Scio10 Interviews

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Anne Frances Johnson

clock — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:47:38 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Anne Frances Johnson

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.

Today, I asked Anne Frances Johnson to answer a few questions. Anne is a freelancer and grad student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

When I was a kid, I, like all 8-year-old girls, wanted to be a marine biologist and ride around on dolphins. A couple decades later, I'm still into science and nature, but I don't actually ride wild animals. I'm a freelance science writer and master's student in the Medical & Science Journalism program at UNC. I like to think it's as fun as riding dolphins, but probably better for the environment.

I'm originally from Raleigh, NC, and I've recently come full circle back to the Triangle after more than ten years away with stops in New Mexico, New England, New Zealand and Washington, DC (I lived there even though it doesn't have "new" in its name). I have a B.A. in biology from Smith College, where I spent lots of time cutting open fish stomachs for my thesis on lobster predation (What Eats Lobsters besides People?).

I always liked learning about science, but in college I found actually doing it to be rather gooey and tedious, and decided I probably didn't have the endurance for it as a career. I found myself gravitating instead toward the edges of science, where it interacts with society. I worked at a marine reserve in New Zealand, patrolled Costa Rican beaches for would-be sea-turtle-egg poachers, and tended persimmons, goats and alpacas on various farms here and abroad. But it wasn't until my first "real" job--at the National Academy of Sciences--that I discovered science writing. Instantly smitten, I've been a ravenous science reader and writer ever since.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

My first science communications piece was an educational booklet on stem cells. Most of the stem cell information available at the time followed either the science community's party line (embryonic stem cells are more useful than adult stem cells so we should use them) or the conservative/political party line (scientists want to kill babies and we should stop them). Since I was working for a scientific organization, it would have been simple to take the usual tack, but we decided it was really time to go beyond that. I spent a lot of time talking to people ethically opposed to human embryonic stem cell research and tried to craft the booklet so it could reach those folks on their terms, while still being true to the science. Dealing with both the scientific and ethical issues head-on ultimately made it a more useful product for people, and tens of thousands of the booklets found their way into schools and doctors' offices. It was very rewarding.

After that, I had the pleasure of developing a whole slew of other booklets (and posters and gadgets and websites) on topics including how to plant a pollinator-friendly garden, why microbes are cool and what the new science of "metagenomics" can tell us, and how climate change might affect ecosystems across the U.S. It's been a constant learning experience.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Last year I decided to go back to school to pick up some additional communications skills I wasn't sure I could learn on the job. So now I'm a science journalism grad student. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the curriculum is the multimedia work I'm doing. I know "multimedia" is a silly buzzword, but it really is useful to be able to apply whatever combination of media--text, sound, video, graphics, animations--is right for the topic at hand. I'm enjoying learning to wield all those tools and figuring out how to leverage the strengths of each to communicate in an engaging way.

Although teamwork is incredibly powerful, it's also useful to be able to function as a "one-woman-band," with a complete suite of skills to produce everything from documentaries to press releases myself. Wherever I end up after I graduate in 2011, I hope I'll be able to apply all my fun new skills and continue to learn and adapt to the changing communications landscape.

What's up with going to journalism school? No offense, but isn't that a dying industry?

I get that a lot. Journalism school is actually alive and well, even in the current climate. The journalism business model is in a period of adjustment that's leaving a lot of traditional journalists out of work, and that's too bad. But I think people are hungrier than ever for information, and for the most part they know the difference between bad information and good information. I think there will always be a role for good journalistic work--especially when it comes to science topics.

Career-wise, I'm more interested in communications than traditional journalism, but I think going through this experience of learning to write more like a journalist makes me a stronger communications person. I also just love being in journalism school because I'm surrounded by really creative thinkers from all different backgrounds, which challenges me to go beyond the obvious and try different approaches.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I love that there's this vast array of genuinely interesting science content online that teachers can use as part of science education. Science education has had a terrible reputation for a long time. The Web gives teachers and parents opportunities to engage children in ways that have never existed before. Kids can interact with the scientific world on their terms and keep following the leads that interest them most. It sure beats those awful textbooks and cheesy videos I remember from childhood.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I have a healthy skepticism about using blogs and social networking in science communications. Organizations pour so much into getting their content out in all these different ways. They're available and "free," so why not? And sometimes they're really effective at amplifying your reach and visibility. But they're not magical. Sometimes, you're better off simply producing more or better actual content, and your resources would be better spent focusing on the dissemination avenues that are most effective for your specific target audiences. There's always a trade-off between quantity and quality, between producing new content and promoting your existing content. You have to hit the right balance, and I think blogs and social networking can be distracting if you don't keep them in perspective. I try to use 'em when they're right for the task, and leave 'em when they're not.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

One of my favorite experiences was getting to hold these really old dead birds they keep in the bowels of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. There were just racks and racks of them. We got to pass them around, and they were so astoundingly light and beautiful. It was fun to connect with nature in the way that taxonomists have for years and years, where you can take note of the tiniest differences among species. I loved that behind-the-scenes tour, and would be thrilled to be able do more of the tours next year.

On blogging, the conference perhaps counterintuitively convinced me that it's okay not to blog about science. Seeing all those people blogging and tweeting so passionately, I thought, you know, there's room for all types here. And if daily blogging isn't my thing, it's okay. People are blogging about science, and people are writing involved, long-form articles and books about science, and folks will continue to be engaged with science on whatever basis is useful for them--whether it's monthly, daily or by the second. There are so many possibilities, so many ways for people to talk about science. With all those opportunities, you can really shop around and focus on what you can do best.

Thank you so much for the interview. I hope you will come to the meeting again next January.

clock Thu, 07/15/2010 - 08:47

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Eric Roston

clock — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:48:15 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Eric Roston

Today, I asked Eric Roston, author of The Carbon Age and blogger on Climate Post and Carbon Nation (also on Twitter) to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? What is your (scientific) background?

Many people have high school teachers who inspired them, and who they remember forever. I have one memory of my high school chemistry teacher: Occasionally some friends and I would go to the Jai Alai fronton on a Saturday night (This being Connecticut in the '80s), and we'd bump into our chemistry teacher and she'd give us betting tips.

"Chemistry" didn't enter my consciousness again for many years.

Flash forward. After covering a wide range of things at TIME, I began to think, What book could I have read before I started here that could possibly have unified everything I've encountered since? This is circa 2003. It became clear that I and a lot of people around me, not just in the energy and climate arena, were talking about carbon all the time and had no idea what it is, in climate, industry, health, pro cycling, etc.

