for The Cause--against drugs in sports--to protect the athletes' freedom to compete without taking drugs.
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For UCLA Today, the report I drafted for Don in 2000 began like this:
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The night Olympic team
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The [N]th Olympic Summer Games are over down under. Beneath the exuberance, fanfare and cheer there were discordant notes every time athletes got caught with performance-enhancing drugs in their urine--but we heard so much about positive tests only because the multinational Olympic team at the Sydney laboratory did such a good job finding drugs. The scientists deserve medals, yet the only gold they got came in specimen bottles in the middle of the night.
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When Don read that last sentence, he humphed, "Gross. No one's going to print anything like it." Although he never submitted my draft for publication, eight years later (in 2008), my book was published with something very much like it on the first page. :-)
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As for the subtitle, Inside a Drug Scandal, one Friday afternoon in 2007, three months before my book manuscript was to be declared final and sent to the printer, my editor extraordinaire (that's a French word that means that he's a star), Andy Boyles at Boyds Mills Press, e-mailed me about it.
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His concern was the suggestion that the book might be about "the *latest* drug scandal, whatever that might be years down the road." Prospective buyers night think, "Oh, I just read about that in the Times. No need to buy this book."
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Andy wanted the subtitle to indicate that the book is not only about one scandal, but also about the general effort to quash the use of drugs in sports. He had spent time trying to come up with ideas and shared a long list of possibilities, including:
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THE NIGHT OLYMPIC TEAM
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The lab that fights drugs in sports
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Keeping drugs out of the Games
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Fighting drugs in sports
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The following Monday afternoon, I replied by e-mail:
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How about
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THE NIGHT OLYMPIC TEAM
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fighting to free sports from drugs
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or
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the untold story of a drug scandal
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Andy sent three new ideas, one of which, "Fighting for Drug-Free Games," he acknowledged to be a bit of a tongue-twister. His e-mail ended with "???"
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To avoid missing any possibility, I wrote keywords on paper slips and shuffled them, reading the permutations aloud until I got this:
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Then I went to peck on my keyboard:

THE NIGHT OLYMPIC TEAM

Fighting to Keep Drugs Out of the Games

I liked the ring of it all. It rolled off my tongue easily with no risk of tripping and with a nice, strong beat.

I clicked "Send."

The phone rang. It was Andy. He wanted to make sure I could live with it.

Yes!

My book had a title and a subtitle. It was becoming real.

This was a milestone in the life of my book, itself a milestone in my life. And it was only the eight-word subtitle of a 6,000-word book! The rest... is another story.

ABOUT ME, CAROLINE HATTON

When I'm not working, I love to make miniatures, quilt, hike, backpack, ride horses, or cross-country ski.
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LINKS AND MORE

* Read a paragraph-long description of science writing careers at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center.
* For an overview, read "Science Careers: Science Writer" at ScienceBuddies.org.
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* For another overview, read "A Guide to Careers in Science Writing" by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

* For a brief overview and paragraph-long profiles of the contributors to the Computing Life website, read "Writing Life" by Emily Carson.

* For a thrill, read an article and brief summaries about the winners of the science journalism awards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

* Read fascinating notes about how award-winning author Caroline Arnold got ideas for her books, such as Global Warming and the Dinosaurs, and about her experiences researching and writing them. She is the author of 150 children's books inspired by her love of nature and by her travels. Many of her books have received awards as science books.

* Find out how author Sneed B. Collard III researches some of his science books for older younsters.
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* Read about how I do research for science writing, in this interview of mine by another author, Vicki Leon:

- part 1 about interviewing experts... with more or less success!

- part 2 about fact-checking

- part 3 about weaving together the scientist's adventures in life and the science

* Read a terrific interview of astronomer, teacher, and science writer Alan Hirshfeld (part 1 and part 2) by Vicki Leon.

* Get some tips for adult, professional beginners.

* For clear, strong advice to help you become a better science writer, read Chapter 15, "Science and Technology," in the book by William Zinsser, On Writing Well - The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. It's one of my favorite chapters in one of my favorite books about writing.

* Read about a job broader than just writing, in the article "Science Communication as a Press Officer" by Christine Pulliam, who has a Master's degree in astronomy.

* For an overview of a related career, Technical Writer, read the ScienceBuddies.org page.

Updated January 30, 2012.

Winter fun – a puzzle

2010-12-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

By mid-December, my husband Bill and I plan a cross-country skiing vacation around New Year's Day. We live in California, so we often ski in the Sierra Nevada.
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Here we are east of Yosemite National Park:
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We look for animal tracks such as these:

The wooden stick is one inch long.

Can you guess whose tracks they are?

Click here for a clue and for the answer.

Holiday fun – a test of observation skills

2010-11-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving, my thoughts turn to an ongoing Christmas project.
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It all began several years ago, when I saw small Christmas stockings in a store. I liked how they were decorated in detail, but not the color (pale blue) or the price (several dollars each). Besides, most of the time, seeing something I like makes me itch to craft it myself.
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So I couldn't wait to get home to design and make my own, smaller stockings:
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They are 1-1/4 inch wide. The bright blue and black ones, in my husband's favorite color pair, are for us. The gray and dusty blue ones are for my big brother's family, in colors I've seen them wear.
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The following year, I made six mittens. The year after that, hats. Then scarves, and now shoulder bags:
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Here's the puzzle to test your observations skills: the black and bright blue ornaments follow a pattern, but there are four departures (deviations, details that don't follow the pattern). Can you spot them?

