These five women alone demonstrate how varied a “STEM career” can be: a researcher, an engineer, a medical director, a radio science journalist, and a STEM career strategist. If we can attract more girls into STEM fields, then we will need systemic change to create an environment they would then want to stay in. Women face many and varied cultural and systemic barriers to success; there are extra hurdles faced by all.
A big reason that there are a lot of women coming to schools to talk to girls about careers is because there are women in the schools motivated to invite them, and there are women out there motivated to donate their time to come and talk. I would love to be a role model who could come and talk to young men about careers and about how to embrace their masculinity in a positive way, but I am not who they need – they need a male role model they can relate to.
The recognition, management, and mitigation of the increasing risk posed by biodiversity loss is not yet a regular part of risk management, as climate change has become. There is still work to do to raise awareness of the economic impact of biodiversity loss, and then to manage and reverse this impact. “Towards Conservation and Recovery of Victoria’s Biodiversity” provides recommendations and practical actions to assist us all.
Unnecessary overtreatment costs Australia $30 billion per annum. Only 60% of diagnostics and treatments are effective, while 30% is of no or little value and 10% can be harmful. So while medical care undoubtedly provides many benefits to many people, sometimes treatments can be ineffective and sometimes even downright harmful. We could save more than 8,000 kilotons of carbon emissions by scrapping low value care that does not demonstrate any benefit.
‘Trees are the architects of the modern world,’ says Dr Ashleigh Hood. At the end of the Devonian period, forests emerged and spread, providing a great source of oxygen via photosynthesis. So while many consider the emergence of animals to be the principal driver of contemporary life, Ashleigh’s work suggests the atmospheric oxygen provided by terrestrial plants has been foundational to the emergence of Earth’s modern biosphere.
