Thirteen-year-old Noah Shaw loves planets and has perfect pitch. He wants to be a scientist like his father Bryan Shaw, a biochemist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. But Noah’s path to science may not be as smooth as it was for the elder Shaw.
as an infant (SN: 1/5/85), Noah now has only one eye and permanent blind spots in his vision. People with one eye, like Noah, and people who have blindness or limited vision, are underrepresented in science and face barriers in STEM education. “Most of the stunning imagery in science is inaccessible to people who are blind,” Bryan Shaw says. That makes him wistful because renderings of proteins hooked him on science.
In an effort to help make science more inclusive, Shaw and his colleagues have come up with bite-sized molecule models that take advantage of the mouth’s supersensitive touch sensors, which can perceive finer details than our fingertips can.
Both can be popped in the mouth for investigation. Once the researchers attached lanyards to the nonedible models to prevent choking, the team tested how well 281 college students and 31 grade schoolers could tell edible or nonedible models apart while blindfolded.
Each student examined one protein model either by mouth or by hand. For every additional protein model that the students assessed, they had to determine whether the protein was the same as the first or different. A separate group of 84 college students did the test by eyesight with 3-D computer images of proteins instead of models.
as an infant (SN: 1/5/85), Noah now has only one eye and permanent blind spots in his vision. People with one eye, like Noah, and people who have blindness or limited vision, are underrepresented in science and face barriers in STEM education. “Most of the stunning imagery in science is inaccessible to people who are blind,” Bryan Shaw says. That makes him wistful because renderings of proteins hooked him on science.
In an effort to help make science more inclusive, Shaw and his colleagues have come up with bite-sized molecule models that take advantage of the mouth’s supersensitive touch sensors, which can perceive finer details than our fingertips can.
Both can be popped in the mouth for investigation. Once the researchers attached lanyards to the nonedible models to prevent choking, the team tested how well 281 college students and 31 grade schoolers could tell edible or nonedible models apart while blindfolded.
Each student examined one protein model either by mouth or by hand. For every additional protein model that the students assessed, they had to determine whether the protein was the same as the first or different. A separate group of 84 college students did the test by eyesight with 3-D computer images of proteins instead of models.
