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Winter/Spring 2020

The latest edition of ScienceWriters magazine reflects on our recent ScienceWriters conference in State College and its volunteer-driven focus on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in our field. Coverage by our travel fellows offers a collection of insight and resources, including tips on data security, from the NASW craft sessions that we hope is useful to attendees and non-attendees alike. Full text visible only to NASW members.

Summer/Fall 2019

Redesigned in 2019, the new ScienceWriters magazine features reporting on climate change, coverage of the Idea Grant-supported "Amplify the Signal" workshop, professional updates from our colleagues, member benefits, and tips and tools of our trade. Full text visible only to NASW members.

Rectangular photo of sea otter in the ocean. Photo credit: Jeff Stevens

Alison Pearce Stevens—Animal Climate Heroes!

Whales fertilize the ocean with their poop. Forest elephants eat small fast-growing trees, helping larger slow-growing trees flourish. In Animal Climate Heroes, Alison Pearce Stevens urges readers aged 8 and up to become climate heroes, too, by cutting back on single-use plastics, encouraging their families to buy local, planting a vegetable garden, and choosing to bike rather than riding in a car.

Rectangular photo of David Baron’s office bookshelf showing works on eclipses, starts, astronomy, Thomas Edison and the U.S. Naval Observatory’s record of the July 29, 1878 eclipse. Photo credit: David Baron.

David Baron—American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World (Revised Edition)

On April 8, the moon’s shadow will sweep over North America from Mexico across Texas to New England into Canada. Some 32 million people will see a total eclipse. This “precious shared experience,” David Baron suggests in a new edition of American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World, may boost recognition of commonalities in our divided nation.

Rectangular photo of Liz Lee Heinecke’s office bookshelf showing works about and by women in science including Marie Curie and Rachel Carson. Photo credit: Liz Lee Heinecke.

Liz Lee Heinecke—She Can STEM: 50 Trailblazing Women in Science from Ancient History to Today

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, but the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics went to her male academic advisor—not a unique story. In She Can STEM: 50 Trailblazing Women in Science from Ancient History to Today, Liz Lee Heinecke chronicles 50 women scientists’ successes and struggles. Each account includes a guide to help readers ages 7-12 conduct topic-related experiments of their own at home.

Winter/Spring 2024 PDF

The Winter/Spring 2024 issue recaps our incredible ScienceWriters2023 national conference in Colorado, along with plenaries focused on Indigenous issues reporting. Plus the usual SciWriLife work nook photo feature and your latest member community news roundup!

Nell Greenfieldboyce—Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life

“Much of scientific inquiry, like poetry, involves play and metaphor and idiosyncratic obsessions and just plain fiddling around,” Nell Greenfieldboyce asserts. In Transient And Strange: Notes on the Science of Life, she employs these same tactics to explore the nature of tornados, meteorites, black holes, lives of fleas and spiders, doodling, quality of silence, making of toast, and making of babies.

Rectangular photo of Rebecca Boyle’s office bookshelves showing works on the moon, the Solar System, tides, cosmology, and astronomy. Photo credit: Rebecca Boyle.

Rebecca Boyle—Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are

Moon dust smells like wet ashes and sticks to everything, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin found on their 1969 moon landing. They slept with helmets on to avoid breathing it in. In Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, Rebecca Boyle covers moon science from the moon’s formation up to recent attempts to monetize it as a graveyard.