Articles on Neutron Stars and Elusive Virus
Win Awards for Science Journalists

Two writers for AAAS's journal, Science, recently received awards recognizing them for their work.

Richard Stone, European news editor for Science, was honored by the American Institute of Biological Sciences for his story describing the hunt for the cause of the neurological disorder Viliuisk encephalomyelitis. "Siberia's Deadly Stalker Emerges from the Shadows" appeared in Science on 26 April 2002. A press release issued by the AIBS notes that contest judges had said of Stone's article, "...it's a gripping tale, the subject was original, and the reporting was excellent. You leave the article feeling intrigued and wondering 'What else do we not know?' Reading the article helps you understand the process of science and start to think like a scientist."

Robert Irion, a contributing correspondent for Science, won an award from the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society for his article entitled, "Ashes to Ashes: the Inner Lives of Neutron Stars," which was published in Science on 27 September 2002. Irion compared the behavior of neutron stars to the image of the Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park.

"'A jaw-dropping event' is how Irion describes these events, which consist of a flash of thermonuclear fusion burning through a '100-meter thick ocean of heavy ashes,'" recounts the Society's announcement of the award Irion shared with another science writer, Ron Cowen (Science News).

The HEAD journalism award is named in memory of David Schramm of the University of Chicago, a world leader in theoretical astrophysics and a leading authority on the Big Bang model of the formation of the universe. He was killed in 1997 when the twin-engine plane he was piloting crashed outside of Denver.

Richard Stone edits Science's news coverage of Western Europe and the Middle East, and writes about research in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In recent months Stone has written extensively on the threat posed by nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, with a focus on former Soviet labs and scientists. In addition to his regular contributions to Science, Stone's articles have appeared in such publications as Discover, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, and The Moscow Times. He has won several awards for his science writing, most recently the 2001 Walter Sullivan award from the American Geophysical Union for an article on Antarctica's Lake Vostok and the 2001 Pan American Health Organization's International Reporting Award for an article on the lingering health effects of Chernobyl. Stone is the author of "Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant," a book published in 2001 that discusses everything from folklore about the woolly mammoth to modern efforts to understand why the species went extinct and attempts to clone it from cells preserved in the Siberian permafrost.

Robert Irion is a freelance science journalist in Santa Cruz, California, and a contributing correspondent for Science. His articles about physical sciences also have appeared in Discover, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, New Scientist, California Wild, Highlights for Children, and other magazines. Irion is the coauthor of One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos, a coffee-table volume on physics and astronomy published by Joseph Henry Press in 2000. The book, written with Neil de Grasse Tyson and Charles Liu of the American Museum of Natural History, received the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in Physics and Astronomy for 2001. Irion also teaches magazine writing in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

For more information, read Stone's and Irion's articles in Science.

29 April 2003