“Proteins are the workhorses of the cell”. According to Google, some 42,800 articles and web pages have used this sentence verbatim to preface their work. What’s more, they did so without citing whomever first thought it clever to compare proteins to workhorses. Does this constitute plagiarism?

And what about those who claim that proteins are instead the machinery of the cell? Examples such as these illustrate that, except in rare cases of blatant copying, plagiarism has many shades of grey. On the issue of plagiarism, Fang and Casadevall argue that good scientists are those who “strike out on their own paths, using their own words”.

Indeed, shamelessly copy-pasting without proper citation is one of the most common definitions of plagiarism. However, with such a definition, would it then be acceptable to re-publish Fang and Casadevall’s article in a different journal, replacing each word with a synonym? The National Academy of Science (NAS)—and the author of this article—would not think so.

In their handbook that treats responsible conduct in research, the NAS goes further. It insists that plagiarism goes beyond using the same turns of phrase; it is about stealing ideas and is an infraction committed “intentionally, or knowingly, or recklessly”. In that same handbook, the NAS suggests a case study where a certain Professor Lee is writing a research grant. In the background section, he includes short sentences copied from a review paper he did not write.

These sentences are not novel ideas, but summarize what is known in the field. He ends the section with a one-sentence summary of that review paper and cites it. Whether this is plagiarism is debatable. The case study suggests that the ‘borrowed’ sentences are common knowledge, much like the introductory sentence of this essay. If so, I would argue this isn’t plagiarism on purely practical grounds: Whom would he cite if a dozen other papers also used a similar sentence?

That said, one would do better to choose different words in any case, if only to avoid clichés. Otherwise, if Professor Lee uses sentences that constitute novel ideas synthesized by someone else, he may want to heed the NAS’ warning that, in a stroke of misfortune, the author of the review paper may be sitting on the committee that evaluates his grant.

In 2013 however, his data fabrication finally caught up with him. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began a case of misconduct and found that Aggarwal had fabricated data for six figures that he used in his thesis, two grant applications, and two publications. Specifically, the ORI found that Aggarwal falsified data, including manipulating experimental images taken from unrelated experiments and fabricating quantitative data for bar graphs and statistical analyses.

This seems to be a very standard case of misconduct, and the ORI concluded that Aggarwal did falsify data. That said, what is surprising is the lackluster consequences for Aggarwal. The ORI decided that his research on NIH grants for the next three years would have to be supervised and that he could not serve on any committees for the NIH.

Despite a clear case of data falsification, the consequences for Aggarwal were mere inconveniences. Aggarwal is now working at Bristol-Myers-Squibb, a large pharmaceutical company, so it does not appear that his career was negatively affected by the ORI’s decision.

Another part of this story that stands out is the fact that Aggarwal falsified some of the data in his PhD thesis, which does not appear to be a major issue in the eyes of the ORI or the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he received his degree. The two papers have not been retracted, nor do they have any notes at all about containing falsified data. If we are to maintain the integrity of scientific inquiry, all his fraudulent publications should be retracted immediately, and so should his PhD. As of today, only one of his papers was retracted. When scientists falsify data to attain their PhD, they cannot possibly have completed the requirements for graduation, and the PhD should be invalidated. The thesis should be reevaluated without the falsified data, and the institution should decide if they would allow the scientist to do any necessary extra experiments to complete the thesis.

Falsification of data was taken too lightly in this case; if it had been discovered while he was a graduate student, Aggarwal would have been expelled from the program, or at the very least, would have had to write his thesis without the falsified data. These actions should be taken retroactively out of fairness to others, and to the scientific process.

Discrimination based on gender is a pressing issue that continues to surface in inconspicuous ways. Professionally, it is not restricted to the STEM fields. Margaret Atwood was once asked, “how does it feel like to be a female writer?” Such questions have a patronizing quality to them, as was aptly remarked by Lisa Kudrow’s political character in a TV show.

The status of women in STEM professions too is far from ideal. In the past year, I encountered a competent mechanic who suffered from a long list of health problems because of continual gender discrimination and ill-treatment at her work; a few years ago, another mechanical engineer friend quit her job after her inebriated male boss acted inappropriately at a business gathering but faced no consequences for his behavior.

