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Forget Lego Batman.
The Best New Minifigures of 2017 Are Female NASA Heroes.
Here's a fun story, in celebration of International Women's Day. Lego has just announced it will release a set of minifigures of five pioneering female NASA scientists.
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Left to right: Margaret Hamilton, Katherine Johnson, Sally Ride, Nancy Grace Roman, Mae Jemison
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It includes NASA mathematician and space scientist Katherine Johnson, 98, who is best known for calculating and verifying trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo programs. Ms. Johnson was recently celebrated in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures.
The others are:
- computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, 80, who worked on the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions
- the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space in 1983
- astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, 91, known as the "Mother of Hubble" for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope
- astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, 60, who became the first African-American woman in space in a 1992 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour
The new Lego figures could be a novel way to give young girls role models in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, which have traditionally not attracted or retained young women. Women are less likely than men to study STEM subjects in college and graduate school, and only 26% of the women who do get degrees in STEM fields
work in STEM careers.
The idea was proposed by Maia Weinstock, a science writer and deputy editor at MIT News, through the Lego Ideas program that solicits fun suggestions for new toy figures. Lego is working on the final design and pricing for the Women of NASA set, and said the official release date would be announced in late 2017 or early 2018.
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Stocks declined modestly last week even as the bull market reached its 8th anniversary on March 9th. Declining oil prices, which fell below $50/barrel on Thursday, weighed on energy stocks and helped to drag the overall market lower. Friday's report on jobs from the US Department of Labor showed another 235,000 jobs gained in February and wage growth is now trending at an annualized growth rate of almost 3%.
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> FOMC Meeting: Today concludes the Federal Open Market Committee's two-day meeting, and as was widely suspected, the Fed decided to raise the US Federal Funds rate by a
quarter point to a new range of 0.75 to 1%. As of Monday morning (March 13, 2017), the fed funds futures market was pricing in a 100% chance of at least a 25 basis point (0.25%) rate hike at this week's meeting. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note, which is most sensitive to the Fed's actions, had moved up to 1.36% on Monday, a full 10 basis points higher than where it was since the last rate hike in December.
> S&P 500: On March 9, 2009, the S&P 500 closed at 676.53, which was the low close for the worst bear market in stocks since the Great Depression. Now at 97 months old, the current bull market now ranks as the second-longest since World War II. During that eight-year period, the S&P 500 Index tripled in value including dividends, producing a total return of 314% (19.2% annualized).
> Productivity Report:
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. estimates about 51 million office workers join office pools during March Madness. Based on the country's average hourly wage of $25.35, the outplacement firm estimates employers will lose $1.3 billion in pay as a result of this employee distraction. Between time spent filling out brackets and watching tournament games live, the total loss of productivity could approach $4 billion!
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New Market Wealth Management offers modern investment solutions backed by extensive research and experience serving the needs of wealthy families. Through our strategic partnership with
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, we provide institutional-quality research, investment due diligence and asset allocation tools. We believe this level of experience and unique access to in-depth, sophisticated research are essential for success in today's complex world markets.
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