** *

Click here for clues and the answer.

Math majors who love their jobs

2010-11-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

Click on the name to read the person's profile.

Ellen Lentz helps researchers design experiments
to test medicines for animals and people.
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Bjorn Roche launched his own music software company. His software, which he started writing as a hobby, can be used for music recording, editing, mixing, and CD mastering.
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Mike Hughes oversees a greeting card company's people in six states. He also studies the mix of world cultures in each area to adapt the selection of cards to countryside or city stores, party stores or dollar stores.
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Elizabeth Hunt Bradford's job is to dream up clever ways for an airline to run better.

Be a science detective - test of problem-solving skills #1

2010-11-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

Adapted with permission from Professor Daryl Cooper, Department of Mathematics, University of California at Santa Barbara.
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Picture 12 balls that look identical. One of the balls is either heavier or lighter than the others. If I give you a balance and allow you to make three weighings, how would you go about discovering which ball is the odd one out, and whether it is heavier or lighter than the others?

Click here for a clue.

If you like this puzzle and would like to try more of Daryl's favorites, click here to go to his web page.

Follow a geochemist to Antarctica – a STEM career glimpse

2010-10-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Middleton, B.A. (Bachelor of Arts, Earth and Planetary Science)

If you like outdoor adventures, you might love to be a geochemist.

Geochemists are both geologists and chemists. As geologists, they study the world around them by observing rocks. As chemists, they examine the compounds and elements that things are made of. Geochemists use the compositions of rocks (or fluids, or gases) to understand how Earth systems (such as volcanism or the climate) work now or how they worked in the past.

As a geochemist, I study the history of Antarctic glaciers by analyzing rock samples from the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

The Dry Valleys region is a cold desert, so dry that it doesn’t get enough snow to be covered with ice. Have the Dry Valleys always been ice-free, or were they ever covered by ice sheets? Scientists need to understand how the Antarctic ice sheets behaved in the past in order to accurately predict how they will react to global warming. Geochemists are detectives who can decode the clues hidden within the region’s rocks, by measuring isotopes.

Isotopes, such as neon-20 and neon-21, are variations of the same chemical element with different masses. When a rock is exposed, high energy particles from outer space (cosmic radiation) produce special isotopes (cosmogenic nuclides) in the rock. Some (such as neon-21) are stable and always stay in the rock grain in which they are produced. Others (such as beryllium-10) are unstable and radioactively decay over time. A rock covered by thick ice is shielded from cosmic radiation and no new cosmogenic nuclides are produced. Beneath the ice, the number of stable nuclides stays the same, but the number of unstable nuclides goes down as they decay. The proportions of cosmogenic nuclides in a rock reveal whether it was ever covered by a glacier. With enough rock samples, we can find out what an ice sheet looked like millions of years ago.

First, our team needed to go to Antarctica to collect samples (the best part of studying the Earth is that you get to see the world). Because Antarctica is in the southern hemisphere, we did our field work between November and January during the Antarctic summer (otherwise it would be too cold). Just getting to our field site (where we wanted to collect samples) required a long flight in a military plane from New Zealand to McMurdo Station (the major U.S. research station in Antarctica), a short helicopter ride to our campsite in the Dry Valleys, and a short hike to the field site.

Every morning, we woke up in a beautiful landscape all to ourselves. We carried backpacks containing sample collecting gear, extra warm clothes, a thermos of hot water (even in a cold desert we needed to stay hydrated) and plenty of snacks. No flashlights though—the sun never sets during the Antarctic summer!

At the field site, we sampled the bedrock, not loose rocks such as boulders, which might have been moved from elsewhere. We made sure that the rock could “see” the sky so it had enough cosmogenic nuclides to tell us something about the past. We avoided rocks that were shielded by other rocks. We also wanted rocks made of large grains, because when we analyze them in the lab, we pick the grains one by one with tweezers, so the bigger the better. Finally, we looked for a vulnerable spot (near an edge or a crack) so that it wouldn’t be too hard to break off a chunk.

This chunk had to be about the size of a grapefruit. Collecting it usually took a few good whacks with a hammer and a well-placed chisel, but sometimes it took me several minutes of rock abuse before the sample was free. Next, I took the GPS coordinates of the sample location and wrote them, along with the sample name (not Bob, but for example, SR-08-007 for the seventh sample taken in Sessrumnir Valley during the 2008 field season), in my field notebook and on a canvas sample bag. I also wrote down the type of rock, the name of the day’s field site, and the amount of shielding from nearby mountains, cliffs or ridges. I needed to keep track of all of this information to interpret the data we would get from analyzing the sample.

