2018
March
22
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

March 22, 2018
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Yvonne Zipp
Features Editor

Picture a scientist. Lab coat or safety goggles? Microscope or telescope? Wild hair or no hair?

I’ve been picturing scientists a lot this week, thanks to a study in which researchers looked at 50 years of children drawing scientists.

About 3 in 10 students draw pictures of women. That’s good news, researcher David Miller says: It’s the highest percentage it’s been in five decades. 

In 1983, when Dr. Miller looked at about 5,000 children’s drawings done between 1967 to 1977, less than 1 percent of the students drew women. And all 28 of those artists were girls. Since then, 28 percent of children routinely draw women. The Draw-a-Scientist Test shows how stereotypes can change over time.

What’s changed? Not only are there more women working in STEM fields, they are also more visible, from efforts like 500 Women Scientists to the women computer scientists and their allies who, after a computer security conference announced just one female speaker out of 22, planned an alternate conference for the same day.

Take today’s Google Doodle. Katsuko Saruhashi was the first woman in Japan to earn a PhD in chemistry and studied radioactive fallout in the Pacific from US nuclear testing. (The Saruhashi Prize now is given to top natural scientists who are women.) NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson shot to such fame after “Hidden Figures” that toymaker Mattel modeled a doll after her. Marjory Stoneman Douglas is now also a household name, for tragic reasons, reviving interest in the conservationist’s work to save the Florida Everglades.

But my favorite picture is one I have not seen. “I still find myself choking up when I show it,” the BBC’s Quentin Cooper told New Scientist in 2011. Students drew a picture, got to meet a real scientist, and then were asked to draw another picture. One girl’s first picture was a man in a lab coat. Her second was of a smiling woman holding a test tube.

The picture’s caption was one word: “Me.”

Now, here are our five stories for today.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Reuters
Laborers work at a Shandong Iron & Steel Group plant in Jinan, in China's Shandong province, last year. In addition to steel and aluminum tariffs, the Trump administration announced new trade penalties against China on March 22.

With President Trump announcing new trade penalties against China, fear of a trade war is growing. But it would take a lot of escalation for that to become a reality.

SOURCE:

US Census Bureau

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Ryan Lenora Brown/The Christian Science Monitor
Dr. Elvis Badianga Kumbu sees patients in the child malnutrition ward of the Presbyterian Hospital of Dibindi, in the Congolese city of Mbuji Mayi. He says the number of severe malnutrition cases has tripled in the past year as conflict has spread across the region.

After years of turmoil, the script can seem familiar: militias, child soldiers, displaced people – and that hopeless sense of same old, same old doesn't help raise desperately needed aid for Congo. But quietly heroic help comes from people like Dr. Kumbu.

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor
Kristin Gromala (c.) and her daughter, Alexis, wait to pay for their target practice session with Michelle Carlson (r.), who brought her girlfriends to Thunderbird Firearms Academy in Wichita, Kan., to celebrate her birthday. It was Ms. Gromala's boyfriend, a law enforcement officer, who first taught Ms. Carlson the defensive shooting skills she wanted to acquire in order to defend her home and her son when her husband was traveling.

Our next story was a real education for reporter Christa Case Bryant, who had never so much as held – let alone fired – a loaded weapon before this assignment. (Even water guns were banned at home growing up.) But as our Heartland correspondent, she wanted to better understand how gun owners see the gun control debate sparked by recent school shootings. What stood out to her was a way of thinking about society and government that places a premium on individual rights and responsibility.

Can something as simple as open lines of communications prevent the horrors of war? UNIFIL, which just turned 40, is a case in point. By regularly convening Israeli and Lebanese officers, the UN force has been credited with helping keep the peace in southern Lebanon amid escalating tensions.

Karen Norris/Staff

 If lectures aren't helping college students learn, some universities are asking, why do we keep using them?


The Monitor's View

He did not frame it this way, but President Trump’s decision on Thursday to penalize China for stealing American intellectual property serves a purpose beyond merely helping the US economy.

It also could nudge China to better honor a cornerstone idea of the world trading system.

The idea is that individuals who invent a widget or create a great work serve a grand purpose for all by bringing forth a useful discovery. To nurture such progress, their work deserves temporary legal protections from theft.

That concept often gets lost in the hard-knuckle nationalism of today’s trade battles, especially when countries like China set forth big goals to dominate specific industries by almost any means. Chinese leader Xi Jinping even speaks of “foreign things for China’s use.” And in Mr. Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on Chinese goods and limit China’s investments in US technologies, he narrowly tries to protect America’s competitive edge in science and technology.

But his actions have the additional effect of affirming a global system that encourages individuals to flourish by rewarding their hard work and creativity through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Original thought, expressed in individual achievements in science and technology, reveals infinite possibilities for humanity. To honor creative thinking is to nurture it.

Many in China may actually welcome this US move. In recent years, Chinese companies have won intellectual property cases against their competitors in court. And Mr. Xi himself has warned Chinese artists not to plagiarize the works of others.

The new legal protections in China have helped create a burst of innovation in industries. China is now the second biggest source of international patent applications behind the United States. It could become the biggest within three years, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The US economy loses an estimated $225 billion to $600 billion annually to theft of its trade secrets. Most of that loss comes from China through cybertheft and forced transfers of technology. Correcting that imbalance will definitely help the US. But most of all it will restore the integrity of global trading rules that rely on the idea that all humanity benefits when individuals can safely earn perks from their discoveries.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Today’s column explores how increasing our understanding of God even a small amount can lead to healing.


A message of love

Aijaz Rahi/AP
A woman fills plastic vessels with water from a shared tap in Bangalore, India, March 22, World Water Day. Bangalore is among 10 cities in the world that appear to be edging toward a water crisis. Today, some 2.1 billion people live without safe drinking water at home, according to the United Nations. Safe access for all by 2030 has been named a Sustainable Development Goal. For ideas on taking action, go to worldwaterday.org.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for spending time with us today. Come back tomorrow. We're working on two stories ahead of this weekend's marches – one on how Florida's top-notch civics education helped mold the Parkland generation and a second looking at lessons from Europe on dealing with mental health issues.

More issues

2018
March
22
Thursday

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