Here's what it is: The fastest way to learn the most about everything larger than an atom and smaller than a star (no disrespect to the other elements). That was the start of my first book, The Carbon Age. If I had paid attention in high school chemistry, I never would have fallen for it as hard as I did many years later. What Richard Smalley called "the romance of the carbon atom" for me started with an attempt to efficiently answer several big questions at once.

Sometime last month my weekly blog, ClimatePost.net ("Thursdays at three!"), had its first birthday. I started Climate Post as a way for busy non-specialists to keep up with the climate archipelago--science, politics, policy, business, technology--in 1,000 words a week. I like hearing from readers so that I can maximize its usefulness--and your time.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

The Past: I'm basically a journalist. Early on I had formative stints at New York Times and elsewhere. I became so thoroughly disillusioned with the media that I retreated to waiting tables and learning Russian, ending up with an M.A. in Russian history, literature, and linguistics. Eventually, I relapsed and joined Time's business section, and later, its Washington bureau. (My wife and I met when she worked for Newsweek and I was at Time.)

Present: Against all expectation and reason, earlier this year I started thinking through a novel, a thriller called The Delta Prophecy. I can't say what it's about in a word or two without giving away the plot (not guessable).

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

The fiction project, or as I'm more comfortable thinking about it, nonnonfiction, emerged in part for practical reasons. These days I can't cloister myself in the Library of Congress for a couple of years or jet off on short notice to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, Rice, or MIT. Personally, I've got a family now and they're my time and passion. There are tradeoffs in life, and I've had to step back from reporting and writing things I'm interested in lately because, eh, they'll be there later but kids are only two once.

This is almost like asking before, say, 1990, "How does copper wire figure into receiving a telephone signal in your home?

For many members of the rapidly growing Fourth Estate (and similarly, I often suspect, for the clinically insane), blogging, social networks, Google (etc.), Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook are now the main distributors of news media. They have disrupted economies, professions, and 500-year-old vernacular written cultures. The web is reshaping institutions and redistributing skills and demand around the economy.

Nothing is growing anew and nothing is falling to pieces: Everything is growing to pieces.

How do you see journalism changing?

Journalism is not changing. Reporting is not changing. Reporters' tools are expanding and barriers to publishing have been eliminated--as long as you're mindful of the Andy Warhol parody line, "In the future we will all be famous for 15 people."

About a year ago, maybe longer, it seemed various factions in the media and journalism debate were not on the same page. Lost in the shuffle, was discussion of skills and habits of mind useful in reporting, capital R, immutable and eternal. They should be discussed the way we discuss scientific skills and habits of mind.

I sat down to write an essay about the neglect of reporting, but just as soon thought it absurd to write an essay about reporting that didn't have any reporting. So I reported it out, calling "traditional" journalist friends, former colleagues, strangers. Some talked for a while, some were succinct. Every last person I talked to concluded explicitly or inexplicitly that his or her professional skills lay somewhere in the vicinity of "investigation and storytelling." (My emphasis.)

One way of describing the change occurring now in journalism is this: Investigation and storytelling have become decoupled. Legacy media institutions were founded and grew up under the principle that investigation and storytelling can't or shouldn't be decoupled. Places that understand this are trying to adapt. New associations are emerging to test new models, where "investigation" and "storytelling" are coupled by "or," not "and." Now hundreds of people who don't know each other can collaborate on an investigation. News narrators now needn't have a network camera in front of them or even get out of their pajamas.

I hope there will always be demand for "investigation and storytelling." It seems like a reasonable bet. Personally, I like knowing that a person's or an institution's reputation, or their paychecks, is on the line for conducting a thorough investigation, presenting findings in an engaging, comprehensive manner, and verifying everything before I see it. It's a way to both establish trustworthiness and tell a ripping yarn. It might be incomplete, but at least someone's visibly responsible for it.

There's a lot of attention, thankfully, to fact-checking lately, because of the success of PolitiFact, a unit of the St. Petersburg Times, and FactCheck.org, of the University of Pennsylvania. It's worth looking back at one brand of fact-checking, which was invented at Time magazine in the 1920s. Here's the Introduction to Time's fact-checking manual, from 1984, by then-chief of research Leah Shanks Gordon: "When an editor asked for examples of how Time research [fact-checking] system had changed in the past ten years, I was hard-pressed to answer. Time research has changed very little since its inception 60 years ago. Its mandate then and now is to make sure the facts are right. What has changed is the technology, and this is a manifestation of the Computer Age. Philosophically, the research system is as sound as the day it was born; technologically, it is a constantly changing function, keeping pace with the latest developments." Cute that they thought they were living in the computer age.

Then what advice do you have for young "investigators and/or storytellers"?

There are three things I'd recommend people tape to the wall: Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit"; a list of the major logical fallacies; and evolving conclusions from the neuroeconomists and behaviorists about group identity, fact-finding, and opinion-formation.

1) BALONEY: The "Baloney Detection Kit" lays bare the similarities between scientists and journalists. This comes from Sagan's Demon-Haunted World. If you edit them a little bit, you have a list of suggestions that should not only be pinned to the heads of reporters, but anybody who comes to Washington:

Â· Verify facts with multiple sources. The more the merrier.

Â· Absorb all knowledgeable points of view. (Corollary: If a prominent point of view is not knowledgeable, then emphasize that.)

Â· Don't assume authorities are correct just because they're authorities (Corollary: "All administrations lie," I.F. Stone, et al).

Â· Develop more than one explanation of what's going on and test them.

Â· Don't overvalue your own insights and pet theories just because you thought of or encountered them.

Â· Counting counts. Quantify whatever you can.

Â· Make sure every link works in a chain of logic.

Â· Remember Occam's Razor.

Â· When you're done reporting and writing, assume everything you've done is incorrect until you can document otherwise (ie, check facts).

2) FALLACIES: If you start looking at Twitter, etc. through the lens of the logical fallacies, it's clear that, if we had to avoid them in tweets, no one would ever have anything to say to each other. I won't dwell on these except to draw readers' attention to a decade-old absurdist piece on McSweeneys.net by a John Warner, called, "Possible Winning Solutions to the Board Game 'Clue' if the Characters Were Replaced With Right-Leaning Political Pundits, the Weapons Replaced With Logical Fallacies, and the Rooms Replaced With Either Jung's 'Psychic Containers' or Varieties of Soft Cheese." Wikipedia has a handy long list, although somebody needs to go into it and clean it up.

3) NEUROECONOMICS: Behavioral research has come up with many thought-provoking observations about how people accept or dismiss facts. Cognitive tendencies often skew "fact-finding" activities in one way or another.

Jay Rosen of New York University has suggested that journalists should come with disclaimers of "where I'm coming from." Personally, I'd prefer a demonstration that they understand these three things and can apply them to themselves and others. Maybe that's my disclosure.

