The persistent parade of UC Santa Cruz science communication program certificate-holders marching into science reporting workplaces and wangling jobs looks to be fully in step for yet another year. The program typically has 8 – 10 enrollees, most of them young and all of them trained and busy in science until pried out of labs and field stations by writer's bug. And each year they sweat out feature stories for the program's ScienceNotes compendium. Years ago UCSC also hosted a science illustration program – its crew did the art for the stories. Then it moved to the new Cal. State University, Monterey Bay on the site of the old Fort Ord army base, a new use of the land that I'd have enjoyed more than what I got: prepped for Vietnam. The transplanted Science Illustration Program still partners on Science Notes with UCSC.
The stories all are good and several are excellent. Most and maybe all would look at home in any of several of the finer science writing or general magazines on the web or still existent on paper. In fact, one was sold in very similar form to a professional outlet of some repute. At least, one presumes the writer didn't give it away.
The list is below. First a mild disclosure. I'm an old friend of the program, having known its founder John Wilkes since before he set it up 32 years ago, and in like fashion have known his successor and present director Rob Irion since well before he stepped in. I've participated as a visitor in the program too. I am biased by fondness.
The spotlighted science fields of the eight stories are diverse – three in medicine, one hybrid of physics and forensic medicine, two in astro-space &physics, two biology, and one environment-natural history. Each comes with a multi-media exercise, usually a recording fit for podcast. Far as I can tell the writers report on fields substantially different from the science they had concentrated on before arriving at UCSC. I shall strive to keep to myself the few overt reservations I have about composition and topic. These are writers who may not yet have grown thick skin in response to even mild and helpfully intended criticism (some of us, cough cough, never do armor ourselves too well against neurotic overreaction).
The overall site for Science notes 2013 is here. Note that each story is copyrighted to the writer, who (as do the artists) has a short bio at the story's end. And so, one by one….
Stories:
- Ryder Diaz : At a Snail's Pace/ Scientists struggle to bring white abalone back from the brink of extinction, but time is running out ; Wow, who knew? Surely I've read of white abalone before. Maybe not. But this tale puts them right up with orange roughy and Patagonian tooth fish as short-lived restaurant bonanzas diametrically opposite from bases for sustainable fisheries. Technology ruthlessly propelled them toward extinction once it caught up with their remote habitats.
- Rina Shaikh-Lesko: Bones and Bombs / A hidden legacy of the Cold War is helping forensic scientists solve cold cases ; Fine job sorting through radioisotope decay rates, nuclear bomb testing, and the composition of cold-case bones. It took me awhile to absorb the illus – the mushroom in the mid-foreground is supposed to be a mushroom cloud far away. Ah, I just can't hold back a tsk tsk remark. The perspective is messed up. The artist, or the instructor looking over the artist's shoulder, should have seen it needs to be peeking up behind the farthest treeline. Then it'd look like it's rising as a horrid false sun beyond the horizon.
- Paul Gabrielsen: Under Thick Skin / A biotech startup battling a rare, disfiguring disease prepares for its defining test ; Wherein a writer, for no observable reason other than to share some pain with a subject of his story, goes so deep into the topic he even gets under the surgeon's knife. Actuall, a skin plug thingie. But he also comes out with a detailed explanation of gene mutations and of orphan drug problems. Pretty good for a former geologist.
- Elizabeth Devitt: Defying Death Caps / A doctor fights to gain approval for an antidote to a deadly poison ; Anpother story on orphan drug struggles, this one seen through a personal stuggle to get a somewhat unproven treatment for mushroom poisoning through the FDA's breastworks. Relates well the near-fiendish way that certain species of tasty-looking mushroom wreak havoc on internal organs. The story makes clear that the therapy has its doubters – so the hed should have qualified things, perhaps said possible or potential antidote.
- Kelly Servick: Future Flock / Will genomic science help the iconic passenger pigeon return from extinction? ; Great arc to this story. By the way, this is the one that has also appeared elswhere – at Wired in March. The naive reader may traipse along quite happily while learning possible ways by which genes isolated from museum specimens could be stitched into genomes of living relatives in a way (a stretch, I'd say, but plausible) that out of the egg would come a bird that grows up to look and act like a passenger pigeon. The fabulous George Church of Harvard comes up as an esteemed wise head familiar with this still-hypothetical project. Only late in the story does there come up a question a few readers will have mused upon already: do we really WANT back a bird once so numerous it blotted out the sun and whose lifestyle pretty much depended on there being a whole lot of other ones? They formed vast, hungry armies. Farmers might not like that. When they roosted for the night and then foraged onward, they'd leave layers of bird droppings an inch or more thick, for miles. Plus, de-extinction, if proven, might pull some of the slats out of the Endangered Species Act.
- Jessica Shugard : Dark Questions / Cosmic explorers have built an enormous camera to seek the invisible ; All these stories force the writers to leave their comfort zones. But an immunologist reporting on dark energy is a hefty push. Shugard starts off simple and builds up well, with a solid employment of narrative and glimpses of the personal histories of her sources. Maybe there are some errors in here but I didn't spot them. Program director Irion is an astronomy bug so I presume he'd have sent this back for rewrite had it any major misfires. The hefty wide-angle camera itself is not well-described in the story but Shugard fills in the gap handsomely in an embedded narrated slideshow. There one learns what it is that one photographs in order to learn about something that, itself, scoffs at photography.
- Chris Palmer : Shooting Star Showdown/ A million meteoroids bombard Earth every second, are satellites at risk? ; We've all read about the growing hazard of space junk in near-Earth and geosynchronous orbit, bits and pieces of dead and busted satellites that might crash into the space station or other useful hardware. This goes up a notch to explore the peril from meteoroids, some of them tiny, moving far faster than most space junk. Palmer explains neatly how, in principle, the vaporization of stuff from collisions could fry a satellites electronics even if the hole is not big enough in itself to cripple the hardware. The story does a professional and smooth job laying out the problem and one possible way to keep it in hand.
- Laura Poppick : Socializing Darwin / An ecologist strives to revise Darwin's theory of sexual selection ; One bets that Poppick learned things here that will stick with her for her entire career. It is a deep dive into the nuance of Darwinian selection theory. That is, not all traits that seem to be decor useless to the essential business of locomotion, eating, and the mechanics of procreation are necessarily there to enhance the chance of gaining access to or attention of an intended mate. It includes an essential episode during which the protagonist makes a heartfelt presentation with no idea what interested party is sitting right in the lecture hall front row. Is this the first piece of journalism to capture that bit of melodrama? If so, a thrill for Poppick and fine example of the unexpected gems that may pop up during the slog-a-day course of reporting.
- Thomas Sumner : Palatable Speech / A new iPad game may help kids learn proper speech after cleft palate surgery ; For the first time I have stopped to dwell on the mechanical and accoustical reason for the distinctive pronunciation difficulties in speech when one has a cleft palate – a leak through the roof of the mouth into nasal passages. This is a story with heart and a straightforward, persuasive proposal for a way to train children whose deformity has been repaired but who have already established the muscle memory needed to speek semi-intelligibly with the impediment but unsuited to make the phonemes of normal speech when aided by a sealed-off mouth. The therapy that is the story's theme takes advantage of video game software and its ability to make tough tasks feel fun – sort of like the difference in enthusiasm between kids laughing as they play tag on a hillside and being ordered to run up and down the hill 20 times without stopping. The treatment, however, seems to be one just as useful for other speech impediments. That should have been adressed, even if only in passing.
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