Swarming robots could be the servants of the future

Mar. 28, 2013 ? Swarms of robots acting together to carry out jobs could provide new opportunities for humans to harness the power of machines.

Researchers in the Sheffield Centre for Robotics, jointly established by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, have been working to program a group of 40 robots, and say the ability to control robot swarms could prove hugely beneficial in a range of contexts, from military to medical.

The researchers have demonstrated that the swarm can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks, by grouping around an object and working together to push it across a surface.

The robots can also group themselves together into a single cluster after being scattered across a room, and organize themselves by order of priority.

Dr Roderich Gross, head of the Natural Robotics Lab, in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, says swarming robots could have important roles to play in the future of micromedicine, as 'nanobots' are developed for non-invasive treatment of humans. On a larger scale, they could play a part in military, or search and rescue operations, acting together in areas where it would be too dangerous or impractical for humans to go. In industry too, robot swarms could be put to use, improving manufacturing processes and workplace safety.

The programming that the University of Sheffield team has developed to control the robots is deceptively simple. For example, if the robots are being asked to group together, each robot only needs to be able to work out if there is another robot in front of it. If there is, it turns on the spot; if there isn't, it moves in a wider circle until it finds one.

Dr Gross said: "We are developing Artificial Intelligence to control robots in a variety of ways. The key is to work out what is the minimum amount of information needed by the robot to accomplish its task. That's important because it means the robot may not need any memory, and possibly not even a processing unit, so this technology could work for nanoscale robots, for example in medical applications."

This research is funded by a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. Additional support has been provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e12RicAy1Q

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/t0u6bm1TWas/130328125325.htm

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The Telegraph erects paywall for UK readers

The Telegraph has had a paywall in place for international readers since November, and now its spreading the subscription model to folks in the UK. Despite the slow rollout, the price tiers are staying the same: £1.99 a month nets unlimited access to the newspaper's website and mobile apps, while £9.99 per month grants the same perks, plus use of its tablet editions. Each subscription comes with a free trial before you're charged, but you could keep your wallet shut and skate by on 20 free articles every month. If you're already subscribed to the dead tree version of the publication, however, you'll be able to reap the benefits of its digital incarnations without spending any extra pennies pence.

[Image credit: Pleasance, Flickr]

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Source: The Telegraph

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/28/the-telegraph-uk-subscriptions/

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PFT: Raiders to cut ties with DT Kelly

Getty Images

The 2011 labor agreement included an important provision:? HGH testing is coming to the NFL.? Nearly 20 months later, HGH testing is no closer than it was before the agreement was signed.

The latest evidence comes from the case of Andrus Veerpalu, an Estonian skier whose three-year suspension was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.? Naturally, the NFL and the NFLPA disagree as to the meaning of the ruling, and the incident has caused Albert Breer of NFL Network to learn that the two sides have scrapped an agreement to conduct a so-called ?population study? aimed at gauging the permissible natural levels of HGH in football players.

The details don?t matter, because neither the NFL nor Congress is willing to do anything more than huff and puff about the union?s refusal to honor the agreement to submit to HGH testing.? As a result, the perception is that neither the NFLPA nor the NFL truly want HGH testing.

Since the day the NFL banned the use of HGH, the prohibition has been enforced via the honor system.? The problem with the honor system? ? It works roughly as well as the rhythm method.? So with no way to test for HGH, players will get caught only if a vial of HGH falls out of their letterman jackets, or if the player?s name pops up in the records of an HGH supplier the government is prosecuting.

Surely, the NFL and the NFLPA realize that, if/when HGH testing begins, plenty of players will be caught.? Which will reduce the supply of healthy players.? In turn, players who quit using HGH will not recover as quickly from injuries, likewise reducing the supply of healthy players.

And it won?t be good for the game if players are busted for using HGH, even though most fans presume that they?re using something to get big, to stay big, and/or to rebound from big hits applied by other big men.

