October 2000 Newsletter

Don’t forget to mark your 2001 calendars for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from February 15-20 at the Hilton (Hotel) San Francisco & Towers. For the latest meeting updates, see http://www.aaas.org/meetings. And set aside Sunday evening, February 18, for NCSWA’s party for journalists covering the meeting. Thanks to all the NCSWA members who forwarded contact names at Bay Area and national media and scientific organizations and companies, we’re well on our way to raising the money needed to put on a spectacular party. It's likely we'll stage the event at Ruby Skye, a swank nightclub near the meeting hotel, providing plenty of food, drink, music, and merriment. Come, meet old friends, make new ones, relax and forget your deadlines for one night. All NCSWA members are invited.

Before the AAAS meeting starts, the National Association of Science Writers will hold a series of workshops and symposia in Berkeley on February 14-15, 2001. You must be a member of NASW to attend. The Wednesday symposia on nanotechnology and genomics cost $45, which includes breakfast, lunch and a wine reception. The Thursday workshops include sessions on writing, using the freedom of information act, news releases, meetings with editors of national publications, a networking lunch, and a tour of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and cost $100 (which includes breakfast and lunch). Student members pay $45 for the workshops. Advance registration ends November 15. Between then and January 7, 2001, add $20 to registration fees. Due to space constraints, attendance will be limited. For NASW membership information, see their website at http://www.nasw.org. The website should have information on the workshops soon. There’s still plenty of time to join NASW and sign up for the workshops and symposia, if you’re not already a member.

STUDENTS WANTED: Brian Lavendel needs a handful of student volunteers willing to help with registration, AV, and other logistics for the NASW symposia and workshops on Wednesday, February 14 and Thursday, February 15, in exchange for free admission to the Thursday workshops. Anyone interested should contact Brian at lavendel@bigfoot.com as soon as possible.

REMEMBER TO RENEW YOUR NCSWA MEMBERSHIP

Check the NCSWA online membership roster to see when your membership dues are up for renewal.  If your dues are due, use the online membership form to renew.

NCSWA MEMBER NEWS

Charles Poe, VP for content at here2listen.com, sends word that woman who are fighting breast cancer will be able to receive free expert counseling through the company’s website: http://www.here2listen.com from October 11 through October 31. Many of here2listen.com’s e-counselors are donating free sessions for breast cancer patients, survivors and their families as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. here2listen.com is an online therapy site.

Larry O’Hanlon swam with sharks this past summer. "I helped come up with the Discovery.com 'basking' shark coverage, which accompanied the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week in August. My biggest parts in it were covering the American Elasmobranch Society meeting in La Paz, Mexico in June (which included large amounts of tequila for the scientists and a SCUBA course for me). Then I traveled to the Isle of Man and the Basking Shark Society there to find "baskers" and swim with them. I provided daily dispatches to Discovery.com during Shark Week. It wasn't easy to find sharks at first, but on the last day -- too late to include in a dispatch, I got in the water with two baby baskers -- about 10-feet-long each (adults can grow to more than 35 feet). With their mouths closed they looked a lot like their closest relative, the great white. So I had a moment of hesitation thinking, 'Are we SURE these are baskers?' In truth, the greatest danger was the thickets of jellyfish in the water. I got nailed on the ankles and Ken Watterson, basker research extraordinaire, got stung on the face."

On October 12th, Rob Irion read excerpts from his book, One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos, before about 80 people at Bookshop Santa Cruz. He co-authored the book, which came out earlier this year, with two astrophysicists from the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. "One Universe" is a coffee-table book on physics and astronomy.

Jan Greene reports from Alameda that she had a baby girl on June 15. "Her name is Kathryn and I’m hoping our efforts to produce and raise her will provide me with plenty of fodder for story ideas in the future. I’m just now getting my freelance health writing work going again, and hope I can juggle it and child-raising at the same time, with minimal help from the daycare provider. I attended last spring’s NCSWA dinner with Alison Gopnik (The Scientist in the Crib) and am busily using all I learned from her; namely to ignore the pricey Baby Mozart products and just babble happily along with Katie. No problem, I just have to remember to switch gears when the business line rings."

Jeff Garberson has moved from Lawrence Livermore public affairs to UC’s Office of the President in Oakland, where he is public affairs manager for Laboratory Administration – the unit that oversees administration of the three big UC/Department of Energy labs at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos. He can be reached at jeff.garberson@ucop.edu .

New member Laila Abdelal McClay is associate producer and science reporter for KQED-TV’s newest local program, "Digital West." Each week, the show takes a look at stories "at the intersection of science, technology and society." Laila is a UC Berkeley grad. Previously she worked for "the California Report" at KQED-FM and for National Public Radio.

Sylvia Wright notes that a year ago she proposed that the UC Davis News Service add a PIO position to cover the environment. "UC Davis has very strong, under-recognized and growing programs in environmental research, public service and education, and we needed to give them more attention. Well, with the strong support of former SJ Merc reporter Lisa Lapin, late of the Sacto Bee and now our news service director, we just received the new FTE. And I’m going to get the job. So we are in the delightful position of being able to do more science writing than ever – and have a position open. We’ll soon be starting the search for a PIO to cover my old beats of biological sciences, physical sciences and engineering. I’d be happy to talk about this vacancy with NCSWAns, even though it is not yet officially open for applicants." You can contact Sylvia at swright@ucdavis.edu.

Roberta Friedman sends word that "After a year with WebMD, corporate downsizing has led me to once again resume freelancing, contributing to HMS Beagle, Celera, and more."

