Articles

On science blogs this week: SynBio

Synthetic biology: a critique from 111 organizations and a dose of realism from a synthetic biologist. A year later, Fukushima and the future of nuclear power. More synbio: Engineering Homo sap to cope with climate change.

On science blogs this week: iPad

The new iPad! Sorta. Brain Awareness Week! Critiquing brain imaging studies. Can an MRI predict future performance on new tasks? The last ape genome: Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Is an auditory system gene a gene for speech? Genetics of complex traits. The resurrection of the Solutrean Hypothesis; were the First Americans really Europeans? The complexities of ancient human migrations.

On science blogs this week: Neurons

How many neurons in the human brain, and where did the traditional number — 100 billion — come from? Ötzi-the-Iceman's genome revealed. Trying to write science for women's magazines and other mass media. New rules for statins. Heartsick about the Heartland climate change email scandal. Open sesame for Open Access. For now.

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings travel funding

Looking for ways to cover science on a tight travel budget? For the fifth year in a row, the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings invites NASW members who are working journalists or freelancers attending on assignment from a media outlet to apply for travel funding to attend the Lindau Meeting. Deadline: April 4.

On science blogs this week: Universe

AAAS meeting blogging. Are the enemies of science growing or just getting louder? A microbe field guide? Primate moral outrage over inequality. Those purloined Heartland climate change documents: the surprising villain, the textual analysis, and the education scheme. The first watery exoplanet, misexplained. FTL neutrinos, not so fast. Download the Universe and the future of science ebooks.

Idea Grants update: $140,000 awarded thus far

In the past seven months, the National Association of Science Writers has awarded an additional five Idea Grants, totaling $67,000, bringing the total awarded since the grant program's inception one year ago this month to almost $140,000. Funding is provided by income from the Authors Coalition, and the grants are intended to help science writers in their professional lives or benefit the field of science writing.

From ScienceWriters: The polls are in

In the circles in which we run we have seen the results of polls that seek to tease out how the public perceives science and scientists. For this edition of Scholarly Pursuits, we are taking a look at one of these polls as well as exploring some recent papers that seek to elucidate how and why people perceive science in certain ways. From the Winter 2011-12 ScienceWriters.

2012 travel fellows at AAAS

NASW awarded travel grants to 8 undergraduates interested in science writing to attend the AAAS meeting in Vancouver, B.C., Feb. 16-20. The fellows reported on some of the scientific sessions that they found most interesting and newsworthy.

Feb. 20, 2012

On science blogs this week: Risky

The sad state of SETI and of space exploration. NASA budget dooms planetary expeditions. Bad infographics of bad science. Deceptive docs. A new stolen email scandal besets some climate change folks, and this time deniers are the targets. Darwin's papers online. Dark matter is everywhere. Wall Street loves dopamine. Videos: Flying robot jugglers and the aurora borealis.

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