If the NFL truly wanted to force the issue on HGH testing, wouldn?t the league unleash the legal hounds and push the issue in court or via an arbitration?? The players already have agreed to submit to testing, and the NFL has more than enough ammunition to argue that the NFLPA deliberately is dragging its feet.? The idea that the NFL doesn?t want to force players to the needle by court order only goes so far.? At some point, the NFL needs to do more than complain about the NFLPA?s refusal to proceed, or the NFLPA will continue to refuse to proceed.

Likewise, Congress has proven to be impotent on the topic, periodically issuing hollow threats but never taking action.Through it all, the delay has given those who use HGH an opportunity to find better masking agents ? or to develop the next wave of substances that work like HGH but for which testing doesn?t yet exist.

The best news for the NFL, the NFLPA, and Congress is that neither the media nor the fans seem to care that the NFL and the NFLPA have struck a deal to abandon the honor system, but that the honor system has continued to be used for two seasons, and counting.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/27/raiders-to-release-tommy-kelly/related/

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Home hot water temperatures remain a burn hazard for young and elderly

Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Natalie Wood-Wright
nwoodwri@jhsph.edu
410-614-6029
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Home hot water heater temperatures are too high, warns a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Despite the adoption of voluntary standards by manufacturers to preset hot water heater temperature settings below the recommended safety standard of 120F, temperatures remain dangerously high for a significant proportion of homes, presenting a scald hazard for young children and the elderly. The report is published in the March 2013 issue of Journal Of Burn Care Research.

In the U.S., tap water burns cause an estimated 1,500 hospital admissions and 100 deaths per year and the economic burden stemming from these burns is tremendous. According to the researchers, human exposure to hot water at 140F can lead to a serious burn within 3 seconds, and at 120F a serious burn can occur in about 10 minutes. Young children and older adults have thinner skin which burns more quickly putting them at increased risk.

"Hot water temperatures above the Consumer Product Safety Commission's recommended 120F were observed in 41 percent of homes we surveyed, including 27 percent of homes with temperatures at or above 130F. We also found renters were less likely to have safe hot water temperature than homeowners," said Wendy Shields, MPH, lead author of the study and an assistant scientist with the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "Delivering hot water at a consistent temperature is difficult. As a hot water tank is depleted, replenished and reheated, water temperature will not be constant throughout the tank. In addition, water heater thermostats are not designed to provide precise estimates of water temperatures, making it difficult for residents to assess the exact temperature."

In a community trial to improve home safety, researchers examined the temperature of hot water using a candy thermometer and recorded the characteristics of the hot water heater including the type, date of manufacture, capacity and descriptors used on the temperature gauge in 708 Baltimore city homes. Demographic data such as the household size, income and home ownership status was also documented. Researchers found that despite the fact that 99 percent of the water heaters examined in the study were purchased after the voluntary standard was implemented, hot water temperatures remained dangerously high for 4 out of 10 homes. Gas water heaters were less likely to have safe temperatures and water heaters that held fewer gallons per person were more likely to be above the recommended 120F.

"Given the limitations of reducing tap water temperature through current thermostat technology alone, other existing strategies should be prioritized," said Shields. "One potential solution is to equip faucets with anti scald devices, such as thermostatic mixer valves, anti-scald aerators or scald guards, but until engineering solutions can be implemented on a large-scale, attention must be paid to educational messages. To prevent scald burns, families should be encouraged to test hot water temperatures after adjusting gauges to insure that a safe temperature is achieved."

###

"Still too hot: Examination of water temperature and water heater characteristics 24 years after manufacturers adopt voluntary temperature setting," was written by Wendy C. Shields, Eileen McDonald, Shannon Frattaroli, Jeffrey Zhu, Elise C. Perry and Andrea C. Gielen.

This research was supported by in the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Natalie Wood-Wright
nwoodwri@jhsph.edu
410-614-6029
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Home hot water heater temperatures are too high, warns a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Despite the adoption of voluntary standards by manufacturers to preset hot water heater temperature settings below the recommended safety standard of 120F, temperatures remain dangerously high for a significant proportion of homes, presenting a scald hazard for young children and the elderly. The report is published in the March 2013 issue of Journal Of Burn Care Research.

