Meet Grace, a scientist who works in the office of international health at the U.S. embassy in South Africa. (Listen to a brief interview here, a transcript is here.)

Grace is concerned that female scientists in South Africa lack the same opportunities as their male counterparts.

Unfortunately, here in the United States we struggle with the same problem. It appears that women have the same opportunities - at least initially - as men in many science disciplines. When I was in graduate school, half of the students were female. Yet there are far fewer female professors than male professors.

Women’s share of tenured or tenure-track science and engineering faculty - what we commonly think of as professors - increased from 10 percent in 1979 to 28 percent in 2006, according to a study by the National Science Foundation. An improvement, but the percent of female full professors is still much lower than the percent of women awarded Ph.D. degrees. In psychology, 33 percent of all full professors were women in 2006, despite the fact that women earned 71 percent of psychology doctoral degrees that same year.

The Association for Women in Science is a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that advocates for the interests of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They support creating family-friendly policies in the scientific workplace.

There are many other organizations that support women in science. Check out the L’Oreal-UNESCO booklet on young women in science.

Are there similar organizations in South Africa, or in other countries in Africa?

Image by Garth Dyer, Architectural Graphic for FGG Architects ©2009

Artist's rendition of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV in Durban, South Africa.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal are working to change this.

In March the two organizations established the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH) on the campus of the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa. Construction will begin in the fall.

HHMI is providing $20 million towards construction of the 6 story building which will include two floors of biosafety level 3 labs - facilities specially equipped to study dangerous biological agents such as bacteria that cause tuberculosis. The University of KwaZulu-Natal and the South African government are also providing support.

The new institute has two goals: to make major scientific contributions towards controlling TB and HIV, and to train a new generation of scientists in Africa.

“The problem is that one group of people were studying HIV by itself and another group was studying TB by itself,” said HHMI vice president Peter Bruns in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. “We know a lot about each of them separately, but not together - and they do change each other when they happen together.”

South Africa had nearly half a million new cases of TB in 2006 and is home to TB bacteria that are resistant to many of the antibiotics normally used for treatment (the so-called multidrug and extensively drug-resistant strains). South Africa has more residents infected with HIV than any other country on Earth. 44 percent of new TB patients test positive for HIV.

“The projects defined in the K-RITH program are there to address important research questions that would provide greater insights, understanding and the potential for solutions. All these should bring hope to people who are infected and affected,” Malegapuru William Makgoba, UKZN’s vice chancellor, said at a press conference announcing the new institute. “Most critically, this partnership is an investment into the future, in the training of a new generation of scientific leaders in this important area of health research.”

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Africa August 4-14, Science Planet will highlight African scientists and science in Africa.

Are there too few professors in Africa? Or is lack of laboratory facilities a bigger problem? Do most young African scientists choose to make their careers outside of Africa? Are there really “vanishingly few” opportunities for foreign-trained African researchers to return to do research in their home countries? What can be done to encourage African scientists to remain in Africa? Is it fair to discuss the entire African continent as if it were one nation?

The European Environment Agency recently released a report on greenhouse gas emissions, saying that emissions from the European Union (EU) declined for the third consecutive year.

The overall combined domestic emissions of the 27 EU countries were 9.3 percent below 1990 levels, a drop of 1.2 percent or 59 million tons of CO2 equivalent compared to 2006, according to the report.

Two points:

1) Most of this reduction comes from households using less fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, likely due to warmer weather and higher fuel prices. Household fossil fuel use is not covered by the EU Emission Trading System, an international trading system for CO2 emissions. It seems that so far this trading system has not put much of a dent in EU greenhouse gas emissions.

2) Combining the EU countries together shows a decline in CO2 emissions, but the story is different when we examine individual EU members. Spain’s emissions increased from 433 to 442 million tons of CO2 equivalents (total emissions) in 2006 and 2007. Austria’s emissions declined, but are still above target levels established by the Kyoto treaty.

There are huge disparities in how EU member countries are reducing greenhouse gas emissions (or not).

