Science Fair Rock Star - Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili

This is the fifth in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second, third and fourth posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!



Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili are two bright minds working to make the world a better place. Both of these brilliant 11th grade students at the International High School of Tuzla, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were inspired to follow a career in science after learning about Rosalind Franklin. The Google Science Fair is not their first event. Both have competed in chemistry and physics competitions in the past, which they credit for helping them hone the problem-solving skills they needed to tackle their latest research project.

These girls set out with the heady goal of finding an alternative energy source that would help achieve energy-efficiency, remain cost-effective, uphold standards of quality, and reduce pollution. Their source for this miracle biofuel? Chickens! Well, more precisely, their feathers.

The town where they live has a large poultry processing plant, so getting enough waste fathers to test their hypothesis was not a problem. The girls designed a two-reactor system (a pyrolysis reactor with an afterburner chamber) that would produce both by using the same process. They found that with minimal pre-processing the fat that occurs naturally in the feathers and is often a byproduct of chicken feather meal (a common livestock feed and fertilizer) is an excellent source of energy once it is removed, while the feathers themselves are remarkably good at storing hydrogen.

These brilliant young women are looking forward with the awareness that fossil fuels will be increasingly difficult and dangerous to come by and instead looked for ways to use existing waste to create a somewhat more sustainable source for fuel, as well as reducing pollution and providing local jobs.

When asked what she likes the most about studying science, Anela responded, "I just love the feeling of getting the right solution after thinking and rethinking." I couldn't agree more!

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili.

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Science Fair Rock Star - Laura Steponavičiūtė

This is the fourth in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here are the first, second and third posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!

Laura Steponavičiūtė is a remarkable young scientist with a bright future ahead of her in nano-technology, or whatever else she decides to pursue. Her mother, herself a sciences teacher, fostered a sense of curiosity and exploration in her young daughter, providing her with a wide variety of books and creative pursuits.

Recently, Laura became interested in learning more about nanotechnology, and more specifically, how these innovative nanoparticles actually interact with the environment and the various organisms they come into contact with. She was inspired to do more research when she learned that the titanium oxide nanoparticles that make sunscreen work tend to have a detrimental effect on coral reefs. As a swimmer applies sunscreen to her face, she may not realize that the minute particles that wash off are being carried away to where they can actually damage the environment they came to the ocean to enjoy.

In her research, she looked at gold nanoparticles and how they influenced the health of plants. She compared the effect these particles had on the growth of beans and algae, and how these could lead to both helpful and harmful consequences -- faster plant growth is good for crops, but terrible for fresh water in that it encourages algae blooms, which can lead to eutrophication and the death of the animal life in the water.

When asked why she wants to be a scientist, she answered, "I want to know answers to the questions that pop in my head while reading articles or discussing various topics. I want to help to improve our environment and help people. I see science as a way to do that." It's true.

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Laura Steponavičiūtė.

Photo source: Kauno diena

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Science Fair Rock Star - Olivia Hallisey

This is the third in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here's the first and second posts.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!

Olivia Hallisey is a brilliant and determined young woman. I expect to see great things from her in the future. She's only a sophomore in high school, and already she has earned major science fair cred for her project to create a diagnostic tool for fighting Ebola and other highly infectious diseases. The picture above is from her win at the International Science and Engineering Fair, held earlier this year.

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Science Fair Rock Star - Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida

This is the second in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (Here's the first one.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!





Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida is a smart, environmentally-minded young scientist who lives in Delhi, but spends a fair amount of time traveling around the countryside, visiting with local farmers. It was on one of these trips where she learned about the different ways farmers were disposing of dried corn cobs once the kernels had been removed. The common methods of burning them, burying them or dumping them seemed wasteful to her, so she decided to look for ways to reuse them in a more productive manner.

Another pressing concern of rural communities is water safety. Lalita wondered if there was a way she could combine these two concerns and come up with a way to use corn cobs to purify water. Initially she tried making a hole into the center of a corn cob and pouring dirty water into it and measuring the quality of the water that came out. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the particles in the water had been trapped inside the cob.