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I took photos of the sample and surroundings to remember all of the details months or years later. Finally, I stuffed the sample into the bag and moved on to collect another sample. At the end of the day, I put all of my samples in my pack to carry all 20-30 pounds back to camp. There, we packed our bagged samples together in wooden boxes to be flown back to McMurdo Station, then shipped to the U.S.
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We needed a lot of samples from many different places to develop a good understanding of what the region was like in the past. We spent a month camping around the Dry Valleys and collecting samples.

We returned to our lab at Harvard University in January 2009. But our samples didn’t leave Antarctica until February, when the sea ice around McMurdo Station got thin enough for a ship to come pick them up. They didn’t arrive at our lab until April 2009. Even then, we had to prepare each sample before the analysis could begin.
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LAB WORK DETAILS: To prepare each sample, I crushed a piece and separated the grains. Under a microscope, I used tweezers to pick out the grains I wanted: only grains of pure quartz from our sandstone samples, because the cosmogenic nuclides we wanted to measure are produced only in quartz. This step took a few hours for each sample. In time I started to enjoy the simple beauty of clear quartz grains at high magnification.

Next, I soaked the quartz grains in a strong acid solution to remove contaminants from the outside of each grain (this was the only time in my science career when I actually wore a lab coat). Contaminants mess up measurements, giving us the wrong information about what really happened in the Dry Valleys. After the acid soak, I rinsed the grains with purified water (the acid is a contaminant too!), dried them, weighed them, and wrapped them in niobium foil (like aluminum foil, but stronger and more expensive) before loading them into the machine that measures isotopes (the mass spectrometer).
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With the measurements, the mass of the rock grains we put into the machine, and the information we gathered about each sample in the field, we can calculate how much of the cosmogenic nuclides were in each sample and deduce the exposure history of our field site.

Our results and conclusions will help support or rule out different hypotheses about the past and future of the climate of Antarctica, and help settle current debates among scientists world-wide. So, were the Dry Valleys covered by an ice sheet millions of years ago? If they were covered, when did this happen and for how long? Well, we’re still working on it, but I’ll let you know when I find out.

ABOUT JENNIFER MIDDLETON
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When Jenny is not working, she loves reading, watching scientifically inaccurate natural disaster movies, and playing outside.

LINKS
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* Relive Jenny's expedition in Antarctica at her team's blog.

* Read an article about Jenny's mission in Antarctica.

* Read a description of geochemist careers.

* For an overview of geoscientist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a geoscientist, and jobs.

* For another overview, read "Geoscientist" at ScienceBuddies.org.

* Link to 23 geoscientist profiles including an astrogeologist, a geophysicist, a hydrologist, a micropaleontologist, and an energy policy program manager.

* Watch the video, Careers for Geoscientists, about opportunities to work on the atmosphere, oceans, and the solid-Earth. Interviews reveal adventures and travels, outdoor work, and use of high tech instruments.

* Watch a video of geochemist Andrew Jacobson sharing how his path into geology took him to the Himalayas. The video is long (28 minutes) and a bit slow, but worth the time if you want to get a feel for life as a geology professional or as a college student.

* Watch a video of geochemist Frank Ramos. Beginning at 14 minutes, you can visit his lab and watch student researchers extract the interesting parts of rocks for analysis. Beginning at 20 minutes and especially from 23:30 to 29 minutes, see a simple explanation of how a mass spectrometer works (the same kind of machine that Jenny Middleton uses).

* Read about the fascinating moment when an arts major turned into a geologist.

* Read about world-class expert seismologist Lucy Jones, "the Earthquake Lady" her work and career path, beginning at age eight.
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Updated on January 28, 2012

Be a science detective - test of observation skills #7 (part 1 of 2)

2010-10-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

If you’re afraid of anything in nature, then skip this one—or at least ask someone who’s not afraid of anything natural to check it out and make sure you can enjoy it too.

Ready?

Are you sure?

Here we go.

In July 2010 while hiking in the Mount Baldy area near Los Angeles,

I walked up this slope to go sit in the shade for a snack.

The rocks ahead looked inviting. But something arrested me. Can you see it below?

Click here for a closer look.

So you think you're a science detective - test of observation skills #6

2010-10-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

What do you see (or what do you think you see) after clicking here?

Be a science detective - test of observation skills #5

2010-09-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

This video activity is amazing, BUT ONLY IF you ask someone else to give you a hand.

Why? Because clicking on the link below reveals the answer... before it asks the question.

So it spoils the fun, unless you close your eyes and someone else clicks on the link for you, then clicks to start the video for you.

First, turn on the sound on your computer.

Then find a helper willing to

1. wait for you to close your eyes

2. click on the link below

3. REMAIN SILENT

4. see a YouTube video ready to start

5. click on the arrow to start the video

6. tell you to open your eyes

Ready?

CLOSE YOUR EYES before you ask your helper to click on "amazing test of observation skills."

Follow a dentist – a STEM career glimpse

2010-09-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

by Minh Tam Dang, DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery)

If you like taking care of people, as I do, you might love to be a dentist like me.

I do a large variety of things at work, including saving teeth and smiles. Like the day a commotion in the waiting room drew me out of my office. Anguished voices talked at the same time.

“Oh, my!”

“He got banged in the mouth."