What is your new media pet peeve?

Occasionally the "me"-driven nature of social media is fundamentally at odds with the outward-looking vector of curiosity and general inquiry that fuels journalism. There are practices and habits of mind central to reporting (and shared with many other professions, notably science) that are at odds with the me-casting zeitgeist of facebook, Twitter, and the blogs. Kurt Cobain was kidding when he said, "Here we are now, entertain us"; not everyone is. There was an article in the New York Times during the 2008 election about college students' media consumption. Students took part anonymously in a study, and one told the researcher: "If the news is that important, it will find me." This would go on to become something of a slogan in some parts. We're making the '70s "Me decade" look like the '40s "Greatest Generaion."

Forget about media and journalism, the "news will find me" ethic struck me as a potentially horrific and arrogant worldview that damns its speaker to manipulation and ignorance. It's revolutionary that we all receive updates from friends and "friends" through various appliances--I'm certainly among the addicted--but as the outrage over Apple's control of iPad media indicates, there are incredibly powerful forces who want nothing more than to make sure that news never finds you.

News does not find anyone. You have to go out and gently beat the hell out of the world to give it to you. Along the way, you collect stories that you didn't set out for. Golden eggs turn out to be rotten, and stones roll over to reveal doubloons. Reporting is frequently what happens when you're busy making other plans.

There's always been diversity in reporting. Reporting is hard to define, because everyone brings a different mix of strengths and weaknesses to the interview, in temperament, emotional intelligence, book smarts, comfort around other people, knowledge of when to be tactful, and when not to be. But all reporting basically comes down to the ethos, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I can't remember a time when the sun didn't rise or a time I didn't read ScienceBlogs. I stay close to climate science and evolution, but also sip from the firehose.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you?

Face time with friends, "friends," and tweeps. It's also fun to rip it up on topics people feel passionately about, in a friendly, collaborative setting.

Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I'm interested in journalism ethics, and, these days, science-in-fiction...

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Tue, 06/29/2010 - 05:48

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Great job Bora, lets hope we get the same calibre of participants over in London for #SOLO10

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Beatrice Lugger

clock — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:00:21 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Beatrice Lugger

Today, I asked Beatrice Lugger, the founding editor of ScienceBlogs Germany, to answer a few questions.

Hi Bora. Thank you for asking me. I am a German woman from Bavaria. I live and work in Munich, the Oktoberfest city, famous for its beer, lederhosen and dirndl, King Ludwig's castles, the Alps and the beautiful lakes in the surroundings. I must say I am a real Bavarian although I don't have a dirndl. But I appreciate living in this megacity that resembles more of a village. I love bicycling, hiking, skiing, swimming or glider flying and can do it all in or very close to Munich. This is no tourist information. This is the truth.

Born in Landshut, Lower Bavaria, I came to Munich to study chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University. There at the University, in the late 1980s, in the time of forest dieback and the Chernobyl disaster, most teachers had still no idea of sustainability. As two fellow students and me managed to focus on ecological chemistry, which we additional studied at the Technical University, one of our teachers at LMU started his lecture with incensed shouting: "We are infiltrated here. For me the green in my soup is enough." I tried my best to undermine the system but realized I won't succeed that much in the research system itself. Simultaneously I couldn't imagine working three years or longer on just one topic for PhD. I am too curious and I love communication, so after my Diploma I started writing. I worked for a small journal called "Politische Ãkologie" for some years and then became a freelancer, writing for German newsmagazines and newspapers. To be honest, I did not write that much about ecological topics, but wrote continuously. I appreciate taking looks into different labs, talking and discussing with scientists and not at least trying to transport the information to a broader public.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

With several years of writing my personal ambition changed. I still want to give people the best information. I still like to look into the labs and talk to scientists. But my interest is today focused more and more into the question how to provide first hand information from scientist themselves, how to start a dialogue between both sides - the public and the researchers - and how to overcome prejudices and, really, existing language barriers. One first step into this direction was with the first internet-hype around the year 2000 netdoktor.de, a medical portal, where we did not only offer lots of medical background information, but invited people to chat, email and get in direct contact with experts online. Later I certainly noticed and added one blog after another on my list to follow. Some years later I was asked to start scienceblogs.de in Germany by Hubert Burda Media. This was like Bingo for me. Within some months, the perfect team around me, the bloggers and me were ready to launch the website, which is still very successful. On the Scienceblogs.de platform we also started the first official blog of the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting, with which I am actually very engaged.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

These days my children and the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting are taking up most of my passion (and time). First joining the conference in 2008 I have never been at such an impressive and ongoing meeting before as in Lindau. It is not only because there are Nobel laureates you may talk to. It is mainly that you can feel the energy and will from the young researchers to care for the future, to seek solutions, to overcome old rules and more. I hope we can transmit some of this through our current blogs and social media activities. And I very much appreciate the idea of a new dialogue between generations, which is supported by the Lindau Meetings. The young should not stop to listen and ask for the expertise of older generations and the experienced should share their knowledge and give a helping hand. This dialogue is building our future - and has ever before, but we stopped talking to each other.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

If one considers the web as the business card of mankind then I hoped there would be more science and reflections in it. This implicates Open Access to all papers, sharing lectures, videos (also here from generations of scientists), platforms for a profound exchange - for scientists and for the public -... and a critical open dialogue about the upcoming science topics. Blogs do a lot for this. But I think there is a need for worldwide platforms to discuss further steps in a sense of humanity. We could start ethical dialogues from the very beginning. Today for example in 'synthetic biology' an ethical debate would be very helpful. Not that we are very close to a human made creature. But we need to discuss about all the opportunities. Is there a need for certain bacteria? Would we allow them to live outside of labs? Is it really in some way like playing God or is this nonsense? ...

To be honest, I do not have my own blog. I blogged for Scienceblogs.de as long as I have been the editor in charge there. And today I blog for lindau.nature.com. I would love to blog more, but I don't have the time for it - working and two children. So I became a fan of twitter. As I am working alone in my home office this is one of the possible ways for daily science and online media chats to come to me. It is perfect, if you select the perfect ones to follow.

Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants of your favourite science bloggers at the Conference?

Sure! You! And many others. Durham was the place to be to meet with many and it is hard to pick up just some of them - for example John Timmer from Ars Technica or Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers and many more. It was a real fun to finally meet Simon Frantz, the colleague from nobelprize.org or talk to Scott Huler, who also published his books in Germany.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you?

I especially enjoyed all sessions about Citizen Science such as Science for Citizens, Trixie Tracker or the Open Dinosaur Project. I have not been that aware of that topic before, maybe because in Europe there are not so many activities in this direction. But this fits exactly to my idea of overcoming old rules that separated scientists and science from the public. The more people engage themselves in sciences the easier I think a profound dialogue is possible. And the web is the best tool for citizen sciences - and the dialogue.

Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

We had a small session about our social media activities which cover the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meetings, looking forward to find further and better ways of interaction between science generations with the help of the Web. All fellows in this session came up with great ideas and we have now realized some of them on our new central social media site. This was very helpful - and not all ideas are realized yet. So thank you very much for this opportunity and thanks to our attendees for their input!

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Mon, 06/28/2010 - 06:00

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Julie Kelsey

clock — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:52:44 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Julie Kelsey

Today, I asked Julie Kelsey to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself?

My name is Julie Bloss Kelsey. I am a full-time stay-at-home mom and a part-time freelance writer with a background in biology and the environmental sciences. While attending a playgroup when my oldest was a baby, another mom confided to me that she didn't discuss science with her child because "dads do the science." I must have looked startled, because she quickly qualified her comment. But that was when it hit me: some people have completed opted out of science. I started my family-friendly science blog, Mama Joules, with the goal of finding ways to demystify the scientific process for non-scientists. I write about things like cricket ears, flying cars, and bowling balls.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I spent eight years working at a state agency evaluating potential hazardous waste sites under the federal Superfund program. I investigated everything from groundwater contamination to lead tailings. One day I took a call that forever changed the way I look at environmental regulation.

A tar-like substance was oozing from the ground at a school for the severely developmentally disabled. After interviewing the neighbors, my co-workers and I learned that the entire area had previously been a dump. I took photographs and carefully documented the condition of the affected playground. I spoke with the health department and compiled information about the potential health risks posed by the contamination. The school subsequently closed - mid-year - and the students were crowded into another school in a different part of the city. One parent told me that her little boy didn't eat for two weeks after the move. The elderly neighbors living near the school weren't happy either; several said they were heartsick over losing their "adopted" grandchildren. Here were two disenfranchised groups that had managed to forge an unlikely - and loving - friendship. Did the potential health risks posed by keeping the school open really outweigh the emotional damage caused by closing it? I still wonder.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

As the primary caregiver for my three children - including a newly minted toddler - most of my days are spent yelling, "No, no!" and running through my home at breakneck speed. To keep myself sane, I write when I can. Before my youngest came along, I tried to update my blog three times a week. Now that she's hit the toddler years, I'm lucky to post once a week. When all of my kids are in school, I'd like to resume working full-time, either as a freelance writer or in the environmental field.

Recently, I discovered the joy of writing poetry on Twitter. I like the bite-sized nature of the writing; it fits my hectic lifestyle. I've had limited success publishing my poems online at nifty places like Outshine, Nanoism, microcosms, and 7x20. Eventually, I'd love to publish a book of poetry.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I feel there is a distinct and alarming lack of communication between scientists and the general public. There's great deal of scientific research out there, but dissemination is a problem. I think of it as a language barrier: scientists tend to use terminology unfamiliar to a casual reader. We need more scientific communicators - bloggers, journalists, media specialists, teachers - to bridge this gap. Too many people are simply opting out of scientific discussions. I think the Web provides a unique opportunity to reach people at whatever level of scientific understanding they possess and help them to re-enter the road to scientific literacy. At some level, we are all scientists.

When I started Mama Joules, I held the naÃ¯ve assumption that editors would bang down my door with job offers. Instead, I've found that blogging keeps my mind fresh and hones my writing skills so that I can write more effective query letters.

I am astonished at the utility of Twitter. When I first started blogging, I had no idea where I fit in. I'm not a traditional Mommy blogger; my posts aren't hard-hitting scientific research either. Twitter put me in touch with like-minded folks like Larry Bock of USA Science Fest, Kirk Robbins of Science for All, Alice Enevoldsen of Alice's Astro Info, Krista Habermehl of Let's Talk Science, and so many others.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

The first science blog that I remember stumbling across was fellow ScienceOnline2010 blogger Allie Wilkinson's Oh, for the Love of Science. Allie was writing about fun things, like glow in the dark animals and proof that bees can count. Her blog was the first glimpse I had into the wonderfully rich and diverse world of science blogging.

I am partial to blogs with accessible, fun, family-friendly science posts. In addition to Oh, for the Love of Science, I like Danielle Lee's Urban Science AdventuresÂ©, Messy Fingers, and Growing With Science, among many others.

Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleader and ScienceForCitizens.net inspire me to work harder at outreach. I enjoyed attending her presentations at ScienceOnline2010. And it was fun to meet Mary Ann Spiro, the Baltimore Science News Examiner.

During a lull in my second session at ScienceOnline2010, I peeked at Twitter. New comments with the #scio10 hashtag were popping up each minute. I eagerly read about a concurrent session which was apparently more exciting and controversial than the one I was attending. I soon realized that every session was under intense dissection in real-time.

Twitter has changed the power structure of today's conferences. Before, speakers were in charge of their message; they controlled the pace and delivery of their content. Now, a speaker's message might be broadcast far and wide by the audience before they've even finished speaking. Anyone with a Twitter hashtag can participate in a conference and influence its outcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Bora!

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Mon, 06/14/2010 - 05:52

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dissemination is the key! Great job Mama Joules. and thanks Bora for your great interviews

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Travis Saunders

clock — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:51:09 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Travis Saunders

Today, I asked Travis Saunders (Twitter), my SciBling from the Obesity Panacea blog to answer a few questions.

I am a PhD student in Exercise Physiology at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. My undergrad was in Kinesiology (aka Physical Education) at the University of Calgary, and my Masters was in Exercise Physiology at Queen's University.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

My research focuses on the inter-relationships between obesity, physical activity, and chronic disease risk. For example, I have been involved with studies examining the relationship between different fat depots and health risk (abdominal fat is very bad, but leg fat can actually be protective in some situations), as well as studies examining the benefits of exercise with or without weight-loss (your lipid profile and insulin sensitivity almost always improve in response to exercise, while inflammatory markers seem to improve only in response to weight loss). I've just begun my PhD, which is looking at the relationship between sedentary time (e.g. sitting) and health risk. For example, if you run for an hour every morning but then spend the next 7 hours sitting in front of a computer, is your metabolic health going to be better or worse than someone who spends all day on their feet but rarely performs vigorous exercise? No one knows just yet, but it's a very interesting area of study with important public health implications.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Right now most of my time is being spent developing my PhD project, as well as (hopefully) getting a few side projects published. I'm fortunate to really enjoy my area of research, as well as the people I work with, so it's a pretty fun way to spend my days. My short-term goal is to do research that is both interesting to me personally and that has a positive influence on the health of the population. I don't have any specific long-term goals aside from finishing my PhD, but I know that I want to be involved with both research and science communication in whatever I do next.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

It is absolutely critical that researchers share their findings with the general public, rather than just other colleagues within their research area. I think it's especially important for those of us performing tax-payer funded research - if the public is paying for our research it only makes sense that we should do everything we can to keep them informed of our results. If the public is better informed they can make better health decisions, but they are also in a better position to understand the value of our research - a clear win-win! For a young researcher like myself, the Web is by far the easiest way to communicate with the public about my area of research.

