Scientists and professionals at research institutions eager to inform the public about their work need to go where the readers or, increasingly, the viewers are. Instead of driving traffic to their websites, a panel of public information officers, editors, and journalists recommend creating science content specifically for use on Snapchat, Facebook Live, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media outlets.
Science writing news
Making ends meet on an intern’s salary can be hard. Stipends, even the more generous ones being offered, don’t always cover the full costs of temporarily relocating. The National Association of Science Writers is pleased to introduce a fellowship for talented students and early-career science writers undertaking summer science-journalism internships. Fellowship winners will come from diverse backgrounds and receive $5000 to supplement any stipends they receive from their summer employer.
This book tells the story of Lonni Sue Johnson, an accomplished artist, musician, pilot and organic dairy farmer who came down with viral encephalitis in her late 50’s and became what neuroscientists call “densely amnesic.” Like the celebrated H.M., she can no longer remember more than a fraction of her past, and can’t form new memories to carry into the future.
The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) will again sponsor several exciting programs for student journalists during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, February 16-20. We are re-sending this note to remind you of the available programs.
Ever heard of the Dyna-Soar? The US Air Force gave that name to a planned space-capable hypersonic glider that never got past the mockup stage. After six years and about $660 million in development costs, the project was canceled in 1963. Rob Pyle reports this story and other little-known aspects of space history in Amazing Stories of the Space Age: True Tales of Nazis in Orbit, Soldiers on the Moon, Orphaned Martian Robots, and Other Fascinating Accounts From the Annals of Spaceflight.
For 100 years, most scientists have contended that nuclear reactions can occur only in high-energy physics experiments and in large nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactions, however, also can occur in bench top experiments, Steven B. Krivit reports. In his three-book series, Explorations in Nuclear Research, Krivit describes the emergence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), a new field of science that bridges chemistry and physics, which he distinguishes from, as he says, the erroneous idea of "cold fusion."
After traveling 9.5 years and 3 billion miles, the New Horizons spacecraft neared its closest approach to Pluto. It sent to Earth the now-famous full global view showing a huge heart-shaped area on Pluto’s surface: a giant sheet of molecular nitrogen ice. “New Horizons had just transformed Pluto from a pixilated blob — as seen by the best telescope ever built — to a spectacular world full of diversity and complexity,” Nancy Atkinson writes in Incredible Stories From Space.
Two dozen print and electronic journalists from across the Southeast got a glimpse of what’s coming next in the climate story during Measure Globally, Respond Locally, a mini-conference held August 15 and 16 in Asheville, N.C.
In this second, updated edition of Human Genetics: The Basics Ricki Lewis provides a concise overview of what genes are and how they function. Consideration of genes has made the practice of medicine both more precise and more personal, she says, describing benefits of genetic research to the understanding and treatment of both rare and common disorders that include cystic fibrosis, cancer, and cardiovascular and infectious disease. Genetic testing teamed with information science, she notes, now makes it possible to diagnose some inherited diseases in minutes. In wrapping up each chapter, Lewis presents dilemmas that may arise from genetic research, information, applications, and technologies.
If confusion is the first step to knowledge, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) users must be geniuses. Fee categories. Pre-determination agency actions. Multitrack processing. Administrative appeals. Glomar responses. In some ways, the FOIA is as impenetrable as it is helpful, but a new resource wants to change all that: FOIA Wiki, which launched in beta Oct. 3.
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