Picasso’s fractured faces defined the cubist movement. His mismatched eyes, elevated ears, and sideways lips force us to see ourselves and our world anew, Claudia Kalb says. In Spark: How Genius Ignites, from Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers, Kalb profiles 13 high achievers, exploring the nature/nurture debate and role of intelligence, creativity, perseverance, and, yes, luck in their success.
In 2018, an orca mother in Puget Sound triggered news stories worldwide, carrying her 6-foot-long dead newborn on her back 17 days, traveling 1000 miles before letting go. Her loss highlights present-day concerns and efforts to clean and restore an environment where humans and other species have long co-existed, David Williams reports in Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound.
A science education can provide a competitive edge for aspiring science writers, Sheeva Azma contends. After earning an MS in neuroscience, Azma began exploring job options outside the lab. In How to Get Started in Freelance Science Writing, she provides tactics to help students and scientists apply their skills to marketing, ghost and grant writing, producing website content, and consulting.
Humans produce about 100 lbs. of poop and 140 gallons of pee each year. Two billion people worldwide lack a minimally adequate toilet. Hundreds of millions don’t use a toilet at all, promoting spread of preventable diseases. In Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet, Chelsea Wald explores efforts to make healthy toilets—and necessary infrastructure—accessible to all.
In 2017, Jeff Weld, then head of STEM Education for Iowa, was tapped to be a senior policy advisor for STEM education at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. His mission: to develop a nationwide STEM education policy within one year. In Charting a Course for American Education from out on a limb at the executive branch, Weld tells how he and colleagues met that goal.
Over the last 500 years, our planet has lost at least 755 animal species and 123 plant species, Michelle Nijhuis reports in Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Humans continue to kill species and destroy habitats, while climate change amplifies these threats. Growing worldwide conservation efforts, she says, have averted extinction of many species and aim to save more.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has used humans to make quadrillions of copies of itself. It also mutates. But is it alive? Many virologists say no: viruses get their sustenance only inside their host species’ cells. What is life anyway? In Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, Carl Zimmer explores efforts by physicians, scientists, philosophers, & historians to answer this timeless question.
“You cannot expect us to furnish you with a stick to break our heads with,” one of 29 medical school deans wrote Elizabeth Blackwell, refusing to admit her. But she persisted. Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College in 1849 at age 28, the nation’s 1st woman M.D. Others followed, as Olivia Campbell reports in Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine.
Journalists and editors: How can you avoid false balance and false equivalency, identify a potential source’s lack of expertise or conflict of interest, improve source diversity, help your audience understand statistics, and use social media effectively? The KSJ Science Editing Handbook, co-edited by Joshua Hatch and Nicholas Jackson, addresses these and many other everyday challenges.
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