As it turns out, they make an excellent and simple filtration system, absorbing as much as 80% of common contaminants. Their high mechanical strength, rigidity and porosity combined with their easy availability make them a ideal option for rural communities.

Hence, contaminants like oxides of salts, detergents, suspended particles, coloured dyes, oil and grease get adsorbed in the surface of the corn cobs. Some of the heavy metals are also adsorbed by corn cobs. If the drain pipe of the household is connected to a chamber having different layers of corn cobs in partition layers or to an S-trap pipe having corn cobs, it will separate about more than 70-80 % of contaminants including suspended particles from the waste water. Similarly the factory out let pipes carrying effluents must be opened to five inter-connected chambers having long slices of corn cobs, pieces of corn cobs, powder of corn cobs, activated charcoal of corn cobs and fine sand for the easy adsorption of TSS and chemical toxicants both organic and inorganic. Corn cobs fitted to bamboos buried on the ground floor of the ponds and allowed two to three weeks to stand can be useful for cleaning of water in ponds, tanks and rivers. This is also useful to clean overhead water tanks of individual households and community tanks.

As a bonus, as the corn cobs absorb the suspended particles, this also helps to reduce the temperature of the water, as well as acting as a flow regulator during high rains.

When asked what advice she'd give others, she reminds us discovery is only possible by observation. "Always observe your surroundings keenly. You never know what scientific breakthrough you may stumble upon."

For more reading, please check out the Google for Education blog post about Sripada Srisai Lalita Prasida.

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
please check out my Patreon.

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Science Fair Rock Star - Monique Hsu and Gina Wang

This is the first in an ongoing series highlighting some of the amazing young women participating in this year's Google Science Fair. (You can read the second one here.) Each has survived the rigorous regional rounds, and are awaiting the results of the final testing to see who will win this year's prizes. The results will be announced on September 21, 2015, and you can be sure I'll be watching!

As always, I am impressed with all the participants and their projects, but the nature of this blog is to highlight the stories of kickass women and girls, so I'm focusing on them for this series. Over the next week I will be sharing stories of many of these remarkable young women. Stay tuned!



Monique (Yo) Hsu and Gina (Jing-Tong) Wang are a pair of junior high school students with big ideas and big smarts to go with them. When these two childhood friends learned about the problem many in their area were experiencing with buying gas that had been diluted with other solvents, they put their heads together to figure out a test that would tell consumers exactly what it is they are buying.

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Kickstart This! Comics Edition

I went looking for a great crowd funding project to share with you today, but instead found soooo many I had to lump them all together into their own list posts. Here's the post of all the awesome comics and graphic novels that are looking for a little support. Each is the project of creative and clever women, and each features smart, brave, and seriously kickass women.  Give these projects a look, and maybe even pick one or three to back.

Sirenne Sisters Investigation by Stone and KaaChan, is a mad cap adventure through Victorian steam punk mysteries and chilling tales of horror with the Sirenne Sisters!

And that's where the Sirenne Sisters Investigation team comes in! A group of specialists in the world of of the Paranormal, here at your service! Composed of three Sisters; the eldest sister, Victoria, is the strong and dependable force behind SSI. The youngest sister would be the chipper and charming, fashion-forward Catherine; and the middle sister Elizabeth, the gear-oriented mechanic of the group. Together, they protect mortals from the darkness that lurks in the unknown world that coincides with our own.

As a part of the Feminist publisher Zubaan Books, with The Goethe Institut, created a week-long workshop with a group of Indian women, to share their stories. The result was something remarkable.

Drawing the Line: A Comics Anthology by Indian Women, by Nicole Marie Burton, is a collection of 14 accounts of lived experience by women in India. Stories cover topics about gender, sexuality, harassment, coming of age, family, sisterhood, race, shadeism, class, and political struggle in a country that many in the West know little about, and understand even less.

Oath Anthology of New Heroes, by Audrey Redpath, is a queer superhero comic anthology by queer creators, creating representation we deserve in a book everyone can read.

