April 2000 Newsletter

It’s time for the latest installment of the NCSWA newsletter, your chance to catch up on NCSWA gossip, news and information. If you’d like to see your name in print or pass on some hot gossip for the next newsletter, e-mail the details to Sally Stephens at skates@slip.net.

APRIL'S DINNER WITH ALISON GOPNICK

By Xanna Schweickhardt

Fifty NCSWA members heard Alison Gopnik, UC Berkeley cognitive psychologist and author of “Scientist in the Crib,” a study on how babies learn, speak at the April 5th dinner at Cafe de la Paz in Berkeley. Gopnik entertained those in attendance with imitations of “motherese‚” and tried to clear up some misconceptions about infancy and childhood.

One basic question common to both philosophy and childhood education, says Gopnik, is, "How can we come to understand the world?" Going from the raw input of photons in our eyes and sound waves in our ears to understanding other people is one of the hardest things to do. Nature's plan, says Gopnik, has three elements:

1. Babies already know a lot. Babies, even those less than an hour old, can and do imitate what they see on faces around them. Researchers stuck their tongues out at newborns, pursed their lips, or smiled; the babies' responses were filmed and reviewed by another researcher, who was able to read the videos correctly, matching the expression with what the first researcher had done.
2. Babies (human babies) have learning capacities greater and more profound than any other creature on earth. Before the age of nine months, babies can hear and distinguish all the vocal tones of all spoken languages, something not even the very, very best computers can do. A mother speaking "motherese" ("Who's my baby? You're my baby, yes you are!") exaggerates the tonal variations and inflections so the baby can learn which ones are important to his native language. By nine months, the baby's ear is already selected for his own language.
3. Parents are there to teach, lead and guide. The good news is, parents already do a lot of things that seem trivial but are actually the most important for the baby's development. Parents serve as "lab rats" for babies to experiment on as they test their theories on the world and relationships. There is even evidence that "motherese" can help adult learners of a new language. (Fathers, by the way, speak motherese too, though they will tend to deny it: "I would never talk baby talk to you, now would I? Would I?")

Gopnik also clarified some common misconceptions:

	"There are no critical periods in learning where the door is slammed shut on a certain skill. BUT the more we practice and feel secure in one area," Gopnik adds, "the less likely we are to try anything new." It is easier to learn gymnastics or basket weaving before you have too many ingrained habits.
	"Early childhood is an important learning time, but not directly causal of later life." Don't worry, you cannot send your child to lifelong therapy with one incident.
	You cannot use the high learning capacity of infancy to make "super-babies" with enhanced learning tapes or other products. "There is no law against claiming a product will make your baby smarter," Gopnik warns. "At best these things are harmless; at worst they will distract parents from doing the important stuff they do naturally."

Unfortunately, Gopnik says, what babies and children most need to develop (interaction with a loving parent or caregiver, teasing and challenging by siblings) is not supported by our society. "Forget the flash cards," she says. "Take time off and play with them!"

JEPSON PRAIRIE VERNAL POOLS FIELD TRIP

By Robin Meadows

On April 8th, about 40 NCSWA members and families braved a tour of the Jepson Prairie vernal pools at their windiest. The plucky group described the steady wind, guesstimated by one member at 30-40 mph, as "bracing." We did have some good luck: we had the only docent with a permit to dipnet from the pools. We saw lots of creatures that live in the murky waters including inch-long tadpole shrimp and bright orange clam shrimp. After that, the wind blew so hard that some members with small children had to leave! Those who persevered across the prairie were rewarded with carpets of tiny flowers including goldfields, golden violets, tidy tips and meadowfoam.

DAVID PERLMAN HONORED

SF Chronicle science writer David Perlman was named one of four winners of the UCSF Medal -- the first time a journalist has been awarded the University of California at San Francisco's highest honor. Perlman added to his list of career honors when he was named co-alumni of the year by the Columbia University School of Journalism. Chronicle Editor Emeritus William German shared the Columbia award.

In a distinguished career, Perlman has written about nearly everything from AIDS research to cosmology, geophysics to space exploration, and arms control to the environment. Perlman, a member of the Columbia University journalism school’s class of 1940, served in the Army during World War II, and reported from overseas until 1951. He worked at the New York Herald Tribune as a reporter, city editor and UN correspondent. At the SF Chronicle, he has written about politics, land use and other subjects, even taking a brief turn as the Chronicle’s city editor in the 1970s, before concentrating on science writing.

BOOK NEWS

Rob Irion invites NCSWAns to attend an upcoming reading from his recently published book, "One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos." Rob and his coauthors -- Neil Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, and Charles Liu, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History -- explore the deep connections between the natural laws controlling motion, matter, and energy on Earth and in the farthest reaches of space. The book also examines the frontiers of physics and cosmology, including the fundamental nature of matter, the origin of the universe, and its fate. One Universe is a richly illustrated coffee-table book, but with far more science content than most such volumes. Hugh Downs says the book "performs a singular service for the lay reader," while Ben Affleck and Matt Damon agree that it "kicks butt." (OK, we made up the second part.) Please come embarrass Rob publicly at 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 12 at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz.

