American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is now accepting entries for the Kavli Science Journalism Awards until 1 August 2018.
The awards recognize outstanding reporting for a general audience on the sciences, engineering and mathematics. Stories on the environment, energy, science policy and health qualify, if they discuss underlying scientific concepts in a substantive way.
Entries must have […]

This month we are delighted to hear from Vicki Martin, writing to us a year into her US postdoc adventure. 
It’s been a year since my family and I moved to beautiful Ithaca, N.Y. for me to take up a 2-year Rose Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I’m here to continue research on […]

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2018 ASC Grants Program.
Lydia Hales was awarded the ASC Professional Development grant worth $600 which will go towards her travels to Europe where she will be attending the 5th European Conference of Science Journalists in Toulouse, France and the EuroScience Open Forum, held in Toulouse.
Two members will also […]

President’s Message
Dr Craig Cormick
 
Why science is rarely taken into consideration in political decisions
Sorry scientists, but here’s a hard truth – when it comes to most policy decisions, science is rarely a major consideration.
Take the recent decision not to cull wild horses in New South Wales high country parks. The evidence is clear that wild horses […]

Dr Craig Cormick
PCST Summary
For those members not fortunate enough to have attended the recent Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference in Dunedin, in New Zealand (or those who attended and got distracted by the local sites), I want to share some of the highlights and my thoughts.
In 50 words or less: the conference […]

Shanii Austin
Four days, nine concurrent sessions, six keynote presentations, so much food and wine and an endless selection of science communication researchers, practitioners, scientists-in-communication and everyone in between; PCST 2018 has been the most intense, exhausting, mind-blowing and valuable experiences of my academic and professional career so far. I was incredibly grateful to receive the […]

President’s update
US cuts Funding to National Science Foundation’s Social Science Programs
Here’s something surprising – the US National Science Foundation recently went to Congress, as they do every year to discuss their $7.5billion budget – and they actually advocated for a cut to their own social science budget.
What the…?
Yes, the National Science Foundation asked Congress to […]

Behind all of the biggest scientific discoveries, there’s the infrastructure that lets it happen. We’ve all heard of the Large Hadron Collider, maybe the most famous bit of research infrastructure in the world. Unfortunately, most other research infrastructure is much more anonymous.
In Australia, one of those is the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), home to our […]

Posted on behalf of Dr Neil Doran, UTAS
I am a prior threatened species management officer from Tasmania. We have an upcoming screening of the award-winning Australian cave biology documentary SIXTEEN LEGS in Canberra this weekend (18 Feb), and Devonport, Brisbane and Sydney later this month.
It’s a film that aims to inspire care and appropriate management […]