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#ScienceRepresentedXDisney - Tiana Tiana got turned into a frog and didn’t believe that stars could grant wishes. Earyn McGee is a PhD student at the University of Arizona studying lizards and how they’re affected by drying streams. She has an epic series of #FindThatLizard that is always a fun challenge and is actively working on making her department and field more inclusive for women and POC. Earyn has also encountered her fair share of frogs in her ecology and herpetology adventures, including the largest bullfrog tadpole ever found, fondly called Goliath. Goliath is bigger than a can of Coca-cola or a banana, much bigger than the average size of six inches (15 cm). Its large size is likely due to a hormone imbalance and might never grow into a mature frog. Ashley Gary sees a lot of herself in Princess Tiana. Just like the iconic princess, she realized that to be her happiest, she needed to create her own business in the South. Additionally, Ashley and Tiana have both had to face some ups and downs. Tiana had help from some bayou animal friends and Ashley gets help from wildlife too! There's no greater joy for Ashley than reading about and observing animals. She aims to spread knowledge about wildlife to the public daily and try to capture their magic and wonder for all to see. Jedidah Isler is an African American astrophysicist so she knows that stars don’t grant wishes. She studies supermassive black holes called blazars that are formed when massive stars collapse. Blazars shoot powerful jet streams of particles that are traveling at 99.99% the speed of light and we are only just starting to understand them. In one of her TED talks, Dr. Isler cited a poster of a young black girl studying physics as inspiring her to overcome financial struggles of her father leaving her family. And she overcame many macro aggressions, including a white male classmate expecting her to clean up his dirty dishes, to become the first black female astrophysicist PhD to graduate from Yale. She also founded @theSearchFoundation and the incredible @VanguardSTEM web-series. I recommend listening to the episode on #Shuri and #BlackPanther Tag your fave black scientists!

#ScienceRepresentedXDisney - Ariel Ariel’s hair is red The ocean is blue Everyone deserves love Whether they identify as no gender, one or two. Vic @vzam506 is a PhD student in Southern California focusing their research on DNA repair, with hopes of eventually pairing the fields of epigenetics and DNA repair to combat genetic diseases. Medical research has always appealed to Vic, not only because of their interest in the sector but also for the prospect of helping others. This is also why Vic aspires to be an open and recognizable nonbinary and gay scientist; they hope that LGBTQ people see their experience in STEM and gain the confidence to be openly #QueerInSTEM as well. Vic grew up loving Disney movies and “Part of Your World” was a powerful anthem for them to come out as gay in high school, and as nonbinary in graduate school. They identified with Ariel’s desire to live the life she wanted, not the one she was expected to live. Additionally, coming to terms with their identity while living in the southern US made them want to “be where the [gay] people are” (or at least prominent) back on the west coast where they were born and raised. Vic has a long way to go to complete their PhD but is excited for their journey and to be out and open as the only nonbinary or trans student at their school. NON-BINARY RESEARCH There is limited research on people who identify as non-binary but a 2016 study by Christina Richards, an expert in genderqueer and non-binary mental health, and her colleagues provides a pretty good review. In a 2013 study in Israel, 35% of survey respondents felt they were to some extent “other” gender, “both” genders and/or neither gender. A 2015 UN report advocates for fair treatment of all LGBT people and includes language for non-binary folks and identifying as something other than male or female is no longer considered a disorder in the premiere clinical handbook. There is no evidence to suggest that non-binary genders are pathological. You can find Dr. Richards on Twitter @CRichardsPsych The simplest step to help non-binary folks is to use their pronouns and normalize discussing pronouns by sharing yours regularly.

