WiE-UC January Newsletter

ISSUE

20

January 2022

WIE - UC NEWSLETTER IEEE Student Branch of the UC Women in Engineering Affinity Group

WHAT'S INSIDE: Opinion Article on Little Women - P. 1

Biography of Grace Hopper - P. 2

Achievement of Adna Bliek - P.3

Curiosity - P.4

Recipes with WiE P.4

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

Opinion Article LITTLE WOMEN Imagine yourself living in a time where the responsibility to feed your family is yours, and your only chance to succeed is through marriage. Well, that’s the scenario of Little Women, a romance novel written by Louisa May Alcott which just so happened to gain another adaptation, directed by Greta Gerwig. The film, available on Netflix and highly recommended, was nominated for an Oscar in six different categories.

Despite the title, Little Women is a novel that tells the story of four women, of which little have they in nothing but the name.

With a civil war setting, the story talks about the author’s and her three sister’s lives, and the parallels between the novel and real life are quite stark.

Because of the time during which it was written, Little Women puts forth a lot of chauvinistic problems, like mandatory marriage and the difficulties of women’s financial independence during the middle of the 19th century. The newest adaptation provides us with impossible love stories, an awesome script, exquisite costumes, and strong women: a perfect combination to warm our hearts and bring tears to the eyes of the audience, that, for a little over two hours, can travel and observe the hard and calm feminine lives of women from more than 150 years ago.

With a huge cast, Little Women is the fourth adaptation of Alcott’s novel, and does not disappoint: from Millennials to Generation Z, everybody can finds a piece of themselves in the characters, whether it be in Jo’s rebellion, Beth’s innocence, Any’s astuteness or Meg’s benevolence. This, after all, couldn’t be any different, since the great Simone Beauvoir once said that she inspired herself on Jo, the main character, when wondering what to be in the future: “we had the same aversion to sewing and domestic works, and the same love for books”. This co-work, as we know, surely worked… #thanksAlcott.

SOURCE: AMAZON.COM

Just like Beauvoir, Petti Smith also declared a special space in her heart that belongs to Little Women. The singer and writer said that it was like seeing herself in the mirror, when looking at Jo’s revolutionary mind, and also admitted that Alcott’s creation was her inspiration to start writing.

Gerwig’s version has one more gift for the audience: the end of the story, which is unprecedented and is loyal to Alcott’s idea.

The author’s point of view mixes with the movie itself and makes the audience wonder how it really ends, leading them to read the book - such a master trick.

Full of verve and imagination, Little Women is such a mandatory movie for those who “want to be great or nothing”, just like Any Marsh once said.

“I’ve had lots of troubles, so I write jolly tales.”

– Louisa May Alcott.

Maria Andrade PAGE 1

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

Biography GRACE HOPPER Grace Hopper, in full name, Grace Murray Hopper, was an American computer scientist and a rear admiral in the United States Navy.

She was born on December 9, 1906 in New York. Even as a child, Grace was always very curious. An example of that is the fact that, with only seven years, she decided to dismantle seven alarm clocks in order to determine how they worked.

Hopper attended the Hartridge School in New Jersey for her preparatory school education, and then went on to Vassar College in New York. In 1928, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar with a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics, and in 1930 earned her master’s degree at Yale University. In 1934, Grace Hopper earned her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale, being the first woman to do so.

In 1930, Grace married Vincent Foster (a New York University professor), a marriage that lasted until 1945 when they divorced.

Hopper was a mathematics teacher at Vassar for 12 years (1931-1943) until she obtained a leave of absence and joined the Naval Reserve in 1943. There, she became lieutenant and was assigned to the Bureau of Ordinance’s Computation Project at Harvard University, where she worked on the first large-scale automatic calculator and a precursor of electronic computers named Mark I. In 1946, she wrote the first computer manual, A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator which described how to operate Mark I, becoming the first extensive treatment of how to program a computer. After that, Grace turned down a full professorship at Vassar, and remained at Harvard working as a research fellow under a Navy contract. She was the one that coined the term bug to vfgtrthhthhrh

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA.COM

refer to unexplained computer failures (when a moth infiltrated the circuits of Mark I).

