Ada Lovelace Day by Ulixis

Originally posted by Ulixis

Today is Ada Lovelace day!

WHO? Ada Lovelace is considered to be the world's first computer programmer - she wrote software for Charles Babbage's analytical machine, the first "computer." Unfortunately, the analytical machine was never completed, but her programs would still have worked. In fact, she was one of the first to see computers as more than just adding machines - envisioning that computers could even compose elaborate pieces of music one day.

So what? WHY does that give Ada a whole day to herself? Well... have you ever heard of Ada Lovelace? What about Henrietta Leavitt? Rosalind Franklin?

Probably not.

These women were all scientist & made major contributions to their fields (see above & below) - but did they get any recognition? Does anyone ever learn about them, except in passing reference to their male colleagues? Of course not, they were women!

So today is a day for recognizing women in science: a field where we're often ignored or unacknowledged - where a women's contribution is often attributed to her male colleagues' ideas - or a man's "interpretation" of her work is deemed most important.

We're important too, darn it!

Thankfully, "political correctness" is all the rage now - and gender equality falls within those boundaries. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean women are getting paid the same amount as a man for doing the same job ... but it's getting better. Let's continue the positive trend - spread the word! Today is Ada Lovelace day!



Rosalind Franklin: her x-ray crystallography photographs were what clued Watson & Crick in that DNA was a double-stranded helix. They probably would never have figured out DNA's structure without it.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt: her work on the relationship between periodicity and luminosity of stars forever changed our view of the universe. Her variables allowed Edwin Hubble to measure distances in the universe & discover that other galaxies existed outside of ours (the Milky Way).

All 3 of these women died of cancer (and blood-letting in at least Ada's case) before their work was recognized.

Ada Lovelace Day 2010 MSOE Blog Mash-up

Today is the second annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science, Ada Lovelace Day 2010 (ALD10). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging about women in science and technology, whose accomplishments have all too often gone unrecognized or unacknowledged.

Today, the Mad Scientists of Etsy, many of whom are women in science and technology, is hosting our own ALD10 Blog Mash-up. We'll be posting on this topic all day and collating results here. You can find links to individual MSOE blog posts below:

Ada Lovelace Day: Rosalind Franklin & Henrietta Swan Leavitt by Ulixis
Ada Lovelace Day 2010 Profile: Ursula Franklin by minouette
In celebration of Ada Lovelace: Marie Curie by AliciaMae
Happy Ada Lovelace Day – Wearable Electronics Edition by Polymath
Ada Lovelace and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, of computers and stars by bijoutery

There's nothing to get your feather's ruffled about!

Especially not with these entries for the MSOE February challenge theme - feathers!

This month's theme was inspired by the identification of colour of some feathers on dinosaurs and early birds for the first time. The researchers found melanosomes in fossilized feathers, which are "color-bearing organelles buried within the structure of feathers and hair in modern birds and mammals, giving black, grey, and rufous tones such as orange and brown". They also found phaeomelanosomes, which result in rufous and brown colours. By finding these, for the first time we know what some of the colors of dinosaurs were!
Read more about it on Science Daily!

This inspired some wonderful and creative items by our team!


Sweettweelab - Otus the Screech Owl 1950s Ephemera Book Page
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=40987433


Minouette - Block Printed Feather Brooch
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=41204667


CreturFetur - Playful Kea
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=41384838


iWunder - Luxury art yarn moebius cowl
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=27132410


Ulixis - Feathers CARD SET
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=41693565


Jackbear - Penguin Hand Carved Rubber Stamp
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=31541788


AliciaMae - Decorative or small masquerade black feather mask
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6922225


Scientificculture - Felt Feather Brooch
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=41568743


Tyarkoni - Heart No. 7, Hand Drawn Feathers, Frameable Art Card
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=37919541


Don't forget to vote for your favorite entry on our poll!
Check back next month for our March challenge theme - entomology!

Profile of a Mad Scientist: Ulixis

The Mad Scientists of Etsy present the second the Mad Scientist Profile. Who are these people who both love science and love to create? What does science mean to them? How do they make the things they do? Well, we're going to tell you!

Today, Cretur Fetur interviews Ulixis, followed by the 'Lightening Round'!

Cretur Fetur: You have three successful, often-updated shops, AND are pursuing a Master's in Medical Science. How do you balance it all?

Ulixis: Well, honestly, I don't think I do. Heh… or at least not all of the time (take my neglected sewing shop for example). All I do is try to make a little time for everything each day. I always set aside at least an hour at night to blog & craft, but during the day I'm at work. When I do sit down for a photoshoot, I take pictures of a lot of items all at once - that way I have a bunch of photos & can list new pieces regularly. But most of all, I don’t let it stress me out. I just keep a to-do list in my agenda & make sure I finish everything that NEEDS to be done. Everything else can be worked on slowly, whenever I have time.

Cretur Fetur: How does your affinity for science affect/influence the subjects in your art?

Ulixis: I often gravitate towards themes reflected in nature. I have a huge stash of beads in the shape of flowers, melons, leaves, waves, even beehives. Likewise, floral & foliage patterns on fabric & paper are my favourite. When it comes to making ACEOs & original collages, I’m inspired by nature just as much as mythology, another interest of mine. The MSOE challenges are another way I like to explore merging science & art.

Cretur Fetur: How does your scientific background affect your craft technique?

Ulixis: Attention to detail is an important skill I refined during my undergrad (it’s on my résumé heheh). I find this very useful in beading, wirework, sewing, collages AND notebook making. But I also learned how to improvise & work out solutions to problems – so when I “mess up” I don’t worry about it. I just turn it around & try to see how to improve on the situation. Oddly, dissection is a scientific technique that I’ve applied to paper work. I recently picked up a good, sharp knife for paper cutting, having refined my technique beforehand with a scalpel. But I still turn back to my scissors often since I also use those (in miniature) in dissection. I try to remind myself to rip the paper too – sometimes this is the best way to remove unwanted tissue.

Cretur Fetur: What do you plan to do with your degree?

Ulixis: Oh man, everyone always asks this one. I'm really still not sure at this point, but I'm aiming for professor right now. Still, you never know where your path may take you. Whatever the case, my next step is PhD - I just have to decide on a question.

Cretur Fetur: Tell me a little about your research. What is it you do in the lab on a typical day?

Ulixis: For my Master's research, I'm looking into the link between obesity and asthma. Many obese individuals develop asthma & I'm trying to see if there's a cellular basis for this. So in the lab I work with airway muscle and fat cells - I grow both of these in flasks & use the cells in my experiments. Picture me in a lab coat with gloves on working in a biological safety cabinet (basically a sterile chamber - you have to reach over a vent to work inside, a window covering the front upper half - the vent shoots air upward, keeping the sterile environment inside).

There are 3 different experiments that I run - ones looking at muscle growth, muscle migration & muscle contractility. Right now, I'm having difficulties with the growth experiments... I can't get the cells to grow in the culture plates before I start the experiment. Not sure why... yet. I've found that the fat serum (basically anything the fat cells are producing) increases migration of the muscle cells. To test contractility, I dissect muscle strips from bovine trachea & hang these in small baths. The fat serum seems to relax the muscle contraction.

Besides working on my Master's work, I also have class on Thursdays (a smooth muscle course) & TA a pharmacology lab course on Wednesdays (well, I do from Sept - Jan). For TAing, I teach 3rd year undergraduate students a radioligand binding experiment. Basically, we use a radioactive compound that binds to a certain receptor in prepared membranes - we then test how other compounds can remove the radioactive one from the receptor (by measuring the change in radioactivity in the membranes).

Lightning Round

Question	Cretur Fetur	Ulixis
Which do you prefer: Astronomy or astrology?	Astronomy	Astronomy
Over land, by sea or by air?	By air	Over land
Acute or obtuse?	Acute	Obtuse
Qualitative or quantitative?	Qualitative	Quantitative
Big picture or tiny detail?	Hmm, this is a tough one. It depends.. but I'll go for details.	Tiny detail
Name your favourite: Palindrome?	Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad.	Kayak
Prime number	3	7
Animal?	Spotted hyena	Zebra
Plant?	Cape sundew	Maple tree
Scientific technique?	Observation	Fluorescence

Ulixis has two other shops: Paper Ulixis and Sew Ulixis. Check out her blog, photo stream, follow ulixis on twitter and check out her website here.

All images curtesy of Ulixis, Paper Ulixis, Sew Ulixis or Ulixis Crafts.

Profile of a Mad Scientist: Cretur Fetur

The Mad Scientists of Etsy are launching a new feature today: the Mad Scientist Profile. Who are these people who both love science and love to create? What does science mean to them? How do they make the things they do? Well, we're going to tell you!

Today, etsy seller Ulixis interviews Cretur Fetur.

Ulixis: What's your science field of choice? Why?

Cretur Fetur: In a very general sense, zoology. Being a little more specific, I'd go for mammalogy and ethology. All my life I've been absolutely fascinated by animals, especially animal behavior. When I was very little, I decided I would be a veterinarian, but quickly backpedaled when I was informed I would have to do a lot of dissection for that. I've always been squeamish when it comes to that sort of thing. Later I heard about ethology, and I pursued that for a while, reading books by Konrad Lorenz and Jane Goodall and stuff on the internet (ah, the young days of the internet), but I abandoned it midway through high school to pursue art instead. I think part of my reasoning for it may have been that I thought art would pay better. HAH!

Ulixis: What was the last thing you learned that you thought was particularly interesting?

Cretur Fetur: There's this jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, that can reset its cells to a younger state. If it's in danger of starvation, or damaged, or feeling old, it'll just age itself backwards all the way back into a polyp colony, the first stage of a jellyfish's life. That colony can then become hundreds of jellyfish genetically identical to the original one. Crazy.

Ulixis: How do you incorporate science into your crafting?

Cretur Fetur: I read about animals pretty often, and I have a particular affinity for animals that not everyone has heard of, or not many people know much about. So what I've done with Cretur Fetur is pick one of these animals per month and put them in the spotlight. I research them as extensively as my resources allow, write everything down, sketch the animal from as many angles as possible to familiarize myself with its shape, then make it into a wool sculpture. I think the sculptural part of the process gives the animal a presence and an approachability that a flat drawing would not accomplish by itself. At the same time, a drawing can show detail and accuracy in a way that my wool sculpting skills can't yet, so I also include a card with a watercolor drawing of the animal, with key parts of my research (by "key" I mean "most exciting") written on the back. So none of the data is wasted, hooray!

Ulixis: What inspires you most when you sit down to create?

Cretur Fetur: I get inspired from two fronts: one is the natural world and how insane and amazing it is, and the other is art and how insane and amazing it is. There's a couple of artists that work with wool whose art I enjoy particularly: Stephanie Metz and Masako Onodera. What I am doing right now is more craft than conceptually robust art, but I'm still getting a kick out of directly translating something from nature into something manmade. I plan to explore the medium more thoroughly soon, and hopefully make bigger, more abstract things. Eventually. Right now I just wanna make a quoll, and find out why grackles congregate in the evenings.

Check out her etsy shop at Cretur Fetur, read about her creative process on her blog here and follow CuriousCreturer on twitter.


Next up: Check the blog soon for the next in this series, when
Cretur Fetur interviews Ulixis - with a bonus 'Lightening Round'

All felted animal photos curtesy of Cretur Fetur. Turritopsis dohrnii photographs via National Geographic, by Stefano Piraino (inset) and Maria Pia Miglietta. Tiger quoll image via wikipedia.

Ada Lovelace Day 2010

This is a detail of a lino block print by minouette of Countess, Lady Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), who published the first computer program. She worked together with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine (the first - analogue! - computers), correcting his notes on how to calculate Bernoulli Numbers with the Analytical Engine. More importantly, she (a great communicator, daughter of mad, bad and dangerous to know poet Lord Byron) was able to understand and explain the workings of the analytical engine and the potential of computing machines. Her comments seem visionary to the modern reader. Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers and the Princess of Parallelograms.

One month from today, on March 24, 2010, the second anual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science, Ada Lovelace 2010 (ALD10).

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited. Just sign the pledge ... and publish your blog post any time on Wednesday 24th March 2010.

We here at the Mad Scientists of Etsy - many of whom are women in science or technology (or both) are hosting our own Ada Lovelace Day mashup! I hereby pledge to blog to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science on March 24th. Further, I will link to my team mates ALD10 posts and we will cross-post all our various entries here, on the Mad Scientists of Etsy Blog. Last year's event was a great success (my own post from 2009 is here) and this year, I'm looking forward to learning about other female innovators and heroines of my fellow Mad Scientists.

So, please get involved!
1. Go sign the pledge.
2. Comment here or convo minouette if you plan to participate in the MSOE ALD10 Mashup.
3. Blog on March 24th, 2010.

Even Mad Scientists Need A Little Love...

A bumper crop of entries for the 'Mad Scientists' Valentine' challenge! Featuring items with a science theme, or any Valentine's Day gift a mad scientist would love :)



clairepayne - Lavender Heart Sachets
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38529196



minouette - Thinking of You Valentine IV Card
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38380178



buffalonerdproject - Shiga toxin sweetheart half apron
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38896464



molecularmuse - Dopamine Heart & Pearl Valentine's Day Necklace
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38985622



jvdarcy - Hand Drawn Valentine's Day Cards
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39285974
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39295988



tyarkoni - Valentine, Hand Drawn Honeycomb, Art Card
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=37991643



iWunder - Hot Pink Glam Cowl
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=36942844



jackbear - Tell Tale Heart ACEO - Alternative Valentine
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39698292



CNJceramics - Red Love Birds
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39747708



bijoutery - Brown Ceramic Heart Necklace
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39830821



scientificculture - Love Robot Coffee Sleeve
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39675846



maidstonejewelry - Valentine's heart pendent
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39152176
- Heartlinks
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38689816
- Heart diamond ring
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38689163



janssendesigns - Valentines Day puppy love wreath
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39378788


Vote for your fav entry in our blog poll!

Find more great items by the team on Etsy, just by searching for 'msoe team'!