Even within the hallowed halls of academia, it is difficult to escape these upsetting gender-based experiences. Meg Urry, the chair of Astronomy at Yale, has been actively giving talks on this topic for several years now. She has provided examples from her own youth, during which she experienced moments that seemed to merely point to a certain distinction based on gender (such as, a professor addressing the class as “gentlemen and Meg”). Only later in life did she realize that it had been discrimination all along. She describes it accurately:

What is worrisome is that we cannot even brush it off as a generation flaw. In fact, Urry had believed that she was coming out of an age of discrimination in the early 1980’s because her professors and peers would never have remarked out loud (even if they secretly believed it) that women were incompetent at physics compared to men. Eileen Pollack, a writer with an undergraduate degree in physics, has also stated her dismay at finding the same, unchanging psychological elements that she struggled with in the 1970s. What is worse – the harmful effects are even stronger now because we live in a society, which believes that there is nothing that can hinder the success of women in any field.

During my undergraduate studies, I have experienced several strange remarks stemming from gender, a few of which are worth pointing out:

1. I once worked as an undergraduate summer research student within a mechanical engineering lab, alongside a PhD student and another undergraduate; both of them happened to have a Y chromosome. One morning, the PhD student left a memo notifying us to ask the university’s technicians to machine a simple structure. In a postscript, it was advised that I should probably place the request because sending a girl would ensure a faster response from the technicians.
2. One day, during the same summer, two men from a company visited the lab. The PhD student described the experimental setup, which was used to run a maximum of three runs per day since it was necessary to clean the system after each measurement. The visitors understood this messy business, and almost reflexively, pointed a quick finger at the only girl present, and concluded: “So that is why you have her here”. The PhD student smiled and said nothing because the prospect of funding dictates every self-preservation instinct within academic creatures.
3. During one semester, I was taking an elective; the instructor worked at a company and taught one evening course. One day the class was going over the assigned time, and a few of the commuter students became anxious to catch their trains on time. The teacher caught onto the restlessness and snapped, “tell your girlfriends and wives to love you a little later tonight”. What was more shocking, however, was that there appeared to be no sign of disgust, amongst the male or female students.
4. On the last day of that same course, the professor, who was more engrossed in taking pictures of the teams for his website, insisted that a picture be taken of him with the team leaders, and requested “the two female leaders to stand on either side of him”.

In 2012, a journal article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) observed a gender bias among the faculty of science. Apparently, biologists, chemists, and physicists, (both male and female scientists) are inclined to agreeably perceive a young male scientist and offer him a job than a woman with the identical qualifications. If they hire the woman, they are likely to reduce her salary by nearly $3,000 on average.

Such evidence showing the different evaluation and treatment of women in the STEM fields compared to men has been acquired by social scientists such as Virginia Valian. For example, a woman scientist might be considered a female first and a scientist second.

There have also been cultural arguments to explain the persistent deficit in the number of women in the STEM fields. Men in some countries do not mix someone’s sexual and scientific identities; others fail to acknowledge a woman as a female and a scientist. This attitude is frequently seen in comments in response to science blogs or videos made by a female, where the safe virtual haven does not hold them back and unleashes their remarks on the looks and features of the speaker, or any sartorial offenses made by her.

These scientific, social, and cultural studies report the gender-related observations. But what can be a step towards solving this problem? The journalist community has dealt with it by creating the Finkbeiner test, which entails a checklist that can help determine whether an article shows a gender bias. An obituary of the rocket scientist, Yvonne Brill, in the New York Times, which opened with “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children” is an example of an article that fails this test.

But how can we reform our attitudes, especially considering the lack of natural interest in the matter because scientists tend to dismiss the possibility that they can be biased? This casual denial of gender prejudice by the industry, researchers, and professors is harmful because they are the ones who write letters of recommendation and join the hiring and tenure committees. Meg Urry has taken steps to make it easier for academics to gain access to the existing and abundant social science research. She has organized conferences and given more than 60 talks to introduce and discuss these issues.

