#SciWri23 in Mile High
Dear Reader,
It's been a pleasure to have met some of you in Boulder over the week!
I had the chance to finally meet our alums Claudia Lopez Lloreda, Siddhant Pusdekar, and Hanna Webster in person for the first time, along with our old friends Carolyn Bernhardt, Betsy Ladyzhets, Andrew Meissen, and those with The Uproot Project. If I missed you during our time in ScienceWriters2023, we'll meet again!
We have long benefitted from the support of the National Association of Science Writers: Claudia and I won the Diversity Summer Fellowship in 2021, while Andrew developed his feature article after receiving a Diversity Reporting Grant in the same year. As a commitment to early-career science writers, we are publishing stories from the NASW David Perelman Virtual Mentoring Program for the first time: Before Elizabeth Lin pitched us, I was unaware that different states have inconsistent regulations regarding involuntary hospitalization, where a couple of signatures is enough to send a person facing a mental health crisis into a facility against their consent. I'm glad I'm now better informed, and this is an important issue that you should learn more about!
By far the memorable segment of ScienceWriters2023 was a screening and panel session of the documentary Bad Press on Indigenous People's Day.
Did you know that out of 574 federally recognized tribes, only five have laws that protect the free press? And in 2018, free press in Muscogee Nation, based in Oklahoma, ended overnight?
This 90-minute film was a thrilling, terrifying, and sobering look at how fragile independent media remains in much of Indian country, and why local, rural media serving marginalized groups is so important for a healthy, functioning democracy. I urge you to check out your local screnings, and support Indigenous newsrooms or journalist groups wherever you can.
Best regards,
Alex Ip, Editor-in-Chief
Thanks to our generous reader Reid Davis, we are giving out Bluesky invite codes for the first five (5) people who reply with screenshots of any donation towards The Xylom!
TEN-ISH WORD STORIES, SUBMITTED BY OUR READERS
- Walk with me on new land while remembering the old.
— Anonymous
TODAY IN THINGS YOU MUST READ
FAMILY NEWS!
- Would you like to be a matching donor for our upcoming NewsMatch campaign in November and December? This year, our goal is to bring back our Newsroom Fellowship for a second year (around $10,000 raised). We're looking for generous individuals and organizations that would commit as little as a couple hundred dollars to get our fundraising going. Reply to this email to get in touch.
- Congrats to contributor Crystal Chow, who is a recipient of the National Press Foundation’s 2023 Covering Rare Diseases Fellowship! She will be covering the Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by issues in Chromosome 15 which affects roughly 500 people in Hong Kong.
- Two news stories from our staff, found elsewhere across the newsverse:
- Editor-in-Chief Alex Ip wrote about a new study establishing links between wildfire smoke and rural suicide rates for New Orleans-based Verite News, while
- Newsroom Fellow Shreya Agrawal updates readers of Calmatters about the California Food Safety Act, which would prohibit the sale of food products containing several additives that are outlawed in the European Union and are thought to be harmful to the health of people who eat them by 2027.
A SOUTHERN FLAIR
- The Mountain Valley Pipeline is nearing completion, thanks to the efforts of one Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) Bloomberg Green's Zahra Hirji, Ari Natter, and Kristian Thacker head up to Appalachia to observe the fallout and ask residents: now what?
- The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently proposed that it would maintain its current target cancer-risk level from air pollution, which scientists and public health officials think is not enough to keep people safe. The current level of 1 to 100,000 means “only one excess case of cancer among 100,000 similarly exposed people would result from each individual pollutant from each individually permitted site,” writes Dylan Baddour for Inside Climate News (via the Texas Tribune). But experts say that this risk can multiply in areas where many facilities emit many chemicals that collectively put human health at risk.
- In Baltimore, conservationists are not happy about a proposed stream restoration of the Western Branch of Herring Run, which would move the stream channel, place boulder and wood stabilization structures in the waterway, construct concrete slope protections, and cut down nearly 700 trees. Critics of the project point to parking lots and suburbanization as the root cause of flooding events. More on Baltimore Brew:
WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
- More than 1,100 people are suing orthopedic implant manufacturer Exactech for their faulty knee and hip implants. The company began recalling implants after they found a packaging defect, which could affect more than 140,000 implants manufactured as early as 2004. Fred Schulte of KFF Health News spoke to many, including Ron Irby in Gainesville, Florida, who had to undergo a painful operation to replace his faulty Exactech implant after just three years.
- Wisconsin has a Democratic governor and numerous municipalities that are committed to climate action, but a heavily gerrymandered, Republican-controlled legislature so far has despite no appetite to let that happen. Fortunately, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, is now providing an end-run by directly funneling millions of federal dollars into state and local climate initiatives. Energy News Network's Kari Lydersen talks to hopeful local officials and advocates about what they expect this money will do for them.
- Say hello to the two newest National Wildlife Refuges: The Wyoming Toad Conservation Area and the Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge in Tennessee. The Associated Press' Adrian Sainz has the deets:
THE XYLOM'S RECENT STORIES
The Dark Side of Involuntary Hospitalization
- Elizabeth Lin speaks to advocates whose lived experience informs their calls for reforming America's patchwork mental health support system. This story is published in partnership with the National Association of Science Writers Mentoring Program.
A Journey Through My Microbiome: An Immigrant’s Perspective on a Changing Gut
- When Manasvi Verma moved over 8,000 miles from New Delhi, India to St. Louis, she ate less of her Dadi's kadhi, but more of her roommate's mom's chicken noodle casserole. How has that changed her from the inside out and the outside in?
If Phylogenetic Sense Be Something Biologists Wish
- Nearly two decades in, researchers are still debating which creature is the closest living relative to all animals. Are new methods getting them any closer? Rohini Subrahmanyam asks.
In the Shadow of Mumbai’s Coastal Road, Fishermen Ponder Their Future — If Any
- Mumbai's Coastal Road, a $1.5B superhighway built on reclaimed land along the Arabian Coast, is set to open next year. Kang-Chun Cheng heads to Lotus Jetty to see how the megaproject has devastated Indigenous Koli fishers — and how they are fighting back.