Science writing news

When a pickpocket grabbed his wallet in Barcelona, Douglas Fields fought back. He recovered his wallet, and was unharmed, but later marveled at his instantaneous, unthinking reaction. In his book, Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain, he explores the neurocircuitry driving such automatic responses. Some people put themselves in harm’s way to aid strangers, while others respond to minor traffic incidents with road rage and other violent behaviors. From a neuroscience perspective, he suggests, the same brain circuits drive these dissimilar acts.

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In Improving Numeracy in Medicine, Bonny McClain aims to help journalists and scientists better understand the imperfect world of prediction and analyses. This is not just another book on statistics or biostatistics, she asserts. It is a guide to such books, addressing topics such as what a hazard ratio is, how effect size is determined, and what is meant by number needed to treat, to harm, or to screen. Learning more about these subjects, she says, can help reporters improve their healthcare coverage.

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Zoologist Susan J. Crockford has studied polar bear ecology and evolution for more than 20 years, and blogs at http://polarbearscience.com. In Eaten, Crockford’s novel set in 2025, residents of hundreds of small towns in northern Newfoundland face a spring onslaught of hungry polar bears. Some of the bears have killed and eaten people. Mounties, biologists, and citizens struggle to protect the population — and the bears.

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While humans have evolved to detect visible light — the energy range our Sun radiates most strongly — we also are surrounded by an invisible spectrum that ranges from radio waves to gamma rays. In Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond, Kimberly Arcand and NASW member Megan Watzke, both of whom work in the communications group at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, explore and explain, using words and artists’ science-based visual translations, all the light we can and cannot see.

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Heather Hansen’s love of national parks started at age seven, when she was a junior ranger at Cape Cod National Seashore. To research Prophets and Moguls, Rangers and Rogues, Bison and Bears: 100 Years of the National Park Service, she drove over 20,000 miles, and she has visited 150 national parks. She spoke with park rangers, superintendents, historians, archaeologists, architects, wildlife biologists, education and interpretation experts, youth ambassadors, and others. Published in time for the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service’s creation, her book includes 125 images, many of them archival photos.

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