Celebrating Women in Science

More decades ago than I care to remember I was teaching a course on the various uses of plants throughout history, and thought I’d liven things up with a class about beer. I informed the students that it was easy to tell the difference between a traditional English ale and urinaceous American “beer” by doing a delta-13C assay. This would prove that the good stuff (English) is made with malted barley (a C3 photosynthetic species) while the abomination (American) is merely fermented Aunt Jemima’s corn syrup (maize being a C4-photosynthetic species). C3s and C4s have different primary carboxylase enzymes that discriminate differently between 12CO2 and 13CO2, resulting in their tissues having different 12C/13C ratios (you can test this at home with your mass spec). Of course, an easier way to distinguish the two brews is to put them in your mouth, so I arranged an 8:30 a.m. beer-tasting at the morning class, which, oddly, was well attended by males. On asking a likely lad of his first taste impression while downing a beautifully complex English IPA, he responded “Toothpaste!”

And what has this to do with women in Science? Well, in a less enlightened era the name of the course (not chosen by me!) was PLANTS AND MAN.

As an apology, and to recognise International Women’s Day on March 8th, this newsletter highlights the research of some of the many women scientists who use Qubit equipment. At the end of the newsletter, there’s an offer for anyone who can name the women pictured above and state their main contribution to their scientific fields.

Dr. Steve Hunt. President and CEO, Qubit Systems Inc.

Marina is a PhD student at the Universidad de La Laguna of the Canary Islands where she explores the future of oceans, focusing on intertidal marine organisms’ potential adaptation to climate change across natural gradients (temperature and acidification). Additionally, she is involved in assessing fishing and shellfish resources in the Canary Islands. Her most recent publication investigated the response of the fissiparous starfish Coscinasterias tenuispina to acute temperature increases (from 20 to 28°C). The results of the study contribute to the understanding of how genetic diversity influences the responses of this species to environmental stressors, providing valuable information for marine conservation efforts.

Marina used Qubit Systems’ Q-Box Aqua intermittent-flow respirometry package in her study. For more on this click HERE.

ALIENDE-HERNÁNDEZ, Marina, et al. “Metabolic response of the starfish Coscinasterias tenuispina (Lamarck, 1816) to Ocean Warming.” Cah. Biol. Mar 65 (2024): 333-341

Since the beginning of her career, Dr. Violette Chiara has focused on social ontogenesis, collective behaviors, and the influence of social context on individual behaviors, focusing mainly on spiders and fish. She has worked at the University of Toulouse, the University of Vigo, the University of Lund and the University of Cambridge. In 2023, she was granted a Sonata project from the National Science Center of Poland, and is currently working in the Museum and Institute of Zoology (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland) where she studies the ontogenic and evolutionary changes of social behavior in spiders, with the aim of improving our understanding of the evolutionary processes leading to sociality. Violette has been pushing Qubit’s multichannel insect respirometry system to its detection limits, and we have been excited to work with her in the design of a system for high-resolution closed-circuit metabolic measurements of tiny spiderlings. For more on Qubit’s low range respirometry systems click HERE.

Violette is also the developer of AnimalTA, which provides researchers with a free, easily accessible and user-friendly video tracking software. Learn more bout AnimalTA HERE.

Dr. Pezalli is an Assistant Professor and serves as the Director of the Pet Food Program at Kansas State University, where she contributes to teaching and research related to pet food processing technologies, and companion animal nutrition and metabolism. The overall goal of her research program is to employ both basic and applied approaches to explore new ingredients, processing techniques, and dietary strategies to assist the industry in developing sustainable products that target and promote the overall health and well-being of companion animals. For her current and future research she has acquired a customised multichannel respirometry system for large animals, with chambers and analysers designed and built by Qubit Systems. For more on our standard and customised systems for large animal respirometry (pigs, cattle and sealions included) click HERE.

For Dr. Pezalli’s impressive publication record click HERE

Dr. Albert Loren is an assistant professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University, who along with her research group is tackling two international projects. The first, funded by NSF, focuses on the ecohydrology of Amazon forests. The other, funded by NASA, aims to advance scientists’ ability to estimate flows of carbon between forests and the atmosphere from space using remote sensing. As part of her future research, Loren will be using a FLOX Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence system mounted on a tower overlooking a pine forest canopy. The upward and downward channels of the FLOX allow measurement of solar irradiance and the radiance reflected .from the canopy, providing critical data on photosynthetic activity. The FLOX system is manufactured by JB Hyperspectral of Dusseldorf for whom Qubit Systems is the proud distributor throughout the Americas. For details on the FLOX click HERE.

To learn more about Loren’s research click HERE, and to see her publication list click HERE

Dr. Alina Szmant is a retired professor formerly at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Coral Reef Research Group and Nutrient Laboratory whose work focused on different aspects of coral physiology, coral reef ecology and effects of climate change on reef corals. Together with Dr. Robert Whitehead from the Center for Marine Science at UNCW, Alina pioneered the development of CISME (Community In Situ MEtabolism), a unique diver-deployed system for non-invasive monitoring of coral photosynthesis, respiration and (de)calcification. Qubit Systems has further developed CISME, which is being used to monitor coral health by marine biologists throughout the world. For more on CISME, and to see a video of CISME in action, click HERE.

Alina is also one of the 1970s Forgotten NASA Aquanauts, a group of women who, as a proxy for living in space, spent 14 days living and working in a submerged laboratory known as Tektite. The women spent more hours in the water doing science than any male groups participating in such studies, and had reportedly less issues with confinement. For more on this remarkable story click HERE. Thanks Alina (and Rob) for your past and current collaborations.

Who are the women pictured in the opening image, and what are their main contributions to science? Please email info@qubitsystems.com with your answers.  For those with a perfect score, Qubit offers a 20% discount on all products except those having a product code starting with the letter Z

American College of Sports Medicine Atlanta, GA May 27-30

Society for Experimental Biology, Antwerp, Belgium, July8-11

Plant Biology 2025 Milwaukee, WI  July 26-30