COSMOS intern Lucie Bradley loved the experience of interviewing, writing, fact checking, editing and proof-reading Credit: The Australian

EVERYONE from the chief scientist down is racking their brains about how to talk kids into studying science and maths. And there is growing recognition that talking – or at least, communication – is where the answer lies.

And there is growing recognition that talking, or at least, communication, is where the answer lies.

Doing its bit to render scientists articulate and sensitive to the desperate need for plain speaking, or even inspiring writing, COSMOS Magazine set up an internship program in 2005 and has just farewelled its 60th graduate.

“Our work is about the critical link between science education and communication,” chief executive and co-founder Kylie Ahern says.

Recruits range from PhDs to journalism graduates, are generally between 20 and 25 years old and 80 per cent are women. Only half the applications received are accepted and the program is booked out for next year.

“From day one we have them working on news, online,” Ms Ahern says. “All the editorial team spend some time training the interns; it’s part of the ethos of working here, contributing to training the next generation of scientists.”

COSMOS was co-founded and bankrolled by Monash University chancellor Alan Finkel. It has a circulation of about 22,000 and the website draws about 350,000 unique visitors a month.

“We prefer to have people with a science background or at the minimum an interest in science,” Ms Ahern says. “We’ve had a few PhD students who have decided a research career is not for them or want to work in science communications.”

Lucie Bradley, 24, a PhD candidate in organic chemistry at the University of Melbourne, who has just finished a stint, fits that category.

“I had been thinking about what I wanted to do when I finished my PhD and as much as I really love science, I also have a more creative side to my personality,” she says.

When she saw an online ad for the COSMOS program she was keen.

“Although my scientific record is quite good I didn’t have much in the way of writing,” she said.

She loved the experience of interviewing, writing, fact checking, editing and proof-reading.

Less than half way through her doctoral studies, she has no definite plan after their conclusion, but is still convinced merging her interests in sciences and humanities would be ideal.

COSMOS is targeting younger generations and their mentors. It produces education material that goes into 70 per cent of Australian high schools and career guides for undergraduates and postgraduates.

“Getting more kids studying science and more people taking science careers is not just about influencing kids but getting the message out to parents and teachers,” Ms Ahern says.

“There are very few careers where you wouldn’t benefit from having a basic scientific knowledge.”

The post COSMOS Magazine prompts more kids to study science appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

The U.S. App Store shopfront: the new COSMOS Magazine app receives top billing.

Following on from last week’s story regarding the iPad app launch of COSMOS, Publishers Australia spoke to Wilson da Silva and Heather Catchpole at Cosmos Media who explain how the move to digital can open doors not close them in expanding to multi-platform products.

Why now?

The publishing industry is increasingly turning to the digital world to stay afloat and COSMOS are no dummies. They knew they had to reinvent themselves but saw it as a positive step towards expansion rather than a necessary evil on the road to downsizing. The international nature of digital publishing is what really caught their eye. Editor–in–Chief Wilson da Silva explains that there are two categories magazines can fit into, ‘hyperlocal’ and ‘hyperglobal’, and you just “can’t be national anymore”.

COSMOS has always had an overseas presence with approximately 15% of their subscribers being international. Science’s global outlook allows the publication to market itself everywhere.

Managing Editor Heather Catchpole, says that a critical question they asked themselves was “Where could we be?”. After looking at similar media products, whether they were websites, print publications, or apps, they knew they had the ingredients needed to be incredibly successful but perhaps not the recipe. So nine months ago they set about working it out.

How?

Catchpole said that the entire process was a “massive learning curve” with entirely new processes established to move into digital. da Silva is adamant that the best way to create a great engaging product is to “let your people play”, and says at COSMOS everybody is encouraged to voice their ideas in staff brainstorming sessions. This has resulted in the iPad edition pushing the platform beyond what the designers even knew and makes reading the iPad edition “like reading COSMOS…but better”!

However content will remain at the centre of all that is COSMOS. “Key in our mind is audience” says da Silva, and although the leap into digital publishing is important, COSMOS follows the mandate that it should be “story first, platform second”. Da Silva and Catchpole both agree that other magazines just don’t focus on content enough, favouring design instead. “If an article doesn’t catch your eye visually you may not read it but the same can be said for a visually stunning piece that is written badly”. Therefore, the aim of COSMOS is to “write like the New Yorker but look like Vanity Fair”. With the release of the iPad App landing front page on the Apple iTunes Store and hitting No. 1 in NZ, No. 3 in Australia, and No. 51 in the United States, it seems they could be hitting the mark.

In terms of putting the print and digital editions together they have allowed the platforms to feed off each other. They are used to having an overflow of content – the iPad allows them to use all of it! “Nothing goes to waste” according to da Silva, for instance previously one picture for a story would have been selected, now an entire gallery can be uploaded for readers to flick through. They also don’t have a set length for the iPad edition, allowing them flexibility that print just doesn’t give. Another visual aspect is that images are available in both portrait and landscape which makes the experience of interacting with them richer, as the picture expands with a simple 90° turn.

Challenges

COSMOS say that the biggest challenge they faced was managing the complexity of the digital edition. Though they established “rigid digital production processes” the intricacy of having video, images, words, as well as portrait and landscape capabilities meant pulling everything together so that it remained functional was difficult. da Silva’s focus on the narrative structure has meant that maintaining the fluidity of the magazine in a multi – platform way has been the challenge. Pushing the envelope but preserving functionality.

Integration of advertising

Advertising has never been the big money spinner at COSMOS however they are dedicated to continuing the innovation in this arena as well.”Magazines are the most engaging media type…and the advertising world needs to catch – up” says da Silva. This can be done by making advertisements a little bit more interesting via animation and interactivity, making the reader less likely to skim over it. Digital publishing provides new opportunities for content creation, and COSMOS feels the same can be said for advertising and believes this is something all publishers need to be aware of.