Last June, the first edition of Jennie Dusheck's college-level biology textbook, "Asking About Life" (Harcourt College Publishing, 1998), written with UCLA professor Allan Tobin, won the 1999 award of excellence from the national Text and Academic Authors association for best new textbook in the life sciences. The California edition of her coauthored 9th-grade biology textbook from Holt, Rinehart and Winston also appeared last summer. She's hard at work on a second edition of "Asking About Life."

Michael Riordan and his coauthor Lillian Hoddeson were awarded the 1999 Sally Hacker Prize for their book, "Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age," published by W. W. Norton. This is a new prize that is awarded annually by the Society for the History of Technology for the best general book of the last three years on the history of technology. Riordan and Hoddeson are its first recipients.

JOB NEWS

Robert Adler reports that he has finished an exciting internship at New Scientist in London, and will be traveling around the Middle East and Europe for the next six months scouting for stories.

Long time NCSWAn Roberta Friedman is now a regular correspondent for WebMD, which provides the news for the Healtheon Web site for physicians and consumers. She hopes to be able to attend more NCSWA functions now that her kids are older. Actually, her whole family was at the Aububon Canyon Ranch field trip place last spring hunting for newts (found some!) but, chronically late as always, Roberta missed the rest of us.

Diane Ainsworth will become a principal editor in the University Communications Office at UC Berkeley in mid-April. She joins the Berkeley staff from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where she was a senior media relations specialist.

Janet Rae-Dupree reports that, “After six years at the Mercury News, I went to Business Week in February 1999, purportedly to cover science and biotechnology, among other things. After a year there, it became clear that that was not what I'd actually be doing. So when US News & World Report asked whether I'd like to write about personal technology from a brand-new home office, I accepted. Started here about three weeks ago. Contact info follows. My nearest colleague? Charlie Petit over in Berkeley. Ya gotta love it!”  Contact Janet by e-mail at  jraedupree@usnews.com  

IN OTHER NEWS

Chris Parsons of Word Craft will be in Charleston, South Carolina on May 13 to celebrate the opening of the new South Carolina Aquarium. Aquarium exhibits present the aquatic habitats of South Carolina, from the mountains to the sea. Chris and her assistant Kit Muhs wrote the text for all of the aquarium's exhibit labels.

Sandia National Labs' Public Affairs Officer Barry Schrader was one of the featured interviewees on KRON's Bay Area Backroads March 25. He extolled the historical virtues of old Livermore, including the 99-year-old light bulb in the fire station, which is the longest continuously-burning bulb in the world, according to Guinness. Barry also narrated a film clip of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Visitor's Center, his competition across the street at that "other DOE lab." The only reason he didn't promote Sandia's Visitor Center is that they don't have one....

NCSWA member Paul Kleyman, national coordinator of the Journalists Exchange on Aging (JEOA), reports that media interest in issues in aging has increased significantly recently. Only eight years ago at a meeting of the American Society on Aging, merely a dozen reporters gathered for one of the first meetings of the JEOA. This year, at the March 2000 ASA meeting in San Diego, 56 (mostly journalists) attended a reception and dinner for attending writers and producers, and more than 40 came to the meeting beforehand.

According to Kleyman, there are now 14 reporters covering the age beat for major media organizations full time, up from about 10 a year ago -- and another 40 or so who cover issues in aging for about half of their beats, mainly at daily newspapers. Mostly these are not medical writers but journalists with the broader social focus. (Bay Area media continue to lag behind, despite the fact that one out of four residents of the region are age 55 or older. The San Francisco Examiner has the freelance "Seniorities" column on Saturdays, written by David Steinberg, age 86, and the Oakland Tribune assigns a small portion of staff writer Kim Vo's time to concerns in aging. That's it, aside from some medical coverage.)

Since 1993, the JEOA , a voluntary group, has helped bring reporters together on a informal (and unfunded) basis with expert sources (in research, policy and practice) and veteran reporters on the age beat. The group has also cosponsored or cohosted educational programs for journalists. It will next cosponsor a daylong workshop for journalists with the AARP Andrus Foundation on May 15 in Orlando, Fla. There is no registration fee, but journalists interested in learning more about this workshop should contact Shelley Buckingham at the AARP Andrus Foundation, (202) 424-2588, e-mail sbuckingham@aarp.org. Writers can also see the full program or register at http://www.andrus.org.

Also, journalists interested in receiving the JEOA's occasional Age Beat newsletter and Aging Today, the news and features paper Kleyman edits for ASA, can contact him at (415) 974-9619 or e-mail: paul@asaging.org.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

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.