Published a Wired article on slowing light
Was excited to publish my first article for Wired Science last week! The article, which appeared on Wired.com, was about a new tiny chip that could slow light down at room temperature, thanks to some quantum physical effects. The article was fairly challenging to write, but thankfully the UC Santa Cruz researcher responsible, Holger Schmidt, […]
Love and Pain, and the start of a whole new quarter
Now that it’s 2011, and I’m back from a nice trip home to India, it’s time to begin the new quarter and the challenges of longer-form writing. Feature writing, profiles and essays all sound somewhat intimidating, but I’m heartened by the fact that so many of my program’s alumni seem to have made a living […]
Learning about fear with rats and Legos
As I wrote in my last post, fear can be a real problem for writers. So much so that there’s actually a book on how writers can overcome it, called The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes. But fear isn’t all bad. It’s a crucial evolutionary response that keeps us away from danger, and scientists […]
Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence – Zinsser’s take
photo © 2008 hojusaram | more info (via: Wylio) I was reading the closing chapters of Zinsser’s “On Writing Well”. Zinsser has an uncanny knack of pointing out things that I hadn’t thought of before, but that seem obvious once he says them. His chapter on “Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence” is full of good advice. […]
Happy Thanksgiving! and my 100th post!
The Neverending Beauty of the War Between Sun and Earth. Aurora Borealis timelapse HD – Tromsø 2010 from Tor Even Mathisen on Vimeo. Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a gorgeous HD video of the Northern Lights in Norway to enjoy. Definitely watch it in full-screen mode. [Via Gizmodo] And just to keep the turkey day theme going, […]
Zoom In on Top 8 Ultrahigh-Resolution Science Panoramas | Wired Science | Wired.com
Zoom In on Top 8 Ultrahigh-Resolution Science Panoramas | Wired Science | Wired.com. Stunning ultrahigh-resolution images, winners of a science photography contest. The images were apparently taken by a GigaPan robotic camera. Link above takes you to the image gallery. [Wired]
A new website to share scientific images
As part of our social media class at UC Santa Cruz, a couple of classmates and I came up with the idea to create a site where scientists could easily share striking scientific images. (All of us used to work in lab and take pretty scientific photos that we didn’t know where to share.) The […]
Earth as Art: Stunning New Images From Space | Wired Science | Wired.com
Earth as Art: Stunning New Images From Space | Wired Science | Wired.com. Wired.com has some absolutely stunning photos from the U.S. Geological Survey. [USGS Via Wired]
NASW and writing about Statistics
I got back from NASW last week, I had a lot of fun but was really busy. I found the sessions really useful, and I met a whole bunch of science writers and editors. The ScienceWriters2010 blog was actually really helpful in learning what went on in the sessions I missed. And it was a […]
Going to NASW ScienceWriters 2010
I’m off to attend ScienceWriters 2010, the annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers, this weekend. This is my first time at the NASW meeting, and I’m excited! I’ve also never been to Yale (in New Haven, CT), where the conference is being held this year. It should be a lot of fun, […]