President Obama will nominate genetics pioneer Francis Collins to lead the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the White House announced yesterday.

Collins was part of the team that discovered the gene that is mutated in cystic fibrosis. He later led the international public effort to sequence the human genome and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

NIH is the principle U.S. government agency that funds biomedical research; during the next year the NIH will fund $37 billion in research grants to scientists at universities and research institutions around the country and spend $4 billion on research conducted at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

Collins has publically discussed and written about his devout Christian beliefs and argues that science and faith are compatible. He established the BioLogos Foundation “to address the escalating culture war between science and faith in the United States.” Unlike many evangelical Christians in the United States, Collins supports human embryonic stem cell research and is an outspoken advocate of the genetic and geologic evidence supporting evolution by natural selection. “Evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true,” he wrote. “If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

In May 2005 Collins and I had a brief encounter at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine graduation ceremony. I had been selected to give the student address (on behalf of all graduating PhDs). I knew I wasn’t good enough to give a funny speech, so I spoke about the duty scientists have to discuss their research with the public (something I’m still passionate about, one reason why I’m spending a year at the State Department). I got applause midway through the speech, and some of the faculty on stage and members of the audience actually stood up at the end, which doesn’t usually happen.

The speech ended, and I took my seat among the graduates, feeling pretty good about myself. Then Collins walked to the stage and after some opening remarks he withdrew a guitar from beneath the lectern and serenaded the audience with a rendition of the song ‘My Way,’ substituting cheeky, science-relevant lyrics for the original. (Watch a similar performance at the University of Michigan.)

The audience was blown away. I was no longer feeling so good about myself, instead I was grateful that I got to address the crowd before he did, and not after.

Collins received a well-deserved standing ovation and my admiration, proving that he is a rock star of science.

Image by Cornell University

Timothy J. DeVoogd, professor of psychology and neurobiology, Cornell University

Wednesday, July 1, from 11:00 to 12:00 EDT (1500 - 1600 GMT) scientist Timothy DeVoogd is hosting a webchat on scientific collaboration in North and South America.

Tim is a Jefferson Science Fellow here at the State Department. Like me, he’s a scientist who is taking a year away from the lab to work in the State Department. Also like me, Tim is a neuroscientist (he studies song birds, I study zebrafish).

Scientific collaboration leads to new insights. Such interactions also form lasting friendships (I’m still friendly with a scientist in Germany, we worked together in Los Angeles in 1999). This webcast will explore how to build such interactions among people in North and South America.

Image by TWW

TWW's house in Brazil, with a white roof, stands out among the neighbor's darker roofs.

Last week I discussed the science behind Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s comment that making roofs white will conserve energy and reduce global warming.

This photo depicts this scientific principle in action: TWW in Brazil painted her roof white. It looks great, even among a sea of dark colored roofs.

Many thanks to TWW and other readers for submitting their comments. I’m working on a series of features explaining the science behind climate change, so stay tuned!

Image by NASA

Insignia of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project

Even at the height of the Cold War, when tensions ran high between the United States and the Soviet Union, U.S. and Soviet scientists cooperated and shared technical data. Some of the first contacts between the United States and Russia occurred among scientists.

This relationship will be celebrated June 17 and 18, as the U.S. National Academies and the Russian Academy of Sciences mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the first agreement on scientific cooperation between the two organizations.

Formal scientific cooperation between the United States and Soviet governments came in 1972.

These agreements paved the way for the 1975 Apollo Soyuz Test Project, when U.S. and Soviet space capsules docked in orbit.

In the 1990s, Russians hosted American astronauts on the Mir space station. Scientists from both countries continue to cooperate on the international space station.

U.S. and Russian scientific cooperation extends far beyond space, and includes chemistry, materials science, biology, geology, seismology, earth and atmospheric sciences, physics, engineering and medicine and health science.

In one example, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture exchanged and studied samples of microbes and insects with Russian scientists.

In another example, in 1981 a U.S. historian and a Russian geophysicist devised a mathematical formula to predict U.S. presidential elections. Their formula has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote of the last seven elections, a feat unmatched by pollsters and pundits.

