Suzanne Clancy

REGIONAL GROUPS

by Suzanne Clancy

New England

Beginning with the announcement, last October, that AP’s Dan Haney won the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting (SW, Winter 2002-03), NESW members have scored a science-writing trifecta, as two New Englanders were honored at the AAAS annual meeting in Denver.

Peter N. Spotts, of the Christian Science Monitor, received one of the six AAAS Science Journalism Awards, sponsored by the Whitaker Foundation. Entered in the category for newspapers of circulation 100,000 or below, Spotts won for articles ranging from new dinosaur fossil finds in Africa to dreams of a 20-mile-long particle collider for probing the subatomic world.

Freelance writer Charles W. Schmidt shared an NASW Science-in-Society Award in the magazine category for his piece in Environmental Perspectives, “e-Junk Explosion.” The story highlighted an under-reported social problem created by new technology.

One bright spot in the way-too-long-and-cold winter of 2002-2003 was the NASW holiday party in December. Despite (appropriately) a snowstorm, a goodly contingent make the trek to Johnny D’s Uptown Music Club and Restaurant, in Somerville, a hot spot of rockabilly, blues, and other musical genres. Joining in the festivities were several Knight Science Writing Fellows from the program at MIT.

In April, NESW sponsored a talk at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The speaker was John Rummel, NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, whose talk, “Issues in Planetary Protection: Microbial Tourism and Sample Return,” discussed NASA’s plans to protect Earth from contamination by alien microbes from material collected from Mars. Rummel also described NASA’s spaceship hygiene measures to prevent errant Earth microbes from Florida from hitchhiking on spacecraft and contaminating life detection experiments on Mars and Europa. “The whole point of the space exploration program is to know if there is life on other planets,” Rummel said. “The last thing that you want to do is to go to Mars to learn about microorganisms from Florida.”

San Diego

In May, the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) helped Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) celebrate its centennial with an evening of “Surfside Science.” SANDSWA members attended a seaside reception at which they had the opportunity to meet Scripps scientists from a variety of disciplines. Hands-on presentations included samples from Scripps’ fish, ocean sediment core, and geological collections; the Coastal Data Information Program; seismology/earthquake research; robotic instruments that measure deep-ocean currents; climate change in the high sierras; and the planetary geophysics of Mars. They also heard an overview of Scripps history and a snapshot of plans for its second hundred years. SIO has a centennial Web site (scripps100.ucsd.edu/events.cfm).

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Suzanne Clancy is a science writer with The Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Send information about regional meetings and events to sclancy@burnham.org.