Congratulations to the winners of this year's National Academies Communication Awards, announced today. The awards are given annually to recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and medicine to the general public, and I'm proud to be a past recipient. This year's honorees will receive their $20,000 prizes during a Nov. 20 ceremony in Irvine, Calif.
One of the best parts of the awards exercise is that it provides a great opportunity to see great science writing (and broadcasting) you may have missed the first time around. Here are links to the winners' Web sites:
- Book: Biologist Neil Shubin, for his intellectually challenging view of evolution from primitive fish to humans, "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body."
- Newspaper / magazine: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Mark Johnson for "Targeting the Good Cell," a series of reports on efforts to reprogram human cells for medical purposes.
- TV / radio / film: Larry Adelman (series creator, executive producer), Llewellyn M. Smith (co-executive producer) and Christine Herbes-Sommers (series senior producer) for their report on the impact of racial and socioeconomic inequities on health, "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?"
- Online / Internet: Vikki Valentine (digital science editor), Alison Richards (deputy science editor) and Anne Gudenkauf (science editor) for NPR's "Climate Connections," a yearlong multimedia journey to explain the global impacts of climate change.
- Finalists: Thomas Hager, author of "The Alchemy of Air"; Kenneth Miller, author of "Only a Theory"; New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, author of Dot Earth.
... And here are a few more links to fill out your daily diet of science:
