Tabla de contenidos para November 2018 en Womankind

• Fruit flies don’t eat fruit but rather fungus growing on the inside of fermenting fruit. Fruit flies deposit eggs inside fruit so larvae have something to eat once hatched. • Fruit flies have a lifespan of 40-50 days making them particularly appealing for scientists who study their genetic evolution across generations without having to wait a lifetime to do so. Fruit flies have been instrumental in scientific findings about human disease, genes, and inheritance. • Fruit flies share some 60 per cent of our genes. • A female fruit fly lays around 30 to 50 eggs per day at room temperature, but produces far fewer eggs in the cold. Black and white thinking: Viewing situations in extremes using words such as “always” and “never”. I’m “always shy when meeting…

As the internet has expanded our world, so our dreams and expectations have bubbled up alongside it. Whereas once it was perfectly normal to hold down a job for life, or buy a home in which we lived forever, constantly switching careers and locations has become the new norm. And as the internet has spawned endless images of far-flung places, some 244 million people today live in a country other than where they were born, up 41 per cent from 2000. Undoubtedly, pretty pictures on the internet have broadened our perspective. Our dreams and expectations are overlayed by fitness retreats in Mallorca, and week-long stays in New York. What about doing a degree in English literature at Oxford? We input the search, “where is the best place to raise a…

1 My motivation for choosing engineering is that I love science. I love exploring and finding out about new things. A big part of my life was always art and creativity, and engineering married these two interests for me. I learned to think about science in creative ways. You need a lot of creativity to solve problems. 2 The idea of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) partnering with NASA is a very special relationship because for humanity to succeed in space exploration it requires international collaboration. So it’s not daunting being in NASA; it’s challenging and rewarding. But it took a lot of work to get here. 3 For a long time when people thought about astronauts, they didn’t think of women. 4 Astronauts who have already been to space…

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronauts on the first manned mission to the Moon took a snapshot from space of the Earth. Emerging out of a black, black sky, with swirls of white and blue, our planet looked like a marble, the kind children play with. From so far away, it also appeared vulnerable: as much eggshell as solid sphere. As Jim Lovell, one of the men on board, commented: “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realise just what you have back there on Earth.” Typing away on a rainy day such as this, as workers dribble past in suits, umbrellas up, faces down against the wind, it isn’t always easy to look at the big picture. To remember that the Earth, as we know it, may not…

The brain chemicals that make us feel good are inherited from earlier mammals. Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin trigger feelings that are easy to understand when you know how they work in other animals. We humans have a big cortex that can inhibit our primal impulses, but the cortex does not control the happy chemicals. If you want to feel good, you have to make peace with your mammal brain. But the animal facts of life are hard to accept. We like to think animals are loving and cooperative, but in truth they have a lot of conflict. Animals compete for food and mating opportunity, and they enjoy a spurt of happy chemical when they prevail. When they lose, cortisol is released, so they have a lot more stress than you…

Mercury 13 After rigorous testing in 1961, a small group of skilled female pilots are asked to step aside when only men are selected for spaceflight. Mission Blue This documentary follows oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s campaign to save the world’s oceans from threats such as overfishing and toxic waste. Surviving Progress Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiralling us downwards, towards collapse? 400 Years of the Telescope A sweeping journey, from 1609 when Galileo invented the telescope to the present day - viewers are taken on an adventure through the heavens. “We are now reaching a point at which technological progress threatens the very existence of humanity.”Surviving Progress…

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We all know that repetition is the key to success. Just look at sportspeople, musicians, or anyone skilled at learning multiple languages. Typically, these folk spend at least an hour a day perfecting their skills. A survey of 2,000 women between the ages of 16 and 25 discovered that, on average, today’s young women, too, spend 48 minutes a day on a single activity. They dedicate some of this time to preparing themselves physically, styling clothes and hair, assessing light conditions, and perfecting the angle. Time is also spent on applying make-up before the shoot. The activity monopolising today’s young women is ‘selfies’ - the art of taking photographs of oneself to publish online. The survey, conducted by a skincare company, found that over half of these women take selfies…

