Desk Notes Newsletter, April 17, 2019
Get an update from President Siri Carpenter, read about a new tool to help journalists access federal court cases, and meet new member Prabarna Ganguly in the April issue.
Featured news
Stephen Ornes: Math Art
A mathematician created 13 mathematical quilts providing visual representations of patterns in pi. A topologist worked out equations for inner and outer curves of seashells to sculpt shells from gypsum. A teacher crochets tangible models of the hyperbolic plane. In Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations, Stephen Ornes explains the math and provides stunning examples of mathematical art.
Diorama contest finds sweet spot between science and storytelling
Siri Carpenter, NASW president and editor-in-chief of The Open Notebook (TON), is all out of Peeps puns. She’s had a peep at the 50 entries in The Open Notebook’s science-themed Peeps diorama contest.
Meet new member Prabarna Ganguly
Prabarna Ganguly, a science writer at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), shares #WhySciWri in this short Q&A.
NASW volunteers keep wheels turning
President Siri Carpenter shares an update on work being done by NASW's volunteer-run committees.
LegalEye will aid access to federal court system
Charles Seife, a journalist, author and professor at New York University, is building LegalEye, an automated research service that will help journalists find new lawsuits that are relevant to their beats and notify them of developments in interesting cases.
Charles Graeber: The Breakthrough
Skeptical reporters usually avoid the word “breakthrough,” but Charles Graeber deems it the right word for the Nobel Prize-winning scientific discoveries he describes in The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer. More than 3000 clinical trials of immunotherapeutic drugs for cancer are in process. “Even oncologists, a cautious bunch,” he writes, “are using the C word: cure.”
NASW releases Information Access Standards
NASW has released a set of Information Access Standards to guide interactions between journalists and PIOs and sources at federal science agencies. The guidelines foster the transparent and open exchange of information about science and technology generated, funded, or used by government entities.
Mark Wolverton: Burning the Sky
In the late 1950s, during the Cold War, the U.S. secretly conducted high-altitude atomic bomb tests, aiming to create a radiation shield to block incoming warheads. New York Times reporters pierced the veil of secrecy, raising safety and moral concerns relevant today, Mark Wolverton relates in Burning the Sky: Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space.