Marketing and subscriptions

One important question for publishers considering the expansion into digital is how to retain your print subscribers but also create a market for new subscribers. Currently the iPad edition of COSMOS is available free for print subscribers focusing on “future proofing…giving [subscribers] no reason to abandon” the print version. In doing so they recognise that not everybody has an iPad and so with each multi platform subscription there is a browser edition and full access to the last 7 years of digital archives. Wilson da Silva expresses that they “want everybody to be able to interact with the brand at all levels, at all times…for COSMOS to be a trusted friend on the road to discovery”. This tactic seems to have worked at least initially with 7200 app downloads in the first three days of release.

Advice

COSMOS has a number of pieces of advice to publishers considering the digital realm.

• Look at your entire brand: Don’t just release an iPad edition without thinking carefully about your print publication, website, etc. as these should all flow together seamlessly representing your brand to readers.

• Nurture creativity in your team: Magazine publishing is a creative and collaborative business so ensure high levels of teamwork. Have processes in place that allow everybody to voice ideas because sometimes the best ideas are the craziest. If you make your team feel valued then they’ll do their best work.

• The reader doesn’t always know what they want until they get it: Don’t conduct market research without having a product first. For instance, if you’re deciding on covers get feedback for options that have already been created.

• Observe your competitors: Look at what your competitors are doing within your niche. Then open up and find out the best practice amongst people doing similar things but not necessarily within your subject area. Ensure you remember your biggest competitor may not be using the same platform as you.

• Have a clear aim: At COSMOS the aim is to be “amazing, surprising, and deep” according to Catchpole and da Silva, and publishers should think about how they want to be perceived by their audience.

The post The COSMOS iPad app: A case study appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

The Media Report's Richard Aedy interviews COSMOS editor-in-chief Wilson da Silva about the magazine's innovative new iPad app. Broadcast on ABC Radio National on 29 June 2012. Credit: ABC Radio National

COSMOS‘s Wilson da Silva appears on The Media Report talking about a new iPad app and to explain why he’s so chirpy about the future of media.

Richard Aedy: I want to finish with a bit more optimism from perhaps an unexpected direction. Cosmos Media is a small company. It puts out COSMOS Magazine, which is about science, and its editor-in-chief is Wilson da Silva who is disconcertingly positive about the future.

Wilson da Silva: Yes because there is a disruptive change going through the media industry, the kind of disruption that we’ve seen in other industries and it’s now finally affecting content. And for a long time we were stumbling around thinking what is it we’re going to do? Because we were wedded to the print model and we wanted to do things online—we’ve got the highest rating science news website in the country—so we’ve been doing okay online but never really had a strategy for how to go beyond, you know, the next five, ten years. And about nine months ago we started rethinking the whole business and thought okay we’re going to become the number one science place for you to do everything science—by DVDs, by magazines, readers…basically a COSMOS experience. And we started thinking of print, not as the central core of the business but as just one of the platforms we have.

Richard Aedy:So a lot of the, say, iPad apps of publications, certainly some of the earlier ones give you the paper on your tablet but there are obviously limitations with doing that.

Wilson da Silva: There were. The first magazines were what’s now called replicas of the print edition. Basically people were thinking…and you can see how it happens in a magazine production house, you go, I’ve got to do the print issue, oh we’ve got to do the iPad issue, you know, what are we going to do? Oh let’s just give a kind of pdf replica and then, oh let’s add some you know hyperlinks here and there. We’ve gone through—and it’s not so much us but some other publishers: Hearst with Popular Mechanics in the US have tried really hard to think, okay what is special about the iPad? What is the functionality it has? And what extra things can we do? And we’ve spent nine months at reimagining the magazine from the ground up. It’s kind of hard to describe, it’s not just adding video and audio; it’s little things like for example if you have a trivia section, why not tap the question and it flips around and the answer shows you? And maybe it has an image associated with it. Or if you have a competition in a magazine, why can’t you just email your answer from that page? If you have an opening story, a…say glaciers disappearing, around the world, instead of having a double-page spread which we have in the print edition of the story, you can open with that image and then pan ever so slowly, it’s almost like you’re standing at the top of this mountain looking across all the glaciers. And you pan as you introduce the story and have the stand first and the first paragraph. It’s just a different way of thinking of magazines. And I don’t think enough publishers are allowing their editorial people to play, to experience and play with the technology and just try crazy stuff and we’ve been trying crazy stuff for months it seems.

Richard Aedy:So your future…what it’s now tied to the iPad? What about other tablets? Are you going to be platform agnostic or…?

Wilson da Silva: We are going to be platform agnostic eventually so we’ve made a massive investment with double staff and we’ve…

Richard Aedy: That takes you to, to be…put that in context, you’re now what, nine or ten?

Wilson da Silva: We’ve expanded to 17 people including commercial people. So we originally had 4.5 people, we now have 10 in editorial. And we’ve expanded other sides of the business too. But basically we’re going to triple the amount of content we produce irrespective of platform. It’s not going to be necessarily advertiser-driven. I think one of the problems of the media industry today is everyone’s trying to think, how do we make advertising pay? I don’t think the game is advertising anymore. I think for too long publishers particularly in the magazine world have been thinking way too much about what can we give the advertiser. We’re actually…because I guess science is a niche so you really have to be interested in science to get in, so it’s never been a big advertising revenue generator for us. We have strong advertising but never the kind of big stuff, 60% that you have in the mainstream titles. So we’ve always relied a lot more on reader revenue—subscriptions, retail and online.