In life, we often face big life decisions that will significantly direct the course of our lives. We weigh up the pros and cons, we agonise and fret, but is there a way to better manage these decisive life moments? Jungian analyst James Hollis advises his clients to ask themselves the following question: “Does this choice enlarge or diminish me?” Hollis argues that we should always choose the path of enlargement, of growth and complexity, over such lesser rewards as wealth or status.…

Etsuko Shimabukuro , age 54, studied archeology and computer science, and once practised as an ascetic mountain priest. For a week she ran through the Sahara Desert in Morocco and trekked 7,500 km in Japan. Today she works as a chef in Mexico while she prepares for a no-return visit to Mars. You are hoping to secure a one-way ticket to Mars. What inspired you to sign up for the mission? At age 10 I got my first telescope. Every night I used it to observe Jupiter, which is big enough for a 10-year-old to find. I had always wished I could live on another planet. I’ve been interested in ancient civilisations since childhood. That’s why I chose to study archaeology in college. It always fascinated me how civilisations…

The shaking was gentle at first, then my father pushed harder against my shoulder. “You’ve got to get up!” “But it’s night.” “Get up, or you’ll miss it,” urged Dad, now nudging my brother awake. I was eight years old and though it was only four in the morning, Dad carried us up to the attic to watch a comet cross the sky above the breaking dawn. My brother leaned against me, half asleep; a gentle dribble of saliva from his open mouth ran down my arm. “There it goes - see?” My father pointed out of the open window. “Yes! I can see! John - wake up!” I nudged my brother awake and we three watched as the comet soared through the heavens before us. Such behaviour was not…

Closing date: 28 February 2019 Format: One photograph per entry. Applicants: Open to all amateur and professional photographers. Entries must also include a separate photo of an edition of Womankind. File size: Please send large file sizes (larger than 3,000 pixels wide, 300dpi). Entries must be provided in file sizes suitable for publishing. The theme of this quarter’s award is water, which covers large expanses of water such as oceans, rivers, and lakes, or smaller water sources including fountains, water droplets, or rain. Win $500 and get published in the next issue of Womankind magazine OPEN TO ALL READERS. For full details visit: womankindmag.com/award Send to: award@womankindmag.com Details…

Day one: The Los Angeles sky never gets dark. Tonight is no different. In fact, the perpetual twilight between dawn and dusk is made worse because a solid, flat haze of clouds is reflecting the light pollution more than normal. The entire sky is a blanket of dusty purple and orange. Every palm tree and building antenna stands in clear relief. I try to get away from the bright street light outside my front door. Bright porch lights from neighbours make either side of my apartment building just as bright. In the back, flood lights illuminate the parked cars. I cannot see a single star. I wouldn’t expect to see many on a clear night, but I did expect to count the aeroplanes flying overhead. Tonight, I could only hear…

We’ve all been told that thinking positive thoughts is good for us. And studies on the beneficial effects of positive thinking continue to roll in; it’s found that being positive makes us happier, healthier, wealthier, more resilient; the list goes on. Positive thinking, it’s touted, can even increase our lifespan. But for many, setting out to be deliberately more positive feels fake, inauthentic, and somewhat crazed. How can you suddenly start thinking positive thoughts when automatic negative thoughts keep popping up in your mind? Quelling the tide of negativity can feel as insurmountable as stopping rain falling from the sky. As much as you try, the negative thoughts keep rolling in. A psychological technique that’s certainly worth a try for anyone wishing to be more optimistic is ‘labelling’. Go back…

It is a common regret of the dying. “I wish I had let myself be happier.” When former nurse Bronnie Ware spoke with terminally ill patients in the final weeks of their lives, she listened to many of their regrets. “Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice,” she says. But many important life moments had been wasted in worry, stress, and distraction. Jungian analyst James Hollis, who works in private practice in the US, identifies two common threats that steal many a happy moment. “Every morning we rise to find two gremlins at the foot of the bed,” he writes in his book, Living an Examined Life. The first threat is fear, identified by that consistent voice in your head stressing that the world is…

