Not all social media are created equal for news purposes, three studies find. Rick Borchelt discusses them in "Scholarly pursuits: Academic research relevant to the workaday world of science writing." Excerpted from the Summer 2011 ScienceWriters.
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The party leaders vying to form the next Canadian government are being urged to “take off the muzzles” from federal scientists. Emily Chung explains the details in an excerpt from the Summer 2011 ScienceWriters.
That Virginia earthquake caused the Earth to move the East coast, but wasn't a big deal after all. Is there a pattern in recent quakes? Tracking the Tweetquake: Tweets really did outrun the quake itself. Fossil news. The oldest life? The oldest placental mammal? How the Juramaia find affects dating mammal evolution, particularly primates. The latest trendy chef is Homo erectus. Maybe.
Thinking of taking a home office as a tax deduction? Not so fast, says ScienceWriters columnist Julian Block. Just because you can walk 20 feet from your bedroom to your work area and conduct business in your bathrobe doesn’t mean the nook with the computer qualifies as a bona fide office. Excerpted from the Summer 2011 issue.
An appeals court has (for a second time) tried to reject settlement of a long-running U.S. Copyright class action suit over unauthorized use of freelance magazine articles in data bases. Meanwhile, if you have written for Canadian magazines or newspapers, you should check out terms of a Canadian class-action settlement for similar unauthorized use of freelance articles. For details, see this update from NASW member Jeff Hecht.
Big HITs: Health information technology is not a snore. Really. Chinese scientists to deflect Earth-threatening asteroid Apophis! The physics preprint server ArXiv at 20. Are physics and chemistry getting more popular because of television? The potential influence of the TV show Breaking Bad.
Mobilizing to cover a complex, breaking story on the other side of the world is never easy. Doing it when reliable sources are clamming up is even harder. In this except from the Summer 2011 ScienceWriters, Joe Palca discusses how National Public Radio covered Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown.
Whatever does not kill a plant may actually make it stronger. After being partially eaten by grazing animals, for example, some plants grow bigger and faster and reproduce more successfully than they otherwise would. In a new study, researchers report that one secret to these plants’ post-traumatic triumph lies in their ability to duplicate their chromosomes – again and again – without undergoing cell division
Microbiologist Rosie Redfield is trying to replicate that arsenic bacterium study in public, a blogging watershed. Yes, gene therapy for leukemia looks promising indeed, but the new small study awaits replication. Gay's end? Why same-sex marriage could eradicate homosexuality. Plus, get your Google+ invite here, Take 2.