In the U.S., tap water burns cause an estimated 1,500 hospital admissions and 100 deaths per year and the economic burden stemming from these burns is tremendous. According to the researchers, human exposure to hot water at 140F can lead to a serious burn within 3 seconds, and at 120F a serious burn can occur in about 10 minutes. Young children and older adults have thinner skin which burns more quickly putting them at increased risk.

"Hot water temperatures above the Consumer Product Safety Commission's recommended 120F were observed in 41 percent of homes we surveyed, including 27 percent of homes with temperatures at or above 130F. We also found renters were less likely to have safe hot water temperature than homeowners," said Wendy Shields, MPH, lead author of the study and an assistant scientist with the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "Delivering hot water at a consistent temperature is difficult. As a hot water tank is depleted, replenished and reheated, water temperature will not be constant throughout the tank. In addition, water heater thermostats are not designed to provide precise estimates of water temperatures, making it difficult for residents to assess the exact temperature."

In a community trial to improve home safety, researchers examined the temperature of hot water using a candy thermometer and recorded the characteristics of the hot water heater including the type, date of manufacture, capacity and descriptors used on the temperature gauge in 708 Baltimore city homes. Demographic data such as the household size, income and home ownership status was also documented. Researchers found that despite the fact that 99 percent of the water heaters examined in the study were purchased after the voluntary standard was implemented, hot water temperatures remained dangerously high for 4 out of 10 homes. Gas water heaters were less likely to have safe temperatures and water heaters that held fewer gallons per person were more likely to be above the recommended 120F.

"Given the limitations of reducing tap water temperature through current thermostat technology alone, other existing strategies should be prioritized," said Shields. "One potential solution is to equip faucets with anti scald devices, such as thermostatic mixer valves, anti-scald aerators or scald guards, but until engineering solutions can be implemented on a large-scale, attention must be paid to educational messages. To prevent scald burns, families should be encouraged to test hot water temperatures after adjusting gauges to insure that a safe temperature is achieved."

###

"Still too hot: Examination of water temperature and water heater characteristics 24 years after manufacturers adopt voluntary temperature setting," was written by Wendy C. Shields, Eileen McDonald, Shannon Frattaroli, Jeffrey Zhu, Elise C. Perry and Andrea C. Gielen.

This research was supported by in the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/jhub-hhw032813.php

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An Easter treat: Spring's first full moon

Greg Diesel Walck

The 2013 March full moon hangs bright over the Bodie Island Lighthouse in Outer Banks, N.C., in this photo from Greg Diesel Walck.

By Joe Rao
Space.com

The first full moon of the new spring season comes Wednesday night (March 27), and it plays a surprisingly important role for the upcoming Easter Sunday.

The moon officially turned full at 5:27 a.m. EDT (2:27 a.m. PDT), but your first view of the full moon at night will likely come later this evening. Traditionally, the March full moon is known as "Worm Moon," supposedly because when the ground softens, the earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the robins. But because of its association with Easter, it's also known as the Paschal Moon.?

Other lunar monikers for this month include "Crow Moon," (when the cawing of crows signals the end of winter), "Crust Moon," (because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night) and "Sap Moon," (marking the time of tapping maple trees).

Traditional names for the full moons of the year are found in some publications such as The Farmers' Almanac. We also published the full list of full moon names?here on Space.com earlier this year. The origins of these names have been traced back to Native Americans, though they may also have evolved from old England or, as Guy Ottewell, editor of the annual publication "Astronomical Calendar" suggests, "writer's fancy." [10 Suprising Moon Facts You May Not Know]

The first full moon of spring is also sometimes referred to as the Paschal Full Moon, because it is the moon used to set the date of Easter in a given year. This year, if you have not already noticed, Easter will arrive a bit on the early side, on March 31. The earliest Easter in our lifetimes came five years ago, on March 23 (the last time that Easter fell this early in the calendar was 1913, and before that, in 1856).