Richard Aedy:Right. So get it right for the readers and then…

Wilson da Silva:Everything else happens…

Richard Aedy: …maybe the advertisers come as well. But if they don’t you think you’re going to be all right?

Wilson da Silva: Exactly. This is the model we’re aiming for and what’s becoming clear to me is that in this world of no borders there are only going to be two general types of magazines; there’s going to be the hyper-global and the hyper-local. We’re a niche, we’re a science magazine, we’re a niche. But that niche is a global topic.

Richard Aedy: I was going to say, it actually means that you can try and be a global publisher.

Wilson da Silva: True but it also means that for example you can be a woodworking magazine or a bicycling magazine and you can be global. Now luckily COSMOS, since its beginning seven years ago, has always been global because science is global. We don’t bundle on about how a story is an Australian scientist. We just do science wherever it is. We also have a really good reputation, 15% of our subscribers—even though it’s extraordinarily expensive to subscribe from the US or other places—15% of them have been international and we’ve won a number of international awards. So we’ve got respect but the problem has always been the cost…

Richard Aedy: Yes.

Wilson da Silva: …of shipping.

Richard Aedy: So that is clearly what you see as your future. You’ll keep doing print for as long as people want and as long as it makes some kind of economic sense.

Wilson da Silva: Exactly.

Richard Aedy: But you are able to do this and you’ve been able to go as well as you have and actually before I go on, are you profitable now? Because you are sustained, you have been sustained by some deep pockets.

Wilson da Silva: Yes we have. Thank God that we had a benefactor in Alan Finkel who’s the chancellor of Monash University and made his fortune by technology—he’s a scientist himself. He believes deeply in the product. He and Elizabeth Finkel have invested in COSMOS and if…without their help, certainly in the first five years…

Richard Aedy: Probably would never have started.

Wilson da Silva: It would never started… it would never have probably have started but certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has and maintained the level of quality. Because one of the things that Alan and Lizzie really believe is quality, quality, quality. I cannot tell you (laughs) the emails I get breaking down his analysis of each issue. What we got right, what we could do better and what we need to improve on. He is a meticulous reader, he loves science and he loves magazines. And he is our biggest fan.

Richard Aedy: Are you now generating an operating profit?

Wilson da Silva: Yes we are.

Richard Aedy: Right, so you’re now a sustainable business where you are. Your concern is though, is with what happens next.

Wilson da Silva: That’s right. We’ve got to think, not what the market is now but what the market will be in five years’ time. So what we’re doing now is making a large investment in staff and resources and in technologies to make sure that in five years’ time we’re not only here but we’re actually thriving. We actually have an internal plan to be the number one science magazine in the world in five years’ time. Watch this space.

Richard Aedy: The irrepressible Wilson da Silva from COSMOS. Remember the website is where you can find more details of everything: abc.net.au/radionational. I’m Richard Aedy. We’re produced by Kyla Slaven. Our sound engineer is Luke Purse.

More information

• Visit the The Media Report webpage here.

• Download the audio interview here.

The post COSMOS: A case study of flourishing media appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

The launch of the Equinox Blueprint: Energy 2030 in Vancouver, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the advancement of Science. L to R: Wilson da Silva, Jason Blackstock, Jatin Nathwani and Lauren Riga Credit: RJ Taylor/WGSI

Is there feasible road to a low-carbon future? According to a group of scientists, policy experts and young environmental leaders the answer is a qualified yes — if national governments and industry get busy developing and implementing transformative technologies to achieve a more sustainable supply of electricity.

The Equinox ‘blueprint’, released on 19 February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, British Columbia, is a summary of findings from the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, a summit conference held last June in Waterloo, Ontario.

Participants in the Equinox Summit spent four days “grilling” scientists about possible game-changing electricity technologies. “It was a very learned tire-kicking,” says Wilson da Silva, editor of COSMOS Magazine and a facilitator for the group.

Summit participants settled on five pathways for action: large-scale storage for renewable energy, enhanced geothermal power, advanced nuclear power, off-grid electricity access and smart urbanization (including transportation solutions).

In the storage department, the group has thrown is support behind vanadium redox flow batteries — a kind of halfway technology between conventional batteries and fuel cells — for storing intermittent renewable-energy supplies and powering electric vehicles. These are more complex and bulky than standard batteries, but they have a greater capacity the larger they are, and don’t lose their charge over time.

For off-grid electricity access, the group picked organic photovoltaics as a probable winner — devices that are flexible, light and resilient, but that, so far, produce electricity at an efficiency of only about 8%, compared to about 15% for off-the-shelf silicon photovoltaic panels. Although these might be more expensive than diesel generators, they offer the huge benefit of ongoing power without effort or expense for, say, isolated villages in Africa.

For base-load power, the group threw a spotlight on geothermal power (they are calling for ten commercial-scale 50-megawatt demonstration projects to be built around the world), and advanced nuclear power (specifically, they hope for a demonstration Integral Fast Reactor to be built by 2020, and a thorium-accelerator-driven system by 2030).

Now the report has been released, the group is switching to implementation mode, trying to convince policy makers to take action. “Watch this space,” says Blackstock.

Some of the youth leaders have already taken the ideas back to their communities to make a difference, they note. Lauren Riga, just 27 years old, has been appointed director of environmental affairs and green urbanism for her city of Gary, Indiana, where she also now has a radio show on sustainability issues and advises the local power company. “It has been a life-changing experience,” she says of the Equinox summit and report.

The post Energy summit unveils blueprint for change appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

A US scientist has distanced himself from Greenpeace’s anti-Genetically Modified wheat campaign in Australia, having previously co-signed a letter asking the CSIRO to abort research into the technology, over concerns with the rigor of human and animal testing.