A teen was pressing a blood-stained tissue on his lips. His father leaned over the receptionist’s counter.

“He broke a tooth right in front.”

I took the wounded boy to the big chair. “Let me look.”

The dental assistant gently rinsed the blood away with a stream of water so I could see. “Only one tooth looks damaged.” It was a top tooth, one of the two middle ones, broken at a slant one third of the way up. “Let’s take an X-ray.”

The dental assistant led the boy to the X-ray cubicle while I walked to my desk to wait for the digital image to appear on my computer screen. I stared at the tooth all over—what was left of it—especially the root, the bone around it, and the middle of the tooth, or pulp chamber, containing the nerve. The break was far enough from the pulp chamber, so there was no need to empty it, then fill it with an artificial material (do a root canal treatment).

Dr. Dang reviewing an X-ray (but not the one in the story)

That was very good news. A live tooth is stronger and sturdier than a dead or fake tooth.

The plan, then, was to cap the broken tooth with a temporary crown and replace it with a permanent crown later.

A crown is hollow, somewhat like a pencil cup. Its outside shape must match the original tooth. Its inside shape must fit the broken tooth—after it’s been prepared by filing it down, to make room for the crown.

First I numbed the tooth and gum with pain killers (anesthetics), by rubbing a numbing gel on the gum, then giving an injection next to the tooth. After a few minutes, I made sure the patient couldn’t feel a thing by testing the gums all around the tooth.

Next, I pictured the prepared tooth in my mind and filed down as needed. The taper and smoothness were very important for the finished product to look good, with no visible line where the crown would meet the natural tooth, just under the gum line. It was like carving a miniature sculpture, except it would not sit in a glass case untouched--it would chomp on food, many times a day for years to come. It would also be seen every time this young man smiled.

I took a mold (impression) of the prepared tooth. I filled a special, small “tray” with a special, soft paste. I squirted softer paste on the tooth to capture the finest details of the edges, so the crown would fit perfectly.

I put the tray in place and asked the patient to bite down. Minutes later, the paste had hardened (set). I took the tray out, sprayed it with disinfectant, and bagged it.

To order the crown, I wrote up the lab slip and asked the lab to make it of porcelain (not porcelain fused to metal or gold). I specified the color closest to that of the other teeth. I held a color chart next to the patient’s teeth and he helped pick the shade.

The lab courier, who comes by every day, picked up the bag and slip. It would take the lab roughly two weeks to make the crown.

Meanwhile, the patient needed a temporary crown. The dental assistant made it, because no pre-made, stock acrylic crown was quite right. She glued it on with temporary cement.

The patient walked out smiling and having silly fun with the numbness, which would disappear within a few hours.

Every team member had to do excellent work to get fine details just right.

As the dentist, I had to prepare the tooth so it would be just the right size and shape. It couldn’t be too thin or it would break. It couldn’t be too thick or else it’s the crown that would be too thin. The filing-down couldn’t come too close to the nerve or the tooth would be sensitive and hurt all the time. The mold could not be distorted, or the crown wouldn’t be the right shape inside and it wouldn’t fit.

The dental assistant faced many similar challenges when putting together a temporary crown.

The lab people used the mold to make a plaster model of the prepared tooth and neighboring teeth, then made a permanent crown on the model. When this crown was ready, it was tried on and final adjustments were made for a perfect fit, before it was cemented in place.

Crowns can last a long time (if their owners take care of their mouths, by brushing twice a day, flossing once a day and seeing a dentist every six months) and that’s something to smile about!

ABOUT MINH TAM DANG

When Tam is not working, she loves arranging flowers, gardening, playing with her two cats (Diddi, also known as “The D,” and Louie), painting with watercolors, quilting, reading and writing Vietnamese poetry, and playing tennis, hiking or riding bikes with family.

LINKS

● Watch this short video overview of dentist careers.

● For a little longer overview of dentist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a dentist, salary info, specialties, and the great job market in the years ahead.

● For dentist interviews, click on the names below.

Jennifer Cyriaque

James Tynecki

Stephen Sterlitz

● Watch this 25-minute award-winning career video about “Women in Dental Research.” After a brief history of dentistry, it follows three amazing women. One fought the AIDS epidemic, the second one, a molecular researcher, studies oral disease and cancer, and the third one leads researchers who provide free dental care to children.

Real world math

2010-09-07T22:05:00.001-07:00

Watch fun videos on The Futures Channel about all kinds of careers that use math, such as architect, bat scientist, bike designer, exotic animals manager, undersea treasure hunter, and more.

Be a science detective - test of observation skills #4

2010-08-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

I like the following mystery photo from Odyssey Magazine, a science magazine for young readers, because if you really exercise your observation skills and imagination, you have a good chance of figuring out what it is.

Click here to try it.

Women Life Scientists Rock

2010-08-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Watch 25-minute award-winning career videos showcasing successful women scientists. Each video follows three amazing women with various backgrounds who discuss the rewards and challenges of their careers and their unique pathways to success.