The conservative radio host once called science a “branch of the Democratic Party”, told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, and has called climate-change science the biggest scam in the history of the world”. It is safe to say that if you are a scientist and your work appears on his website that it is not because Rush Limbaugh is a fan.

It all started when I was in college and decided to submit an article to the student-run Harvard Science Review. As with most student magazines (though surely not this publication!) nobody really read it, but it was a chance for science students to hone their writing skills, add an extracurricular to their resumes, and have something tangible to show Grandma over Christmas. Each issue was themed, and with the goal of drumming up interest the editors decided that a good theme for the Fall 2008 Issue would be Brave New World: Controversial Science.

The standard canon of eyebrow-raising research was already covered: Stem cells? Check. Climate engineering? Check. Embryonic screening? Surveillance technology? The possibility that turning on the Large Hadron Collider might create a black hole? Check, check, and check. A self-proclaimed science fiction fan I took it upon myself to write in this eponymous issue about a bit of technology that appeared in the original Huxley novel: the artificial womb.

Let me stop right here to say that, no, an artificial womb does not exist. As of yet, there is still no circumventing roughly nine months hosting a free riding fetus followed by childbirth (or convince someone else to do it) if you would like a child. Arguably the closest we have come to the artificial womb is a Japanese group that in the early ‘90s managed to keep a goat fetus alive in a tank of amniotic fluid for three weeks. At the time, news outlets heralded the arrival of the artificial womb for humans within a matter of years, yet here we are two decades later with no artificial womb in sight. The regulatory bodies that police in-vitro fertilization procedures do not allow developing embryos to be maintained in the lab past two weeks in the UK and less than that in the US. The research is also practically unfundable. I personally believe this technology is likely to remain science fiction for many years to come.

I went ahead and wrote about it anyway. I find the bioethics surrounding issues of fertility fascinating. As morally questionable as the development of the artificial womb may be, is it so much more clear-cut that affluent women are currently able to hire out the uteruses of the generally less fortunate for a fee? The article I turned in, “Artificial Wombs: Delivering on fertile promises”, not only inflicted groan-inducing puns on the reader but also suffered from a fair dose of sensationalism. That was what the editors wanted though, right? Besides, it did not matter because no one would read it (with the possible exception of Grandma) and I had real work that I should be doing instead of writing articles (still, in fact, true).

It turns out that Aldous Huxley borrowed his title Brave New World from a verse in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Aptly, by the summer after my article was published a storm was already brewing. A group of crackpots, ahem, I mean fellow Internet journalists had created a youtube video entitled “Postgenderism: The Genetic Singularity”. The video begins with amateurish computer-generated images of machines manufacturing humans. Next the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone is quoted about how we must rid ourselves of all sex differences in order to truly achieve equality of the sexes. This is followed by a sob story about a dystopian future in which genetic engineering and biotech companies control all reproduction. Then the video shows someone googling my last name and Harvard Science Review, a shot of our magazine cover, and quotes me twice.

The video has three parts and altogether is about 30 minutes of psychedelic, free-association, reactionary, anti-feminist, anti-science paranoia. This is, of course, the type of thing the Internet loves. The video was soon reposted all over the conservative blogosphere (most prominently on rushlimbaugh.com in the Summer of 2009). Now, I could claim that I am not responsible for others deliberately quoting me out of context in order to bolster their anti-science polemic, but that would be a cop-out.

The fact is that we are responsible, especially as scientists, for the honesty and clarity with which we present the state of scientific research to the public. There are those who are poised to pick apart any ambiguity in our words if it serves the point they are trying to make. You may know that you are a nobody in your field and that your opinions do not really matter in the grand scheme of things, but you cannot expect others to be so knowledgeable. We are not just talking crazies on the Internet either—a few years ago a friend of mine was quoted in the New York Times as “a legal scholar” despite being 25 years old and not yet having attended a single lecture of law school.

In the future when I get the chance to explain a piece of research to a non-scientist, I am taking that responsibility seriously. Most of what we as scientists publish in professional journals gets consumed by other scientists, because not only is it often locked behind pay-walls but also the terminology can be so technical as to obfuscate what has been discovered for a lay audience. On the other hand, this ridiculous video has been viewed 7,000 times. If even 1% of those who happened across it went ahead and read the source material my guess is that they learned something. As they say, all publicity is good publicity, and my guess is that this particular audience is one not often reached by scientists. I just hope that if my name ever gets featured again on rushlimbaugh.com that I have the wherewithal and the guts to write back.