Professor David Schubert from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, co-signed an open letter on 27 June to CSIRO Chief Executive Megan Clark, criticising proposed human trials of GM wheat, along with seven other doctors and scientists.

The letter was sent in the lead up to Greenpeace activists’ destroying CSIRO’s GM wheat field trials in Canberra on July 14 after entering the site illegally, in an effort to gain publicity for its flagging anti-GM wheat campaign.

Questions have also been raised about the letter’s lack of independence and authenticity, amid accusations it was plagiarised from previous Greenpeace anti-GM propaganda.

Professor Schubert, a neurobiologist, denounced Greenpeace’s attack on CSIRO’s scientific work.

He told Rural Press, he did not approve of the “destructive actions taken by Greenpeace or any other anti-GM group”.

Professor Schubert said the protest was “counterproductive in addition to being illegal”.

“The decision to grow these crops should be based upon science, not threats from either side of the debate,” he said.

“The latter is a major problem in the US.”

Professor Schubert said he was not a member of Greenpeace but was opposed to feeding GM products to people, without genuine product safety testing in animals.

But CSIRO has already trialled the GM wheat on rats and pigs with no indication of negative effects.

The researcher has approval from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) to conduct human trials and is awaiting further advice before moving ahead.

Two Australian based co-signatories to the letter, Dr Benjamin Ticehurst from Sydney and Dr George Crisp from Shenton Park in Perth, are members of Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA).

DEA is a voluntary organisation of medical doctors in Australia that says it works to prevent detrimental health outcomes caused by damage to the environment, globally.

Dr Ticehurst confirmed he was a co-signatory to the CSIRO letter.

But when asked if he supported or condoned the activists destroying the scientific trials said, “I have nothing to add regarding Greenpeace’s tactics”.

“At the risk of sounding like a politician, I don’t wish to make a judgement on this question,” he said.

Dr Crisp was a candidate for the Greens in the Perth metropolitan seat of Curtin at last year’s Federal election, running against Federal deputy opposition leader, Julie Bishop who won by a large majority.

Dr Crisp was unavailable for comment regarding the CSIRO letter.

However one of the scientists, UK based Professor Carlo Leifert, from the Newcastle University School of Agriculture, ruled out distancing himself from the Greenpeace anti-GM wheat campaign.

Professor Leifert said he was not informed by Greenpeace beforehand that they intended to take such action; nor was he contacted by Greenpeace after the event to say what had taken place and provide an explanation.

He said he did not condone the destruction of the experimental crop but offered some sympathy to the cause.

“I can completely understand that Greenpeace felt that, in the current political climate, where it seems that the biotech industry can influence governments at will and very often against the wish of the people, they had no other choice but to destroy the crops,” he said.

Rural Press contacted the other co-signatories to the letter, including Dr Michael Antoniou of the King’s College London School of Medicine and Dr Vandana Shiva, Professor at the Navdanya Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, a renowned global anti-GM campaigner.

However they did not return emails before deadline.

The letter said “feeding trials should not be conducted until long-term impact assessments have been undertaken and appropriate information released to enable the scientific community to determine the value of such research, as against the risks.”

Karl Haro von Mogel, a graduate student in plant genetics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US, believes the letter was plagiarised, indicating Greenpeace was “scraping the bottom of the barrel” to drum up criticism of the GM wheat trials.

Mr Haro von Mogel is the co-executive editor of Biofortified.org, a website which aims to foster factual, civil dialogue on genetic engineering in agriculture which he says is independent and not supported by any companies.

Mr Haro von Mogel said Greenpeace produced the letter as part of a concerted media strategy to give the impression that the scientific and medical community widely condemned the wheat research being conducted at CSIRO.

But he said by exaggerating the risks of genetic engineering in the letter and in other documents they released, Greenpeace set the stage for “breaking into CSIRO to destroy the plots of GE wheat”.

He said not only was this scientific veneer “thin on evidence and signatories” but much of the letter was merely copied from a different letter penned against trials of pro-vitamin-A enhanced rice or Golden Rice.

Mr Haro von Mogel said the letter also failed to mention Greenpeace’s involvement “giving the false impression that this letter was an independent act”.

“One of the signatories has even come out against their act of vandalism, adding to the chorus of condemnation from the scientific community around the world,” he said.

“Greenpeace thought that they could engineer public support for their position but instead they just mowed down what moral arguments they had left.”

Greenpeace spokesman, James Lorenz, said any strong similarities to the Golden Rice letter was due to scientists making reference to “well established and respected protocols for the testing of experimental products on humans”.

“We certainly didn’t write the letter,” he said.

“We are campaigning against GM wheat.

“But it’s a long bow to assert we are manufacturing opposition…it’s not as though GM doesn’t have opponents outside our office.

“GM wheat has been rejected in Europe, Russia, Canada etc.

“We certainly didn’t push the Canadian Farmers Union to reject it.”

Editor-in-Chief of literary science magazine, COSMOS, Wilson da Silva, said no GM wheat had been approved for human consumption in Australia but the CSIRO did have permission to conduct trials.

He said Greenpeace had “lost its way”.

“What was so ‘toxic’ about this wheat strain that it had to be destroyed?” he said.

“Its genes had been modified to lower its glycemic index and boost fibre content, creating bread and other wheat products that would improve bowel health and nutritional value.

“Its former glory rested on the righteousness of its actions in support of real evidence of how humanity was failing to care for the environment.

“Now it is a sad, dogmatic, reactionary phalanx of anti-science zealots who care not for evidence, but for publicity.”

