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23 May 2019
Take your lab to the ocean!
Calling all Ocean Scientists: with World Oceans Day fast approaching, and in celebration of AGU’s Centennial, we want to highlight the experiences you and your teams have out in the field!
30 October 2017
Drawn to Geoscience: Bat Poop Is Helping Scientists Study the Past
Animal poop holds many secrets. Our own JoAnna Wendel shares a comic, and the process behind the creation of the comic, about researchers’ work to identify past wet and dry periods using bat guano.
22 May 2017
Sciencing & Social Media
This is a cross post from Dr. Paige Jarreau’s blog From the Lab Bench. You can find the original here. This week, I helped Shane M. Hanlon at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Sharing Science program give a webinar on Sciencing and Social Media. We talked about what social media platforms are, how scientists are using them, and how to integrate more effective science communication practices (for example, engagement over “information-dumping”). Following the formal …
13 April 2017
All Politics is Local – Engaging your Legislators Locally
Congressional recesses are the perfect time to engage with your legislator about what is important to you. Here’s how you can get engaged!
6 June 2016
They got to “Ask-Me-Anything.” So, what did they want to know?
What’s it like to participate in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything”? AGU member and journal editor Kris Karnauskas shares his experience.
22 April 2016
Action on climate change needs our hearts and heads: uniting our faith and science
By Katharine Hayhoe, Asma Mahdi, Ed Maurer, and Vaishali Naik We scientists are eyewitnesses to the changes occurring in our world. Every month, it seems, a new record is being broken: whether for global temperature, Greenland ice melt, hurricane intensification, heavy rainfall, or devastating heat waves. Our science can clearly document how climate is changing. It can meticulously examine all relevant forcings to show that– for the first time ever …
11 February 2016
Letter to the Gods from the Goddess of Landforms
By Naomi Weissmann Geia! Hello, mighty Gods and Goddesses, I am Gi, goddess of landforms, a minor goddess who wants more. I believe that I belong in the Pantheon (as your 13th goddess). I spend all of my time shaping, and otherwise forming the earth. I am endlessly patient and persistent: I will stay put, stubborn as a mule, until I am pleased with what I’ve done. The breathtaking canyon …
9 November 2015
What makes newsworthy science? Depends on your audience.
As a scientist-turned-journalist, I have approached scientific research from two different angles. When I was a researcher, I paid the most attention to papers that related to my specific areas of interest, and evaluated them based on how they furthered my community’s understanding of my field. As a reporter, however, I consume new research with a slightly different set of questions in mind. I still wonder, “what do these results tell us about how the world works?” but I also have to ask myself, “will my audience be interested?”
16 April 2015
Climate scientists and faith-based groups come together this Earth Day for GreenFaith Day 2015
A wide range of climate science experts, including researchers, state climatologists, and Fulbright students, will volunteer their time to meet with churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith groups in more than 20 U.S. states to speak on climate change and explore solutions on a local level.
3 December 2014
“Yes, And …”: How Improvisational Acting Improves Your Communication Skills
The idea is not new – doing improv does improve your ability to communicate. While the specific vehicle – improvisational acting – may seem foreign from the scientific process, the concept connects the realities of life (improvised, after all) with the vagaries of doing science (experiments don’t always go according to plan, right?).
The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion.
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