I just finished paying $1,211 to publish a scientific article that is ~950 words. Earlier this year, I co-authored another article; this one was ~3,500 words and cost $1,322. That’s $1.27 per word for one article and $0.38 per word for the other; two costly articles that were actually discounted prices because: (1) I’m a student; and (2) because it was an invited article.

How did I pay for these?

Well, I didn’t really. You did, the taxpayer. One was paid for with federal grant money and the other by the library at the public institution I work at. Want to read them? Go ahead, they are both “open access” meaning you don’t have to pay the roughly 40 dollars that many journals charge. But try reading another article and you may—around 80% of scientific publications cost money to read.

The cost of publishing both those papers was frustrating and painful but I nonetheless went ahead with publication. Why pay roughly fifty cents per word? Or more generally, why do scientists pay so much to publish? The answer is simple: scientific publishing is in itself a “token of scientific success” regardless of the merit of the article. Publish in the right journals and you’re in the “golden club”, a club that brings all the prizes scientists care about: grants, tenure, fame, and more publications. You may have heard the admonitory adage ‘publish or perish’ before. It’s been around for decades and it’s what you learn as soon as you start out in academia. It’s also the reason predatory publishing exists. Scientists eager to build their resume at any cost are easy prey. And this brings us to the ugly truth: we care more about scientific careers than scientific principles.

This ugly truth is reflected in the fact that 89% of “landmark” cancer studies can’t be reproduced! This means that more times than not, scientific work simply reflects the bias of the scientist and isn’t a real verifiable result. Reproducibility, remember, is the definition of science. But the way we evaluate scientists today—where they publish, not what they publish—is a mismeasure.

So what do we do? How do we put the RE back into REsearch? We can write more scientific articles lamenting the flawed inner workings of the system, this will after all give us more publications. Indeed, I have done this before but it won’t change much, change requires action by people like you and I. This is why I am starting The Winnower.

The Winnower is a new scientific publishing platform, or as it’s more commonly known, a journal. But The Winnower is not just any journal, it’s an open access, post-publication, peer-reviewed journal. That mouthful means that from the moment you submit your paper to the moment you finalize it, your work can be read and reviewed by all. Because the reviews you receive should help strengthen the paper, there will be an open period during which edits can be made to the paper. Once made final, papers published in The Winnower will be assigned a DOI so that they can be cited in other studies.

The Winnower will provide various metrics on papers including page views, downloads, “altmetrics”, as well as scores from structured reviews. These metrics, along with actually reading the article, will allow the scientific community to evaluate research for what it is instead of where it’s published. To ensure sustainability of the site and growth in the future, authors will be charged a flat fee of $100.00.

So, if you’re also fed up with the monster, help us kill it. Publish with The Winnower.

Mr. Bernstein is an executive at a not-for-profit organization and should be familiar with the folly of assaying the worth of an activity solely by its ability to earn a profit. My first defence of chemistry would also serve just as well as a defence of literature, mathematics, economics or even Mr Bernstein’s own subject, philosophy. Each field of knowledge ultimately aims to explain and explore either humanity or the context in which human affairs occur. Chemistry is part of that. To not know chemistry is to not know the universe one inhabits. That is not a place any educated person should be comfortable with.

While in university, I was frustrated and annoyed by students who insisted that subjects such as poetry, politics and philosophy alone constituted a true education, and what scientists and engineers were engaged in was mere training for a trade, a bourgeois affair pretending to be an intellectual pursuit. May I now retort that an education that omits chemistry, of all things, may best be called inadequate, if one is being generous, and not much of an education at all, if one is being frank. The early philosophers spent their lives trying to unravel the workings of the natural world around them; we have the good fortune of being born in a time when we can know most of those answers from simply opening a book. Seen in the context of history, this is a staggering privilege.

