Nespresso espresso: a coffee addict’s instant fix

This weekend I took a break from worrying about my qualifying exam and everything else grad school related,  and took some time to enjoy the wonderful birthday gifts my amazing friends and family showered me with. The first is the Samsung Tab2, which I’m trying to poxt from right now. It’s the best of both worlds between a computer and an iPad: I dont feel as limited in my capabilities using just apps, and the android operating system is more intuitive than other tablet interfaces. Ive quickly become quite fond of widgets, which have the convenience of the live tikes of Windows 8, while integrating seamlessly with my apps.

But what I really want to brag about is my new coffee machine: a Nespresso.  I’m one of those people that likes good cofee, and living in Dunkin Donuts loving Boston is a little difficult for me. There is a sad lack of good coffee options close to lab that aren’t a decent hike, so image how ecstatic I was to find out my amazing friends had all pitched in to buy me a Nespresso machine! Opening the box for the first time confirmed my suspicions– this thing was a machine for coffee snobs who think they are too good for Keurigs. The sleek black owners manual and membership information made me feel like I was ingratiated into some exclusive coffee lovers society, patrons only. The usage instructions were modern and minimalist looking, and the machine itself was much smaller than I imagined. I found my judging the quality of the coffee to be based on the machine’s small stature, but as if to cast my doubts aside, the little guy roared to life when I started brewing hot water. The powerful noise it makes was extremely satisfying and I knew this was going to make a fantastic cup of coffee.

But because Nespresso facies themselves a little bit more snobbish then Keurig, they make sure they aren’t dealing with lazy people. The Nespresso will keep pumping out hot water after you push start for as long as you desire, so you cant simply walk away. This festure makes it more customizable but requires some judgement about the size of your mug and the strength of your desired cup. Once I was finished in the blink of an eye, it was a damn good cup, almost as good as what I could achieve with my stovetop espresso maker. Most notably, I found it lacked all of the residual burned taste that some conventional espresso makers leave, and there was no mess or cleanup to do! This classy thing even removes the pods and collects them for you in a container, so there is no cup sitting in the insert place forever getting gross.

Overall,  highly recommend this coffee maker. I can’t wait to bring it to work and have delicious coffee without braving snow, sleet, rain, or most recently wind to have my cup o’jo. Also, since I’m highly addicted to caffeine it helps avoid those debilitating headaches that will ensue without my daily dose. This will make late nights in lab so much more tolerable!

International Women’s Day: taking a closer look at women in science

Just ahead of International Women’s Day, the journal Nature decided to take a look at the state of women in science and gender bias in research, dedicating many articles and op-ed’s to all sorts of topics. And while they tried to sound enlightened and modern in their approach to the issue, as a woman in science myself I was slightly confused and a little insulted after reading their pages.

They spat out the statistics and talked more than once about how the deck is stacked against women in any and all scientific fields, drilling home that all of us are unconsciously biased toward the maintenance of gender roles, trying to appear sympathetic without assigning blame. Instead they implied quite a bit about how those few women in science make it, and why: largely ignoring what I believe to be the main issue: mentoring of women.

They ran a story titled “From the frontline: 30 something Science” where they chronicled the paths to success of several women scientists in various fields. All of these success stories featured women who seemed to have it all, the prestigious position, the lovely family, the respect of their peers, if only they were willing to work hard enough and make sacrifices:

Being five months pregnant comes with a series of concessions: no booze, no sushi, no double-shot espressos…[breakdancing] is one of the few limitations that Tye, 31, has been willing to accept. Striving to make her mark in optogenetics, one of the hottest fields in neuroscience, Tye thought nothing of working past midnight, getting by on four or five hours sleep a night and maintaining a constant, transcontinental travel schedule…With her mother as a role model, Tye says that she was in her teens before it occurred to her that her gender could hold back her career.

Great, so if only all of us women only worked harder, yes we might have to make sacrifices, but as long we do not accept sacrificing anything for our career and do whatever it takes, we’ll make it. The article goes on to describe how Tye “tearfully” “begged” another successful woman for a place in her lab, threatening to drop out of graduate school if she wasn’t taken in. Another strange bit of writing…is this really the path to success?

But herein lies the real problem. This article glosses over the small detail that Tye had several female mentors not only in life, but during very important times in her career. She became very successful once she was able to convince another woman to help her, and that is not a coincidence. That isn’t to say that she wouldn’t have been successful in a man’s lab, she probably would have, as long as she received good mentoring from that person. All of us, men included, don’t become successful without the help of others, no matter how absurdly talented we may be. Statistically, men receive more mentorship than women, especially in the sciences. That includes men helping women, but more striking is how many less women are inclined to mentor other women. Nature itself even sounded mildly surprised when mentioning that there is no correlation between the number of women who sit on grant review committees and the number of women researchers who receive grants from those same committees. And while I would argue that this is a good thing, it hints at a larger theme that it is expected for women in science to help other women in science and quite honestly, they don’t always.

Unfortunately, women helping women gets much less attention then women spurning other women, which hurts cultural attitudes and expectations about women’s relationships to their peers. Stepping out of science for a second into popular culture, the media broadcasts the latest female feuds with glee: whether manufactured or real. The latest example between Taylor Swift and Tina Fey/Amy Poehler, isn’t just fueling the female feud stereotype, but actually damaging the case for “women helping women.” Taylor Swift angrily insinuated that by embarrassing her at the Golden Globes, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler would go to “a special hell for women who don’t help other women.”  This quote in Vanity Fair magazine was simple retaliation, using the very methods she claims to abhor. Her hypocrisy is sadly typical, and actually hurts the “women should help other women” debate.

Many women in positions of power are in a delicate position: often watched very closely for signs of favoritism. They may even have a bit of a chip on their shoulder;  unwilling to help other women because of the sub-par/non-existent mentoring they received themselves. The reverse is often true of younger women. Many today feel entitled to special treatment by older women without earning anything or working particularly hard. None of these scenarios should be the case. I have had and continue to have been fortunately to have several mentors both women and scientists, sometimes both. But it’s not easy to find them.

I won’t even talk much about the incredibly high and unrealistic expectations the US expects of their workforce: long hours, low pay, a much reduced quality of life in exchange for a wonderful career. When some people, rightly so, judge that to be a bad opportunity cost, other people are shocked: s/he just didn’t work hard enough! Maybe working hard is exactly what we need to do; maybe overworking is not.

Some of the most outrageous examples of bias in science, courtesy of Nature:

One study showed that mothers are 79% less likely to be hired and are offered US$11,000 less salary than women with no children³. By contrast, the same study shows that parenthood confers an advantage to men in the workplace.

A particular professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. On the first day of class, “he looked around and said ‘I see women in the classroom. I don’t believe women have any business in engineering, and I’m going to personally see to it that you all fail’.”

In biology, for example, women comprised 36% of assistant professors and only 27% of tenure candidates in a 2010 study by the US National Research Council³.

Professors said they would offer the student named Jennifer US$3,730 less per year than the one named John, even though the CVs were identical. The scientists also reported a greater willingness to mentor John than Jennifer.

• Nature 495, 22–24 (07 March 2013)
• Nature 495, 28–31 (07 March 2013)