● Women in Dental Research

● Women Scientists with Disabilities

● Women Are Pathologists

● Women Are Researchers

● Women Are Surgeons

Be a science detective - Test of spatial skills #1

2010-08-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

This puzzle is fun because when you find the correct answer, an animation shows you why you were right.

Click here to try it!

LINK

Watch a video about how spatial skills are used by designers, landscape architects, doctors, chemical engineers, pilots, and others professions.

Follow a hospital dietitian – a STEM career glimpse

2010-08-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

by Mary Ann Dames, M.S., R.D. (Master of Science, Registered Dietitian)

Self-portrait by Mary Ann Dames

If you like imagining what you could do with food, you might love to be the kind of dietitian I am.

Planning and preparing food has such a powerful impact on our health and energy, it’s a science called dietetics. The professionals in this field are called dietitians or nutritionists. They work for schools, sports teams, companies with food services for employees, and hospitals, to name only a few.
As a hospital dietitian for many years, my job included teaching patients how to make changes in diet in order to improve their health. I also created clever nutrition programs for patients with special dietary needs.

Patients who arrive at the hospital suddenly lose control of their lives. A caring health team takes over. Doctors decide how to treat them. Nurses give them instructions. Others dictate their daily schedule.

Many patients are scared. Most are stressed. Some take it out on something. Guess what they pick on?

You got it—hospital food. It isn’t like what they’re used to. Maybe they don’t eat American food at home. Or they are on a restricted diet. Or the food tastes funny due to the aftereffects of anesthesia or medication.

And I got to hear all about it when I walked in their rooms to do one special part of my job: diet education. Patients who complain aren’t being mean—they want some control back.

I remember a man (I’ll call him Mr. Doe) whose wife paced around or hovered while I tried to give him advice. I was actually glad she was there so that she could hear it too.

I needed to talk Mr. Doe into drinking less alcohol, eating healthier foods, and exercising more. But the first thing he said was, “When I go home, I want to go back to normal.” And he really wanted his two nightly beers.

Mrs. Doe declared that he was going to follow his new diet. She started doing the one thing that wasn’t going to work: nagging him. I said to her, “Although you love him very much, you can’t make him change.” What she could do was to shop wisely to make the appropriate foods available. Then, whatever Mr. Doe ate or drank would be up to him, even if it broke her heart.

When he saw how upset his wife was, his face softened. And when I gave him back some control, he almost smiled.

I said to him, “You don’t need to change your whole diet overnight. Maybe you can think about making one small change.”

He nodded.

Then I told both of them, “It’s a learning process. One step at time—one food at a time, one change in exercise—would be fine.”

And just in case he’d be ready to make one more change, maybe in a week or in a month, I gave them handouts and went over them.

By the time I left his room, Mr. Doe had decided to cut back to one beer a night. He and his wife were reading the handouts and planning what to do as a team.

He was in charge again.

As a dietitian, many days people skills are even more important than scientific knowledge. All the science courses I took help me understand what is happening physically to my patients. But what it comes down to is finding a way to inspire one patient at a time to make one change at a time.

Now that I’m retired, I am fulfilling a dream. I’m giving back to the world through a blog, “Reading, Writing, and Recipes”. If children can learn about food, nutrition, and cooking through my blog and elsewhere, maybe they won’t grow up to be like Mr. Doe, because they will have been leading a healthy lifestyle all along.

Mary Ann Dames, M.S., R.D.

LINKS

● For a quick-and-easy overview of dietitian and nutritionist careers, click on “Listen to the podcast…” at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a dietitian, salary info, where dietitians work, and the favorable job market in the years ahead.

● For another friendly overview, read "Science Careers: Dietitian or Nutritionist" at ScienceBuddies.org.

● For examples of dietitians’ jobs, from personal chef for a movie star to policy-maker in Washington, watch the American Dietetic Association video.

● Read an interview of a dietitian and nutritionist (why she chose her career, her workday, what she likes best and least about work, career goals, hobbies).

● For current trends from the point of view of another dietitian, read the article, “Hospital dietitian's job more than just playing with food.”

● See Robin, a registered dietitian, talk about her job as a pharmaceutical sales representative or "drug rep" in a 5-minute video interview about a typical day, job requirements, and the best and worst parts of the job.

● If you are a teen, and you want to get the most energy out of what you put in your body, this nutrition guide for students and athletes is for you!

Updated August 6, 2011

Engineering career planning resources for girls

2010-08-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

A cool site about engineering for middle school girls has the exciting profiles of 141 women engineers!

A guide to engineering for high school girls lets you meet 12 more inspiring women engineers. It also shows why and how to become an engineer.

Be a science detective – Test of observation skills #3 (Part 1 of 3)

2010-07-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Where on earth is this?

Click here for the answer.

An excellent STEM career planning resource

2010-07-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

For an overview of a particular STEM career, visit the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. Much of the info is from the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics website, except shorter and easier to read.

It covers the required schooling, day-in-the-life, salary, job market, and more. For each career, a 10-minute podcast goes over these key points.

Resources for middle school students also include links to Science Centers/Museums, Hands-On Projects (links to contests and programs), Summer Ideas (links to programs and camps), and Precollege Links.

Resources for high school students include The Scoop on Salary.