Mr. Bernstein says that his son is unlikely to become a chemist or a chemical engineer and would be better served by learning oratory or music (delivered with an idiotic remark suggesting that those of us who were busy studying chemistry would not understand the economic concept of ‘opportunity cost’).

Let us assume that Mr. Bernstein is right, and his son will not engage with chemistry in a professional context. Would he, as a citizen and a consumer, still be better equipped for life with or without a working knowledge of chemistry? Sooner or later he will face an issue where chemistry will come into play: chemical and radioactive contaminants, nutrition, toxins, climate change, water and air quality: all of these are issues which a voter or a buyer might need to grapple with at some point in their lives, and where more than a vague familiarity with chemistry would be helpful. A scientifically-illiterate constituency leads to misconceptions that range from the amusing (‘‘contains no chemicals’’ – so what is it made of, then?), to the frustrating (the insistence that ‘natural’ anything is better than ‘artificial’) to the seriously consequential (public opinion about energy policy, climate change, genetically-modified foods, or even vaccination). And what if he were to find himself in a position of influence and as utterly lost as Yes, Minister’s Jim Hacker?

This argument applies to any science one can think of. Would an electorate that did not panic and stampede at phrases like ‘Frankenstein food’ be better at recognising the merits of genetically modified organisms? Would that same electorate recognise the differences between various designs and generations of atomic power plants instead of running scared at the very sound of the word ‘nuclear’? Would it be less willing to accept pseudoscientific bases for justifying racism, sexism and homophobia? I should imagine so.

Yes, chemistry is a challenging subject, in that it does not yield without some sincere effort. They all are. Physics, biology, geology, mathematics, computer science, you name it. However, Mr Bernstein is amiss to think that this alone constitutes some sort of justification as to why his son should not be required to educate himself about the way in which matter interacts in the universe around him. Difficulty alone does not prove a subject’s unfitness for study; nor does being interesting earn it a place in the curriculum. As someone whose own high school experience isn’t too distant, I put it to him that adolescents are not always the best judge of what a complete education is. I would have jettisoned some parts of my own syllabi quite gleefully, but in retrospect, I am better off for not having been able to do so.

In arguing otherwise, that teenagers ought to be allowed to self-specialise at an age when they should be acquiring a holistic view of the world and all that’s in it, he comes off as little more than a parent disgruntled at his own somewhat pitiable inability to help his son with grade school homework without the aid of a tutor, and wishing the world to mould himself to his little snowflake’s needs and allow him to pick easy, immediate pickings than challenge him to push his limits and strive for something difficult yet richly rewarding.

Image credit: flickr.com/wilzdezign/4811128042/

One thing is certain about living – it eventually ends. The story of every fruit fly, beggar, king, janitor, professor, singer, barbaric STM official (with a passion for knitting and mortal combat), actor, politician (the latter two usually have a lot in common) usually doesn’t have a happy ending. We all perish. Also, we perish only once. Life, spanning an average of 67.2 years might seem too short to have any meaning. This insignificance has bothered several of us. The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera expresses this sentiment: our single and short life implies that it can be taken lightly; however, the fact that we are given just one life – no dress rehearsals, no second chances – makes this lightness unbearable.

Rabindranath Tagore held a different view and believed that “if you are not happy just at the mere fact that you exist, then you don’t deserve to exist.” This is because Kundera’s lightness of being from the cosmic point of view proves liberating and a little less unbearable because it reminds us how fortunate we are for our existence. So let’s take a step, or rather, several steps back and examine our current position. In doing so, we find what is perhaps best said by Daniel Dennett:

Carl Sagan also offers this cosmic perspective which helps us to view our beloved earth as a ‘pale blue dot’. When we adopt this vision, nationalism, patriotism, and other dangerous words (which usually end in –ism or -ion) suddenly lose their importance. Instead, according to Carl Sagan, it highlights the importance of “dealing more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.”

Neil Degrasse Tyson, the Carl Sagan of today, shares the same opinion. He argues that visiting his and Sagan’s cosmic vantage point renders the constant conflicts in the name of religion and boundaries silly, immature and egoistic. This is very similar to an adult (a word to which we generously associate the labels – grown-up and matured) who treats a child’s complaints about broken toys and bruised knees (all traumatic experiences to a kid) as small problems.

