New web-zine to help make research understandable, accessible

Vanderbilt has taken another step in its effort to help enhance the public's understanding and appreciation of science and engineering with the creation of an online research magazine designed to explore the challenge, excitement and importance of university-based research.

The official launch date for the new publication, Exploration, is Feb. 1. Its Web address is: http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu.

"It's extremely important that universities and the other science and engineering research institutions do a better job of explaining what they do to the general public," said Rick Chappell, former NASA science astronaut and director of Vanderbilt's Office of Science and Research. "Exploration is one of the things that Vanderbilt is doing to contribute to the improvement of science and engineering communications. The World Wide Web provides us with an exciting new way to tell fascinating stories about the world-class research done on campus."

The online journal is specifically designed to take advantage of the properties of the World Wide Web to illuminate the nature of scientific discovery. It employs photographs, illustrations, animations, video and audio clips to illustrate aspects of research that are difficult, if not impossible, to convey with text alone.

"A great deal of basic science and engineering is graphical and dynamic in nature," said David F. Salisbury, assistant director of the Office of Science and Research Communication and managing editor of the new publication. "For every type of research, there should be an optimal combination of media that can explain the basic principles involved. Exploration allows us to harness the power of multimedia for this purpose."

In its initial phase, Exploration contains five basic sections: News & Features, Policy & Opinion, Students @ Work, Events and Interact.

The "News & Features" section contains news articles about Vanderbilt research accomplishments and multimedia features that provide greater background about specific researchers and projects. The features attempt to draw a multidimensional portrait of research, one that not only explains its importance but also gives some sense of the fundamental process that underlies engineering and scientific advances and gives viewers some insight into the personalities of the people involved.

"All too often scientific breakthroughs are reported as if they come out of thin air," said Chappell, who co-authored with television journalist Jim Hartz "Worlds Apart--How the Distance Between Science and Journalism Threatens America's Future," a report on their yearlong study of the media's portrayal of news related to science and technology. "Those who are involved know that such breakthroughs are produced by a steady, incremental process and a tremendous amount of commitment and hard work. Through Exploration, we're trying to convey these aspects of research to the public."

The subjects of the multimedia features in the debut version of the site are: associate professor of mechanical engineering Michael Goldfarb's research on robotic bugs; anthropology professor Arthur Demarest's discovery of a royal Mayan palace in Guatemala; and professor of cancer biology Ann Richmond's work on melanoma growth factors. News articles feature the research of assistant professor of psychology Jo-Anne Bachorowski, assistant professor of biological sciences Lilianna Solnica-Krezel, Peabody Dean Camilla Benbow, and Franz J. Baudenbacher, research assistant professor of physics, and John P. Wikswo, the A. B. Learned Professor of Living State Physics.

In "Policy & Opinions," Geoffrey Vincent, director of federal relations for Vanderbilt, will contribute a monthly column that provides his personal analysis of major developments in this critical area.

"Students @ Work" capitalizes on another, closely coupled science and engineering communications program at Vanderbilt: an interdisciplinary contract major and minor degree program in science, engineering and technology communication. Majors are required to do a semester internship at a research laboratory on campus, followed by a semester internship at the Office of Science and Research Communications. During their second internship, the students write articles that describe their experiences working in the research laboratory. The best of these are published on the Web site.