Blogging has had a very positive impact on my work to date. Writing a blog is almost like doing 2 or 3 Journal Club presentations every week! It has forced me to stay up-to-date on the latest studies in my field of research, and has also helped me to develop my understanding of a number of issues (it's one thing to skim through a paper, but it's another thing entirely to write an intelligible blog post about it!) Blogging has also been tremendously helpful in preparing for conferences - responding to comments and questions online is very similar to responding to questions following a presentation (but in a much less stressful environment). As a result, it has made me a much more confident writer and speaker, which has direct benefits in my day-to-day work. And finally, blogging has been a very effective means of spreading the word about my own area of research, which is the whole reason I got into blogging in the first place!

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I first discovered science blogs (and ScienceBlogs) in SEED magazine. My girlfriend bought me the magazine on a whim and I absolutely loved it, and when I saw an ad for ScienceBlogs I knew it was something that I had to check out. Around the same time my labmate Peter and I stumbled upon the blogs of Drs Arya Sharma and Yoni Freedhoff, two physicians who specialize in the treatment of obesity. That was when we realized that science blogging was something we wanted to get involved with.

For me personally, the coolest part of ScienceOnline2010 was meeting the bloggers that I have been following for the past few years. This includes people like yourself, Ed Yong, Scicurious, the gang from Science Based Medicine, and Dave Munger to name just a few. It was especially nice to meet Dave as he's not only a phenomenal writer, but also because he has done such great work promoting peer-reviewed research via ResearchBlogging.org.

The best part for me was meeting all of the other participants. There were some incredibly talented science-communicators in attendance, and it was a lot of fun to be able to learn from them. Rebecca Skloot's session on pitching story ideas was especially useful, and gave me a much better understanding of how to frame a story in a way that appeals to journalists, which is an extremely important skill as a researcher.

This year's conference featured some top-notch science-communicators (Michael Specter, Ed Yong, Rebecca Skloot, Carl Zimmer, etc); I'd love to see next year's conference bring in a few more top-notch researchers - maybe a Nobel Prize winner or prominent researcher like Brian Greene or Freeman Dyson. This year's conference helped me learn a lot about science communication from the perspective of journalists and bloggers, but I feel it would be extremely useful to hear what these top researchers could add to the discussion.

Thanks again for all the hard work that you and Anton put into the conference, it was an amazing experience!

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Wed, 06/02/2010 - 05:51

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Cassie Rodenberg

clock — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:48:59 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Cassie Rodenberg

Today, I asked Cassie Rodenberg to answer a few questions.

I'm a Charleston, SC native that now resides in NYC -- a complete Northern convert that carries an appreciation for Southern plantations and shrimp 'n grits. As a kid I slogged through marshes to erect an osprey perch, played slippery 'jelly ball' (jellyfish) hockey on a shrimp boat and floated an ATV across a river, only now realizing how much science I was experiencing. The physics of ATV floating? The surprising number of jelly balls hoisted aboard a boat when hunting for shrimp? The torturous plotting of perch placement in attracting birds of prey? Science is everywhere, why hadn't I noticed?

I'm shamelessly effervescent about science now, dying to share a cool science factoid or an interesting study, which somehow bubble out despite my best efforts to stem them! I think people care about science more than we think they do; science communicators just need to find out what intrigues them-- like ATVs or jellyfish hockey games. Enthusiasm and passion are contagious, too. If we're truly excited, others will be as well. We all need to find the inner kid that's fascinated by the world around us, the one that shouts, "oo, cool!" before trying to reach the public.

I studied chemistry during college, finding it the most beautifully simple and elegant of all the sciences. Under an NIH grant, I conducted inorganic chemistry research -- single molecule spectroscopy -- on the Amyloid-Beta peptide associated with Alzheimer's, looking at different conditions that stimulate growth of the earliest cytotoxic stages of peptide and thus spur the disease's formation. And my 11-year-old brother would be horrified if I didn't mention the coolest part: I worked with a laser in the dark.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

Gosh, it certainly is an interesting trajectory...after my lab days I wanted to investigate the public's perception of science, how people thought about science on a daily basis. Actually, I was so intrigued, I later published psychology research on the subject. If we're making careers out of reaching people and teaching, we better understand where these people come from and how they think.

And so, I worked at a local science museum, teaching science in big public programs -- chemistry demonstrations, reptile shows (yes, I held everything from boas to Madagascar hissing roaches to tarantulas)... even walked around in a toga as the Lady of Pompeii to guide in ancient medicinal practices. Besides learning fascinating things myself (iguanas have a third light-sensing eye on the tops of their heads, my long curly hair could stand on end with enough static electricity power..), I learned quickly how to speak across age barriers, from the three-year-old to her great-grandmother to her bored aunt with a Blackberry.

After, I moved to NYC and took science journalism graduate courses at NYU before becoming an in-house contributor at Popular Mechanics and a writer for the weekly science section of the Charlotte Observer.

Now I'm starting at Discovery as an associate web producer, working mainly with planetgreen.com, a environmental and futuristic tech initiative.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

The geek side of me loves production and organization. Though I like writing, I don't feel married to my byline -- the important thing to me is contributing to something meaningful. I hope to do more entrepreneurial work with both science- and non-science-based efforts, hopefully working with idea geniuses to launch new projects. Of course, I'd expect that whatever I delve in will have some scientific element to it, but hybridizing science with other subjects makes it more tangible to readers. We should always be reaching and trying new things... I could never imagine myself without a side project bubbling in the recesses of my mind.

You used to be involved with Scienceline until recently. Can you tell us a little bit more about the project, what was your role there, and what were your experiences while working there? Was it a useful jumping board for your career?

Scienceline is a project of NYU's graduate science journalism program -- all students contributed to running the website and producing content, a mini-newsroom of sorts. It's a bit like training wheels on a bike: it's important to get newsroom experience, even working with fellow students as editors, before getting started in the real world of journalism. Though I think it is useful to an extent, especially for giving prospective employers links to clips, I encourage all students to go for internships first and foremost. I've always learned most by jumping headlong into a field.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

The web provides science communicators a wonderful opportunity for collaboration. Once upon a time, in a small town in South Carolina, I didn't know any science writers, didn't know who to go to for advice and inspiration. The web has transformed this, and that struggle isn't true anymore, as we have genius at our fingertips at just a tweet away. We can craft ideas, bounce them off one another and form relationships. Even further, we can debunk bad science, pass along source recommendations and generate excitement on an issue.

