Good Science Explaining =/= Good Science Writing

"The general public is pretty intimidated by science since it sounds like homework. It’s not fun. The biggest reason science isn’t accessible is that it’s boring. Not inherently boring, but people want stories. We’re a storytelling species. This is a book about a family, losing a mother, scientists doing research. There are characters. It takes work to read science, but when there’s a story you don’t care. It’s like taking medicine with something that tastes good. Storytelling shows people why it’s relevant to them—everyone out there has benefited from the research done with HeLa cells."

-Rebecca Skloot in an interview with the Onion's AV Club.

This is the mantra I repeat to myself when I'm teaching, and have been working on getting better at this in technical and popular science writing as well. The good explanation is not good enough to excite the reader to read, unless the reader already so deep down the rabbit hole of the discipline he or she can appreciate it. 

Political Scientists

I'm going to be catching up on responding to articles I've had a chance to read in the last year, but haven't had a chance to properly digest. This article by one of my instructors at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop, Cory Dean, is spot on:

"In a telephone interview, Dr. Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who retired this year, said he thinks a kind of “reverse snobbery” keeps researchers out of public life. “You have these professors struggling to write their $30,000 grant applications at the same time there are people they would never accept in their research groups making $100-million decisions in the National Science Foundation or the Department of Energy,” he said. He said it was “shortsighted” of the science and engineering community not to encourage “some of their best and brightest” into public life."

I've got (almost) rhythm

Music is one of the things thought to make us human, to differentiate us from animals. If you've ever heard a piece of electronically generated music, you can tell in an instant. The beat is too regular, too perfect. It's a little unsettling. Researchers in Germany have been looking at the flip side: what makes music human?

Naked Mole Rats FTW

I have seriously been told I resemble a naked mole rat when I'm roused from sweet, sweet slumber. My eyes refuse to open, and I burrow under the sheets. I'm pretty pale and mostly hairless, too.

While I hope I don't resemble a naked mole rat in all ways (a bit on the uncomely side) I think there's reason to hope my cells act like their's.

Naked mole rats never get cancer.

Real nanobots !!!! (???)

With fancy chemicals being developed for new medicines, a question remains: how can we deliver the most bang for the buck? It would be ideal to have a microscale delivery truck, capable of delivering the drug to the precise location needed. This would also eliminate many side effects experienced through a general delivery of the drug.

 Catalytic nanoswimmers are being researched as potential cargo vehicles. They are tiny spheres, with one half coated with a reactive material. This side reacts with chemicals in the environment, and the energy of reaction is transmitted into motion forward. Attach a blob of drug to them, and they can move medicine. But questions remain about how to get them to go a specific direction, without having to babysit them. Can we make these trucks driverless?