Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Reducing Negative Stereotypes

Via Science:

Social science research powerfully demonstrates how stereotypes, even those that people are not consciously aware of, can influence the careers of women and minorities...

... Individual scientists can take at least three steps to buffer themselves against negative stereotypes: educating themselves and others about the science of stereotypes, adopting a growth mindset, and expanding their professional networks...

Pharaonic Inscription

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Saudi archaeologists recently discovered the first royal pharaonic inscription on a mountain face near the ancient oasis city of Tayma, evidence, experts say, of the major trade networks that criss-crossed the region thousands of years ago. The discovery comes on the heels of a major push by Saudi authorities to foster wider appreciation for the Arabian peninsula's pre-Islamic history, which has often been glossed over or ignored in official narratives...

Paleontology Law Suit in S.D.

Via Belgrade News:

A South Dakota research group is suing a competing Montana-based paleontology concern over copyright infringement stemming from a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton excavated in the Fort Peck area and housed at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls, the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, based in Hill City, S.D., is seeking $8.2 million and other damages from Fort Peck Paleontology, Inc. The organization alleges that it loaned copyrighted T. rex castings to the Fort Peck group to help them create a complete skeleton of a T.rex unearthed in north-central Montana in 1997.

If True, This Changes Everything

Via WiredScience:

NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon announced today that NASA has found a bacteria whose DNA uses  arsenic instead of phosphate.

...The microbe may be substituting for phosphate with discretion, says geochemist Everett Shock of Arizona State University in Tempe, using arsenic in some places but not others. But Shock says the real value of the work isn’t in the specifics. “This introduces the possibility that there can be a substitution for one of the major elements of life,” he says. Such research “stretches the perspective. Now we’ll have to see how far this can go.”...

Dinosaur Demise and Mammals

Via BBC:

Writing in the journal Science, researchers say mammals rapidly filled the "large animal" void left by the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago.

They then went from creatures weighing between 3g and 15kg to a hugely diverse group including 17-tonne beasts.

Further growth was capped by temperature and land available...

Kids, Fossils, Finds and Burpee Museum

Via National Parks Traveller:

Perhaps it's proof that you're never too young to consider a career in paleontology: A 7-year-old visitor to Badlands National Park earlier this year spied a partially exposed fossil that turned out to be the skull of a 32-million-year-old saber-toothed cat...A few months later Mindy Householder, a fossil preparator from the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois, visited the park on her way to a fossil dig in Montana. Although the fossil was still encased in the rock matrix, she was excited about the find and volunteered to prepare it once she returned from Montana...