Science writer

Do you get excited about news in science and technology Do you like to explain information in a way that others find interesting and understandable Then consider a career as a science writer. 

Science writers keep up-to-date on what is happening in the worid of science and transiate that news so nonscientists can understand it. These writers work for newspapers, magazines, scientific pubiications, teievision stations, and internet news services. Lots of curiosity, as weii as a degree in a science and/or journaiism, is essentiai. 

Miners reiied on the physical property of density to distinguish goid (19 g/cm ) from the worthiess minerais in their sluice pans. The density of pyrite, a worthiess minerai often mistaken for goid, is 5 g/cm.  

Substance Color State at 25°C Melting point (°C) Boiling point (°C) Density (g/cm ) 

Extensive and intensive properties Physical properties can be further described as being one of two types. Extensive properties are dependent upon the amount of substance present. For example, mass, which depends on the amount of substance there is, is an extensive property. Length and volume are also extensive properties. Density, on the other hand, is an example of an intensive property of matter. Intensive properties are independent of the amount of substance present. For example, density of a substance (at constant temperature and pressure) is the same no matter how much substance is present. 

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Good current sources of information on the environment are newspapers. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and Environment magazine. Professional science writers have been particularly helpful to high school teachers. Several college-level texts (12,13) are resources for high school teachers.and, with appropriate modification, could be used as reference texts by secondary students. 

SHARON Bertsch McGrayne is a science writer and award-winning journalist. She has been a reporter for Scripps-Howard, Crain s, Gannett, and other newspapers covering education, politics, and health issues. She is a former science editor and writer for Encyclopaedia Britannica and the author of several books, including Nobel Prize Women in Science. 

The Foundation s headquarters at 41 Portland Place, London W1B 1BN, provide library facilities, open to graduates in science and allied disciplines. Media relations are fostered by regular press conferences and by articles prepared by the Foundation s Science Writer in Residence. The Foundation offers accommodation and meeting facilities to visiting scientists and their societies. 

Scientists and science writers did not merely turn to occult notions to help describe or even inspire their research. As Modem Alchemy demonstrates, during the period from the turn of the century to just before World War II, the trajectories of science and occultism briefly merged. The stories told here document how and why the nature of matter was so newly important to both scientists and occultists—and they uncover the spiritual and ethical implications of the new material science of radioactivity. 

Science writers, working for magazines such as Science News and Popular Science, translate discoveries reported in journal articles (written for expert audiences)... 

At this point in her life, Carson was fortunate enough to find a more lucrative position, as a science writer at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Her job there was to prepare radio scripts and to edit a variety of government publications dealing with fisheries. She was also able to do some freelance writing on the side and, in 1937, published her first major article, "Undersea," in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. 

Society s 19th Science Writers Seminar, Sarasota, Florida, April 1-6, 1977. 

Kathleen Hefferon completed her PhD in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Georgia and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University. She became cofounder of two start-up biotechnology companies using patents based upon her own and other research performed at Cornell University. Dr. Hefferon most recently held the title of Director of Operations, Human Metabolic Research Unit, Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She also acts as a science writer for the Center for Hepatitis C Research at Rockefeller University in New York City and as an expert selector for the Infection and Immunity Division of the Medical Research Council, in London. She currently lives in the Fingerlakes region of New York with her husband and two children. 

Many do, but science writer Martin Gardner reports that a greater percentage of Americans today believe in astrology and occult phenomena than did citizens of medieval Europe. Very few newspapers carry a daily science column, but nearly all provide daily horoscopes. 

We are able now to cover the atom and space beats with a high degree of competence and sophistication, due in large part to the development of specialist reporters. At my own newspaper, for example, we do not have simply a science writer we have one reporter who is assigned exclusively to the physical sciences and a second reporter assigned to the biological sciences. A third reporter is a nationally respected authority on evolution and DNA... 

Paula Ford-Martin, MA Principal Writer/Editor, Wordcrafts, Warwick, Rhode Island Lisa Fratt Medical Writer, Ashland, Wisconsin Roberta Friedman Freelance Science Writer, Santa Cruz, California... 