At least three Greenpeace activists used whipper-snippers to cause about $300,000 damage to the CSIRO GM wheat trials in Canberra; the matter is now under police investigation.

The Australian Federal Police executed a search warrant at the Greenpeace head offices in Sydney last week, with a range of items and property seized as evidence during the raid.

Part of that evidence will undergo forensic analysis and the warrant follows on from police interviews of two persons of interest in Sydney last week.

On Monday, AFP said investigations were ongoing, with charges yet to be laid.

The Gene Technology Act 2000, under which the trials are conducted, sets out a maximum penalty of two year imprisonment for anyone found guilty of damaging or interfering with approved GM trials and associated facilities.

Gene Technology Regulator, Dr Joe Smith, has declined to comment while the issue is under investigation.

Greenpeace issued a media statement publicising the police raid.

In it, Greenpeace Head of Campaigns, Steve Campbell, said “As an organisation that stands-up for transparency, Greenpeace is open to scrutiny”.

“This action has stirred up heated debate and it’s about time,” he said.

“Greenpeace is demanding that the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, urgently increase funding for the CSIRO, so that our public science agency stops having its strings pulled by billion-dollar foreign biotech corporations.”

Rural Press contact Ms Gillard’s office but her office declined to comment on a matter under police investigation.

The post Scientist distances himself from activists appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

“Why would you chuck your career down the toilet?” my incredulous colleague asked.

I was in Canberra, working in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for Reuters, relieving another foreign correspondent who’d gone on his long annual leave. It was my third such stint from Sydney, always in deep winter when Canberra is least welcoming to those not so enamoured with the cold.

Over a beer, I’d told him that after almost five years with Reuters, and two before that as a staff journalist on The Sydney Morning Herald, I wanted to focus on science journalism, and was entertaining an offer of just such a job in Melbourne.

I’d long had a fascination with science, having studied geology at university, and had been doing a lot of science reporting out of Australia for Reuters. Not that I was the official science correspondent – there were only three out of 1,200 in the whole world, and the Asia region was covered by a fellow in Tokyo.

But there were always good science stories to be found locally, and Australian scientists do excellent work that is valued internationally. So long as there was no other pressing coverage to be done, my bureau chief didn’t mind my unofficial science beat.

Yet, I can’t say I was surprised by my fellow correspondent’s colourful reaction: in Australia, science journalism is looked down upon as not very serious. The pinnacle is political or financial reporting, especially in the exalted nirvana of the Canberra press gallery. And yet, having served long stints within its sacred halls, I found serious stories were often ignored, most reporters obsessed with the personalities of politicians or the minutiae of real or imagined political machinations.

Often, the flood of reportage was more akin to coverage of a boxing match rather than reporting on the Grand Affairs of State. Business reporting (obligatory at Reuters) was more substantial and worthy in my experience, but hardly seemed to justify the cred (although lunch expenses were very generous).

By contrast, science reporting was hard: one day you’d be writing about exploding stars, the next about stem cells; the day after, about the ozone hole – and you’d better not have missed that big story on swine flu or the hypersonic jet NASA is testing in the outback.

You had to become an instant expert on dozens of topics, be able to recognise a strong story from a beat-up, confidently counter the flacks selling you a miracle cure or trying to bury a story about a pharmaceutical product that’s been “temporarily shelved”. So why is it undervalued in Australia?

It is respected in British and American circles: scores of science writers have won Pulitzers across a rage of categories since the prizes were born in 1917, including investigative reporting, breaking news, local reporting and feature writing, as well as general non-fiction books.

And audiences love it. In Britain, the BBC and The Times are planning expansions of their science coverage: online traffic is telling editors that science rates highly with their audiences. In July, Times editor James Harding told the World Conference of Science Journalists that his paper’s three biggest stories in the preceding year had been the election of Barack Obama, the global financial crisis … and the ignition of the world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider. “Science is absolutely essential to what we do … It clearly engages our readers,” he said, noting that the paper had expanded its science beats, adding a new ocean correspondent and a maths columnist, and had substantially boosted its science blogs.

This shouldn’t be surprising: science is at the core of many of today’s big stories, such as climate change, stem cells, carbon trading, tsunamis and pandemics. Science is sliding its way into everything from finance (peak oil) to police and court reporting (DNA fingerprinting). In a sense, all reporting is becoming a bit more like science reporting; journalists who continue to dismiss science or fail to bone up on the basics are not only getting it wrong, they’re missing bigger and juicier stories. Knowing your science can be a backstage pass to where the stories are being made; or your ticket to catching out a politician or uncovering shady practices.

Despite this, science journalism is under serious pressure in the U.S., where CNN disbanded its specialist science, technology and environment unit, while many metropolitan dailies have retrenched science reporters. Not because science stories don’t rate, but because the U.S. media industry is in such dire straits. Cable news has lost its claim as the primary source of news-on-demand, something the internet provides more efficiently and for free. Magazine house Time Inc shed 600 jobs, while Gannett, America’s largest newspaper chain, laid off 3,000 people. As The New York Times put it last year, in reporting the U.S. media industry’s travails: “Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is, how many people will be left to cover it.”

But science reportage is booming elsewhere, especially in the developing world: in China, the Middle East and Latin America, new publications and programs on radio and TV are emerging, or growing audiences. One of the most popular TV shows in Sri Lanka is Macro World, and a science program in Romania has been attracting an average audience of four million viewers for almost five years. Despite the economic slowdown in Western Europe, science reportage has held its ground.