Blake Edgar "has decided to try to learn about book publishing from the inside out, having taken a position as a second science acquisitions editor at the University of California Press. He’ll focus on paleobiology, earth sciences, and ecology and conservation for starters. His new e-mail is blake.edgar@ucpress.ucop.edu.

Suzanne Bohan-Thompson has left her correspondent position with the Sacramento Bee and is now a regional science reporter with ANG Newspapers (which has nine dailies in the Bay Area, including the Oakland Tribune). Her beat is health care and biotech.

Henry Bortman has signed on to write an ongoing series of articles for the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s website about research being conducted by the institute’s members.

Jim Lamb "having grown weary of answering letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls from people asking the Compton Foundation for money has decided to leap over his desk and take a job at the non-profit CompuMentor. As Development Coordinator there, he will be part of the team sending out letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls… asking for money."

Paul Kleyman, editor of Aging Today, newspaper of the American Society on aging in S.F., "has brought on Stephanie Hamilton as the paper's new part-time associate editor. It's a generational switch for the former senior editor of parenting and coauthor of The Whole Parenting Guide (Broadway Books, 1999). Hamilton also was codirector of News Watch, based out of San Francisco State, which reviews coverage of communities of color and gay/lesbian communities for fair, nonstereotypical treatment. Kleyman, who also coordinates the national Journalists Exchange on Aging, flies to New York during election week to head a panel on coverage of the age beat. The occasion is The Age Boom Academy, a one-week fellowship program for journalists from around the country that is being sponsored by the International Longevity Center-USA. Anyone interested in knowing more about the Journalists Exchange and obtaining a free copy of it's Age Beat newsletter should contact Kleyman at (415) 974-9619 or paul@asaging.org.

RECENT NCSWA EVENTS: PRESIDIO TOUR
by Xanna Schweickhardt

On July 23rd, 28 NCSWAns took a walking tour of San Francisco's Presidio, a military base founded in 1776 by the Spanish to guard strategic San Francisco Bay. Our afternoon commenced with a guided tour giving us the history of the Main Post and Officers' Row. Before Spanish settlers arrived in 1776, the Ohlone Indians used the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering plants. Though the land now occupied by the Presidio was only windswept dunes and sea grasses, the strategic importance of the location (a large inner bay protected by a narrow gate) was clear to the Spanish. So they built a quadrangle and adobe living quarters and, with a battery of 13 bronze cannons, defended the entrance to the bay. Six of these cannons still remain on the Presidio grounds. The fort passed into Mexican hands in 1821 after Mexico won its independence from Spain. American forces landed at Yerba Buena (San Francisco) in 1846, during the US war with Mexico, and found the fort abandoned, after the Mexicans had moved to Sonoma to head off Russian settlers.

Led by NCSWAn Suzanne Bohan-Thompson, our group proceeded to Crissy Field to see the wetlands restoration project on the site of the old airfield. The original marsh was filled with concrete rubble from the Pan-Pacific Exposition. When the land was restored last year, over 70 acres of concrete were removed. Volunteers have planted native plants, and last November the channel was re-opened between the tidal marsh and the sea. Water birds are nesting there, and fish runs have also been reported.

Six NCSWAns returned from Crissy field to continue the "nature" portion of the tour. The forest path went through the "Serpentine Restoration Area." Serpentine, a greenish rock, has a high metal content, which is inhospitable to many plants. Native plants have adapted to this metal, whereas imported plants have not. So the Serpentine area provides a place where native plants can grow without competition from invaders.

Also on Presidio lands, Bohan-Thompson told us, is the last living Raven's Manzanita tree anywhere. For protection, the tree's location is kept secret. Scientists have succeeded in cloning it, but cloning doesn’t answer the need for genetic diversity. Scientists have tried "selfing," or self-pollination, an attempt to activate the dormant recessives of the original and cross them to obtain a wider gene pool. They created one "selfed" plant, but it died. So they'll probably try the next best thing: cross the original with a closely related species and then cross the next generations back to the parent to strengthen the original traits.

Four of the original 28 NCSWAns made it back to the Main Post and Liverpool Lil's for beer and snacks. Footnote: A repeat performance of the NCSWA Presidio tour with a fresh set of NCSWAns was led by Bohan-Thompson on October 15.

RECENT NCSWA EVENTS CONTINUED: CHABOT SPACE AND SCIENCE CENTER

On October 21st, NCSWAns enjoyed an after-hours tour of the new Chabot Space and Science Center in the Oakland hills. We caught a show in the Ask Jeeves Planetarium, one of only three planetariums in the world to have the latest state-of-the-art Zeiss star projector (the Hayden Planetarium in New York City is the only other one in North America). Eileen Engel, Director of Education, took us on a tour of Chabot’s student labs, and showed us the Challenger Learning Center, where students, corporate clients, and the general public simulate space missions. After allowing time to wander among exhibits about the forces at work on the planets, we saw Chabot’s historic 20-inch refractor, Rachel. Unfortunately, fog prevented us from viewing anything through the telescope. Anyone interested in information about Chabot can get their online press kit at: http://www.chabotspace.org/aboutus/press/.

UPCOMING BAY AREA MEETINGS

CHEST 2000, the annual American College of Chest Physicians International Scientific Assembly, will take place from October 22-26 at the Moscone Convention Center North in San Francisco. The meeting program is available online at http://www.chestnet.org. Or call either Mike White (703)739-1363 or Jim Augustine (703)644-6824 for more information.

The American Society for Cell Biology will hold their annual meeting from December 9-13 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. For up-to-date information and the journalist registration form, see http://www.ascb.org/ascb.

The American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting will be from December 15-19, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. You can get more information, including how to register as press at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0023.html