I started out blogging but lost steam fairly quickly, realizing that Twitter was a much better outlet for my exuberance that a blog post because, honestly, I want to talk about science news constantly... but don't usually have time to blog about it. On Twitter, I can post the gist of my opinion and ask others for theirs in return -- much more effective and efficient than waiting around for comments on WordPress. I can feel the hum of my network around my tweets, much more vibrant than a blog. Twitter is inordinately positive in what I do -- knowing what the public thinks should be as, if not more so, important to a journalist as writing a piece, and Twitter magnifies the vitality of readers.

Just after ScienceOnline2010, I highlighted an online event in which you played a central role, that hints at how some aspects of the new journalistic ecosystem - scientist-journalist collaboration - may work. What are your thoughts, in light of this event, on the ways the science journalistic ecosystem is changing?

I think scientists and journalists are finally understanding how much they need one another to effectively change the way science news is disseminated. Science journalism should never have been a fragmented system, it should be a constant conversation and relationship between two different sorts of people united by a single goal. Honest and important news comes from general concern and idea generation -- the best ideas come from different vantage points. In the future, I imagine scientists and journalists brainstorming and mingling over drinks, public interest forefront. I've already mingled on Twitter -- the web only enhances the science/journalist cocktail hour.

It staggered me to think beyond web and print communication and on towards TV, entertainment and citizen journalism projects. It's invigorating to realize what an effort there is to mesh good science with the public realm and gives me hope that scientific accuracy may not be so far away, that scientists won't always be portrayed in movies as 'mad' and that everyone can do small science projects at home for the benefit of a larger goal.

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. Looking forward to meeting you again soon in NYC and I hope to see you here again next January.

clock Tue, 06/01/2010 - 05:48

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Fenella Saunders

clock — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:59:46 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Fenella Saunders

Today, I asked Fenella Saunders from The American Scientist to answer a few questions.

I was born in England, raised in New York City, did my undergraduate at Duke University in North Carolina, went back to New York for 10 years, then came back to NC five years ago. I have a master's degree in animal behavior from Hunter College of the City University of New York, where I did my thesis on the interactions of proboscis monkeys in captivity. My undergraduate degree is in computer science with a minor in Japanese, although I chose my major with the concept of going into science journalism.

While I was at college I discussed the education I would need with a number of science journalists, all of whom told me that an education in science, with outside projects to get journalism experience, was the best way to go. (I am from the era just before when it became pretty much standard for science writers to go to an MA program for science journalism.) A computer science major allowed me to study a broad range of sciences and technology, and it also gave me a backup plan in case journalism didn't work out. At school I wrote for any venue I could get into (and I was lucky that in addition to a regular school paper with a health/medicine section, Duke had both a student-run science and a technology magazine), and in my senior year I wrote a couple of small pieces freelance for Popular Mechanics.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

My career started when I landed an internship at Discover Magazine, then got hired on. It was largely a matter of luck and timing: They had a lot of biology people and needed someone with a technology background. I stayed at Discover for about eight years, and ended up also being the online editor toward the end of that time. There were a ton of great moments at that job, but I would have to say my favorite one was when they allowed me to start writing about a different, new robot in each month's news section. It was a series that lasted 2-3 years, and I never ran out of new robotics research to write about. During that time I freelanced a little, most notably as a co-author for a Time-Life book called "Space 2100." I left Discover to work on publications for NYU School of Medicine for about two years, which was a very different experience. Probably the best part of that job was learning all about really high-powered MRI machines. For the past five years I've been at American Scientist, where I am now a senior editor. It is both fascinating and a challenge working with different scientists each issue, trying to get them to explain their own work for a general audience. I couldn't even begin to pick a favorite from all of the articles I've helped bring to print--it could be anything from Champagne bubbles to snow flakes to honeybee nest relocation.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

American Scientist is published every two months, so we always confront the problem of remaining timely. We want to find more ways to keep in contact with our readers between issues. We recently relaunched our Web site, which allowed us to better keep up with technology in a few ways. We're now able to embed video with the online versions of articles. We now also post podcasts of our lunch-speaker series. I am excited that I have been chosen as a fellow to attend on of the Knight Digital Media Center's multimedia workshops, where I'll learn more about how to edit audio, video and maybe program some Flash animation. I am hoping that after I attend that workshop, I will be better equipped to have us do more multimedia for the magazine online.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

The immediacy of the Web still is its biggest advantage in my mind. Something can be posted for all of the world to see within minutes, and if you are looking for information on a specific topic, a quick search will pull up enough reading to last hours. It's a very democratic platform, as anyone can post on it, but that makes it all the more important to make sure that sources are reputable and verifiable--I am pretty sure that we all rely too much on the truthfulness of Wikipedia these days. I am also hopeful that the Web can make information, about science or anything, more accessible to people who, say, don't have the luxury of going to college, or find themselves in a position of having to learn about something new that they never thought about doing.

That being said, I am still unsure of how the print vs. online debate is going to shake out. There is something to be said for picking up a whole magazine, not just a specific article you were looking for. It is broadening to be exposed to topics you might not have even realized existed. People are busy, so in some ways it's faster just to pick up a print copy rather than have to search and dig online. Perhaps platforms such as the iPad will change all this. But I know that, when I have the time, just browsing through publications in the library is the best way for me to get new ideas.

It's fairly bizarre for a publication not to use all social-media platforms possible these days. We send out a daily and a weekly conglomeration of science news, and we tweet about these entries daily as well. We also use twitter to talk about what's in our latest issue, and we tweet about any news that relates to a past story that we have done. We have groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. We don't have a set blog yet, although we are working on it, but our Computing Science columnist, Brian Hayes, has a regular one at bit-player.org.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

Carl Zimmer is a former colleague of mine at Discover magazine, and he was an early entry into the blogosphere, so his was probably the first blog that I followed. I was happy to meet Ed Yong at the conference, and I follow his blog "Not Exactly Rocket Science." I've also been following Rebecca Skloot's blog about her book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."

I really liked the fact that there were kids at the conference. Kids often are not brought into the dialogue when discussing science, particularly science journalism. Sometimes they are the target audience, but they are rarely part of the process. For a few years we did a mentoring program with a local middle school where we'd have kids come in for a week, but they'd rotate, so I'd get each student for only one day. I challenged them that they would write a whole science news story by the end of the day, and they all looked at me like I was crazy, but they all did it. Children can do amazing things if given the opportunity, and can provide unique insight. I found it particularly enlightening that the young students at ScienceOnline 2010 thought that Twitter was an adult thing--they saw no real use for it in their lives, preferring more interactive platforms such as Facebook.