Richard M. Kapit, M.D. Freelance Medical and Science Writer, Garrett Park, Maryland Marsha Lopez, Ph.D. Faculty Research Associate, University of Maryland, Center for Substance Abuse Research, Baltimore, Maryland L.A. McKeown Freelance Medical Writer and Editor, Spring Lake, New Jersey... 

Jennifer Wilson Science Writer, Haddonfield, New Jersey... 

Chemistry was never an easy topic for science writer KRISTA WEST. Only after years of studying chemistry in life science and earth science did she realize (and appreciate) its power. Today, she writes young adult chemistry books on topics as diverse as states of matter, chemical reactions, and the properties of metals. Krista holds masters degrees in Earth Science and Journalism, both from Columbia University in New York. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her husband and two sons. 

While science writers today extoll the virtues of computer controlled laboratory instrumentation, knowledgeable lab dentists recognize the extent to which automated equipment can "free" the scientist from his laboratory investigations. A similar appraisal occurred in the crime laboratory. Crime laboratory directors soon recognized that no amount of modern equipment could reduce the ever-growing case load if there were not enough laboratory scientists to use the equipment. Adequately prepared laboratory scientists were needed to use the equipment to produce results which could be interpreted in a meaningful manner relative to the cases at hand. In other words, we have not as yet found the way to get the "computer" to testify under oath on the stand ... 

Volumes have been written about the red herring known as Schrodinger s cat. Without science writers looking for sensation, it is difficult to see how such nonsense could ever become a topic for serious scientific discussion. Any linear differential equation has an infinity of solutions and a linear combination of any two of these is another solution. To describe situations of physical interest such an equation is correctly prepared by the specification of appropriate boundary conditions, which eliminate the bulk of all possible solutions as irrelevant. Schrodinger s equation is a linear differential equation of the Sturm-Liouville type. It has solutions, known as eigenfunctions, the sum total of which constitutes a state function or wave function, which carries... 

In The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins turns his attention briefly to the bombardier beetle. First he cites a passage from The Neck of the Giraffe, a book by science writer Francis Hitching, that describes the bombardier beetle s defensive system, as part of an argument against Darwinism ... 

These conflicts reverberate into the present. In 1990 Scientific American asked a science writer named Forrest Mims to write several columns for the Amateur Scientist feature of their magazine. Amateur Scientist treats topics such as measuring the length of lightning bolts, building portable solar observatories, and making a home seismometer to record earth movements—fun projects for those whose hobby is science. The understanding was that if the editors and readers liked the columns, Mims would be hired as a permanent writer. The trial columns all went very well, but when Mims came to New York for a final interview he was asked if he believed in evolution. Mims replied, well, no, he believed in the biblical account of creation. 

During the later years of his life he worked as waterworks engineer and a science writer. In 1808 he compiled a Dictionary of Practical and Theoretical Chemistry [ii, iii]. 

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human-like behavior to creatures and things that are not human. In a pet store, a clerk told a customer that the turtle he was watching with his head pulled into its shell was "shy." Sure, the turtle s head was retracted, but how did the clerk know it was shy Maybe pulling its head in was simply a turtle-like thing to do and had no significance at all. Who knows Turtles can t talk. But you don t have to work in a pet store to anthropomorphize. Science writers do it, too. 

Interferons are arguably the oldest known cytokines, first described over 40 years ago by Isaacs and Lindenmann (1957). True, there were somewhat earlier publications in which phenomena now known to be mediated by cytokines or growth factors had been described (Bennett and Beeson, 1953 Levi-Montalcini and Hamburger, 1953), but, as pointed out by the science writer Stephen S. Hall (Hall, 1997), it was the first interferon publications that lit the fuse for an explosion of discoveries leading to the vast accumulation of knowledge about cytokines and the appreciation of their important biological function. 

There are no doubt other useful materials elsewhere in nature, too in the oceans, polar icecaps, volcanoes, and maybe even other planets and moons. Before we can take advantage of these resources, there are a host of problems to be solved—but the possibility of a chemical cornucopia if we solve them. Where do we focus our efforts The answer may be found in the words of the venerable scientist and science writer, Isaac Asimov. He said, The most exciting phrase to hear in science. .. is not Eureka but That s funny. .. ... 

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