#ScienceRepresentedXDisney - Cinderella Cinderella is the quintessential rags to riches story. Dr. Adeola Olubamiji was the first African person to graduate with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. She now runs a non-profit called STEMHub which provides hands-on experiences and scholarships to African youth in Ontario, Canada while also working in industry as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer and Material Scientist. Growing up in Nigeria, Dr. Olubamiji worked as a child hawker and was the youngest of five children to two uneducated parents, which she said “did not make [her] the princess like in other homes” Follow her on Twitter @adexmee and@STEMHub_ and check out the platform that taught me about her and numerous other African women in STEM @LeversInHeels One of my favorite undergrad professors, Dr. Rashmita Mistry, is an expert on the effects of poverty and socioeconomic stress on the well-being of children and their families. She taught me about numerous social policies and their intersections with disadvantaged communities. She is one of the few people of color I know that studies issues of inequality. Dr. Mistry’s research shows that both parents’ and teachers’ expectations affect student educational achievement. She also advocates that psychology research should include perceived social status in addition to a more traditional conception of status based on parental income. Such an expanded definition can better reflect immigrant and multi-generational families as well as relative dimensions of poverty that are more correlated with psychopathology outcomes. In the US, more than 1/7 women lived in poverty in 2014. And white children are 4 times more likely to transition from the bottom 25% to the top 25% of income distribution than black kids. October 17th is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty but we should focus on low-income communities every day. #DisneyPrincesses #WomenOfColor #WOCinSTEM #WomenInSTEM #WomenInScience #ScientificResearch #Cinderella #Poverty #RacialInequality #EconomicInequality #DisneyGram #DisneyIG #RagsToRiches #LiveActionCinderella #ScientistsOfColor #DisneyPrincess

#ScienceRepresentedXDisney - Snow White While several of the most famous people with dwarfism are actors and actresses, they are totally capable of having other professions as well. Below, learn about two female scientists who Snow White would be proud to call her friends. @thesineadburke Sinéad is currently earning her PhD in Dublin, Ireland but is already a bad-ass author and fashionista. She has written for Vogue and interviewed incredible women about way more than their appearance or what they’re wearing in her Extraordinary Women series. Sinéad also advocates that the design of everyday things - clothes, public bathrooms, and transportation - should consider everyone, but especially little people. Her PhD research focuses on how schools allow children to advocate for their rights. Uta Francke, like Snow White, was a German girl who lost her father when she was young. She went on to become not a princess but a pioneering genetics researcher whose work set the stage for the Human Genome Project. Although she does not have dwarfism, she is still connected to it! After immigrating to the United States with little mastery of English, Dr. Francke identified genes involved in a number of rare diseases, including a rare form of dwarfism that is abnormally common in Ecuador. This condition, called Laron Syndrome, is unlike some forms of dwarfism that can be aided by growth hormone injections because of a genetic mutation that alters the receptor for this hormone. And this receptor is thought to be the key ingredient for the low rate of cancer in people with the condition. Since earning emeritus status, Dr. Francke has been working as a consultant for 23andMe. Check out Little People of America at http://lpaonline.org and Restricted Growth Association in the UK at http://rgauk.org (they have an awesome Role Models series) to learn more about people with dwarfism #Dwarfism #Genetics #Achondroplasia #DisneyPrincesses #FemaleScientist #WomenInSTEM #STEMinism #STEMinist #DisneyPrincess #PhDPrincess #PhD #Activism #Disability #LittlePeople #Feminism #WomanInSTEM #DisneyGram #DisneyArt ##SnowWhite #SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs #SevenDwarfs #HumanGenome #SevenDwarves

Princess AND a PhD Females (and marginalized genders) can like: 🥑avocado toast and Avogadro’s constant 🌹The Bachelor and bacteria 💍diamonds and derivatives 💪🏻fro-yo and forces 👠heels and hypotheses 💁🏻‍♀️Kardashians and kinetics 📸Instagram and isotopes 💞marriage and machinery 💅🏼nail salons and neutrons 👸🏾princesses and pipetting 👗style and science 💄lipstick and labcoats Or they (and men too!) can like none of the initial terms and still be awesome humans who are worthy of love, no matter their physical appearance. What combos can you come up with? Which combos resonate with you? Why does this matter? Women who more strongly identify with the female part of their identity than the scientist part of their identity report poorer academic performance, lower self-esteem, and more depression. And there are many environmental factors in the science community that are correlated with these negative outcomes. Women have been perceived as less competent in math and science and not objective or rational enough to do high-quality work in STEM (Lane et al 2012) But male-female differences in math aptitude have been shown to be more a result of their culture’s degree of gender equality rather than biology (Guiso et al 2009). Female faculty members in STEM experience more sexual harassment and perceived more gender discrimination related to hiring, promotion, space, and other factors than female faculty members in non-STEM fields (Settles et al, 2006) Identifying as a women and a scientist for a longer period of time erases the association with negative psychological outcomes (Settles et al, 2009). This makes it even more important to help young girls see themselves as scientists earlier on. If the surrounding climate perceives female scientists more positively, females in STEM have higher self-esteem and believe they have higher performance (Settles et al, 2014) Tomorrow I am starting a series of posts called #ScienceRepresentedXDisney I will be highlighting female scientists who have something in common with Disney characters, starting with princesses because I’m doing the #runDisney Princess 10k! Turn on post notifications so you don’t miss it!