Which leads us to ask the question, exactly just how is the date of Easter determined?

Equinox and the full moon
Traditionally, Easter is observed on the Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon. If the Paschal Moon occurs on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday.

Following these rules, we find that Easter can fall as early as March 22 and as late as April 25 in any given year. Pope Gregory XIII decreed this in 1582 as part of the Gregorian calendar.

This year the Paschal Full Moon falls Wednesday, so according to the current ecclesiastical rules, Easter is to be celebrated four days later, on Sunday.

Interestingly however, these rules also state that the vernal equinox is fixed on March 21, even though at European longitudes from the years 2008 through 2101 it actually will occur no later than March 20.

Hence, there can sometimes be discrepancies between the ecclesiastical and astronomical rules for dating Easter. In the year 2038, for instance, the equinox falls on March 20, with a full moon the next day, so astronomically speaking, Easter should fall on March 28 of that year. In reality, however, as mandated by the rules of the Church, Easter in 2038 will be observed as late as it can possibly come, on April 25!

Adding additional confusion is that there is also an "ecclesiastical" full moon, determined from ecclesiastical tables and whose date does not necessarily coincide with the "astronomical" full moon, which is based solely on astronomical calculations. In 1981, for example, the full moon occurred on Sunday, April 19, so Easter should have occurred on the following Sunday, April 26. But based on the ecclesiastical full moon, Easter occurred on the same day of the full moon, April 19.

So in practice, the date of Easter is determined not from astronomical computations, but rather from other religious formulas such as Epachs and Golden Numbers. In 2013, we are in Epach 17 and the Golden Number is 19. [Who Observes Easter? (Infographic)]

Since the beginning of the 20th century, a proposal to change Easter to a fixed holiday rather than a movable one has been widely circulated, and in 1963 the Second Vatican Council agreed, provided a consensus could be reached among Christian churches. The second Sunday in April has been suggested as the most likely date.

Changeable weather too
Interestingly, the fact that Easter occurs at a time of the year when weather patterns are transitioning from winter to spring, means a wide variation in the type of weather that can be expected, depending upon just when the holiday falls in a given year. Ask somebody what type of weather immediately comes to mind when Christmas is mentioned, and likely the answer will be cold and snowy. For the Fourth of July, it's probably sunny and hot.?

Yet Easter can feature both of these extremes!?

In 1970, Easter fell on March 29. In that year, a snowstorm hit the northeastern United States. In New York City, the famous Easter Parade had to be canceled, as four inches of snow fell, with as much as a foot of it?in the northern suburbs.

And yet, just six years later, in 1976, Easter fell on April 18, which ended up going down in New York weather annals as the hottest Easter on record. Not only was the 96-degree Fahrenheit reading that day the hottest temperature recorded in Central Park that year, it was also the very first (and only time) that New York held the distinction of being the hottest location in the United States!??

Editor's note:?If you have an amazing picture of the full moon or any other night sky view that?you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at?spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The?New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.?Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook?and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2a109ca2/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C270C174898980Ean0Eeaster0Etreat0Esprings0Efirst0Efull0Emoon0Dlite/story01.htm

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How hard is it to 'de-anonymize' cellphone data?

Mar. 27, 2013 ? The proliferation of sensor-studded cellphones could lead to a wealth of data with socially useful applications -- in urban planning, epidemiology, operations research and emergency preparedness, among other things. Of course, before being released to researchers, the data would have to be stripped of identifying information. But how hard could it be to protect the identity of one unnamed cellphone user in a data set of hundreds of thousands or even millions?

According to a paper appearing this week in Scientific Reports, harder than you might think. Researchers at MIT and the Universit? Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, analyzed data on 1.5 million cellphone users in a small European country over a span of 15 months and found that just four points of reference, with fairly low spatial and temporal resolution, was enough to uniquely identify 95 percent of them.

