Helen Fields sure likes her Livescribe pen and she writes about it for the Science Writers' Handbook. It costs $120 to $200, and to use it, you have to write on special pads that cost $25 per pair. But for that, you get a pen that automatically synchronizes your handwritten notes to your audio recordings: "I find the pen particularly useful for checking quotes," Fields writes. You can pre-order the NASW-funded Handbook from the NASW Bookstore.
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Transcending traditional academic boundaries is key to continued progress at the intersection of nanotechnology, biotechnology and other scientific fields, but the organizational structure at many institutions hinders that kind of collaboration.
The blue whale — owner of the world’s largest mouth — has some newly discovered prey-catching tricks. In a Jaws-like fashion, the whale ambushes huge patches of prey from below with a powerful 360-degree barrel roll.
Electronic implants to treat hearing loss, blindness and immobility are no longer limited to science fiction, scientists say. Researchers from the U.S. and Europe spoke February 17 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston to present new developments in this field of bionic medicine.
The moral of the Jonah Lehrer story: Science writing is impossible because of the human brain. Nevertheless, lobbying for the Brain Activity Map. The Darwin finch genome project. Obamacare news: the Republicans are bringing us socialized medicine.
Mathematical modeling is no longer a tool reserved for scientists. Artists and architects are now using it to create sculptures, abstract graphs and digital seashells that visualize mathematical equations and concepts.
It may seem the sun wages a constant war against our skin. Harmful UV radiation burns us, damages our DNA, and can sow the seeds for melanoma. But the sun is essential to our healthy development and our immune systems, because sun-exposed skin produces Vitamin D. During the long-ranging human exodus from Africa, says anthropologist Nina Jablonski, Vitamin D levels in the body played a key role: driving the evolution of our species' skin color.
Birds soar, cheetahs sprint, and humans speak. Just as each animal’s unique behavior evolved via natural selection, our capacity for language is also hard-wired in genes and brain tissue.
The idea was a natural. Modeled loosely on the short, single-topic boot camps of the Knight Science Journalism program or the National Center for Atmospheric Research, ours would be the first on astronomy to be offered on the West Coast, and the first anywhere on computational astronomy.