Peter Pan is basically a naked mole rat… Naked mole rats, like The Boy Who Would Never Grow Up, don’t age. Well, sort of. Unlike almost every mammal, naked mole rats are not more likely to die as they get older. Their mortality rate is lower than any other mammal at advanced ages. Based on the lifespans of similar sized rodents, naked mole rats are only expected to live to be six years old. But they can live to be more than 30 and still be fertile! This allows them to be law-defying animals. Like Peter’s ability to fly defies gravity, naked mole rats’ lifespan defies the Gompertz law. This mathematical function describes the risk of dying based on age. In humans, our risk of dying doubles every 8 years after we turn 30. But naked mole rats’ risk stays the same or even decreases as they get older. These almost magical abilities are thought to be a result of naked mole rats’ ability to repair their DNA. They have unusually high numbers of special proteins called chaperones that help other proteins maintain their functional shapes. In addition to helping maintain their muscles and other tissues, this also helps them avoid developing cancer. #NakedMoleRat #PeterPan #PeterPanAnniversary #DisneyMovie #KimPossible #DisneyScience #ScienceOfDisney #RonStoppable #WendyDarling #PeterPansFlight #DisneyBlogger #DisneyGrammer #DisneyGram #OffToNeverland #NeverGrowUp #SecondStarToTheRight #DisneyGrammers #Telomeres #Biology #Aging #StopAging #Science #DefyingGravity #YouCanFly #Marceline

Happy Lunar New Year and Year of the Pig! Hamm is a piggy bank and you might think the origin of piggy banks is because pigs are fat and eat anything and therefore are good metaphors for storing and saving away valuables. Although pigs are symbols of wealth and good fortune in some Western cultures, the most popular origin story of piggy banks is attributed to a mistranslation. In the Middle Ages in Europe, people made their dishes and pots out of a clay called “pygg” and whenever someone wanted to save a precious coin, they could drop it into one of these clay vessels. Over time, the meaning of the material was lost and potters started making coin-storing vessels in the shapes of pigs. Similar vessels were supposedly already in use in China during the Han Dynasty (around 100 BC) to help prevent financial corruption. Pig-shaped vessels have been discovered in Indonesia and are thought to have been influenced by the Chinese. The Javanese language has a word that translates to both “a place to store money” and “similar in appearance to a wild boar”. It is thought that these vessels were influenced by pigs signifying wealth and good fortune in Chinese cultures. But even if all of these hard to substantiate stories are just stories, you can still celebrate the Year of the Pig by giving your Chinese friends money in red envelopes instead of piggy banks. The color red symbolizes warding off both evil spirits and old age. #LunarNewYear #Hamm #ToyStory #ToyStoryLand #HollywoodStudious #DisneyLunarNewYear #ChineseNewYear #PiggyBank #Pig #Pigs #LunarNewYearFestival #Mulan #DisneyCaliforniaAdventure #DisneyBlogger #DisneyGrammer #DisneyGram #DisneyPins #DisneyPinTrading #ToyStory2 #ToyStory3 #PixarAnimation #PixarMovie #DisneyScience #ScienceOfDisney