In other words, to extract the complete location information for a single person from an "anonymized" data set of more than a million people, all you would need to do is place him or her within a couple of hundred yards of a cellphone transmitter, sometime over the course of an hour, four times in one year. A few Twitter posts would probably provide all the information you needed, if they contained specific information about the person's whereabouts.

The first author on the paper is Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a graduate student in the research group of Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Science Sandy Pentland. He's joined by C?sar Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and science; Vincent Blondel, a visiting professor at MIT and a professor of applied mathematics at Universit? Catholique; and Michel Verleysen, a professor of electrical engineering at Universit? Catholique.

Focusing the debate

Hidalgo's group specializes in applying the tools of statistical physics to a wide range of subjects, from communications networks to genetics to economics. In this case, he and de Montjoye were able to use those tools to uncover a simple mathematical relationship between the resolution of spatiotemporal data and the likelihood of identifying a member of a data set.

According to their formula, the probability of identifying someone goes down if the resolution of the measurements decreases, but less than you might think. Reporting the time of each measurement as imprecisely as sometime within a 15-hour span, or location as imprecisely as somewhere amid 15 adjacent cell towers, would still enable the unique identification of half the people in the sample data set.

But while its initial application may be discouraging, de Montjoye and Hidalgo hope that their formula will provide a way for researchers and policy analysts to reason more rigorously about the privacy safeguards that need to be put in place when they're working with aggregated location data.

"Both C?sar and I deeply believe that we all have a lot to gain from this data being used," de Montjoye says. "This formula is something that could be useful to help the debate and decide, OK, how do we balance things out, and how do we make it a fair deal for everyone to use this data?"

Everybody's different

In the data set that the researchers analyzed, the location of a cellphone was inferred solely from that of the cell tower it was connected to, and the time of the connection was given as falling within a one-hour interval. Each cellphone had a unique, randomly generated identifying number, so that its movement could be traced over time. But there was no information connecting that number to the phone's owner.

The researchers randomly selected a representative sampling from the set of 1.5 million cellphone traces and, for each trace, began choosing points at random. For 95 percent of the traces, just four randomly selected points was enough to distinguish them from all other traces in the database. In the worst (or, from another perspective, best) case, 11 measurements were necessary.

"There's a concern with this data, to what extent can we preserve anonymity," says Luis Bettencourt, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute who studies social systems. "What they are showing here, quite clearly, is that it's very hard to preserve anonymity."

But for Bettencourt, the uniqueness of people's trajectories through cities is itself precisely the type of information that analysis of cellphone data is meant to uncover. "This is interesting, from a scientific point of view, to understand how people use urban space," Bettencourt says. "It shows what kind of social systems cities are."

The researchers suspect that similar relationships might hold for other types of data. "I would not be surprised if a similar result -- maybe requiring more points -- would, for example, extend to web browsing," Hidalgo says. "The space of potential combinations is really large. When a person is, in some sense, being expressed in a space in which the total number of combinations is huge, the probability that two people would have the same exact trajectory -- whether it's walking or browsing -- is almost nil."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Larry Hardesty.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, C?sar A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen, Vincent D. Blondel. Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility. Scientific Reports, 2013; 3 DOI: 10.1038/srep01376

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/information_technology/~3/VTffQuQWigw/130327132547.htm

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Learning to "Lean In" from Our 19th-Century Ancestors | Excuse Me ...

By?Ellen Gruber Garvey, PhD

???..Ellen Gruber Garvey???..

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg [author of Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead] says women ?hold ourselves back? when we should be advocating for ourselves and??leaning in.??If only she had known Caroline Healey Dall! With other feminists one hundred fifty years ago, Dall spoke up for herself. Early feminists advocated for each other, too. Their tools and methods for smashing through and stepping over barriers may still be sharp and effective.

