Science writing news

The Atlanta BeltLine, now in the works, aims to transform a 22-mile ring of mostly defunct rail lines running through 45 diverse downtown Atlanta neighborhoods into a green pedestrian walkway and path for runners and bikers with a possible streetcar line, an urban planner’s dream. In City on the Verge: Atlanta and the Fight for America’s Urban Future, Mark Pendergrast, an Atlanta native, explores the BeltLine’s development and potential impact on the communities through which it will run. He also addresses broader urban issues, including transportation, race, housing, education, religion, public health, and the economy.

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Sitting too much, and exercising too little, weaken gluteal and postural muscles essential for supporting the spine, and may trigger back pain. Treatment for back pain is a microcosm of everything wrong with the health care system, Cathryn Jakobson Ramin asserts in Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery. Ramin aims to give patients “the information they need to make good decisions, to know what works sometimes, what works rarely, and what can cause harm.”

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“Company XXX has recommendations for you based on items you purchased.…” Similar emails flood our inboxes daily. In his fifth novel, The Happy Chip, Dennis Meredith explores the impact of runaway data-grabbing. He imagines a ground-breaking nanochip people seeking to improve their lives have implanted in their bodies. The chip not only monitors behaviors, but also can control them surreptitiously. It’s 1984, a few decades on. Meredith’s non-fiction books include Explaining Research, a guidebook for scientists and science writers.

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My grandmother sprinkled salt on her grapefruit. As a child, I reached for the sugar. In Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense, Bob Holmes explains why my grandmother made a wiser choice: salty tastes inhibit bitter ones. Most people, Holmes says, know little about the complex interplay of taste, smell, touch, sight, and even expectation that creates flavor sensations. We can learn to improve our everyday flavor experiences, however, Holmes asserts. It’s worth the effort, he says: “Paying attention to flavor makes life not just richer but deeper.”

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When drugs deemed potentially useful for medical treatment in published research papers advance into pharmaceutical testing regimes, nine out of ten fail. That’s because the underlying science wasn’t rigorous, writes Richard Harris, long-time NPR science correspondent and NASW’s president in 1997-98. In Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions, Harris explores recent efforts to air and address the reproducibility crisis.

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As a 23-year-old postgraduate student working with Edward Teller in 1951, Richard Garwin came up with the design that led to the hydrogen bomb, Joel Shurkin reports. Outside of a small group in Los Alamos, however, Garwin’s role was completely unknown, Shurkin asserts in True Genius: The Life and Work of Richard Garwin, The Most Influential Scientist You Never Heard of. Garwin’s other inventions include air traffic control systems and the first laser printer. Of the bomb, Shurkin notes, Garwin once said, “If I had a magic wand, I would make it go away.”

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