Who would have thought that a Russian scientist living under a communist government would provide such insights into democratic elections?

Image by trillbilly

A house in Bermuda with a white roof.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Independent, Chu said:

“If you look at all the buildings and make all the roofs white, and if you make the pavement a more concrete-type of color than a black-type of color, and you do this uniformly … It’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years.”

Let’s tackle energy conservation first. On a hot day, you’ll be much cooler wearing a white shirt than a dark shirt. This is because light colored objects reflect more sunlight. Dark objects absorb more sunlight than light colored objects; the absorbed light then radiates away from the object (or is emitted from the object) as heat. Your dark shirt is absorbing sunlight, and then releasing it as heat, which makes you feel hotter.

Image by Cool Roof Rating Council

A white roof reflects more light and radiates less heat than a dark roof.

A dark roof on a building is like a dark shirt. The roof absorbs sunlight, and then radiates heat into the building. The temperature inside the building increases, and we use energy - in the form of air conditioning - to cool the building. Paint the roof white (or use a reflective material, like white tiles), the roof absorbs less sunlight, less heat is radiated into the building, the temperature inside the building doesn’t increase as much and we don’t need to use as much energy to cool the building. That’s how painting a roof white conserves energy. In the United States, the California state government has become a leader in encouraging the use of white roofs or cool roofs.

White roofs may also reduce global warming.

When sunlight is absorbed by a roof, the roof heats up and radiates heat in the form of  infrared light, which is invisible to humans (it has a longer wavelength than red light). Infrared light is emitted from the roof and reaches the atmosphere, where it is absorbed by gases and re-emitted as infrared light - a continuous cycle of absorption and emission that traps heat in the atmosphere and increases the temperature of the Earth. Gases that absorb and radiate infrared light are called greenhouse gases - these include water vapor, carbon dioxide and ozone.

Atmospheric gases don’t absorb much visible light, which is why sunlight reflected from a white roof - visible light - can travel through the atmosphere and escape into outer space.

Image by redskunk

These principles also apply to car roofs.

Incidentally, light is also absorbed by the Earth - the ground, the soil - and returned to the atmosphere as infrared light, where it is trapped as heat. This is the greenhouse effect. We can’t paint the Earth white to reduce global temperatures, but nature has helped us out a bit, in the form of ice. Polar ice caps and glaciers are like big, white roofs - they reflect much of the incoming sunlight back into the atmosphere and out into space. Scientists and policymakers are concerned that melting ice will expose land, decreasing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space and increasing the amount absorbed by the Earth and trapped in the atmosphere as heat.

Researching this post I have found no reason why we should not be painting our roofs white (or using reflective tiles). Can you think of a reason not to do this? People might complain about having to look at a white roof, but does an aesthetic concern outweigh conserving energy and reducing global warming?

From May 26 - 29, Nobel Laureates from across scientific disciplines were joined by world experts in climate change to discuss “the connections between global warming and other urgent environmental, economic and development challenges facing our world.” The symposium was hosted at The Royal Society and St. James’s Palace in London, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. 

Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate who now leads the U.S. Department of Energy, attended the symposium and held interviews with the British media.

One of my favorite interviews is with Channel 4, where Chu discusses the cultural shift that must occur to spur Americans to use more renewable energy.  Chu said “the young people get it” and added that just as the young generation helped convinced their parents to quit smoking, so too the current young generation will urge their parents to change their behavior to better protect the environment. Chu advocates rapidly deploying existing energy efficient technologies.

I think it’s safe to say that the United States is now fully engaged in climate change.

Then again, I’m a biased source.

The media and the blogosphere are buzzing about President Obama’s speech at Cairo University in Egypt.

Obama had this to say about Muslim contributions to science and technology:

“It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.”

He also mentioned a new U.S. fund that will support science and technology development in Muslim countries:

“On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create more jobs.  We’ll open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops.”

Will science help bridge the differences between the U.S. and Muslim-majority countries?