Science writing news

In the Apollo 8 mission, December 21, 1968, humans left earth’s gravity for the first time, and flew to the moon, circling it 10 times. They took now-iconic photos from space. To mark Apollo 8’s 50th anniversary, Robert Zimmerman collaborated with a fan of his 1998 book Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8: The First Manned Flight to Another World to produce the work’s first ebook and audio versions.

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DNA makes us who we are. But how? In Genetics 101, Beth Skwarecki starts at the beginning. She aims to build lay readers’ understanding step-by-step, and moves from describing basic building blocks of cellular information to how traits are inherited to topics in the news, including how DNA ancestry services work, ethical quandaries posed by embryonic gene editing, and babies of the future.

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US Route 1, the nation’s first highway, runs the entire length of the East Coast. Long bypassed by the interstate highway system, it’s still used by millions of people every day, and ranges from two-lane divided highways to narrow crooked roads. In U.S. Route 1: Rediscovering the New World, Mark A. Marchand explores the character of communities and geographical challenges that determined its path.

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Both science writers and investigative reporters rely on analytical skills, curiosity, skepticism and a knack for sussing out dubious claims, Liza Gross notes in The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook. Her book, written with support from a NASW Peggy Girshman Idea Grant, tells how to explore the story behind the story, detect biases, and find concealed information.

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In Weather: An Illustrated History: From Cloud Atlases to Climate Change, NASW member Andrew Revkin, and Lisa Mechaley provide one-page summaries of meteorological milestones. They report, for example, how clouds were classified and named, how reliable The Farmer’s Almanac is, how global warming harms coral reefs, what a “nuclear winter” would involve, and where climate diplomacy is heading.

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Space exploration isn’t just a technological story, Carolyn Collins Petersen asserts. Literature and art helped fuel interest, education, and funding. Jules Vernes’ From the Earth to the Moon, one of many examples, inspired future rocket designers. Many Trekkies now work at NASA. In Space Exploration: Past, Present, Future, Peterson examines what it takes to build a space-faring civilization.

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By the start of the 20th century, near disappearance of beavers from the U.S. at the hands of trappers made wetlands and meadows dry up, hastened erosion, altered streams, and harmed fish, fowl, and amphibians. Beavers’ recent resurgence, a wildlife success story, offers many environmental benefits, Ben Goldfarb asserts in Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.

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