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 […]
Explore. Climb. Knit. The secrets of good science writing with Jo Chandler
If you want to be a great science writer, you’ve got to explore. Then you need to put a fence around it and etch out your landscape. Yes, you need character. You’ve got to nail it, you’ve got to knit it, you’ve got to […]
Hands up who has a boss who doesn’t really understand social media?
Or maybe your boss gets Facebook, or maybe gets Twitter like Donald Trump does, but uses their own personal experience of one to define how others might experience it?
That can be a fairly common problem for all communicators, but the bigger question is how […]
Data Trivia
Feature your data and/or visual stories and findings. If you have some data trivia that reveals an answer or poses a question that you would like to share, please email editor@asc.asn.au
The following Data Trivia has been submitted by Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi, PhD student, Macquarie University.
Is summer the best time for communicating about ants?
Google trends analyses suggest […]
By Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi, PhD student, Macquarie University, 2017 grant recipient.
One course, 6300 words, and 2 papers.
I was awarded one of the Australian Science Communicators professional development grants last year to take a scientific writing and editing course offered by Dr. Malini Devadas. I am happy to share with you that since I started the e-course, I have […]