One page even has links to tons of games!

Be a science detective – Test of observation skills #2 (Part 1 of 4)

2010-07-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite hobbies is backpacking. After Labor Day in 2008, my husband and I enjoyed walking by ourselves in Kings Canyon National Park in California, near Bullfrog Lake in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

The mountains are mostly granite, gray rocks with gray specks, all different shades.

In the next photo, you can see four small rocks on a big rock, and to show the scale, a pair of pine needles (one inch long).

In the next photo, what do you see?

Click there for the answer.

Behind the scenes at the Olympics - A pharmacist’s story

2010-07-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, Peter Ambrose showed you exactly how a hospital pharmacist takes care of a patient. Would you like to know how he, as a pharmacist, got a front row seat at the Olympics… for free? Read about his adventures at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and see his photos at his blog, “My Olympic Journey.”

ABOUT PETER AMBROSE

When Peter is not helping others as a pharmacist, he loves camping, hiking, fishing, planting flowers and vegetables, and working out with weights. He also enjoys watching many sports, especially from the front row at the Olympics!

Follow a hospital pharmacist – a STEM career glimpse

2010-07-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

by Peter Ambrose, Pharm.D. (Doctor of Pharmacy)

as told to Caroline Hatton

If you like helping people, you might love to be a pharmacist.

You may have been inside your neighborhood pharmacy, and seen people distribute medicines and give advice from behind a counter. Some of them are pharmacy technicians. One of them is the pharmacist in charge. Such a pharmacist, who works in the community, is called something very clever… a community pharmacist!

But did you know that some pharmacists work in hospitals?

They also distribute medicines. They advise not only sick people (patients), but also doctors and nurses. This is because pharmacists are experts about medicines: what they are, how they work, and how best to use them to help people by curing disease or making life better.

Hospital pharmacists do a large variety of tasks. What might be one of those tasks? How exactly would it get done? To find out, let’s follow one pharmacist. She joins a doctor and nurse at the bedside of a patient, a teen athlete in pain.

The nurse takes the athlete’s temperature. He has a high fever. His right leg is red and swollen.

The doctor has examined him, ordered a pain killer, reviewed lab tests results, and identified (diagnosed) the problem as cellulitis (pronounced SELL-u-LIGHT-iss), an infection under the skin. It is caused by bacteria and can spread among athletes.

The boy’s infection is serious, so the doctor decides to treat it with a powerful medicine called an aminoglycoside (pronounced uh-MEE-no-GLY-coe-side) antibiotic. Like most medicines, it has many effects, some wanted, some not. Giving the patient too much may cause him to go deaf or it may damage his kidneys, which must work properly for him to stay alive and healthy. Too little medicine may not keep the infection from endangering his life.

Someone must take responsibility for figuring out how much medicine the nurse should give the patient. The doctor turns to the pharmacist to ask her to make a plan.

The ball is now in the pharmacist’s court. She knows exactly what to do. First, find out how fast the patient’s body will get rid of the medicine—how well his kidneys are working to remove water, waste, and medicines from his body. A special blood test (serum creatinine concentration) can reveal this.

The pharmacist walks to the pharmacy office closest to this patient’s room. At the computer, she pulls up his personal information (chart) and orders the test. She asks the lab staff to call her as soon as the result is known. A lab team member will come take a blood sample from the patient and bring it back to the lab for testing.

After the pharmacist works on other things for a few hours, her pager beeps: the test result is ready! She reads it in the patient’s chart. She can see his age and weight.

Using a math formula in a computer program she wrote and saved before, she figures out how fast the medicine will flow out through the patient’s kidneys—today. Now the pharmacist can calculate how much medicine to give (the dose) to have, in the patient’s body, the maximum amount that will be safe.

She orders exactly how much the nurse must give and how often, for example “50 milligrams every 8 hours intravenously” (injected in a vein). This is not the same as giving twice as much, half as often, which would not be right for this patient.

The pharmacist also orders more lab tests, to measure the amount of medicine in the blood, at its highest (half an hour after the patient received it) and lowest (half an hour before the next dose). She asks the lab team to take the blood samples at specific times.

For days, ten or more if necessary, the pharmacist follows this boy’s treatment. She keeps adjusting the dose, based on blood levels, kidney function, the nurse’s reports, and the doctor’s lead. Her calculations help the treatment work better so the patient can go home several days earlier.

The pharmacist is a key member of the health team. So is the patient, following orders and maintaining a winning attitude.

This may sound like walking a tightrope, hand in hand with the patient. Team work makes it a thrill and a triumph, every step of the way. And this is only one of many things that pharmacists work on with others.

ABOUT PETER AMBROSE

Peter is a hospital pharmacist, a Doctor of Pharmacy, and a Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy of the University of California at San Francisco. As an enthusiastic teacher, he’s shared his wisdom and experience with students as far as his hometown of Long Beach (California), nearby Los Angeles, and Tokyo. As a sports fan, he’s had adventures that not many pharmacists have experienced: follow him behind the scenes at the Olympics.

LINKS

* Watch a video about hospital and health system pharmacists who LOVE their jobs.

