As my coworkers and roommates over the years can tell you: I have louder, and therefore funnier, than average hiccups. The involuntary diaphragm spasms also have great timing, always managing to show up just as I’m about to finish a sentence like “No, I just have the hiccups,” or “Just give me a chance to hold my breath for a bit,” or “Shhhhhh.”

And while usually I can rid myself of them by manhandling my diaphragm by taking very deep breaths in and out, Mallory Kievman has done me one better by inventing a lollipop that cures hiccups in her kitchen. She is only thirteen.

The scientific community has been in a bit of a stir this year, ever since mathematician Tim Gowers wrote a post on his blog stating his intention sto abandon publishing his findings with any journal run by Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher, citing the stranglehold a publisher that large can have on the world’s peer-reviewed scientific information, controlling not just how it’s published, but what it costs to read or even obtain a copy. One step in the right direction, according to many, is to create laws or programs that would ensure that all publicly funded scientific studies were eventually (or immediately) made publicly available.

Well, England’s Science Minister just struck decisive blow for what’s being called the Open Science movement, by promising just that.

Have you ever sat quietly, sipping a cup of tea and thought to yourself, “This tea needs more science?” Now you can have your wish thanks to this Gzhel inspired scientific set.  It’s like serving tea, with science! It’s CHEMIS-TEA! Hit the jump to see cups, saucers, teapot, and more! 

Rosalind Franklin might be officially the first historical lady of the geek world who I talked about on The Mary Sue. Well, there were a bunch of posts we wrote in the two weeks before the site went live, but they don’t count… the site wasn’t live. I talked about Franklin as an example of a person who was denied her proper due because of unreasonable expectations of what women are “naturally” like.

Franklin’s research was directly responsible for giving Watson and Crick, the famed discoverers of the structure of DNA, the final pieces of the DNA puzzle, even by their own admission. Yet her research, collected based on techniques she’d invented independently, was shown to them without her permission or even awareness by a colleague who she worked with regularly, and she was left predominantly uncredited for her unwilling contributions. The reason why they, as rival scientists working on the same discovery, felt it was okay to inspect her work without her permission? Well, it boils down to… “she wasn’t very approachable.” Needless to say, this isn’t a good reason to leave somebody uncredited.

Jenifer Glynn, Franklin’s sister, offers insight into her sibling’s personality in here book of Rosalind’s correspondence, My Sister Rosalind Franklin: A Family Memoir.

Jane Goodall made her second appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, and the first order of business was to make sure Jon Stewart remembered the proper chimp greeting. And then she talked about the new documentary from Disney, Chimpanzee. As you can imagine, all of this was fascinating and adorable. Video after the jump.

As revealed in Alice Calaprice‘s Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children, the eponymous genius (which is to say, his name is on the book and has become a synonym for genius itself) had some pretty awesome views on gender’s relationship to the study of science, which is to say: it doesn’t matter.

Among the children with whom he exchanged correspondence is Tyfanny, of South Africa, who seemed a bit worried when she wrote him a second time to say:

I forgot to tell you, in my last letter, that I was a girl. I mean I am a girl. I have always regretted this a great deal, but by now I have become more or less resigned to the fact.

SciShow does their best to explain why Marie Curie is basically the best, for breaking gender barriers, discovering incredibly important science, knowingly studying radiation’s lifesaving uses as the research destroyed her own health, and raising two kids mostly singlehandedly. If you’d like to hear about some more lady scientists who were also basically the best, refer, as always, to this xkcd comic.

(Thanks, Tipster Abigail!)

Not that we’re going to suddenly stop celebrating great women in history, especially those who have made an impact in STEM fields, but what better way to close out Women’s History Month than with a gallery of women in science? After the jump, one such gallery, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, of women who have made great contributions to several fields of science!

NASA’s G.I.R.L.S. initiative is so new they haven’t even really finished designing their homepage. But GeekMom was already on it, and getting the low down on the brand new five-week summer program that will connect girls with their own personal mentor, a woman working at NASA, from Mamta Patel Nagaraja, NASA official herself.

We’re a fan of unique wedding/engagement photoshoots so when we came across this one that featured science(!) we were very excited. Nicole Lisanne Weddings and Events by Design styled a scientific geek wedding shoot they called Geek is Tres Chic. Hit the jump to see the rest of the shots.