Field trips on forest and range science management near our Flagstaff, Ariz., meeting site, workshops on audio and video production, and a welcome reception are among today's highlights at "a meeting for science writers, by science writers." If you are unable to attend, you can follow the Twitter hashtag #sciwri11 or just check this page, where Purdue University is aggregating tweets. Watch this space over the weekend for further reports.
Science writing news
The Scientist is dead. The Bolshoi Simulation: It's Life, the Universe, and Everything. Except Life.
The latest on early human migration to Australia and Southeast Asia. The latest on what a mongrel species Homo sapiens is. Bioethics and Aborigine genetic research. 50 reasons not to believe in evolution. Nearly mind-reading and somewhat spooky: Capturing images of what the brain is seeing. Best video of the week: The NASA satellite that fell to earth. Not.
DON'T PANIC, but Microorganisms R Us. Gut bacteria govern the brain and behavior, mice say. Yogurt and the Mind-Body Problem. My.microbes wants your microbes. The Encyclopedia of Life is reborn: 700,000 species and counting.
NASW Treasurer Ron Winslow, the New York-based deputy bureau chief for health and science and a veteran medical reporter at the Wall Street Journal, has been awarded the 2011 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. Winslow was cited for the “exceptional breadth, precision and clarity of his coverage about how technological innovation is transforming the world of medicine.”
Meet a new human ancestor, maybe. Can 2 million year-old soft tissue be recovered from a fossil site? The politics of vaccination: Republican presidential candidates, HPV vaccine, and cervical cancer. Green fluorescent cats: These are not cute kitties, but genetic engineering a possible weapon against AIDS.
Winners of the 2011 Science in Society Journalism Awards, sponsored by NASW, are Maryn McKenna for her book Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Free Press). Katy Butler for her New York Times Magazine article, “My Father’s Broken Heart,” Barbara Moran for her Boston Globe Magazine article, “Power Politics,” Charles Homans, for his Columbia Journalism Review article, “Hot Air.”
Cloudy and unfair. The latest controversial climate change paper led a journal editor to resign. Should he have retracted instead, or did his resignation force useful new analyses of the paper? Open The Open Notebook and see how science writers do their work. The 9-11 tenth anniversary: fewer health problems than forecast. Is a less scary world on the way?
Not all social media are created equal for news purposes, three studies find. Rick Borchelt discusses them in "Scholarly pursuits: Academic research relevant to the workaday world of science writing." Excerpted from the Summer 2011 ScienceWriters.
The party leaders vying to form the next Canadian government are being urged to “take off the muzzles” from federal scientists. Emily Chung explains the details in an excerpt from the Summer 2011 ScienceWriters.