Not in Australia, where the picture varies depending on the personal preferences of editors and TV management. News executives often think of science reporting as arcane and not relevant to their readers: as if stories on collateral debt obligations or the Byzantine internecine battles within the Labor Party were relevant to the daily lives of readers. I recall an editor who found science an irritant – he said stories needed to be reduced to the lowest common denominator to be interesting to his audience. This was dismissive of the interests and intelligence of his well-heeled readers, and only proved that the lowest common denominator was actually in the editor’s chair.

Australians also have an intellectual life, and an interest in how the natural world works. They want more science in their news diet, as two large-scale CSIRO surveys have shown (they also want less politics and finance!). More people attend science museums than sporting events. Yet somehow, a myth pervades that science ain’t real journalism and people ain’t all that interested in it.

This is disturbing, particularly at a time when science is increasingly essential in helping navigate our way through the shoals of complex societal decisions. Our stock of science journalists, and science coverage, should be expanding. All of us are more and more pressed for time, and yet many of the decisions we need to make – on stems cells, climate, mobile phone towers, and so on – require citizens to cogitate on complex issues without access to expert knowledge or the time to investigate the literature in detail. That’s where science journalists are essential: sorting through the myriad of scientific papers and opinions and fashioning stories in an accessible, engaging way that tell audiences what they need to know.

Even worse than not covering science is to dismiss it when it doesn’t meet political prejudices. Sounds absurd, but that’s what The Australian appears to do, particularly on climate change. Many of its articles dismiss or underplay scientific concerns, undermine widely-accepted scientific evidence and often highlight minority opinions from scientists with little or no credibility among their peers. Its editorials are even more ludicrous: reading them, you could easily form the view that man-made climate change is nothing but a conspiracy of a global cabal of left-wing scientists determined to de-industrialise society.

This explains how The Australian was able to run an editorial in November last year that said of climate change, matter-of-factly: “The science is not definitive (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 found scientists were 90 per cent sure we are experiencing anthropogenic warming.)”

Which is, of course, true. It’s also true that the science is not definitive on a range of phenomena, from the Earth’s magnetic field to HIV causing AIDS. Should we abandon safe sex until we know with 100 per cent certainty that HIV causes AIDS? Or should we give equal time to the minority of HIV sceptics, among them scientists, who doubt that it does? In science, nothing is 100 per cent certain.

But you don’t need to be ignorant of science to know that: you’d have to have missed more than 2,000 years of philosophical thought, starting with Socrates circa 430 BC. Nothing in life is certain, and waiting to make decisions until all doubt evaporates is foolish.

Climate change, like a lot of contentious science, does not conform to the old thumbnail rule in journalism that, in order to provide balance, you list the objections of an opposing side in any heated debate. Science ain’t politics, where a witty rejoinder or clever spin can win the day; it’s a discussion based on evidence. And the majority view of the best scientists is driven by evidence: lots of it, all pointing in the same direction.

The 2,000 scientists who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represent the majority view of the best minds we have on the issue – that’s how they were chosen. If they say something is 90 per cent certain, you can bet the farm on it.

The post My science experiment appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Wilson da Silva, the Editor-in-Chief of COSMOS Magazine, believes that while the chances of life elsewhere in the universe are high, intelligent life is probably very rare.

FANCY a close encounter of the third kind – finding other life in our galaxy? Don’t hold your breath.

WHAT’S the chance of finding intelligent life in our galaxy, the Milky Way? Pretty slim, according to Wilson da Silva, editor of COSMOS Magazine.

He has updated the famous Drake Equation, used in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), to reveal aliens are even harder to find than we thought just 50 years ago.

That was when the search began in earnest, led by radio astronomer Dr Frank Drake.

He hoped to find ET by scanning the sky for radio signals. The mission continues to this day, as Dr Drake is now chairman of the SETI Institute, but the silence is deafening.

Writing in the latest issue of COSMOS, Dr Drake says the silence is not eerie, it’s predictable.

“If you take the most plausible guess for the number of detectable civilisations in our galaxy, the answer you get is about 10,000. That’s a big number,” he says. “And it requires civilisations to stay detectable for 10,000 years or so.

“Nevertheless, that means in our galaxy, with its 100 billion or so stars, only 1 in 10 million stars will have a detectable civilisation.

“Which suggests SETI will not succeed until we have searched some 10 million stars. And, of course, we don’t know what frequency to search at!”

Our planet has been buzzing with radio waves for decades, but we’re about to go quiet with the switch to digital television. Military radar has toned down the volume and mobile phones require less power to achieve the same result.

“Very soon, the Earth will become undetectable,” Dr Drake writes. “If we are typical of what a civilisation goes through, it means the search will be much more difficult than we ever imagined.”

With changing technology, he says, optical signals may be a better bet. But then who’s to say these aliens are following our path of technological development. They may be doing something far more sophisticated. They may even be masking their signals to avoid being detected.

At the moment, Mr da Silva says, we’re only likely to trip over those civilisations that have set up a beacon to highlight their existence.

“Only a very powerful beacon – intended to be found by new civilisations – could be detected by us,” he says. “But just sending such a signal would be extremely difficult, and expensive. And why would you do it?”

To celebrate the SETI anniversary, Mr da Silva plugged the latest science into the Drake Equation. Dr Drake listed all the questions science would need to answer in order to predict the number of detectable civilisations in the galaxy, then realised answers to all of the questions could be multiplied to find the ultimate answer to the ultimate question.

Dr Drake agrees the equation still works.

“The only thing that’s changed is the numbers we put into it,” he says. “When I first invented the equation we had to guess some of the factors. A lot of those have now been established through observation.”

But the answer Mr da Silva has come up with is a much smaller number than Dr Drake found 50 years ago – a low 0.00127.

What does it mean?

“It means that during any 100,000 period in our galaxy’s history, around 127 detectable civilisations will crop up,” Mr da Silva says.