Our heroes aren't cautionary tales. Stories in the anthology will empower unquestionably queer characters and creators, and saturate heroic plots and settings with new perspectives.

Big Brown Eyes is a collective composed of three sisters: Emily, Karis and Freya Lambert, aiming to launch their first 'zine at the Bristol Comic and Zine Fair in October. Based on the artwork in their Kickstarter post, it looks like it will be a beautiful 'zine. I fully expect to see more by these creative young women in the future.

We will be showcasing our debut zine Beginnings, themed on creation, development and cycles, as well as our individual comics at the Bristol Comic and Zine Fair 2015 on October 3rd.

Poizon: Lost Child Hardcover 20th Anniversary collection by Bad Girl Artwork looks like a pretty kickass comic.

Annique Talbot lives in Queen City in the year 2072 during a time of war between humans and demons, a war humanity is losing badly. In this time Razor is a force for evil and the bride of Lucifer's agent on earth Anvil. Taking the name Poizon she is a powerful psyonic she is able to form a bubble of energy around her as barrier physical objects cannot pass but the more pressure placed on it the more effort it takes to sustain. She also has a strong psychic ability and is able to communicate over time and space with desired targets. Important to the Razor story it was Poizon that tended to the fallen Razor after her battle with Stryke. She followed Razor into Limbo and tried to persuaded her to come back to earth to finish her work instead of finding the peace and rest she so longed for. Razor chose peace only to be dragged back to earth by other undead forces.

Strange Wit, by Katy Rex, is an original graphic novel about Jane Bowles, an incredible author, inspiring woman, and tortured mind.

Jane may have been marginalized by the cultural canon, but her contemporaries considered her “one of the finest modern writers” (John Ashberry), “the most important writer of prose fiction” (Tennessee Williams), and further, a “genius imp, [a] laughing, hilarious, tortured elf” (Truman Capote). Jane drank more than she wrote, worried more than she worked, and had more epically disastrous love affairs than completed books. By almost any measure, Jane led a fascinating life filled with literary giants and great adventure and I want to bring her story to life.

Jill Trent, Science Sleuth #2, by D.M. Higgins, is a modern re-awakening of the original Jill Trent, Science Sleuth from the mid-1940s, filled with stories of science, mystery, & adventure!

Now, more than 65 years later, we've brought Jill and Daisy back! Jill Trent, Science Sleuth #2 is a 28-page comic book featuring 3 all-new stories by 3 creative teams! By popular demand, these stories are slightly longer than those in Jill Trent #1 — a full 8 pages each! Each stand-alone story reimagines the Science Sleuths in a new way, including a range of racial and ethnic identities and time periods, from the 1940s to the not-too-distant future.

If you like the work I do here at Self-Rescuing Princess Society,
sharing great projects by kickass women, please check out my Patreon.

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Music Break - P!nk

Everyone needs an anthem once in a while. And Pink seems to be very good at supplying them.

Alecia Beth Moore (aka Pink) was born on September 8, 1979. Her musical talent was evident in her youth. When she was a teenager, she used lyric-writing as an outlet for her feelings. According to her mother, "Her initial writings were always very introspective. Some of it was very black, and very deep, almost worrisome."

I think that's why her lyrics seem to resonate so strongly with me. Her emotions come through because she's not just writing something she hopes will sell, she's using her songs to tell her story. And her story is something I think many of us can relate to. Like "So What" which is probably one of my favorite post-break-up songs.

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Women in the Labor Movement

Here in the US it's Labor Day Weekend. For some that means BBQs and shopping. But it's also a time to reflect on those who've come before us and worked so hard for many of the things we take for granted these days - reasonable working hours, weekends, child labor laws, safer working conditions, etc. It's also a day to stop and evaluate where we stand now in regards to these same issues.

Over the last few years of working on this blog, I've featured more than a few women who have played instrumental roles in the Labor Movement. These are just a handful of the many women who were involved. You can rest assured I will continue to celebrate more as I have the time to research their lives and write about them. I also plan to include more women in the modern Labor Movement.

On this important day of reflection and celebration, here are some of the women I've written about over the last couple of years.

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