This is why a crash course in astronomy is needed at every level. As students, it should inspire us to spend less time on our cell phones and social media sites. As researchers, it should broaden our minds, develop our attitudes towards learning and reduce unattractive competitiveness over journal names, the number of papers one has published in comparison to his/her neighbor, and impact factors (the academic equivalent of brands and equally worthless). Finally, as human beings, it should humble us down so that we can live up to our scientific name (homo sapiens – wise men).

Astronomy is unfortunately and unfairly considered ‘useless’ compared to other sciences. However, it has the power to expand our view; reform our character and behavior towards each other and the world we live in. Astronomy can lower the omnipresent egoistic sentiments related to social status, race, culture, and language (desperately needed here in Quebec). Lessons learnt through astronomy are capable of maturing up the mindset of any individual, family, institution, corporation, and country. Anyone who relishes the cosmic outlook will have qualities that will make him/her a better policy maker (who will probably suggest replacing the bibles in the motel rooms of The United States of America with a picture of the universe and an arrow showing where we are) and truly develop this fraction of an iota of a crumb of a grain of the universe which we all call home.

Finally, a few words of the late Steve Jobs further illustrate how his mortality influenced his thoughts: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose”. Excellent words from an undeniably innovative man who nevertheless used his cosmic lessons very selectively and should have been more humane with his actions (Chinese workers and Emily Post will agree).

That being said, dear reader, I hope that your unbearably light life is as long as humanely possible, plenty light, and bearable to you (as well as those around you).

First, some numbers: Did you know more women than men attend university? In fact, women make up approximately 55% of the undergraduate students in Canada, yet only about 20% of these women will go into engineering or applied sciences (see http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/es/Nov1999/10/BEGIN.HTM). That means 11% of the student body is female scientists and engineers. Now remembering that this 11% has to get split up between the various departments and fields… well, that means very few girls per class.

After hearing the facts, I asked the simple question, “But why?” There is a general consensus (but no proven research) that girls aren’t good at math. That science is for boys. That we should just stick to the other stuff. Not science! Not engineering! The problem actually begins much before high school students fill in their university applications.

It’s in our homes, in our elementary/junior high/high schools, and in our society. It’s a bit discouraging, knowing that the whole system can’t be improved just like that and that girls are going to believe these things, even if they’re not true. Obviously, I’m not famous enough yet to tweet about it and have the whole world react. But I prepared a little something for the girls:

So ladies. To help motivate you, to help you tap into your inner feminist (and scientist!), to show you how you could change the world, I found a few inspiring women who fearlessly tackled applied sciences.

Lise Meitner

To kickstart the list, let me introduce Lise Meitner, who obtained a doctoral degree in physics in 1905, the second to do so at the University of Vienna. After completing such a prestigious program, you would assume scientists all over Europe would be interested to have her work with them. Nope. Her only job offer was at a gas lamp factory. With a Ph.D.! Equipped with ridiculous amounts of perseverance and intelligence, she accomplished all her goals, from becoming a full-fledged professor of physics at the University of Berlin (the first woman to do so) and a famous researcher in Europe. But her journey was not an easy one. She was not allowed to attend classes at certain universities, it took years before her admittance to a prestigious research institute despite stellar work, and she was even basically robbed of a Nobel Prize when she discovered nuclear fission with Otto Hahn but only he received the coveted award. It’s a difficult story to hear, but quite inspiring, in the way she forced her way into the field of physics and never gave up. Also her cool factor goes up quite a bit when you find out element 109, meitnerium, is named after her.

Stephanie Kwolek

Stephanie Kwolek, a Polish-American chemist, invented poly-paraphenylene terephtalamide. Or Kevlar, if you don’t recognize the scientific name. She worked at DuPont, a famous chemical company, to raise money to go to medical school, but ended up liking it enough to drop her idea of being a doctor in favor of a career as a chemist. In the experiments her team conducted, waste was generated and discarded. But our girl here used her passion for science in convincing someone to test the waste. And boom, Kevlar was born.

