Sadly, my Media Fellowship placement at New Scientist has come to an end. But, I rather feel like I have 'gone out with a bang', as my latest article for them is a double-page spread! (Not the same as a centre-fold, to my husband's disappointment!)
You can read it here.
I was very pleased to be able to write about something (a) I know quite a bit about, (b) I'm really interested in and (c) I'm passionate about. A lot of the time, I gather, journalists don't get to chose what they write about, so I was very lucky.
The microbes that colonise cadavers is just up my street, and it was great to interview Professor Peter Noble about his research - although I did have to disturb him during his Caribbean holiday [alright for some!]. He and his team looked at how microbes spread out from the gut and colonised different internal organs of several cadavers, as a function of time. They found that the microbe populations differed more between individuals than between organs, suggesting that colonising microbes may be used to identify people. Then talking to Sibyl Bucheli was really fascinating too, especially as some her research is very closely aligned with mine, and that of the Burial Research Consortium. She voiced certain caveats to the research that I was thinking but couldn't put in without an external reference, so it was very helpful to talk to her. I hope that we may be able to work together on similar projects in the future. And of course, it was wonderful to get some choice comments from BRC's very own Professor John Cassella, an expert in this field.
I really enjoyed seeing all the processes that go into transforming a spark of an idea into a full-blown article, and watch it being tweaked and polished by editors, sub-editors and back to editors again. It was great to see how pictures were chosen, or rejected as the case may be, and how my writing turned into a 'proper' article for New Scientist. I'm absolutely delighted!
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