From ScienceWriters: A memorable fall meeting awaits

The city of Columbus and The Ohio State University are preparing to welcome you to ScienceWriters2014, Oct. 17-21. There’s a lot to look forward to: NASW workshops, awards reception, annual NASW business meeting, lunch with a scientist, CASW’s New Horizons in Science briefings, and after-meeting field trips and tours. OSU’s top scientists are eager to share their work on climate change, stress and immunity, and the links between media violence and real-life violence.

Tours being considered will allow participants to see ice cores holding thousands of years of climate history, visit the lab that designed the world’s fastest electric car, and view a 52-acre wetland research park on the edge of campus.

You’ll be staying in the city’s Short North neighborhood, which the New York Times states is “challenging all precon ceived notions of what passes for cool in the Midwest.”

ScienceWriters2014 local host committee members include: Emily Caldwell, Pam Gorder, Jeff Grabmeier, Kim Knight, and Amy Scott.

NASW Workshops

Topics for the NASW workshops (Oct. 18) include: media law, statistics, writing for kids, writing for local publications, PIO blogging, increasing diversity in science writing, and a session on “passion projects.”

Attendees can also sit in on lunchtime conversations focused on one of three topics: writing for blog networks, writing in post-retirement, and a contracts boot camp. Extra added attraction is a Friday afternoon hands-on workshops on data visualization and podcasting for people arriving early for the meeting.

This year’s hard-working program committee members are Haley Bridger, Clinton Colmenares, Jennifer Weston Cox, Virginia Gewin, Laura Helmuth, Robin Henig (chair), Michael Newman, Jeffrey Perkel, Erin Podolak, Kathleen Raven, and Jill Sakai.

Science in Society

Awards committee volunteers are also busy, screening through 300+ Science in Society Journalism Award entries to find the year’s best science writing. Amber Dance Dennis Meredith are award committee co-chairs. Venue for the awards reception is the Columbus Center of Science and Industry.

New Horizons

What are gravitational waves telling us about the earliest moments of the universe? What new research and therapies will genome-editing tools enable? What’s the significance of the thriving coyote population in the Chicago Loop? How does marital unhappiness affect health?

If these questions whet your appetite, stay after the NASW workshops to hear the latest on these topics and more at New Horizons in Science, a two-day science feast (Oct. 19-20) organized by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

New Horizons presenters will focus on new findings that haven’t yet been covered, brewing controversies in their fields, and emerging research topics worth watching in coming years. One of this year’s headliners will be anthropologist Don Johanson, who discovered the hominid Lucy 40 years ago this fall. Johanson will talk about what fossil and genomic evidence now reveal about human origins.

The full New Horizons lineup will be available in August. Meanwhile, CASW welcomes questions questions and program suggestions. Contact Rosalind Reid at ros@casw.org.

Keep an eye on ScienceWriters2014.org and follow Twitter at #sciwri14 for the latest information.