Hoping the groundhog won’t see his shadow today so I can wear bows instead of beanies. My first column will be up today on Rainbow Caverns, an all women-run Disney news site! In it, I discuss how Imagineers use shadows in attractions and queues. Let me know your favorite use of shadow in the parks or movies! And check back on Saturdays for future “The Steminist Mouse” columns. I’ll be talking about Disney, STEM, and feminism! Groundhog Day has a fascinating origin! The North American version stems from the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were actually German) tradition for celebrating Candlemas and used bears then foxes (who hibernate) then badgers as the predicting creature. But it goes even further back to Christians adapting a pagan holiday (surprise surprise) for the goddess Februa. This day specifically marks a midpoint between winter solstice and the spring equinox and was celebrated with lots of candles, hence the name Candlemas. The current superstition goes that if a groundhog does not see its shadow due to cloudy weather, spring will come sooner! If it does see its shadow, winter will last another six weeks. I definitely thought it was the other way around 😂 But it doesn’t really matter because scientists have not found any correlations between groundhog predictions and subsequent weather patterns. In fact, by most estimates, Groundhog Day celebrations are worse at predicting the onset of spring than a flip of a coin. But this also illustrates the importance of defining variables. The “onset” of spring weather has to be very carefully defined to be able to predict accuracy. And these definitions vary based on the study. Do you have any interesting superstitions? #GroundHogDay #GroundhogDay2019 #MinnieEars #MickeyEars #AnnualPassholder #DisneyAP #3DPrinted #3DPrintedEars #DisneyBlogger #DisneyGram #Feminism #Steminism #RainbowCaverns #WomenOfDisney #DisneyScience #ScienceOfDisney #DisneyGrammers #Steminist

Find yourself a partner who is willing to Disneybound and wear a tie even when it isn’t Dapper Day. So excited to see him tomorrow to celebrate meeting him just over a year ago, by chance on a bus to Disney Springs. #PhDLife I thought I would be better off and more successful as a PhD student by cutting out all of my friends to make more time for work. I was very wrong: I ended up procrastinating more and feeling worse about myself. His support made me realize that I was a fool for thinking I could do this alone. I’m still not great at making time for friends but talking to one person has made a world of difference. Thank you for being my go-to person whenever I start feeling down about my dissertation and reminding me that my lack of productivity does not determine my self-worth. Thank you for volunteering to do pomodoros with me, even after midnight. Thank you for fighting for me when I was at war with myself. And I’m sorry you have to share a post with puking ants. #ScienceOfDisney Loneliness might be as deadly as smoking. People who lack or believe they lack close social connections are more likely to die than people who think they have a lot of friends. Ants who live alone were found to have one-tenth the lifespan of other ants that lived in small groups, according to researchers in Switzerland. And isolation affected ants’ eating behaviors. Usually, ants participate in social eating and regurgitate some food when they return to their colonies. Afterwards, the food continues into their digestive tract. Isolated ants did not do this and instead walked themselves to death. So I hope you all reach out to just one friend after reading this. Now you can tell them how glad you are that they share their food like a human instead of like an ant. #ABugsLife #Pixar #Disneybounding #Disneybound #ArtOfAnimation #AnimationAcademy #PixarAnimation #DapperDayDisneyland #DisneyGram #PhDStudent #PhDStudentLife #PhDepression #GradStudent #GradStudentLife #DisneyGrammers #PartnerAppreciationPost #DisneyCouple #DisneyCouples #Flik #BugsLife #BugsLand #DisneyScience #Loneliness #Lonely

Going with the Flo #ScienceOfDisney #ScienceOfPixar Pretty much all of the animated objects in a Pixar movie are combinations of simple 3D shapes that start as 2D shapes. For example, Flo’s V8 Cafe uses a circle and many triangles transformed into a cylinder and triangular prisms to make the air filter inspired tower. What’s the craziest thing you can think of composed of simpler geometric shapes? And which shapes is that object made of? This computational trick is actually very similar a theory of human perception called recognition-by-components proposed by Irving Biederman. This theory argues that we identify objects by separating them into component parts he called geons. Geons are a set of no more than 36 geometric figures, such as a cylinder and noodle shape that would comprise the simplest of coffee mugs. For a shape to count as a geon, it must be identifiable from any view and appear the same regardless of illumination or texture. Many of them are derived from extending mathematical conic sections along straight or curved paths. Evidence for this theory comes from research studies that showed humans can recognize entire objects if we can see the edges of geons within an object, even if the rest of the object is obstructed from view. But recognition-by-components theory cannot explain how we distinguish objects in a complex scene or how we are able to differentiate objects without clear geon boundaries, like an apple vs a pear. #psychology #perception #PhDLife #PhDStudent #DisneyGram #DisneyScience #PixarAnimation #ScienceBehindPixar #PixarAnimationStudios #PixarMovie #PixarCars #FlosV8Cafe #DCA #CaliforniaAdventure #CarsLand #AnimatedMovie #Animation #DisneyAnimation #DisneyGrammer #DisneyGram #HumanPerception #Experiment #Science #TodayILearned #Flo #ScienceBehindDisney #Geon #Geometry