“It may not sound too bad but it actually makes the odds of us tracking and finding one of them really, really hard, especially within a few hundred years of looking. The chances are actually minimal at best.”

He says working through the calculation is a good exercise for students, who learn a lot about science along the way.

South Australian science teachers puzzled over the problem at their annual conference yesterday.

SA Science Teachers Association president Bronwyn Mart says the conference brings together teachers, laboratory officers, tertiary students and educators all striving to improve their ability to infect students with a love of science.

Mr da Silva gave the keynote presentation and the program features a swag of scientists, including climate change Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide, and the director of the Flinders Artificial Intelligence and Language Technology Laboratories, Professor David Powers.

Today’s children will decide the fate of our civilisation and Mr da Silva hopes the light of humanity will continue to burn brightly.

“If we are alone in the cosmos, then we have an obligation to ensure that our spark of intelligence is not lost, that we protect life on our planet,” he says.

“I would argue we also have an obligation to ensure the survival of humanity by expanding beyond the planet. You can be sure that one day a massive calamity will befall our world – asteroid, comet impact, solar burst, nuclear war – and we could disappear or our civilisation could fall.”

The post The chances of discovering intelligent life in our galaxy is incredibly low appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Dr Elizabeth Finkel and Dr Alan Finkel AM, co-founders of COSMOS and philanthropists. Credit: Monash University

Dr Alan Finkel AM and Dr Elizabeth Finkel are leading donors to Monash University and the community through the Alan and Elizabeth Finkel Foundation.

In 2008 Alan Finkel (BE 1976, PhD 1981) became Monash University’s Chancellor, the first alumnus to hold the position. Elizabeth Finkel is a noted science journalist and author. The Finkels spoke to us! about their philanthropy.

You have recently made a significant philanthropic gift to create the Finkel Chair in Global Health in Monash University’s Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. What was the inspiration behind the theme of global health?

Dr Elizabeth Finkel: I trained as a molecular biologist, but had I not gone in that direction my very strong interest was global development. It has always been an abiding interest.

When we set up the Foundation I was able to re-visit that interest, this time as a philanthropist. Our Foundation has always reflected Alan’s compelling passions and my compelling passions. Also, through my work as a journalist I have been able to pay attention to global health issues.

There is also a more poignant reason why this theme was so relevant at this time. I was in Botswana in February doing research for a book I’m writing. It’s about the impact of genetics [research] on medicine and agriculture. I spent a day with a doctor in an AIDS ward at Princess Marina Hospital.

Botswana is the showpiece of the world. They are the country that is rolling out free HIV medication to the people who need it, yet the AIDS wards were full of dying young women and men. I couldn’t figure out why. It had to be a failure of the public health system.

Dr Alan Finkel: The theme of global health also appeals to me because I am an outcomes oriented person. When there are so many health issues to deal with, one of the most practical places to start is with those health problems that are preventable. In particular, communicable diseases in developing countries can be prevented by good health practices and a deep understanding of the social and health services shortcomings that have led to these diseases getting out of control.

In 20 years time, what do you hope that the Chair will have achieved?

EF: I hope that they will have been able to capitalise on what Monash has already put in place, including the campuses in South Africa and Malaysia. When we were in South Africa in February I was so inspired and moved that Monash was involved in South Africa’s development. I hope this Chair will take advantage of what’s already in place, build on public health measures and apply expertise that’s developed at Monash, using data from South Africa and Asia.

AF: I will be extremely pleased if I can see that the research contributed to a change in policies and practices, in one or more of the governments around the world, that actually helped prevent disease.

What does the word philanthropy mean to you?

AF: It means investing in the community that underpinned your own achievements. You have a bit of success in your life and achieve some goals and you find that you want to give back. One way I give back is by investing my personal time and effort on education. [Dr Finkel is also involved with a number of educationrelated activities and projects outside Monash University.]

Another way of giving back is financially and I think we have an obligation to do that. To me philanthropy is giving back to the community that has supported me and helped contribute to my success.

EF: For me philanthropy is a little more seamless with what I do. Through journalism I try to do public good in providing good, objective information. Public good is the way I approach journalism, and philanthropy is about public good.

Through your Foundation you support a wide range of causes and projects. How do you choose what to support?

AF: Fundamentally, we support things that we find personally interesting. Given our backgrounds the projects are often in health, science, engineering, education, development and community engagement. For example, we have supported the educational officer of the Koori Museum and the educational officer of the Jewish Museum. We give to things that we believe in.

We have tried to give our money to areas that interest us but also where we see some sort of multiplicative effect. We prefer to give our money to a research or educational activity that will build the capacity of a researcher or build the capacity of a student. They can then do so much more, in the long-term. Leveraging, through education, is an important part of what motivates us. Thanks! January 2009 5

EF: Before Alan became Chancellor, neither of us really thought about universities as a destination for philanthropy. Now that fate has positioned us where we are, I ask myself: why isn’t the philanthropic community alive to this? What better place is there to invest in for public good? Who else is going to do the research about issues like climate change, feeding the world, water shortages, and emergent diseases? Where are you going to find solutions to those problems? You are only going to find them at universities.

Tell us about your recent donation to establish the Finkel PhD Scholarships in Engineering at Monash University. The scholarships are ‘top-up’ scholarships that add to the recipients’ Australian or Monash PhD scholarships.

AF: Australia’s core research system depends on HDRs (Higher Degree by Research students), primarily PhD students, to do the research. They are undertaking the research that will ultimately improve our economy and wellbeing through innovation.

There is a shortage of PhD students nowadays for a number of reasons including demographics and the many attractive job opportunities resulting from the strong economy.

