For Clara Ma, who won the naming contest for Curiosity, the NASA rover currently exploring the Red Planet, the experience rocked her world.
"I was really, really shy as a kid," Ma explained. "I didn't think my voice was important. But after winning the naming contest, there was a lot of attention on me - unlike anything I'd ever known. My life would not be the same if I hadn't spoken up to articulate my thoughts."
"The experience of naming the rover and everything that came with it changed my life," Ma said recently. One key part of the experience was getting to speak with so many NASA scientists and engineers of different backgrounds; several of them became longtime mentors.
"It was so inspiring to meet people who were asking questions about the world and the universe for a living," she said. "It made me realize that was something I could do with my life: I could be a scientist, too."
Where is she now?
Ma graduated earlier this year with a degree in geophysics from Yale University. Her coursework and research focused in particular on how Earth's atmosphere, oceans and climate interact with one another. She is completing a master's degree in science, technology and environmental policy at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
"Thinking about sending a robot to another planet made me realize how special and fragile life is on Earth," she said. "Space is incredibly vast. There are trillions and trillions of planets out there. And yet we're still the only place that we know of where life exists. I realized that studying the Earth was the most important thing I could do."
Winning the naming contest also gave her the confidence to tackle broad questions and reach beyond the world she knew.
https://blog.creaders.net/u/8994
/201509/235853.html
话得从1974年11月24日美法两国考古学家组队在埃塞
俄比亚发现的320万岁的、据说所有所有人类的第一位
祖母 Lucy 露西的40%的骨骼化石说起，
Obama meets Lucy, " The grandmother of all humanity," during his
Ethiopia visit
Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old member of Australopithecus afarensis, is
the most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor ever
discovered.
The US president even touched a vertebra from Lucy’s torso after being
encouraged by Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, senior curator of
anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. （ Mon. July 27,
2015)
Neanderthal man （左一为尼安德特人是现代欧洲人
祖先的近亲，从12万年前开始，他们统治着整个欧
洲、亚洲西部以及非洲北部，但在两万四千年前，这
些古人类却消失了。）recreated as 3D models for
the BBC's latest show, which airs every night this
