Link Round-up 29th September 2014

Happy Monday everyone! Here's this week's link round-up:

1. Sexism in Space.
   Ok so I've gone for a slightly sensationalist title here. On the positive side Yelena Serova is the first Russian woman on the International Space Station! On the negative side at the pre-launch press conference Yelena was asked about make-up, her hair and if her daughter would miss her. Well done to the press for continuing to be the problem and not the solution.
2. The heart of the milky way smells like rum.
   Yes that's right, the alcoholic drink! Thanks to radio astronomy it's been discovered that a dust cloud close to the centre of the Milky Way contains molecules of ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their taste and rum its smell. However, the similarities to more earthly rum don't end there. The same dust cloud also contains billions of litres of alcohol! Unfortunately we won't be partying there any time soon as the gas cloud is around 27,000 light years away.
3. 
   
   Too few fellowships of the Royal Society for female researchers.
   On 19th September the Royal Society announced who would be recipients of this year's University Research Fellowships. Unfortunately out of  the 43 awards made only 2 were made to women. Now, could this be due to around only 5% of the applicants being female? No, in fact 19% of applications were from women, which isn't great, but that's almost 1 in 5. On top of this, looking at previous years the percentage of awards that were made to women was more comparable to the percentage of women applying in the first place. In the article above Professor Athene Donald discusses the figures, issues and what could be done to improve things in the future.

And finally... The piano guys are back with a medley of Batman music! 

Currently Reading The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks. The same book as last time because its 816 pages long!
Currently Watching Psycho Pass. In the near future people are constantly psychologically screened to assess their mental health with the aim of catching those with a 'criminal mindset' before they can ever harm society. Psycho Pass follows investigations of the Public Safety Bureau as they try catch both active and latent criminals. Spoiler alert, it's pretty awesome.