Summer Research Fellowship Project Descriptions 2022

A summary of research done by Smith College’s 2021 Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. Supervised by faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center and connected to its eighteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/clark_womeninscience/1012/thumbnail.jp

Women in Science 2012

The summer of 2012 saw the number of students seeking summer research experiences with a faculty mentor reaching record levels. In total, 179 students participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF) program, involving 59 faculty mentor-advisors, representing all of the Clark Science Center’s fourteen departments and programs.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/clark_womeninscience/1011/thumbnail.jp

Carrier Seeds: A Cultural Analysis of Care and Conflict in Four Seed Banking Practices

Seed banking has become a hopeful technology of ex situ conservation in the face of devastating biodiversity loss. Through storing seeds in liminal, often frozen, states, seed banks create valuable living archives. This thesis analyses four such seed banking practices ranging from iconic global seed vaults in the Norwegian Arctic (the Svalbard Global Seed Vault) and the UK (the Millennium Seed Bank) to the Kostrzyca Forest Gene Bank in Poland and the food sovereignty seed bank of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Palestine. It asks: what are these practices saving (for)? But also: what escapes them? What is threatened in the current era of the Anthropocene is not just the genetic diversity preserved in seed banks but the cultural, epistemic, and relational diversities of humanvegetal ecologies. On this basis this research uses an interdisciplinary approach grounded in cultural studies and interwoven with perspectives from conservation and plant science, multispecies ethnography, and the environmental humanities more broadly. Methodologically it follows patterns of collection, containment, and cultivation through three carrier seeds as analytical and narrative devices: a black bean, a banana wild relative, and an endangered white cucumber. Conversing in particular with decolonial and postcolonial theory and feminist Science and Technology studies, the thesis observes shifting, sometimes conflicting, understandings of mastery, vulnerability, and sovereignty. It argues that these concepts are produced in practice, in relation to national imaginaries of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. These seed banks do not simply preserve seeds but through their care actively shape life across the scales of genetic data to the (agro)ecologies seeds exit from and enter into. This thesis suggests that while similar technologies of conservation are shared across practices, their ecological imaginaries differ vastly in their politics, cultures, and ethics of saving

Women in the History of Science

Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research. Arranged by time period, covering 1200 BCE to the twenty-first century, and across 12 inclusive and far-reaching themes, this book is an invaluable companion to students and lecturers alike in exploring women’s history in the fields of science, technology, mathematics, medicine and culture. While women are too often excluded from traditional narratives of the history of science, this book centres on the voices and experiences of women across a range of domains of knowledge. By questioning our understanding of what science is, where it happens, and who produces scientific knowledge, this book is an aid to liberating the curriculum within schools and universities

Summer Research Fellowship Project Descriptions 2018

A summary of research done by Smith College’s 2018 Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. Supervised by faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center and connected to its eighteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/clark_womeninscience/1007/thumbnail.jp

Plant Biodiversity and Genetic Resources

The papers included in this Special Issue address a variety of important aspects of plant biodiversity and genetic resources, including definitions, descriptions, and illustrations of different components and their value for food and nutrition security, breeding, and environmental services. Furthermore, comprehensive information is provided regarding conservation approaches and techniques for plant genetic resources, policy aspects, and results of biological, genetic, morphological, economic, social, and breeding-related research activities. The complexity and vulnerability of (plant) biodiversity and its inherent genetic resources, as an integral part of the contextual ecosystem and the human web of life, are clearly demonstrated in this Special Issue, and for several encountered problems and constraints, possible approaches or solutions are presented to overcome these

Women in Science 2013

“Women in Science” summarizes research done by Smith College’s Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) Program participants. Ever since its 1967 start, SURF has been a cornerstone of Smith’s science education. In 2013, 167 students participated in SURF, supervised by 57 faculty mentor-advisors drawn from the Clark Science Center’s fourteen science, mathematics, and engineering departments and programs, and associated centers and units. At summer’s end, SURF participants were asked to summarize their research experiences for this publication.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/clark_womeninscience/1000/thumbnail.jp

Discretization reaction-diffusion models with finite difference method

Discretization model is a continuous model transformation procedure to model discrete. Discretization is done using advanced finite difference method, by analogy differential equations using limit rules, with different equations using the different between discrete time points. The model used in this paper is a model of reaction-diffusion (Turing) that represents the diffusion of fluid in the cells that cause the cells to move. Finite difference method is a numerical method that can be used to solve partial differential equations. Methods used explicit finite difference scheme developed for the time difference and central difference for the space to complete the reactiondiffusion equation (Turing). Based on the numerical solution obtained then the amount of domain growth does not affect the stability of reaction-diffusion models (Turing)