I can't say my usual "It was so nice to meet you in person" because I see you often, but certainly thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again soon.

clock Mon, 05/31/2010 - 05:59

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jeremy Yoder

clock — Thu, 27 May 2010 09:43:26 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jeremy Yoder

Today, I asked Jeremy Yoder from University of Idaho and the Denim and Tweed blog to answer a few questions. Jeremy came to ScienceOnline2010 as one of the two winners of the NESCent blogging contest.

Hello, and many thanks for having me! I'm not sure how best to start this, so I'll just go from the beginning:

I grew up very Mennonite in rural Pennsylvania (no, there were no buggies involved). I'm more-or-less an agnostic now, but my thinking is still strongly influenced by Mennonite values of peacemaking, simplicity, and independent inquiry.

I had my first taste of field biology in my senior year of high school, when one of my science teachers led the class through a forest survey in a woodlot adjacent to the campus. By cataloguing the trees according to their age class and species, we were able to deduce how mature the woodland was, and what it might look like in another hundred years. It opened up this vision of species jostling against each other, accommodating as well as competing to shape the landscape right outside my front door, and it seemed like a pretty cool thing to do for a living.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

From high school on I did my best to arrange to spend time outdoors. I majored in environmental science as an undergraduate, and then spent a year interning with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, working on plant community ecology among other projects. When I started to think about graduate school, I knew I wanted to study coevolution -- the ways in which interacting species shape each other's evolutionary history -- and I was lucky enough to connect with Olle Pellmyr, who was looking for a new graduate student to work on his current study of Joshua trees and the moths that pollinate them.

Joshua tree populations are exclusively pollinated by one or the other of two different species of yucca moths. It turns out that trees from populations with different pollinators look pretty different themselves, and we now have good reason to think that the moths' preferences for their "native" type of Joshua tree determines how often the two tree types can interbreed. A big part of my dissertation work is to use DNA sampling from Joshua trees across the whole Mojave desert to estimate how completely the two types of Joshua tree are isolated, and how much coevolution with the moths is responsible for the differences we see in the two types of tree. Before I started grad school, I'd never seen a North American desert -- now I've been to just about every place Joshua trees grow, from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the outer suburbs of Los Angeles and (I kid you not) just outside of Area 51.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

My dissertation is far and away my biggest preoccupation, you won't be surprised to hear. I've just had a couple of projects accepted for publication -- a literature review and an analysis that reconstructs some characteristics of the ancestors of yucca moths. I'm (hopefully) nearly done with a mathematical model that compares how different kinds of coevolutionary interactions affect the species involved, and I'm heavily occupied with the Joshua tree DNA analysis right now. My plan is to complete my doctorate by about this time next year, and I'm starting to think about possible postdoctoral work (hint, hint!).

I'm also keeping up with writing on Denim and Tweed for the time being, and I'm thinking about running what will be my second marathon sometime this fall. Hopefully, I'll find some time to get out and enjoy the wilderness out here in the Pacific Northwest this summer, too, since this might be the last year I spend within a day's drive of both Olympic and Glacier National Parks.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Most academic biologists spend time teaching in addition to their research, and I really believe that telling the general public about my work is a logical extension of that principle -- that being a scientist means communicating what you learn to others, not just accumulating knowledge to satisfy your own curiosity. The Web is a great venue for that, thanks to user-friendly blog hosting services and networks like Research Blogging and the Nature Blog Network that connect interested readers to my site. I now list D&T as a "broader impact" on all my grant applications.

I try to treat Denim and Tweed as an exercise in writing about science for a general audience -- so it has that value for me even if no one reads it. In that sense, it's a little like a one-man journal club, in which I sit down every week and read one paper carefully enough to explain it to someone else in about 700 words.

The blog is pretty heavily linked into my online social network as well -- I have a public account on Twitter that I use regularly, and a FriendFeed profile that ties together the blog, my Flickr account, and my Facebook profile. And I interact with family, personal acquaintances, colleagues, and readers of D&T across all those platforms -- over my last field trip, I'd post photos from Flickr to the blog, and have folks comment about them on my Facebook wall. It's not very tidy, but every one of those networks seems to reach a slightly different set of people, so I guess I'm thoroughly enmeshed.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I've been reading science blogs since long before it occurred to me to start writing on my own -- I don't remember exactly how I got started, but my first contact was probably when someone sent me a snarky link from Pharyngula. I think I probably didn't have a sense of the full scope of the science blogosphere before I found Research Blogging, though.

Through RB, I've found great sites like The EEB & flow, Conservation Maven, and Open Source Paleontologist, and even occasionally exchanged thoughts in the comments or via back-and-forth posts. Research Blogging is really a fantastic way to get started in writing about science on your own blog, both because it's easy to add your posts to a feed lots of other science bloggers read and because it helps you find other people writing about the sort of science that interests you.

And then, after I'd been involved in RB for more than a year, I was lucky enough to be able to attend ScienceOnline 2010, and meet in person a number of folks I really only knew as text on the screen -- and, yes, add a number of links to my RSS list, including Observations of a Nerd. I think I picked up far more Twitter feeds than blogs at ScienceOnline, though -- so much of the conference conversation occurred on Twitter that it was basically unavoidable. And now I probably get more of my online science news via folks I'm following on Twitter than even through the RSS feeds I have bookmarked in Firefox.

I think the biggest benefit I took from ScienceOnline2010 was a better sense of where I fit in the world of online science communication, in my role as a scientist with a blog. I saw some great models of how to draw the public into ongoing scientific work using online tools, and even how to engage the public in the actual science. I also saw some great sessions that addressed interactions among different groups of people involved in science communication -- working scientists, educators, and science journalists. It was a really fun weekend all around, and it gave me a lot to think about as I work towards the (still pretty distant!) day when I'm ready to set up my own lab and research program.

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Thu, 05/27/2010 - 05:43

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ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jack, Staten Island Academy student

clock — Wed, 26 May 2010 09:54:18 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jack, Staten Island Academy student

Today, I asked Jack from Miss Baker's Biology class at Staten Island Academy, to answer a few questions. Jack wrote about his experience at ScienceOnline2010 here and wrote a blog post about video/computer games here.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you from?