Ursula M. Burns

I feel like by now, you’re all hoping for a more recent tale of girl power. Well meet Ursula M. Burns, Madam Chairman of Xerox Corporation. Our girl Ursula rocks a B. Eng. in Mechanical Engineering, as well as a Master of Science in the same field. She began working at Xerox as an intern, and slowly rose to the top. Her biggest accomplishment is not a complete revolutionizing of engineering or an invention or a Nobel prize. Instead, she is the first African-American woman to head a Fortune 500 company. And also the first woman to replace a woman as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. So for that, we definitely give her a good clap.

Emily Warren Roebling

Ever heard of a little thing called the Brooklyn Bridge? The civil engineer who designed it, John A. Roebling, was injured shortly after beginning the construction (and eventually passed away because of complications). Before dying, he handed the project over to his son, Washington, who coincidentally enough became ill and developed a debilitating condition. In order to save the project, his wife Emily Warren Roebling stepped in to oversee the work. During her time as the technical leader, Emily studied everything from higher mathematics to cable construction to bridge calculations. Not only did she bring the project to completion and essentially become a civil engineer in the process, she fought to have her husband remain the official chief engineer on paper (thus giving him most of the credit).

Next time you happen to be in New York, now you’ll be able to appreciate this bridge so much more knowing that a woman with no background in science tackled and completed successfully what many consider the most difficult civil engineering project ever.

So next time you walk into your classroom, I recommend sitting beside a girl. She might just be the next great scientist/engineer, and trust me, you’re gonna want in on that.

In those letters, the authors express their concerns about the state of computational biology: “Engineers and biologists should collaborate more”, they urge. And collaborate they must: the current state of affairs is such that a lot of experiments in biology generate so much data that we aren’t able to process any of it with ease. Supposedly, there are oodles of science that we could learn from that data if only we had enough engineers and time, or computer cycles, to analyze it all.

One example that comes to mind is sequencing DNA. Currently, sequencing your complete genome would cost you around $10,000 and several hundreds of gigabytes of disk space. That said, companies like 23andMe.com will gladly sequence a small chunk of your genome. For roughly $200, they will mail you a kit that you spit in and then mail back. They extract the DNA from the sample, analyze it and send you the results. That said, they only look at certain regions of your genome known as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced snips). These SNPs are locations in your genome where you find a mutated letter in the DNA sequence; such variations can be thought of as typos in your DNA.

While the price of sequencing a genome keeps decreasing (see our Q&A with NHGRI director Dr. Eric D. Green), the problems encountered with storage and data processing remain a big issue. Beyond that, the other issues that creep up include whether sequencing every human on the planet is feasible from the point of view of technology, whether it is useful in terms of the medical information we can reasonably extract from looking at sequence data, and whether it is even desirable in the first place, from the point of view of privacy.

But let’s go back to our multidisciplinary collaborators. On the face of it, it seems like such a simple problem: Gather biologists and computer scientists in one building, supply unreasonable amounts of caffeine and have them collaborate to solve all our problems.

However, a quick thought experiment would reveal that scenario to be ineffective. The much thrown-around idea that all we need to do is to build research facilities with floors that have both engineering and biology labs to increase interactions is wishful thinking. If the problem originates from differences in research culture, increasing the number of chance encounters in the building will get us nowhere.

Collaboration ≠ Working together

Working together does not mean having biologists conduct experiments and asking computer engineers to analyze the data later. It has been tried for years and has been the cause of much frustration and wasted time.

Biologists who want to plan an experiment correctly ought to have discussions with computer engineers before the experiment to have an idea of which experimental parameters will ensure significant results.

Conversely, computer engineers cannot develop data analysis tools without understanding the biology behind the experiment. Otherwise, how could they possibly know about the caveats of an experiment and how those show up in the data?

This fantasy world where biologists and computer scientists need only be near each other to foster an atmosphere of collaboration is becoming increasingly absurd

The influence of the Mac, the PowerBook, the iPod and the iPhone upon the world of technology is unmistakable, as they blend the boundaries between computers and accessories. A successful design is one that makes the mechanism by which an object works disappear. Apple products of the latest generation fit exactly the definition. It is exemplary that the iPad is used with ease by both small kids (and even babies) and your grandparents, in a way that they can fully draw on technological innovations such as the Internet and digital movies. Focusing on the experience itself, rather than on how to ‘program’ the device to make the operations you wish to perform, is what differentiates Apple’s philosophy.

