In February, the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017 website was launched. It is your one-stop location for news and updates on the conference program, proposal submissions, fellowships, venues, field trips, and registration.
Featured news
Deep in the Heart of Texas, the Alamo City is home to many wonders, including the UNESCO World Heritage Missions and World Champion Spurs NBA team. San Antonio is also deep in the heart of discovery on everything from cancer, Pluto, Ebola, and robotics. San Antonio scientists are excited to welcome you and share their discoveries.
On October 29 NASW members will vote on a proposed amendment to the NASW constitution that would change the qualifications for the positions of president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. A lot of discussion has been prompted by this amendment, and we'd like to give the ongoing conversation a home on the NASW web site so as many people as possible, members and non-members alike, can engage in the discussion about issues that affect our community. Read more for background and to comment.
If you were hanging around the Twittersphere in February, you may have caught glimpse of the excitement generated by the return of the Knight Science Journalism Tracker: the MIT-based blog for evaluating and critiquing science journalism, which went on hiatus in 2014. The Tracker has a new home as a monthly column in a much broader, more ambitious digital publication that KSJ’s new director, Deb Blum, and editor Tom Zeller Jr., have given the evocative title Undark.
The Board of the National Association of Science Writers is responsible for the operation and continued well-being of the organization as a whole. That is why we feel a need to weigh in on the sometimes-rancorous debate now underway over the proposed constitutional amendment regarding officer positions, which will come to a vote in the fall. We as a board are unanimous in our opposition to the amendment.
Usually, there is only one way for writers and other self-employed persons to write off medical and health expenses: They have to claim those outlays as itemized deductions on Schedule A of Form 1040. That is just the first obstacle. There is another barrier for itemizers. Their medical expenditures are not fully deductible. They are allowed to claim such expenses just to the extent that they exceed 10 percent of AGI (short for adjusted gross income), the figure on the last line of page one of the 1040 form.
The Ad Hoc Committee on Constitutional Review went above and beyond in their service to NASW, producing a report earlier this month that suggests that the organization is at a critical juncture.
In The Autoimmune Connection, Rita Baron-Faust explores autoimmune diseases that are found more frequently in women than in men. These include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Sjögren’s Syndrome, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, immune thrombocytopenia, and inflammatory bowel disease. Some women have two or more of these disorders, she notes. Because symptoms such as fatigue or pain often are vague and overlap, diagnosis may be delayed or missed. In this update of her 2004 book, Baron-Faust reports recent advances in understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of autoimmune disorders.