Sam appeared this week on NPR’s All Things Considered. You can listen to a clip here. (Takes a moment to load…)

New reviews of The Disappearing Spoon have appeared in the Boston Globe, in Time, at Barnes & Noble / Salon.com, and in Entertainment Weekly.

Sam has won the 2010 DC Science Writers’ Newsbrief Award for, “Mother’s Cancer Can Infect Her Fetus.” This follows on Sam’s winning the runner-up prize in the National Association of Science Writers’ Evert Clark / Seth Payne contest, which honors the top young science writers in the country.

Sam appeared this week on NPR’s All Things Considered. You can listen to a clip here. (Takes a moment to load…)

NPR affiliate KCUR-FM’s “Walt Bodine Show”, in Kansas City, Missouri, from August 2.

NPR affiliate Jefferson Public Radio’s “Jefferson Exchange”, in Ashland, Oregon, from July 28.

NPR affiliate KPCC’s “Patt Morrison Show”, in Los Angeles, from July 27.

NPR’s “On Point” with Tom Ashbrook, based in Boston, Massachusetts, from July 27.

NPR affiliate KDSU’s “Hear It Now”, in Fargo, North Dakota, from July 21.

Wendlee Broadcasting’s “Mike and Jesse Show”, in Brownsville, Texas, July 19.

Two British publications (one and two) hear rumors that element 114 could be officially welcomed to join the periodic table soon, at which point it would need a new and permanent name. The cleverest suggestion so far? “Tysonium,” as in Mike, another unstable heavyweight.

Great story on the revival of interest in the periodic table in today’s high-tech era.

The newest element on the periodic table is … spherium? Sort of. The link also mentions the possibility of new periodic tables of spherium-like elements, similar to the quantum-dot periodic tables mentioned in the last chapter of The Disappearing Spoon.

Approximately three minutes before the book went to press, a few jokesters in Russia and the U.S. announced that they had created six atoms of element 117, ununseptium, a long-time gap on the periodic table. We were able to add box 117 to the hand-crafted periodic table in the back of the book, but did not alter the blank table on the book’s first and last pages. So, if compelled, please take a pen and add the proper boxes to your copy of The Disappearing Spoon. Better yet, if you come to an event or stop me on the street, I promise I’ll do it for you…