General Interest Writing
Scientists contain multitudes!
Here are links to some writing by Dr. Baran for general interest publications on totally non-science or only science-adjacent topics
Josephine Ball, Barnard College Yearbook, 1922.
Josephine Ball (biography)
In Biographical History of Behavioral Neuroendocrinology
By O. Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández, Jennifer A. Liu, and Nicole M. Baran
Abstract: Josephine Ball (1898–1977) was an American comparative psychologist, endocrinologist, and clinical psychologist. She was a pioneer in the study of reproductive behavior and neuroendocrinology (1920s–1940s). Her research on the role of steroid hormones and reproductive behavior was contemporaneous with that of the founders of the feld of behavioral neuroendocrinology, W.C. Young and Frank A. Beach. Ball’s first paper describes the earliest investigation of the role of steroid hormones on learning. Her meticulous studies on hormones and reproductive behavior in rats and macaques provided foundational contributions to the field. Notably, her work in the early 1930s touched on the organizational and activational roles of steroid hormones, predating, by more than two decades, the influential work led by Young on this topic. Struggling to find steady funding for her research in the 1940s, she transitioned to a career in clinical psychology and retired in 1967.
Lindy Hopping in Atlanta, Georgia. Probably a United Service Organization (USO) dance, 1943. Photo courtesy of Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.
Jitterbugging with Jim Crow
By Nicole M. Baran (The Bitter Southerner)
In the South of 90 years ago, young African Americans started dancing the Lindy Hop. It was an act of resistance, an assertion of freedom against the discrimination and violence of Jim Crow. Today, swing dancers across the South — black and white together — pay proper tribute to that legacy.
An alligator swims away in Okefenokee Swamp, March 2018
Photo credit: Nicole M. Baran
A precious wetland is under threat. We can save it.
By Nastassia V. Patin & Nicole M. Baran (Medium)
Every year, half a million people visit the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge near the Florida-Georgia border to paddle through the peaceful waterways. The 438-acre federally protected swamp is home to more than 200 varieties of birds and 60 kinds of reptiles. Alligators cruise through the water and lounge on the banks for canoers to safely observe. Several threatened species like the gopher tortoise and eastern indigo snake call the refuge home. …
Photo credit: Natalie Behring Getty Images
Abortion bans based on so-called “science” are fraudulent
Our silence in the face of new anti-choice laws across the U.S. is deafening
By Nicole M. Baran, Jane Zelikova, & Gretchen Goldman (Scientific American)
We are scientists, and we believe that evidence, not ideology, should inform health care decisions. The wave of anti-abortion laws across the U.S. is the latest in a long string of attempts to falsely use the language and authority of science to justify denying people their basic human rights and inflict lasting harm. Although abortion is still legal in every state, recent legislation in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio threatens the future of abortion rights in the country. Scientists should, first and foremost, value evidence, and the evidence is clear: abortion bans cause harm. They make abortions less safe and especially harm historically marginalized communities. …
EGALITARIANS: The psychologist and feminist Daniel Lehrman chose to study the ring dove, which shares the work of raising its young equally between male and female. Photograph by Yathin S Krishnappa / Wikicommons
How women came to dominate neuroendocrinology
A scientific field founded by men is now mostly female.
By Nicole M. Baran (Nautilus)
When Kathleen Morrison stepped onto the stage to present her research on the effects of stress on the brains of mothers and infants, she was nearly seven and a half months pregnant. The convergence was not lost on Morrison, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, nor on her audience. If there ever was a group of scientists that would be both interested in her findings and unfazed by her late-stage pregnancy, it was this one. Nearly 90 percent were women. …