In 1949, Grace Hopper became an employee of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp., where she designed one of the first compilers, which translated high-level language into machine-language, coining the word compiler. She worked on the design of UNIVAC I as a head programmer and remained with the firm when it was taken over twice by different people.

In 1957, her division developed Flow-Matic, the first English-language data processing compiler, a language whose features inspired the development of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language). It was her strong advocacy of COBOL and her development of its compilers that led to the widespread adoption of the language in the 60s.

PAGE 2

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

In 1966 she retired from the navy as a commander, but a year later, she was called back to active duty in order to help standardize the navy’s computer languages.

She was promoted to commodore in 1983, and that rank was incorporated into that of rear admiral in 1985. At the age of 79, she was the oldest officer on active U.S. naval duty when she retired again in 1986.

Hopper was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 1962 and was named the first computer science Man of the Year by the Data Processing Management Association (1969).

She was also awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1991, becoming the first woman recipient of that honor.

Grace Hopper died on January 1st, 1992 at the age of 85. In addition to her programming accomplishments, Hopper's legacy includes encouraging young people to learn how to program. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing Conference is a technical conference that encourages women to become part of the world of computing, while the Association for Computing Machinery offers a Grace Murray Hopper Award. Additionally, on her birthday in 2013, Hopper was remembered with a "Google Doodle."

She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 by Barack Obama.

Sofia Diogo

Achievement ADNA BLIEK

Adna Bliek received her Bachelor's degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2018 and her Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence majoring in Robotics at the University of Groningen in 2020. She also had a position as a Teaching Assistant at the very same institute from which she received her master’s degree and after that at Umeå University.

Adna was a Doctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund up to January 2021 and is one at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg since February of this year in the field of Human-Robot Interaction and Cognitive Modeling.

Bliek received the Women’s STEM Award by Deutsche Telekom in the field of Artificial Intelligence for her Master’s Thesis “Backchanneling in Human-Robot Interaction”. In her thesis, she investigated how the robot’s behaviour as a speaker SOURCE: EEI.TF.FAU.DE influences the backchanneling behaviour of a human

klçklç listener.

The study explores how backchanneling can be triggered and reinforced in human-AI interactions.

Mariana Almeida PAGE 3

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

Curiosity of the month...

If you were asked to name an essential kitchen appliance, what would first come to mind? Your electric whisk, the microwave, the oven? Or perhaps you might think straight away of your fridge: a staple to any kitchen, a vital part of any home, and a method of conservation we may even sometimes take for granted. But have you ever thought about just who invented it?

Florence Parpart, born in Hoboken, New Jersey, was listed as a housewife in the United States census for most of her life. Very little is known of Parpart, but it was thanks to her ingenuity that the electric refrigerator exists! Parpart was also an experienced entrepreneur, attending multiple trade shows, developing her own advertising campaigns, and managing product operations.

SOURCE: STREETSWEEPER.COM

If this wasn’t enough, she also improved upon earlier models of the street sweeper, and within two years of receiving her patent, she had gotten numerous offers to manufacture her design all across the US! So, next time you go to the fridge for a late night snack, you know who to thank for its convenience!

Sarah Holm

Recipes with WiE: QUEIJADINHAS DE LISBOA There’s no better way to start the new year than with something sweet. It may not have raisins, but you’ve already had those at midnight! This is quite a simple recipe, but it’ll indulge all your sweet desires (and probably ruin a couple of your new year resolutions) …

PAGE 4

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

INGREDIENTS 400g of sugar 2 eggs 100g of flour 0,5L of milk 50g of butter Cinnamon to sprinkle

INSTRUCTIONS 1. Whisk together the sugar and the eggs until mixture has lightened in color.

2. In a different bowl, melt the butter and mix in the flour and the milk.

3. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, whisking well.

4. Grease a muffin tin with butter and sprinkle with flour, then fill with the batter and bake at high heat until golden brown.

5. Serve them hot and sprinkled with cinnamon!

Mariana Almeida

F O L L O W

S T A Y

O U R

T U N E D

A N D

S O C I A L

T O

O U R

M E D I A

T O

E V E N T S

P O S T S !

PAGE 5

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022

Solution

PAGE 6

HAPPY NEW YEAR See You Next Month!

ISSUE NO. 20 | JANUARY 2022