Innovative upcycling methods can transform human excrement into fertilizer, electricity, and biofuels, Lina Zeldovich reports in The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste into Wealth. Fecal transplants can benefit people with C difficile infections and other disorders. Sewage treatment plants, Zeldovich predicts, soon may be known as resource recovery facilities.
An advanced arm and hand prosthesis allows an amputee to hold and control movement of a muffin, egg, soda can, and even a wine glass. It soon may be possible for a prosthesis-wearer to enjoy the sensation of petting a dog, Timothy Jorgensen reports. In Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life, he explores electricity from a biological perspective, detailing its role in health.
Suppose Lee Harvey Oswald was not alone when he shot and killed President John Kennedy from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas in 1963. Did Kennedy’s plan to send humans to the moon trigger his assassination? In his novel, The Answer from Surveyor 3, Mark A. Marchand provides an out-of-this-world explanation for questions conspiracy theorists still debate.
“Researchers who run human clinical trials often say that mice lie and monkeys exaggerate, but everyone watching the progress of the Moderna vaccine was eager to hear the reports from the animal world,” Brendan Borrell relates. He interviewed 150 sources for his gripping in-the-moment narrative, The First Shots: the Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine.
During pandemic shutdowns, with more people staying home, kangaroos hopped on Adelaide, Australia’s streets. Coyotes trotted on the beach in the daytime near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. These appearances remind us that humans often disrupt animal habitats and can do more to protect them, Lenora Todaro writes in Sea Lions in the Parking Lot: Animals on the Move in a Time of Pandemic.
“Animals are motion masters. They skitter, scuttle, grip, glide, spring, cling, & more,” Linda Zajac reports in Robo-Motion: Robots That Move Like Animals, an illustrated book for 4-9 year-olds. Robots that mimic animal motion help surgeons reach into tight spaces, explore the seafloor, aid in search & rescue missions, and perhaps soon may serve as first responders for wildfires & other dangers.
A strong cyclone hit Madagascar in 2017, ruining 30% of the world’s annual vanilla supply. Vanilla prices rose 350%. ”Climate change is impairing the entire food system,” Carrie Koplinka-Loehr & colleagues assert in Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need. Personal and societal actions from curbing food waste to cutting greenhouse gas emissions may help stem the damage.
In 1989, Alison Bass reported for The Boston Globe on psychiatrists who had sex with their patients. In 1992, she reported for The Globe on pedophile priests, a decade before The Globe launched its Spotlight investigation. Later she documented sex workers’ lives, a topic she expanded into a book. Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo is her memoir.
Scientists and journalists seeking to explain scientific research findings, implications, and applications need a variety of tools and techniques from jargon-free language to social media skills. Audiences still filter information through their own values. In Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work, 2nd Ed., Dennis Meredith aims to help readers get messages across.
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