Missing this girl and the Florida sunshine today! We both prefer Rapunzel but do you have a preference of all the blonde princesses? Black hair is actually the most common amongst the official Disney princesses whereas brunettes are the rarest. But more than 90% of the people in the world have black or brown hair. Hair color is determined by how much of a pigment molecule called melanin is in the hair. People with black hair have more eumelanin molecules (a specific type of melanin) than people with blonde hair. Red hair has mostly pheomelanin, which has a slightly different chemical structure from eumelanin and causes the pinkish hue in lips and skin. Hair color is also determined by genetics. There’s a gene for a protein receptor in the process of producing melanin. People with two copies of this gene turned on are more likely to have darker hair because they can produce more melanin. How do you get colors of pink or blue hair? First, you usually have to bleach hair which turns the melanin into a colorless form by breaking covalent double bonds within the molecule. Bleached hair looks yellow because it is the natural color of keratin, the main protein in hair. Hair dyes also include the chemical ammonia which breaks open the cuticles of hair so that the dye can get in. Then, red, blue or yellow-green dye molecules react with the products of of the bleaching process. One popular red molecule will produce magenta while another will produce purple. If you were to dye your hair, what color would you want it? I’ve been leaning towards lavender. #ScienceOfDisney #DisneyScience #Cinderella #CinderellaCastle #SleepingBeauty #MakeItPinkMakeItBlue #MakeItPink #MakeItBlue #DisneyPrincesses #HairDye #HairColor #DisneyBeauty #Keratin #Melanin #HairScience #BeautyScience #PurpleHair #DisneyBlogger #DisneyGrammer #DisneyGrammers #DisneyBloggers #DisneyPrincess

💖GIVEAWAY💖 To celebrate 600 followers and 60 years of Sleeping Beauty, I’m doing a giveaway of some science and Disney inspired goodies! I’m giving away one custom spindle neurons puzzle and one copy of Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle To enter: 💘Like this post! 👩🏻‍🎓Follow this account! 🗣Comment below with a science or Disney question you’ve always wondered about! AND 👯‍♀️Tag two friends who like science or Disney! Include a 🧠 or 📚 or both for which prize you’re interested in! Giveaway will end February 5th at midnight PST. What are these beautiful pink and blue spindle neurons anyways? Spindle neurons, or von Economo neurons, got their name based on their long, tapered shape and having only one dendrite on each end. Even though having a lot of them has been associated with suicide (in schizophrenic and bipolar patients), they usually have a much less nefarious purpose than how Maleficent used a spindle. These neurons are found in humans as well as highly social animals that are also thought to have consciousness like whales, elephants, and apes. Specifically, spindle neurons found in the parts of the brain that are active when experiencing emotion or monitoring one’s own bodily sensations. These brain areas are also thought to be responsible for feeling empathy. Besides brain area activation, there’s lots of evidence pointing towards spindle neurons being responsible for our social functioning. Humans have more of them than any other creature. In humans with dementia and impaired social functioning, these are the cells that are damaged. And spindle neurons are much larger than most other brain cells, which suggests that our increased empathy skills co-evolved with cells that could process relevant social cues faster and faster. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway! #DisneyGram #DisneyGrammers #SleepingBeauty #SleepingBeauty60th #SleepingBeauty60thAnniversary #Spindle #Maleficent #SpinningWheel #Aurora #BriarRose #PrincessAurora #EyvindEarle #DisneyArt #neuroscience #neuron #neurons #NationalPuzzleDay #Puzzle #histology #ScienceOfDisney #DisneyScience #DisneyAnimation #DisneyBlogger #DisneyGiveaway #ScienceGiveaway

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