* For more about what is uniquely exciting about hospital pharmacists’ careers, how they spend their work time, and what they like best and least, read the first two pages of these survey results.

* About pharmacists

Hospital pharmacists do what Peter described and much more. They tend to find their work life varied, challenging, and satisfying. Community pharmacists spend most of their time helping patients, making a difference one person at a time. Pharmacists can also choose careers in industry or government, research or business, even sports. Pharmacists have among the highest starting salaries of college graduates in the U.S.

* For a quick-and-easy overview of pharmacist careers, click on "Listen to the podcast..." at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a pharmacist, salary info, where pharmacists work, and the fantastic job market in the years ahead.

* For another friendly overview, visit ScienceBuddies.org.

* Is pharmacy right for you? Get help finding the answer at the website, "Pharmacy is Right for Me".

* Watch videos of pharmacist Kate James:

- on why to become a pharmacist (hint: Kate loves science and people)

- on how much money pharmacists make

- on how to become a pharmacist

- on the pros and cons of a pharmacy career

* Read an interview of a research pharmacist (why she chose her career, her workday, what she likes best and least about work, career goals, hobbies).

* Pharmacist was the second-best-paid job for women in 2011.

Updated January 18, 2012

Top pay for girls

2010-07-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

To help pick the right career for you, find out how much money you’re likely to make.

The article, “Best-Paying Jobs For Women,” ranks the ten top-paying jobs for women who worked full time in 2009.

Look at the graph below. It represents those ten top-paying jobs.

Each job is shown as a stack of coins. The more coins, the more pay.

The gold coins are STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math) careers. How many of the top-paying careers for women are STEM careers?

BEST-PAYING JOBS FOR WOMEN

The STEM career that pays women the most is… pharmacist! And job opportunities for pharmacists are expected to grow faster than for most other careers until at least 2018.

LINKS

● For a quick-and-easy overview of pharmacist careers, click on "Listen to the podcast..." at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center. It’s an introduction to the required schooling, a day-in-the-life of a pharmacist, salary info, where pharmacists work, and the fantastic job market in the years ahead.

● Read an interview of a research pharmacist (why she chose her career, her workday, what she likes best and least about work, career goals, hobbies).

Be a science detective. Test of observation skills #1 (Part 1 of 3)

2010-07-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, scientists make discoveries because they spotted something unusual. Therefore, it’s good to practice the ability to recognize both what is familiar and what is unfamiliar.

Try it.

This is the thief who ate my granola bar. Can you name what kind of critter he is?

Click here for the answer.

A STEM Careers Blog. Why now? Why me?

2010-07-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

Because in July 2010, I will appear once more at Tech Trek, the math/science camps for 7th-grade girls. Trekkers, it’s for you that I launch this blog now.

I get invited because I’m a scientist. At Tech Trek, I join the Professional Women’s Night, when campers meet women who are math or science professionals, and I make presentations. For this I thank the camp directors, Carol Holzgrafe and Colleen Briner-Schmidt, a science teacher.

As a scientist, I help test athletes for prohibited performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids. I’ve worked at three Olympics.

One year at Tech Trek, Colleen the science teacher asked me whether I’d had to surmount obstacles to become a scientist because I’m a woman; whether as a girl, I was ever discouraged from being a scientist. Were there few women scientists around, if any, when I was young?

No, no, and no! Quite the contrary. My mother was a pharmacist like my father. I knew many women who were pharmacists or medical doctors, and one who was a physics researcher.

Plus, every day on my way to school in Paris (France) where I grew up, I walked past a building…

…with a stone plaque on the wall that said, “Here, Marie Curie discovered radium.”

Marie Curie was a scientist. She discovered radium and polonium, two chemical elements, and studied the kinds of rays of energy or particles they give off, or radioactivity. As a result, our understanding of matter and energy, and science itself changed forever. Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes for her work.
So I always knew that women could be scientists.

Speaking of role models, Colleen the science teacher knows a boy who, when he was five years old, loved to watch Sesame Street. Astronaut Sally Ride appeared on it. He loved her, and oh he would’ve loved to be an astronaut, but he didn’t think he could, because he thought it was a woman’s job.

Of course, that’s not true, and the boy soon learned this. Astronauts are chosen for what they can do. It doesn’t matter if they’re men or women.

Isn’t it amazing what we think we can or cannot do, what we’re even capable of imagining, depending on what we experience as we grow up?

So I start this blog to help girls and boys unleash their imaginations and potential, by helping them follow STEM professionals at work, do fun activities, and link to valuable resources.

LINKS

● For more on Marie Curie, such as tons of details, photos, and quotes from her autobiographical notes, see “Marie Curie and the science of radioactivity” by the American Institute of Physics - Center for the History of Physics.

● Read a Smithsonian Magazine article on Marie Curie's passion for science, despite the barriers she faced because she was a woman.

● A new play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, written by the actor and director Alan Alda, debuts November 9, 2011. Read his interview.

● What are some of the careers that match your interests and favorite school subjects? Find out at this career info site. Examples of STEM careers are under Math, Science, Computers, Managing Money, and several other subjects.

