Copy Writing & Copy Editing
As a staffer, I was a professional, full-time science editor for more than eight years.
What’s That Flavor? I Can’t Taste It Over All This Noise
Discover, October 14 2010.
White noise doesn’t just drown out other noises, it drowns out taste too, says research in the appropriately named Journal of Food Quality and Preference. This could help explain why airplane food tastes so bland, why we eat more with the TV on, and why.. →
Plastic Chemical BPA Is Officially Toxic in Canada
Discover, October 14 2010.
The Canadian government today declared bisphenol A, a chemical in plastics also known as BPA, to be toxic.
A scientific assessment of the impact of human and environmental exposure to bisphenol A has determined that this substance constitutes or may constitute.. →
X Marks the Spot of a Dramatic Asteroid Collision
Discover, October 14 2010.
Out in the asteroid belt beyond Mars, two asteroids rendezvous-ed in the darkness, with explosive results. Atomic bomb level explosive. These two asteroids, one probably 400 feet wide and the other, smaller asteroid around 10 to 15 feet across, collided sometime in.. →
Punching Robot Totally Breaks Asimov’s First Rule
Discover, October 14 2010.
How much harm would a robot cause, if a robot could cause harm? Ok, admittedly that’s not as good of a tongue twister as the woodchuck chucking wood, but it’s a legitimate question being posed by researchers in Slovenia. In Slovenia, where electronic.. →
Obama Administration Lifts Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium
Discover, October 13 2010.
On Tuesday the U.S. government repealed the six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, enacted in May in response to BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“We are open for business,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters.. →
The Platypus Can Poison You 80 Different Ways
Discover, October 13 2010.
The platypus is a bit like a fruitcake. Shove a bunch of leftover genes in there, mix it up and send it to your relatives see what kind of animal you get.
That’s kind of the approach evolution used when designing this odd creature’s venom; scientists.. →
Does a 200-Year-Old Gourd Contain the Blood of a Beheaded King?
Discover, October 13 2010.
Dried blood on a handkerchief, a $700,000 gourd and one dead king. A forensic murder mystery? Nope, just another genetics paper. I mean, it is gourd season, what did you expect? The dead king in question is Louis XVI (the last of the French kings), who was ceremoniously.. →
2 Ways to Keep an Eye on Illegal Logging: Watch on Tiger-Cam; Bug the Trees
Discover, October 12 2010.
Motion-activated cameras have been used to catch bad nannies and adulterers for years. But in the forest, a high-tech, heat-detecting nannycam has caught video not just of the rare tigers that were its intended targets, but also of some unexpected forest-dwellers:.. →
How & Why to Write a Bacterial Opera for the Ig Nobel Awards
Discover, October 12 2010.
Marc Abrahams enjoys writing operas, but until a few years ago had never even been to one. Abrahams is the editor and co-creator of the Annals of Improbable Research, the science humor magazine that gave birth to the Ig Nobel awards, a marvelous celebration of quirky.. →
Um… That “Goldilocks” Exoplanet May Not Exist
Discover, October 12 2010.
A group of Swiss astronomers announced yesterday at the International Astronomical Union’s annual meeting in Turin, Italy, that they couldn’t detect the “goldilocks” exoplanet found by U.S. researchers a few weeks ago. That news of that.. →