Dianne McGrath is a food sustainability critic and a Mars One candidate. To demonstrate food wastage, for a week Dianne lived off other people’s food scraps at restaurants. You are a food wastage expert. Tell us a little about how much food the average householder wastes. About a third of all food bound for human consumption is lost or wasted, which is extraordinary when you think about how many people are hungry on this planet. In Australia alone, householders throw away the equivalent of one in five shopping bags every week. It’s mind blowing. It might be one bruised apple or a slice of toast or something like that, but it adds up. If people captured pictures of what’s left on their plate for a few days, they’d…

I am a photography and art lover, who lives in Latvia. Twelve years ago, I picked up my camera just to take photos of nature and friends but somehow it snowballed into a career. I have always been captivated by the Moon, the stars. It makes me melancholic. It has always been that way. The stars teach us that we are small - and there is something big and magical out there but we will never know what it truly is. Nature gives me strength and a clear mind. I often try to capture what would happen if nature took over us, took back what was hers. We should take care of it as it is our home, our soul, and our body. We should care of nature as it is our life.…

One summer in 1947 a pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying over Mount Rainier in Washington State when he caught sight of nine “strangely disk-shaped objects” ahead of him. They were weaving in and out of mountain peaks, “like saucers skipping on water”, he said. Thinking they were refracted light from water droplets he rolled down his windows, but the objects remained unchanged, moving impossibly fast (an estimated 1,700 miles per hour), flying in a long line and flashing bright lights. There were further sightings over the coming weeks, and newspaper articles that spawned the term ‘flying saucer’ and a feverish interest in UFOs. Such sightings were not entirely new. For instance, in 1492, when approaching land Christopher Columbus and various crewmembers saw a strange light resembling “a small wax…

AC: How did you come to choose astronomy as a career? LHS: I never could think of it as ‘a career’ because I did not know of anyone in my world with degrees, let alone scientists. I could not have imagined it in my wildest dreams. My aspirations were to be a police officer because I had seen that on TV. My aspirations were as small as my world, but then when I fell in love with astronomy - just the pure joy of looking up at the sky and not worrying about physics or what it all means - that is when I thought I had to take it further. And that’s when I delved into books, and the world of research, and realised that there were people who…

You have been painting astronauts for a long time. Why does this astronaut appear so frequently in your paintings? I started painting astronauts back in 1999 when I first watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I thought my adult life would be filled with jet packs, flying cars, and robot best friends. Instead, my life as a university graduate involved cooking single serve pizzas on a hot plate, taking the bus to work, and watching soap operas at the laundromat. In other words, it was not exactly the future I thought I’d grow up into. I had also spent time travelling abroad. Living far from home, I started to get used to the idea of not being from wherever I was. But when I…

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”Gustave Flaubert Metropolis By Thea von Harbou This city of the future encompasses two worlds: that of the hedonistic ruling class and that of a segregated subculture, toilers in a mechanised underworld who labour to provide the rich with their pleasures. Vivid in description, rich in characterisation and symbolism, the story draws upon ancient myths to form a compelling vision of the future. Braiding Sweetgrass By Robin Wall Kimmerer Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, Kimmerer shows how other living beings - asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass - offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear…

JEU DE PAUME Concorde, Paris Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing 16 OCTOBER 2018 UNTIL 27 JANUARY 2019 The Politics of Seeing features major works by American photographer Dorothea Lange, featuring over one hundred vintage prints taken between 1933 and 1957. During the Great Depression that began in 1929, Lange observed the unemployed homeless people in the streets of San Francisco and decided to drop her studio portrait work because she felt that it was no longer adequate. During a two-year period that marked a turning point in her life, she took photographs of urban situations that portrayed the social impact of the recession. This new work became known in artistic circles and attracted the attention of Paul Schuster Taylor, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Taylor was…