I'm Jack, a freshman student who went to Science Online 2010. I am one of Miss Baker's students and I'm from NJ. I go to school at Staten Island Academy. I currently play the piano but I am planning to get a drum set to teach myself drums, too. I love making things whether it be some random contraption built out of paper or a game to be put online. I always liked making things since I built stuff with legos when I was in lower school.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

I enjoy using photoshop and flash together to make games. Recently, I decided to also write out my own music for the games. I am currently making a few games that have absorbed most of my free time. Between painstakingly creating graphics and filtering through code to thinking of music for the games, my free time is pretty much gone. As for my goals, I always wanted to design and create new devices or develop new software. I really want to go to M.I.T. for college, and I've been doing my best in and out of school to try and get there. On a completely different note, I also want to learn Japanese.

What particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I enjoy the amount of freedom that the web gives people, as anyone can access a world-wide database of knowledge for almost any subject. I currently surf the web to find aid in the programming world whenever I have trouble with a script. I also enjoy how the web can be used as a great device for gathering information and doing research. As I move along in developing my programming skills, it is great to talk with fellow programmers to brainstorm possible techniques of getting around difficulties like run time or complex functions.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work and school? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do and want to accomplish?

Using Facebook has helped me immensely as it is quicker and more open than e-mailing, so if I or someone else needs a little help with something, they can simply put it up and one of their friends can help out. I also think it is a great way to spread cool articles and facts. Twitter on the other hand has been abused by hundreds of people. No, I really don't care that you are "enjoying your microwavable pizza" mrtwittrface. Because of all of the "eating this" or "listening to that" tweets on Twitter, I really can't get into it.

As Miss Baker, when teaching the Biology class, gives you a lot of creative freedom, how does that affect your own interest in the subject? Do you think you learn better this way? What would you suggest to do differently to make it even better? What are some of your own projects you did for the class?

Of course, I found it easier to learn by writing a blog post and commenting on others. Having the creative freedom allowed me to learn what I wanted to, while also allowing the output of the project to be read and understood by people who aren't just my classmates. Not only was I able to learn about how video games affect the brain, but I also got to make a game and work on my programming.

I loved the fact that people were able to come together for a few days to talk about how the internet is used in science. It was cool to be one of the 8 kids there looking at everything from a different view than most of the other people there. I can't believe that while I was presenting, Beth Beck (jokingly) asked, "Would you like a job at NASA?" but I was so focused on not messing up that the question just flew over my head. I didn't want to ruin my opportunity to present at a conference in front of scientists and journalists and everyone else who was there, too. Because of that moment, I'm now working harder than before on my "occupation" of making flash games, as I realized that I could make a positive impact with my programming knowledge, but I need to keep working on getting better first.

It was so nice to meet you in person and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

clock Wed, 05/26/2010 - 05:54

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All I can say is: If you don't know Jack, you SHOULD!!!! Jack is our future. And what a bright future it is! :)

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Karyn Hede

clock — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:45:33 +0000

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Karyn Hede

Today, I asked Karyn Hede to answer a few questions:

I think of myself as a scientist who writes, even though I jumped out of research after graduate school. Most of my formal education is in science. I was biology/chemistry major and then studied genetics in graduate school at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I should have known I would end up a science communicator though. As an undergraduate, I performed in a "chemistry magic show." We would go around to elementary and middle schools and get kids involved in the show. It was fantastic to see kids get engaged and to realize that science can be fun. After I committed to making the switch to writing about science and medicine, I studied journalism at UNC-CH. This was well before the medical journalism program existed. I was the oddball. I like to think I helped plant the seed for that program. I've spent my whole career telling stories about medicine, science and scientists.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

My first professional writing gig was for a local publication called Triangle Business Journal. I talked the editor into letting me write personality profiles of local scientists. My first interview was with George Hitchings, of the [now defunct] Burroughs Wellcome Co., who had just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He was so gracious, and I was so nervous! Many years later, I was working as communications officer at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a post now occupied by the inestimable Russ Campbell, when Dr. Hitchings passed away. We went over to the old Burroughs Wellcome offices to collect some of his memorabilia for display. They had his personal scrapbook there - he had cut out the article I wrote and put it in his scrapbook. That remains one of the best compliments I've ever been paid as a writer.

I was senior science writer at Duke Medical Center for four years. I learned how to put together broadcast-quality video and how to organize and run a news conference. It was a hectic job, and I spent a lot of my time responding to media requests. I discovered I prefer to be on the other side of the equation. I like to be the one asking questions.

Currently, I am a news correspondent for Journal of the National Cancer Institute and for the journal Science's Careers site. I also write for magazines and science organizations.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days?

An undercurrent within my work has always been career development for scientists. When I was a graduate student, you were pretty much on your own as far as exploring career options and developing professional skills. I enjoy teaching and helping support the next generation of scientists. In the last couple of years I have done some consulting work with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to promote professional science masters programs with the state. We organized a meeting around the issue in 2008. I've also been working with Russ Campbell on a series of professional development booklets for scientists. Recently, I started teaching scientific writing for biomedical graduate students at UNC. I taught two courses, one for first-year students and a second course I developed for students who are working their first grant or their dissertation. It's my way of giving back.

What are your goals?

I am also into gardening and the local food movement. I subscribe to a local CSA at Maple Spring Gardens. A few years ago I organized a session at the National Association of Science Writers meeting to get science writers more interested in covering how our food is produced. Since then, the topic has gotten a lot of coverage, with Michael Pollan's fantastic books and all the concern over outbreaks of food-borne disease. I'd love to write more about the intersection of science and food production.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I think the wave of the future in science communication is going to be scientists engaging directly with people through their own blogs, videos and websites. Some people (like you!) are naturals and don't need any help. I know scientists who would like to move more into this arena, but don't know how to get started. I'd like to work with scientists to help them develop those communication and storytelling skills.

I read blogs and have gotten story ideas from blogs. I don't have a blog (yet). I like to let ideas percolate for awhile before writing. The thought of having to produce coherent posts every day (or nearly so) is a bit daunting. My Facebook connections are mostly old friends from college and family. I like LinkedIn for work-related networking - it's a bit more professional and I like having more control over the content.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I lived in Washington state for several years and moved back to North Carolina a couple of years ago. In my absence, I discovered an enthusiastic on-line science blogging community had grown up here. I wasn't surprised. This has always been a science-rich area - blogging is just the latest incarnation of the local science communications community, but with a much wider reach now. I read your blog, Drugmonkey, Female Science Professor, The Intersection, and Terra Sigillata, among others.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year?

This was my first time attending ScienceOnline. I was impressed with the sessions and particularly the workshops on Fri. The sessions on visualization in science were valuable, because I was teaching at the time and was able to gather a lot of incredible resources for my students. Meeting so many interesting people who are inventing the future of science communication was great. I'd love to see more of a mashup of working scientists and science communicators shaping the agenda next year.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope you can come again next January.

clock Tue, 05/25/2010 - 05:45

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