Dall?s first public speech in 1855 at the Women?s Rights convention in Boston, which she gave on Massachusetts laws, made her very nervous. Women?s speaking in public, especially to mixed audiences, was barely proper. But she was so thrilled by her speech?s reception that she clipped pages of newspaper accounts of the talk for her scrapbook. She recorded friends? and strangers? praise of it in the?extraordinary diary?she began at age 15 and kept for 75-years?such persistence as a diarist shows she thought her ideas mattered. Beginning with obligatory self-deprecation, she went on to treasure up admiration and acknowledgment, relishing the comparison to eminent orator Daniel Webster:

My report . . . had a most unmerited success. E.P. Whipple said it was the ablest thing done in the Convention, some?stupid?person that it would have done Dan. Webster credit.! ?! . . .? Several pressed my hand silently or said ?I am glad you belong to Boston.? Miss Hunt said, ?How brave and beautiful you have been.? Mrs. Severance, with her clear true face, ?Noble words!?

And pages more. She had learned from other women who stuck up for themselves. As a teenager, she?d taken notes at Margaret Fuller?s ?conversations,? where Fuller developed transcendental philosophy and earned money to support her family. Dall had confidently spoke up in sessions attended by Ralph Waldo Emerson, even when her mentor, Elizabeth Peabody, told her she was too bold.

Economic need spurred her next moves. Her husband, a minister, had suffered a nervous breakdown and sailed off to missionary work in India, leaving her to support two children essentially as a single mother. Attending a lecture by a male friend suggested a career direction. She was heartened by how mediocre his lecture was. Evidently, the bar was lower than she?d believed. Perhaps she recognized that, as Sandberg explains, men apply for jobs that they?re only 60 percent qualified for, while women hold back unless they?re 100 percent. Dall guessed at the fee her friend had received, and then took her public speaking the next, more daring step: speaking to public mixed audiences of men and women for pay.

She?d been wise to stockpile appreciation for her public speaking, since her family was happy to tear her down: A sister scolded her for wanting to lecture in public, and her mother planted further doubts.

When Dall gave her first paid speech, ?The Dignity of Woman,? the Boston?Evening Traveller?published a brief account. It was not to her liking. The paper said she differed with most other women?s rights activists and she worried that this description would cost her speaking engagements. So Dall wrote a spirited eight-paragraph analysis of their article, pointing out its sexist assumptions and errors?with style. Long before Sandberg noted that in positions of authority ?the word ?female? implies a bit of a surprise,? Dall got? in a dig at the assumption that ?male? equals normal:

?Lecture by a female.? Female what? Parrot, popinjay, or monkey? This phrase does not hurt me on my own account, but I confess that I am weary of this popular coarseness. ? If, after a brilliant political dinner, you were to see this caption?Fine speech by a male?what should you think? That your compositor had gone crazy, I am sure.

After thus parlaying her rebuttal into more newspaper publicity for her talks, she sent her reply around, seeking more speaking engagements. If digital social networking had been around, she would have been sharing that post on all her friends? timelines and tweeting it like mad. Dall spoke back to the media and through it to readers, teaching them that it was wrong and even crazy to assume that speakers were naturally male.

After her exchange with the?Traveller, Dall did not leave her reputation to chance. She pulled in favors from male allies?something men rarely accord to women, according to Sandberg?and lined them up to write about her talks. Their articles appeared anonymously, as was common. But her notes on her scrapbook clippings let her remember that it was William Lloyd Garrison who called her a ?superior lecturer,? or that popular orator Thomas Starr King regarded her as ?amply qualified by abilities, by faithful preparation, and enthusiasm for her subject, to do justice to the themes she will treat.?

She had learned to advocate for herself and to gather her supporters.?At this juncture in contemporary America, when Sheryl Sandberg tells women to act more like men, the history we review during Women?s History Month should remind us that examples of how to stand up for ourselves come from ancestors who never set foot in a corporate boardroom.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Ellen Gruber Garvey, a professor of English at New Jersey City University,?is the author of?Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance?(Oxford University Press, 2013) which contains information on many more women?s rights scrapbooks.

This essay was originally published by George Mason University?s History News Network.

Photo credit: The Smithsonian Archives

Source: http://www.kbgressitt.com/2013/03/25/feminism/learning-to-lean-in-from-our-19th-century-ancestors/

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