Daily Science Dose

In a very creepy Children of Men kind of way, this recent development in the state of our world’s water resources could be the first step to lower fecundity in humans, which yes, in an extreme case like the world of 2027 in Children of Men, could lead to diminished birth rates.

Guess I’ll stop worrying about overpopulation…

A British joint-research project finds that increasing numbers of new chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals and fertilizers — the very things that make life worth living, am I right? — are showing up in our water supplies. These chemicals may have a rather harmful and decidedly less fruitful side effect on a man’s reproductive system.

And on a fish’s reproductive system. Studies in the past have shown that male fish are being “feminized” due to female hormones in the water supply. Certain hormones in the water are turning the fish into girl fish, kind of in some cases and literally in others. These estrogens are making it through the water treatment process after passing through women taking birth-control pills. To be fair, chemicals that act like estrogen also have the same effect on fish, and those chemicals are coming from industrial manufacturing.

Now, researchers are finding new chemicals they are calling “anti-androgens.” These are acting much like the estrogen and faux-estrogen. Androgens are male hormones like testosterone, and serve to support sperm production.

In fact, the researchers says they really don’t know where some of these chemicals are coming from.

“We have identified a new group of chemicals in our study on fish, but do not know where they are coming from. A principal aim of our work is now to identify the source of these pollutants and work with regulators and relevant industry to test the effects of a mixture of these chemicals and the already known environmental estrogens and help protect environmental health.” [quote from Lead author on the research paper, Dr Susan Jobling at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment]

Senior author Professor Charles Tyler of the University of Exeter said: “Our research shows that a much wider range of chemicals than we previously thought is leading to hormone disruption in fish. This means that the pollutants causing these problems are likely to be coming from a wide variety of sources.

“Our findings also strengthen the argument for the cocktail of chemicals in our water leading to hormone disruption in fish, and contributing to the rise in male reproductive problems. There are likely to be many reasons behind the rise in male fertility problems in humans, but these findings could reveal one, previously unknown, factor.”–SPX via TerraDaily

These anti-androgens are known to cause a condition called testicular dysgenesis syndrome. Even the name tells us what is going on — dys means “ill” and genesis means “birth“. The anti-androgens can cause developmental damage to the reproductive system in embryos and the syndrome is becoming more and more common unfortunately.

We are what we drink. The ultimate anti-androgens, Women.

Yet more bad news for our water supply.

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And why not, ladies?

Computers are so hard. I might get wrinkles.

I ran across an interesting article in the New York Times today (the article is from the 15th). It is one of those essays that explore an issue, but never offers a full answer, only leaving me with more questions that before I read it. Anyhoo, it seems that women and computers do not go hand in hand. Sure, there are a gazillion female web designers, but nary a girl to be found in collegiate level computer science classes.

From the article:

What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.

When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling. In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. Data collected by the Computing Research Association showed even fewer women at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering in the United States and Canada granted in 2006-7 by Ph.D.-granting institutions, down from 19 percent in 2001-2. Many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates.

The article goes on to blame the gaming community for being so dude-centric. And all the games that are developed don’t appeal to girls. I can agree with first part of that, but not necessarily the second.

Anyone hear of the Sims? How about Tomb Raider? Sure, you could argue that TR is a male-fantasy in the badassness of Lara Croft, but it is a bit of a girl-fantasy, too. What little girl doesn’t want to find ancient artifacts in the jungles of Peru, while totally looking hot, and blasting away the bad guys with your twin 9mm’s?

The gaming community is male-dominated, for sure, but I don’t think that the gender-inequality is really to blame. Think about the caliber of men in the gaming community. They send shivers down my spine, and I am a gamer that can barely tolerate being in Gamestop for more than ten minutes, lest the dorks rub off on me (ahem). What girl would choose to spend every working day, be it in school or on the job, with those guys? Sorry to generalize, gents, but come on, you know what I am talking about.

In a previous life, I worked in the media industry, i.e. television, and let me tell you, those guys are weird, and I mean weird. The first few jobs were okay, because they were short-term projects, but after ten months of working with quasi-virgins and totally socially-awkward male editors, I quit and vowed to change careers. It is really difficult to work with such men, that have cloistered their entire lives in their parent’s basement, graduating from Sega to the Playstation to the Xbox, all the while missing out on crucial social interaction time to become well-rounded and non-creepy chronic self-pleasurers.

Sorry to rant. Back on topic…

Ms. Cassell [director of Northwestern University’s Center for Technology & Social Behavior] identifies another explanation for the drop in interest, which is linked to the pejorative figure of the “nerd” or “geek.” She said that this school of thought was: “Girls and young women don’t want to be that person.”

I spoke with Ms. Spertus last week about her thoughts about the declining percentage of undergraduate women majoring in the field. “Women choosing not to go into computer science is fine,” she said, “if there aren’t artificial barriers keeping them out.” She lamented the recent decision of one of her outstanding computer science students who chose to major in nursing because of what the student perceived as better prospects for finding employment.

Yeah, again, not so much that a girl doesn’t want to be a nerd, we just don’t like hanging out with geeks. Even geek-chic isn’t going to help some of those guys.

Not a very scientific post today, but some days we need to have a little fun around here.

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