The top-up scholarships mean that the students can concentrate on their research more and not have to spend so much time working for income.

I feel we are achieving something important through that donation. It’s very multiplicative. With a relatively small amount of money we are enabling somebody to do research that might not otherwise be done. It’s for the long-term benefit of the country. It’s for the benefit of the University. And it’s to the enormous benefit of that student.

The post Inspiring philanthropy appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Work from home ... Karen Taylor, who will return to work after four months’ maternity leave, with Lily and Charlie. Credit: Simon Alekna/The Sun-Herald

KAREN TAYLOR plans to return to work next month after giving birth to son Charlie six weeks ago.

The mother of two from Oyster Bay said her employer had agreed to extremely flexible conditions to encourage her to continue in her job as advertising sales manager at COSMOS Magazine after four months’ maternity leave.

Ms Taylor, 37, said she would not have considered taking two years’ maternity leave, although she welcomed women having the option. It would have meant too long a career break for her and created difficulties for her small business boss.

”A lot changes in two years. That, to me, is not as useful in the workplace as flexibility,” she said.

Ms Taylor plans to work one day a week from home, building up to three days a week. She will also go to the office once or twice a month. ”Because they are so flexible I can do it. They were keen. They haven’t replaced me,” she said.

Her plans are in stark contrast to her attempt to return to work with a different employer after the birth of her daughter Lily, now 2.

”They didn’t hold my … job open but said they would find me ‘a job’. But there was no flexibility and I couldn’t do 9-to-5.30 five days a week,” she said. She was not able to return to work.

Her employer, magazine publisher Kylie Ahern, said Ms Taylor was one of the few staff members to be offered flexible working hours. ”The most important thing is you get to keep great staff. It is looking at work from a different perspective. It is not about hours but what that person can bring to the role.”

But she said: ”Not everyone can handle the responsibility.”

Kelly Taylor, 31, lost her marketing job when her employer changed its policy about allowing her to go part-time after returning from a year’s maternity leave.

If she had known this, Ms Taylor, of Sutherland, said she would have delayed starting a family. ”When it came time to come back they said I needed to be full-time or they would replace me,” she said.

Ms Taylor has been unable to find work since. She hopes the new laws will change employer attitudes. ”Why does having a child need to mean you could lose your financial security and independence?”

The post Two years is too much: flexibility better than long leave, says Karen appeared first on COSMOS magazine.

Flying high ... Wilson da Silva will be one of only a few Australians to fly into space with Virgin Galactic. Credit: James Elsby/The Daily Telegraph

HE’S about to undertake probably the most daring trip possible, becoming one of the world’s first space tourists.

But Wilson da Silva says there’s only one thing he’s worried about.

“If Paris Hilton’s going, I don’t want to be on the same flight,” the science nut said at his home in Sydney’s inner west yesterday. “Can you imagine? She’d be a nightmare.”

Unfortunately, da Silva, editor of science magazine COSMOS, won’t get to choose his company for the two and a half hour, $US200,000 trip.

He and magazine backer scientist Alan Finkel – among the 14 Australians already paid up for the 110km sky journey – will have to draw lots like everyone else.

Not that the company has much to do with it. They are realising – no doubt like Ms Hilton and each of the 300 people worldwide booked in – a dream that was all but given up as government-backed space programs dwindled from the heyday of the 1960s space race.

“There are people who grew up with the space program and thought they were going to get holidays in space and they didn’t,” Mr da Silva said.

But along came Burt Rutan, the American engineer who designed tourist-friendly SpaceShipOne for a science competition, and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who saw the whole thing as a business opportunity.

Then, earlier this month, Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic unveiled the enlarged SpaceShipTwo, a vehicle capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots on “suborbital ballistic flights” relatively safely.

Virgin promises to conduct at least 50 test flights, with the first commercial trips expected in 2011 from its spaceport in California’s Mojave Desert. Apart from society heiress Hilton, Brad Pitt and Star Trek luminary William Shatner are rumoured to have snapped up seats.

The first flight is expected to be Sir Richard’s own family – mother, father, son and self. His wife, though, has apparently refused.

Otherwise, those taking part include the very rich, the very interested in space and those who still remember watching the first man on the moon in 1969.

Incidentally, while the space safaris don’t get up quite that far, they do closely follow the trip taken by the first American in space, Alan Shephard.

Like him, da Silva and crew won’t see Australia from space. But they will see almost all of North America and Mexico.

Money aside, the flights are open for almost anyone, no matter their age or fitness level.

Already 200 people (including da Silva) have sat the intense three-day training program to prepare for speeds of up to 4200kmh.

Of those, just four have been turned away for medical reasons, according to Gil McLaughlin, owner of three Harvey World Travel outlets that are acredited “space agents”.

“The biggest thing we’re concerned about is people will have sensory overload during the experience and not remember what it was like,” he said.

“It’s certainly going to be a saturation experience.”

Others have voiced concerns that the enterprise is nothing but a high-pollution folly for the idle rich.
But da Silva believes the trips will produce no more carbon than an economy flight from New York to London.

He also predicted that the flights would change international air travel – in terms of comfort and environmental friendliness – by cutting all flights to less than three hours.

“Thirty years from now, nobody will be flying 24 hours to London,” he said. “If you’re going to the other side of the planet: suborbital. Always.”

But most important, he said, was the opportunity to simply see the Earth from afar.

“You’re going into space, which is something that only 500 people have done in all of human history,” he said.

“To look down on your own world from above. wow, that would be very moving.

“It’s the opening of a new frontier.”

The post THE WRITE STUFF: Editor boldly goes where tourists dream to tread appeared first on COSMOS magazine.