● If you are curious about a particular STEM career and would like a quick-and-easy overview, look for that career at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center and click on "Listen to the podcast..." about it. For example, the Veterinarian podcast offers a rounded overview of the profession, the required schooling, specialties, a day-in-the-life of a veterinarian, salary info, where veterinarians work, and the awesome job market in the years ahead.

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Updated November 9, 2011

Why start a STEM Careers Blog?

2010-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

For girls and boys like you,

● to help answer a question you might ask, about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) professionals: “What exactly do they do?”

● to go one step beyond what many excellent websites offer (STEM careers overviews, a day-in-the-life of STEM professionals, profiles, interviews) by showing you specific examples of some of the things STEM professionals do and how they do them (click on '"GLIMPSE" in the column on the right)

● to help you

- decide whether a STEM career is right for you

- find your truth

- in one word…

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I dedicate this blog launch to Tech Trek science camp girls.
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Updated May 27, 2011

About me

2010-06-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

My name is Caroline Hatton. I’m a scientist and an author of books for young readers.

As a sports anti-doping scientist, I help test athletes for prohibited performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids. I became qualified to do this by earning a pharmacist degree from the Université de Paris and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and going to work at the UCLA Olympic Lab when the 1984 Olympics came to Los Angeles. I loved running the lab, which became the biggest of its kind, for more than a decade. I also worked at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 and Salt Lake City in 2002.

A book I wrote for young people, The Night Olympic Team, takes readers behind the scenes at the Olympics to see how scientists do their work.

I hope you enjoy my blog. If you have any comments or questions for me, please feel free to e-mail me anytime. I would like to hear from you and do what I can to help shed light on careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

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SELECTED VIDEOS

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* My "Writing Tip of the Day" for non-fiction writers, at Tina Nichols Coury's blog.

* My science lesson on TV, "Be an Olympic detective"

- first 10 minutes

- next 10 minutes

- last 10 minutes

* Introduction to sports doping control: this informational video was made by Agilent Technologies in 2004 for distribution to the media before the Athens Olympics. Stuart Cram (who worked for Agilent at the time) and I (a consultant to the UCLA Olympic Lab at the time) appear in it.

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

* by the School Library Journal, about doping in sports

* by Bonnie O'Brian, for California Readers

* by author Tina Nichols Coury

* by author Terry Pierce

* by historical detective and author Vicki Leon, about research for science writing:

- part 1 about interviewing experts... with more or less success!

- part 2 about fact-checking

- part 3 about weaving together the scientist's adventures in life and the science

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

* Werner TC, Hatton CK. Performance-enhancing drugs in sports: how chemists catch users. Journal of Chemical Education 88, 34-40, 2011.

* Hatton CK. We're winning the fight against drugs in sports, The Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2010, page 34.

* Hatton CK. The Night Olympic Team. Boyds Mills Press, 2008. (science nonfiction story for ages 10-110)
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* Hatton CK. CIR foils cheaters, Drug Free Sport Insight, newsletter of The National Center for Drug-Free Sport, Inc. First quarter 2005, page 3.

* Hatton CK. Surprise Moon. Bebop Books, 2004. (an easy-to-read book for ages 5 and up, also available in Spanish)

* Hatton CK. A Pet for Grandma. Seedling Publications, 2004. (an easy-to-read book for ages 5 and up)
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* Catlin DH, Hatton CK. Designer drug find sounds alarm. UCLA Today, December 9, 2003.

* Aguilera R, Hatton CK, Catlin DH. Detection of epitestosterone doping by isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Clinical Chemistry 48, 29-36, 2002.

* Hatton CK. "Plant pals". Highlights for Children June 2002. (a craft activity)

* Hatton CK. "Stacking Bears." Highlights for Children Feb. 2001. (a craft activity)

* Hatton CK. Véro and Philippe. Front Street/Cricket Books, 2001. (a chapter book for ages 8 and up).

* Hatton CK. Where Is My Puppy? Bebop Books, 2004. (an easy-to-read book for ages 5 and up, also available in Spanish)

* Aguilera R, Chapman TE, Starcevic B, Hatton CK, Catlin DH. Performance characteristics of a carbon isotope ratio method for detecting doping with testosterone based on urine diols: controls and athletes with elevated testosterone/epitestosterone ratios. Clinical Chemistry 47, 292-300, 2001.

* Hatton CK. "Panda Card." Highlights for Children Nov. 2000. (a craft activity)

* Catlin DH, Leder BZ, Ahrens B, Starcevic B, Hatton CK, Green GA, Finkelstein JS. Trace contamination of over-the-counter androstenedione and positive urine test results for a nandrolone metabolite. Journal of the American Medical Association 284, 2618-21, 2000.

* Catlin DH, Hatton CK, Starcevic SH. Issues in detecting abuse of xenobiotic anabolic steroids and testosterone by analysis of athletes' urine. Clinical Chemistry 43, 1280-8, 1997.

* Catlin DH, Kammerer RC, Hatton CK, Sekera MH, Merdink JL. Analytical chemistry at the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad in Los Angeles, 1984. Clinical Chemistry 33, 319-27, 1987.

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Updated February 2, 2012