Separation of Church and State

These days people often say the world is going mad!  With all the wars political debates and endless disagreements I often had this idea:  At times like this we need better leaders!  We need some spiritual guidance of what is right and wrong in this world.  We need inspiration.  It cannot be always about money and power!
Coming from science I'd like to bring a simple illustration of the Bell Curve.  This is the universal statistics of how all options spread.

Now let's us talk about intelligence.  The IQ test examines the intelligence of people.  The results are defined such that IQ of 100 is the average.  If you check the bell curve in the graph below, you can see that most people have an IQ between 85 and 115.  The smartest are the 2% on the right side, and the most unintelligent are the 2% on the left.
 

 

In the simplest terms this means that half the people are smarter than the rest.  The other half are not as smart.  So in general the smarter people have a better chance to succeed in life, get a degree, accumulate wealth and so on.  The other half naturally will not have the same chances.  They maybe trash collectors or menial laborers.
For a rational mind it is obvious that the fortunate smarter people have an inherent responsibility to look after the less fortunate ones.  This idea of the greater good is very basic.  We all benefit when others do well. 

All this rational reasoning hardly works in the world of politics today.  Rich powerful people get richer and control politicians.  In the US we have Citizens United which allows corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns.  The oil rich Arab countries keep funding Muslim organizations around the world.  The largest refugee crisis in the world brings a stream of refugees to the shores of Europe every day.  And there is no end in sight.
We believe in the principle of separation of Church and State, so no one expects any religious leader to rise and preach for goodness.  I kept wondering when will such a leader show up?
And then Pope Francis came to visit and gave a speech to congress.  He said what needs to be said: We should respect each other’s traditions.  We should remember the Golden Rule.  Most important: we should protect the sick and the weak.  Homelessness is our communal failure.  We should protect our earth, our common home.  

I wonder how well we can keep this idea of separating religion from politics.  We can all doubt the existence of God (what god?Jesus?  Allah?)  We can all doubt the legends and superstitions attached to the various religions.  But as history unfolds we can see various leaders arise to guide the human connection: Sometimes it is a military commander, sometimes a philosopher or the Dalai Lama.  This time is it a catholic Pope?

Teaching Math to Girls and Women in Science

Do
boys and girls have different skills and ability to excel in mathematics? 
Most people will intuitively think that boys do better in math than girls.

I
heard an interesting review on NPR describing a study where they had math tests
checked by two sets of teachers.  The first set knew who wrote the test,
and the second set of teachers had no such knowledge so they had no idea if the
test was taken by a boy or a girl.  The surprising result was that the
teachers who did not know who took the test gave the girls a higher
score!!  This means that the first set of teachers had no expectation that
the girls can do well in math and therefore gave them a lower score regardless
of the answer.  Another study came to the
same conclusion:  Gender math gap is cultural not biological:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45646131/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/gender-math-gap-cultural-not-biological/#.VejYUXlRHrc

This
is not surprising to me, although as a very shy girl I did excel in math. To
this day I believe that understanding math is essential to any scientific field
and ultimately mathematics holds the answers to all the basic questions of our
existence.  But when I try to convey this to people, I mostly get utter
disinterest. I do not detect any excitement in people about knowledge, or
appreciation of deeper understanding of the biological and physical world
around us and even more so among women.  No wonder that with no
expectations, girls would not even try to grasp any basic concepts of math and
sciences. I find this very regretful.

Thinking
about women in science today, we have to remember that there were practically
no women scientists until the twentieth century. It is only in the past hundred
years that women began to have some equality with men.  We have only just begun to face the
intellectual and physical challenges of this equality.  

These
are some stories I heard from senior career women I was fortunate to work
with.  The late Doctor Jo Anne Brasel, a pediatrician at LABiomed had many
stories of her days at medical school as the only woman in the whole
school.  She had to be strong and persistent in addition to being
intelligent and clever.

Professor Joan Valentine from the chemistry department in UCLA was the first
female chemistry PhD in her class and the first female UCLA professor in
chemistry.

Most these women scientists came from a family of scientists.   
They had a father or brothers who were doctors or chemists.

One
of my favorite pioneer woman scientist is Marie Curie.  Check out all her firsts:

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a Polish and naturalized- French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel
Prize, the first person and only
woman to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences, and was part of the
Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in
the Panthéon in Paris.

Check
my post on Intellectual curiosity and women:

The young women doctors I know are amazing people.  They are caring hard
working and very sensitive to their patients.

All I have accomplished in my life was due to my education.  I was encouraged to study despite my background where there were no academics in the family.

I
would like to see a world where young girls everywhere are encouraged to pursue
any knowledge that they imagine they would like to have.  I believe with the advances of computers and
the internet all areas of knowledge will be available to all who want to learn.
Boys and girls anywhere around the world.