The DC Science Writers Association, under its new president, Carol Ezzell, a writer at the NIH Journal of Research, organized a discussion of the role of and the problems in embargoing news releases. The lively session took place on April 15 in the Gannett Building in Arlington, VA. The session was chaired by Joe Palca and featured comments by Monica Bradford, managing editor of Science and Laura Garwin, now physics editor of Nature in London who is coming to Washington as the North American editor.
On May 4, DCSWA convened at the Columbus Center in Baltimore's Inner Harbor for presentations by Madilyn Fletcher, director of the University of Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB), and COMB scientists Yonathan Zohar and Gerardo Vasta. Zohar is developing new methods to control the spawning of striped bass, and Vasta studies ways to combat dermo, the parasite that has decimated the Chesapeake Bay oyster population. Future programs feature National Cancer Institute director Richard Klausner on June 10.
According to an earlier report from Terry Devitt, "the Wisconsin science writers group continues to meet. Our next foray, to take place May 2 in Madison, will be an exploration of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Health Research Center, sort of the FBI of wildlife disease investigation. Subsequent to learning about wild animal pathogens and (possibly) observing a necropsy or two, we will retreat to the Terrace of the Memorial Union at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for frosty beverages and a view of another kind of Madison wildlife."
A recent dinner meeting of the Northern California Science Writers Association (NCSWA) featured NASA-Ames Research Center exopaleontologist Jack Farmer speaking on his strategy for looking for signs of early biological life on Earth and choosing which sites to target for seeing fossil microbes on Mars. (This research had been covered recently by The New York Times, Discover, and Smithsonian.) In April, UC San Francisco's Stan Glantz gave a raconteurial report of his research on the impact of second-hand smoke and nicotine, focusing on his expose of Brown & Williamson that he covers in a new book, The Cigarette Papers. In January, NCSWA participated in a media preview of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's spectacular new Outer Bay wing, which includes the world's largest fish tank--a million-gallon home for tuna, sharks, bonito, and ocean sunfish.
Members of the New England Science Writers gathered at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics April 12 in the hope of seeing comet Hyakutake with beer and chips. They were rewarded not only with an excellent view of Comet C/1996 B2 but also an impromptu conversation with Brian Marsden, of the Observatory and head of the Central Telegraph Bureau, which logs in every new sighting.
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