People who manifest a specific pattern of brain activity while letting their minds wander can learn a second language more easily than those who don’t show it. A computer interpreting brainwaves can generate speech that sounds “as clear as Alexa,” Douglas Fields relates in Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better.
A child reports having a best friend and a worst friend (no friend at all). Adults typically need 40-60 hours of being together to form a casual friendship and 200+ hours to rate someone as a best friend. Maintaining close relationships boosts quality of life and benefits our health, Lydia Denworth writes in Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond.
Who is a science journalist and how do you become one? What makes a science story and how do you find one? How do you report a science story? How do you tell your story? How do you build expertise in science writing? —The Craft of Science Writing: Selections from The Open Notebook edited by Siri Carpenter, TON co-founder, provides 30+ articles delving into these concerns, many by NASW members.
“You may discover things about yourself and/or your family members that may be upsetting or cause anxiety and that you may not have the ability to change.” People ordering DNA tests often overlook the small print, Sergio Pistoi writes in DNA Nation: How the Internet of Genes is Changing Your Life. Afterward, he notes, they may regret that. An estimated 2-10 percent of paternities are misattributed.
“It’s not just that physical activity is good for you. It’s that a sedentary lifestyle, as a totally separate variable, is seriously bad, Judy Foreman writes in Exercise is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging. Moderate exercise 30 minutes a day, five days a week, she says, increases lifespan by 3.5 years. Are you sitting down now? —Read this fast, then take a walk.
In The Wildlife Confessional—Kick It in the Ice Hole and Other Stories, NASW member and wildlife biologist Matthew Bettelheim and the late writer/wildlife biologist Thomas Roberts offer a multi-authored collection of tales and reflections on encounters with birds, bears, and more in diverse locales. Funds from book sales will help support student scholarships, grants, and training opportunities.
Science writer John Galbraith Simmons and his wife Jocelyne Geneviève Barque provide the first English translation of a 900-page epistolary novel by the French author Marquis de Sade, written while Sade was imprisoned in the 1580s. Aline and Valcour combines picaresque adventures, satire, and black humor to illuminate societal injustices that persist today, including exploitation of women.
Physicist Sidney Perkowitz began writing about science for non-scientists in 1989, the year he celebrated his 50th birthday and published his 100th academic paper. In "Real Scientists Don’t Wear Ties," he includes 50 of his favorite pop-sci reports on topics such as illuminating light, brain injuries in soccer, Frankenstein turns 200, Hollywood science, and, yes, how scientists dress for success.
The classical concept of Darwinian natural selection does not encompass the varieties of new structures and functions that arise when separate entities interact in useful ways, Gene Levinson asserts in "Rethinking Evolution: The Revolution That’s Hiding in Plain Sight." His updated evolutionary theory, he says, reflects recent discoveries in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.
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