Dec. 16 Annual Holiday Dinner with Science Comedian Brian Malow

Mark your calendars for Wednesday, Dec. 16, to join NCSWA at the New Delhi restaurant in downtown San Francisco for the annual holiday dinner.  Prepare to have your funny bone tickled by “The Science Comedian” Brian Malow, who has brought his stand-up routine to the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS), Tech TV, Discovery and A&E. Also, enjoy the opportunity to mingle with news media colleagues in town to attend the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Of course, festivities will include NCSWA’s own annual science trivia contest with door prizes. More information coming soon.

Other Upcoming Events:

The American Geophysical Union, AGU, will hold its fall meeting Dec. 14-18 in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center . For more information go to http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, will hold its annual meeting in San Diego February 18-22. The multidisciplinary meeting includes more than 150 scientific symposia and attracts scientists and journalists from all over the world. For more information, go to http://www.aaas.org/meetings/.

Miss the Oct. 7 Dinner? Read about it here:

NCSWA Fall 2009 Dinner: Nanotechnology – Why It Usually Doesn’t work
Alex Zettl, director of UC Berkeley’s Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems and senior scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, discussed why attempts to build devices on a nanoscale based on proven macroscale technologies usually fail. Jettisoning approaches that worked well for microtechnology and thinking outside the box, Zettl created such nanowonders as a functioning radio made from a single nanotube, a superpowerful nanoengine, nanoboats propelled by beams of light, a scale for weighing single atoms, and an ultra-high density memory chip that can last for a billion years.

Upcoming Award/Fellowship Deadlines:

The Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion, a two-month program at the University of Cambridge, is accepting applications until Dec. 15, 2009. The fellowship enables print, broadcast or online journalists annually to pursue an intensive program of study in issues of science and religion. Open to those with at least three years professional experience as a journalist, writer or editor, including freelancers. For more information, go to www.templeton-cambridge.org.

The American Society for Microbiology’s 2010 Public Communications Award has a deadline of January 31 for all entries. Those eligible are authors of work appearing in print newspapers and periodicals, broadcast media available to the general public and Web sites. The eligible microbiology topics include issues on the environment, prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, laboratory and diagnostic medicine, food and water safety.

The deadline for the 2010 Science in Society Journalism Award, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers, is February 1, 2010. Entries are for material broadcast or published in 2009. Entries will be available by January 2010 at www.nasw.org.  For more information and a look at winners from previous years, go to  http://www.nasw.org/awards/2009/index.htm.

NCSWA About Town:

 NCSWA member and well-known science journalist Timothy Ferris  is on track to publish his latest book, The Science of Liberty, in February from HarperCollins.  He wrote to say that after ‘’fifteen years of research and writing, I’ve finally delivered my opus on science and liberal democracy.  My hope is that it will help bring greater clarity to American political discourse, which has been needlessly distorted through an insistence on mashing everything into a one-dimensional spectrum.’’  Ferris is the author of a dozen books, including Coming of Age in the Milky Way, which was translated into 15 languages, and  has made three documentary films that aired on PBS.

Jessica Brainard, an interpretive writer, submitted the winning design in a competition to design a bee-friendly demonstration garden at the UC Davis Honey Bee Haven garden.  Jessica was on a Sausalito-based team with a local landscape architect, exhibit designer and graphic designer for the winning design.  Congrats, Jessica, and details are at http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu/HAVEN/honeybeehaven.html.

Ruthann Richter, working with photographer Karen Ande, has published a book, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa, released by Hope Publishing House in Pasadena, CA. Ruthann will be giving a talk at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park on Thursday, November 19 at 7:30 p.m. and on December  1, she’ll give a presentation at Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery Street, San Francisco at 7:30 p.m.;For more information, go to http://facetofaceafrica.com/.

NCSWA’s Doug Fox and J. Madeleine Nash have stories featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 2009). Doug’s article was "Did life begin in ice?" from Discover, Feb 2008; and Madeleine’s was "Back to the future" from High Country News, 13 Oct. 2008.

NCSWAn Robin Meadows is doing a part-time Web content internship with the National Park Service’s San Francisco Area Network, which is building a new regional multimedia Web site. SFAN includes nine parks from Point Reyes National Seashore to Pinnacles National Monument, and Robin said she hopes to visit them all.  By the end of her first week, she had been to Point Reyes , the Golden Gate Recreational Area in the Marin headlands and the Presidio.

Doug Isbell writes to say he has joined the public affairs staff of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as manager of communications and media relations.  Doug comes to the Bay Area from Tucson, where he was the associate director for public affairs at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory for eight years, and he previously worked in public affairs at NASA headquarters.

Dan Carlson writes to say he and his wife Lynn Newton have a baby, Dexter Harris Newton Carlson, their first child born April 23 in a planned home birth.  Dexter is already more than six months old now, Dan says, and is full of smiles and “nascent coordination.”

Margie Wylie recently joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as an editor/writer in a part-time appointment for the creative services office in public affairs.

 Kelly McGonigal has a new book out in December, Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind and Heal Your Pain (New Harbinger). Kelly says it’s the first book to integrate neuroscience and medical research with traditional yoga and meditation practices.  She adds that she met her literary agent at the NCSWA conference at UC Berkeley in April and is grateful for the event!

Paul Kleyman has been promoted to director of the elders news beat at New America Media in San Francisco, writing/editing and conducting media briefings on issues such as elders in poverty and older immigrants, and educational seminars for reporters in ethnic media.

New Members:

Doug Isbell, manager of communications and media relations at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Helen Shen, senior graduate student in the UCSF neuroscience program

Lisa Krieger, reporter for science, medicine and higher education at the San Jose Mercury News; rejoining after a “too-long hiatus”

Treve Johnson, Berkeley ; coming back to NCSWA after working as a freelance technical writer and later as a photographer

(Teresa) Jane Palmer, student at UC Santa Cruz; computational modeler turned writer

Megan Lee, Berkeley ; freelance and recent graduate of Harvard School of Public Health

Jessica Law, Berkeley; recently moved from the Netherlands; technical writer/editor

Lisa Isailovic, marketing manager at Alpha Innotech, San Leandro

Mark Helfen, San Carlos

Claire Trageser, San Diego

Rachel Schafer, associate editor/managing editor, Engineering News, UC Berkeley

Nancy Faas, San Francisco; freelance contract writer/editor

Ann Filmer, director of communications, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Nicholas Bock, East Palo Alto

Kaspar Mossman, San Francisco; communications director, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3)

Jennie Rose, San Francisco; independent writer