There has been great growth in women's participation in the US academic doctoral workforce, but underrepresentation remains in all science and engineering fields, especially at high academic ranks. We obtained estimates of the numbers of professorial women and men in fields likely to seek funding from the National Science Foundation and aligned those numbers with each of six research directorates to investigate temporal trends in submission patterns. We found that women are as likely to be funded as men, but the percentage of women submitting proposals was less than expected in every field but engineering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCephalopods are a diverse group of marine molluscs that have proven their worth in a vast array of ways, ranging from their importance within ecological settings and increasing commercial value, to their recent use as model organisms in biological research. However, despite their acknowledged importance, our understanding of basic cephalopod biology does not equate their ecological, societal, and scientific significance. Among these undeveloped research areas, cephalopod immunology stands out because it encompasses a wide variety of scientific fields including many within the biological and chemical sciences, and because of its potential biomedical and commercial relevance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the mutualistic relationship between the squid Euprymna tasmanica and the bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri, several host factors, including immune-related proteins, are known to interact and respond specifically and exclusively to the presence of the symbiont. In squid and octopus, the white body is considered to be an immune organ mainly due to the fact that blood cells, or hemocytes, are known to be present in high numbers and in different developmental stages. Hence, the white body has been described as the site of hematopoiesis in cephalopods.
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