Ever since the Macintosh was introduced in 1984, Apple’s goal has been to develop user-friendly differentiated products, based on proprietary technology. It’s the idea of having a unique product in a box that you can just open and start working on right away. It is not a coincidence that consumers tend to think of Apple as products that “just work”. And this is all the more true when you compare their operating system to Windows. Differences have largely blended as years go by, but Apple’s OS X is still seen as having no viruses and bugs, letting you focus on the task at hand.

And surely, Steve Jobs has clearly stated that he doesn’t wish that Apple be the best, but between the best, as he realizes that other technology companies have their pluses too. What makes Apple stand out, however, is their attention to detail and their customer relations. Jobs was there every step of the way, pushing his employees to perfect each product, and emitting a creative energy rarely seen in traditional CEOs.

Apple engineers are not inventors. Strictly speaking, they have not invented a major technology, except maybe multi-touch (though Steve Jobs boasts over 300 patents in his name.) Rather, they are innovators. In fact, one of the most important technology innovators since the era of Ford’s T model. Putting together the first Macintosh, with the Graphical User Interface and the pointing device created by Xerox, they marked the beginning of the modern personal computer. Designing the PowerBook in the early 1990s to be the first real laptop with trackball and palm rest area was also a major industry leap as all portables up to then had the keyboard in the front.

And then came the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Though three different products, each with its clearly defined purpose and each bringing a small revolution to its area, they all share a common theme. It was a personal vision of Steve Jobs that computers wouldn’t be just for work, or just sitting on our desks. They would be everywhere, as part of our lives and as such, he would need to create a place for our digital life. Apple was the first one to achieve widely popular sales of digital songs, simple email on a portable handheld device and e-books on a tablet. They developed a successful business model where others failed, making people want to transition into that new digital era by putting all their material on an electronic device.

If Bill Gates’ vision was to put the same operating system in every computer and have it available to open-source software that would change it in their own image, Jobs’ idea of the future was to make an interface as simple and useful as possible, where the main focus is on viewing digital content and having an optimum input from the user with multi-touch. Microsoft largely succeeded in their vision, and now we are on the track to seeing Apple bring their own vision closer to reality.

But to make his products as unique as possible, Jobs took a particular interest in design. He wanted his products to have an object appeal, to be beautiful from the outside too, so as to fit with your home in the same way that a favourite piece of furniture or an engraved book does. He took astounding steps to make sure their design of the 80s, named Snow White was fully developed in all of their products and was part of each step of manufacturing. Then came Espresso in the 90s with a transition to more curvy devices, which finally made place for the current minimalist design of the iDevices. And though Jobs was away from Apple for almost 10 years, the company still followed his design principles.

Other companies are now embracing Apple’s design approach, such as Samsung and HP, who have completely re-branded their products in the last 10 years to appeal to a new generation of Apple followers. Microsoft developed their own mobile OS from the ground up, creating the ultra-minimalist Metro design of the interface that would also make the basis for their desktop system of the future.

As he said himself in his famous Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs was ready to die, as he considered death to be the single best invention of life—its change agent. He had already played his part and was ready to step down, not only from the company but also from life, in order to make place for the next visionary. If he helped make computers and mobiles a finished product, there are still other technology problems in the world to be solved, such as energy security and human disease.

The Future of Software

The next big revolution in technology will surely be the complete integration of mobile devices and tablets with the PC and Mac. Apple has already proposed a starting direction by introducing iOS elements into the Mac OS X. Microsoft has proposed its own plan by aiming to develop a new universal platform, starting with Windows 8, which would be scalable on all devices, no matter what size or shape. But these updates are not the real revolution. What would be the real defining factor is when someone integrates a processor and a mini hard drive to have the same power and capabilities on all devices. Then we would have to create a complete new user experience of how devices interact with each other.

And Apple seems to be the frontrunner to create this paradigm shift and to once more, make the maximum number of people adopt it