Meet the Women Who Blasted into a Male-Dominated Industry, a Smarter Way to Fight Prejudice and More

 
Onward and Upward, Vogue
In this stunning photo essay, take a look at the women who power NASA and learn about how far they’ve come since the time period depicted in “Hidden Figures.” With job titles ranging from research biologist to mission integration manager, the significance of their hard-found positions within the aeronautics industry is not lost on them. It won’t be on you, either.
In Response to Rising Biased Rhetoric, Muslims Run for Office, NPR
With hate crimes on the rise, some members of the American Muslim community are confronting the problem in a bold way: by running for office. Campaigning inevitably puts them in the spotlight and often brings about further vitriol, but many see it as the only way to move the conversation forward.
Surgeons Were Told to Stop Prescribing So Many Painkillers. The Results Were Remarkable. The Washington Post
The opioid epidemic in the U.S. has killed tens of thousands during the last decade, and the overprescription of drugs is largely to blame. A small trial in New Hampshire uncovered a simple, data-driven solution that could lead to a huge cutback in prescriptions and ultimately, addictions.

Artificial Intelligence Protects First Responders, How Birth Control Is Stopping the Spread of Disease and More

This NASA-Developed A.I. Could Help Save Firefighters’ Lives, Smithsonian Magazine
Disorienting scenes where a single move can be deadly is a common experience for both space rovers and firefighters. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built an artificial intelligence system for navigating unfamiliar landscapes, is sharing its technology with fire departments — warning first responders about hazards they might not notice in the smoke and flames.

Man v. Rat: Could the Long War Soon Be Over? The Guardian
A New York City subway rat carries a host of dangerous contagions, and its reproductive capacity — up to 15,000 offspring in a year — spread disease through city sewers and alleyways. A biotech startup in Flagstaff, Ariz., has developed a humane way to deal with Gotham’s infestation where rat poison has failed: birth control.
Generational Poverty: Trying to Solve Philly’s Most Enduring Problem, Philadelphia Magazine
Can Mattie McQueen, an unemployed 52-year-old raising three grandchildren in a largely unfurnished apartment, escape the destitution that’s dogged her ancestors since the postbellum years? One Philadelphia nonprofit is using what’s being called a “two- generation” model to assuage her financial stresses to make space for the children’s learning.
 

Think You Can Build an App That Saves the World From Asteroids?

If you’ve ever dreamed of saving the world from an impending asteroid collision, and you’ve got a better solution than hiring Bruce Willis to bomb the asteroid to smithereens, we’ve got the competition for you.
On April 12 and 13, during NASA’s third annual Space Apps Challenge, hundreds of scientists and software engineers joined together in a 48-hour hackathon to come up with solutions to vexing global and interstellar problems. NASA comes up with the puzzlers for the event, and anybody with the engineering chops to work on them is invited to try. Teams on six continents and at over a hundred locations work on the problems.
In total, there were 40 challenges, such as this one in the category of asteroids: “Create an open source network of quick-response robotic telescopes that would enable fast follow-up observations of potentially-threatening asteroids.” Other tasks included trying to make a “Track that Wetland” app — allowing citizen scientists to record observations and data on the wetlands in their communities — and creating a design for a greenhouse that NASA could use to keep visitors on the moon or Mars stocked with fresh produce.
Each year, the challenges result in the creation of useful apps. Last year, software engineer James Wanga’s team won the Best Hardware Prize for building the prototype of an asteroid mapper. Wanga told Denise Chow of Space.com, “There’s a spirit that infects everyone when we realize all these people around the world are working on the same thing.”
After participating in the NASA Challenge, Wanga and three colleagues started the company Go Lab, which builds tiny satellites for all sorts of uses. Wanga and Co. were at it again this year, coding all weekend long at the Manhattan NASA Space Apps Challenge location in an effort to build a network that could one day allow far-flung astronauts to communicate in space.
“We all understand here that we’re trying to change the world,” Wanga told Chow. “This is the beginning of the space tech boom, and the people here right now are the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of space tech start-ups.”
MORE: San Francisco’s Tech Talent Lends A Hand to Help the Homeless
 

How NASA Went Above and Beyond to Help a 4-Year-Old Boy With Homework

Did you know that when NASA isn’t too busy discovering planets or launching rockets into space, they also give homework help? That’s what little Lucas Whiteley discovered after he recently asked the rocket scientists for some help for his science project.
As the Telegraph reports, Whiteley filmed his three questions for the space agency and sent them off via email. Three weeks later, he got a very detailed response from NASA engineer Ted Garbeff. Garbeff personally answered the 4-year-old’s questions about how many stars there are in the universe (about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), who came in second and third in the race to the moon (Russia and China), and if any animals have been to the moon (No). He also included a 10-minute tour of NASA’s facilities on their Mountain View, Calif. base. (You can read the Q&A and watch the vitural tour here.)
MORE: Can This Six-Year-Old Get Us to Mars?
Lucas was, well, over the moon and even showed the video to his school during an assembly. His father, James, told the Telegraph, “When I was a kid I wrote to NASA and got a brochure, so when Lucas was doing a project on space I thought we might be lucky if we sent a video of Lucas asking some questions. What we got back was amazing. Obviously Ted has thought about his audience and gone to a lot of trouble just for them.”
“When I sat down to watch it with Lucas he had a big smile on his face,” he added. “Ted is a fantastic bloke to go out of his way to do something for someone he doesn’t know on the other side of the world.” Here’s to inspiring the next generation of astronauts.

These Scientists Are Helping Blind People Experience the Majesty of Space

The spectacular imagery of distant galaxies captured by the Hubble telescope can make you rethink the nature of the universe. So why shouldn’t blind people be able to experience them too? That’s what motivated two scientists, Carol Christian and Antonella Nota, to create 3D models of Hubble’s stellar data. Their first draft is a series of square panels with what look like topographical renderings of mountain ranges. In fact, the panels are richly textured physical descriptions of faraway star clusters. Dots and ridges indicate different substances, like filaments and dust, while the surface’s varying height is meant to indicate distance. “They would be able to spatially understand where important features are relative to everything else and what the structure is,” Christian and Nota told Gizmodo. They plan to make the CAD files, or 3D blueprints, available to the general public soon.
MORE: This student solved his speech impediment with a pen and Denzel Washington

Can This Six-Year-Old Get Us to Mars?

Connor Johnson, an aspiring astronaut, wasn’t happy when he learned that congress was cutting NASA’s budget. The Colorado six-year-old decided to donate the contents of his piggy bank, $10.41, to NASA, and start a petition to the President to ask the government not to withdraw funding. Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon, recently called Connor to encourage him. And Connor’s not the only one who wants the NASA funding restored—astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently told a Senate hearing that if America raised NASA’s budget from less than half a penny per government dollar spent to a full penny, “we can transform the country.”