Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

One whole face of the Moon can never be seen from Earth because it constantly faces away from our planet. But now one of the twin GRAIL spacecraft launched by NASA last September has returned its first video of the Moon's hidden side after being pulled into orbit at New Year... from the/ Telegraph/ (UK)

Alzheimer's disease spreads through the brain like an infection, jumping from one cell to another, according to a new study... from /CBS News/

Meadows of seagrass found in the Mediterranean Sea are likely to be thousands of years old, a study shows... from /BBC News Online/

A scramble to buy African land is threatening the continent's sustainable development, according to reports launched today at the Royal Society in London... from /Nature News/

As the father-to-son exchange in the old Cat Stevens song advised, "take your time, think a lot, ... think of everything you've got." Turns out the mellow '70s folkie had stumbled upon what may explain a key feature of our brains that sets us apart from our closest relatives: We unhurriedly make synaptic connections through much of our early childhoods, and this plasticity enables us to slowly wire our brains based on our experiences... from /ScienceNOW Daily News/

A treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells might have improved the vision of two patients with an eye disease called macular degeneration [1], researchers reported last week. ... [1] http://ow.ly/8Dy9o

As nanomaterials move into the marketplace, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences is concerned that not enough is known about their potential health and environmental risks [1]. ... [1] http://ow.ly/8HGtg

Some areas could find global warming beneficial. [1] Countries that are cold right now could see very real benefits from a few extra degrees. Consider the Northern Sea shipping route, which runs through the Arctic waters north of Europe and Asia. Climate change could open the route earlier and keep it clear later. ... [1] http://ow.ly/8GcDG

It may not be a planet at all. A reassessment of the Hubble space telescope's first photo of a planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting a nearby star, suggests that it may actually just be "scattered dust." [1] ... [1] http://ow.ly/8HFZ2

Researchers mapped out the relationships among a remote group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania who live as humans did about 10,000 years ago and found that their social networks are very much like ours [1], even though they don't have Facebook or cell phones. ... [1] http://ow.ly/8HFMs

Campaign coverage takes on a green hue Curtis Brainard

Reporters still fumbling numbers in wake of pipeline’s rejection Curtis Brainard

The Hubble Space Telescope’s userers at the European Space Agency, which is a junior partner to NASA on the telescopes management, released today a stunning image of a galaxy called NGC 1073. If Milky Way specialists are right, it looks a lot like the one in which the Sun and its planets circulate. The distant galaxy is hardly new to science, having been discovered by German-English telescope wizrd William Herschel in 1785. To the left and down a tad is a more conventional image of it in a catalog assembled in the mid-1990s.

Here at ksjtrcker a roundup earlier this week of news on a report in PLoS ONE about how Alzheimer’s disease – or the version in lab mice to be more exact – spreads in the brain noted with curiosity that the NYTimes’s Gina Kolata was the only reporter who had wind of a second paper on the same topic. It even used much the same protocol, but is not yet published by the journal that has accepted it, /Neuron/. The post wondered how she found out and got hold of the author, all in

I am still debating whether to set aside a perfectly good opportunity to work in the yard or clean out my office closet to watch the NFL’s Super Bowl game. No Niners, no reason to jump up and down. But the Giants did beat them fair and square in a very close game so if I tune in, I’ve been thinking, I ought to root for the NFC’s representative. After reading on the *AP* *Seth Borenstein*‘s article [1], I am thinking perhaps I better instead follow my head rather than my heart and clap my

/(English intro to Spanish lang post) Astrophysicists from Carnegie Institution led by Catalan Guillem Anglada announced the discovery of GJ667C, an exoplanet only 4.5 times the Earth’s mass and orbiting inside its star’s habitable zone. “It’s the best candidate we have to contain liquid water and maybe life as we know it”, said the Spanish researcher to his countries’ press. //El Mundo has the most extensive story yet out. It is the only outlet whose reporter  talked to the Spanish astrophysicist. //El Pais tends to cover all news coming from NASA, but curiously it

Fiber, groan...hey, heap on sugar and YUMMM!!!! Some things that have a nice internal logic to them, data in support, and the public’s benefit topmost in mind are still so ludicrous-sounding off the top that some reporters can hardly wait to find outraged sources just to hear them cackle in derision. One need look no further for example than the opinion-piece letter to /Nature/ from University of California, San Francisco, researchers who say processed sugar is so toxic, if one couches the definition carefully, and causing such vast harm that the feds should police

Last night, researchers and public health officials gathered high above New York City’s ‘Ground Zero’ in hopes of narrowing the divide within the scientific community over the fate of two papers currently in the press at /Nature/ and /Science/ demonstrating mammalian transmission of avian influenza H5N1 [1]. Dozens of commentaries and news stories have born out the debate as to whether or not the research should be published in full, allowing others to replicate it. Michael Osterholm, who was part of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity [2] (NSABB) which unanimously

NASA has the blessing of a committee of US astronomers to become a small-percentage partner in Euclid, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to study dark energy. The National Academies issued a short report [1] today endorsing a deal where $20 million from NASA would buy access to Euclid data for US astronomers. NASA has been trying to find a way to study dark energy — the anti-gravitational stuff that’s accelerating the expansion of the Universe — with a small space telescope for years. Initially that was to be JDEM, a joint mission with the US

/Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro./ Omid Kokabee, a physics student accused of spying [1] by Iran, has spent one year in Evin jail in Tehran without being judged. In a hearing on 31 January the trial was postponed for at least another four months, according to sources in Tehran. The trial has already been postponed twice before, in July [2] and October [3]. Kokabee complains in an open letter [4] published by the opposition magazine /Khaleme/ that authorities are trying to obtain his “collaboration” through threats to him and his family. According to this document,

/Posted on behalf of Hannah Hoag./ Canada’s marine biodiversity is under threat and there’s no strategy for fixing it, states a report released today by the Royal Society of Canada [1]. According to the independent panel behind the assessment, the heart of the problem lies in the conflicting responsibilities of Fisheries and Oceans Canada [2] (DFO), a federal department with the joint role of promoting industrial and economic activity and conserving marine life and ocean health. The international ten-person panel found that climate change, aquaculture and over-fishing were having negative effects on Canada’s marine ecosystems and

/Posted on behalf of Ichiko Fuyuno. / Nearly six years after it was proposed, Japan’s Space Activities Commission has finally approved the development of Hayabusa 2 [1], successor to the Hayabusa asteroid probe, which returned samples to Earth in 2010 (see ‘Asteroid visit finds familiar dust’ [2]). Hayabusa 2 will aim for 1999JU3, a small asteroid about 900 metres in diameter. The asteroid is slightly bigger than the first mission’s destination, Itokawa, but it is supposedly more primitive and contains more organic or hydrated materials, which may provide clues about the origins of the Solar System.

No better place to commence this new column on science writing for science writers than with some optimism about clearing up our profession's cloudy future. Literally cloudy, according to Dot Earth's Andrew Revkin, who discusses what he calls "cloud financing" of investigative work by science journalists. Revkin's example is a Nov. 9 New York Times piece by Lindsey Hoshaw on vast trash heaps in the ocean.