Joe Palca
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for NPR. Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He is currently focused on the eponymous series, "Joe's Big Idea." Stories in the series explore the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors. Palca is also the founder of NPR Scicommers – A science communication collective.
Palca began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. In 1986, he left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine.
In October 2009, Palca took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Writing. In 2019, Palca was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in journalism.
With Flora Lichtman, Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).
He comes to journalism from a science background, having received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he worked on human sleep physiology.
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Getting DNA into plant cells is tricky. Researchers have tried using infectious bacteria, as well as gene guns that shoot gold bullets. Then a physicist came up with a new approach almost by accident.
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NASA's six-wheeled rover landed on the red planet in January 2004 for what was billed as a 90-day mission. The plucky robot was still going until a dust storm on Mars last summer killed it.
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As a child on a New York farm, Eben Bayer helped his dad shovel wood chips in the barn. That's where he noticed a stretchy web of fungus that became the basis of his biodegradable packing material.
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Space scientists on Earth have improvised a tool on the Mars rover to help them figure out how a giant mountain on the Red Planet came to be. Their surprising conclusion: It's likely windswept sand.
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The device isn't the first technology that can turn water vapor into drinkable liquid water. But its creators say it uses less power and works in drier conditions — the key is something called a MOF.
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Engineers in California are working on a new test that could offer a fast, cheap way to see if people are infected with the parasite.
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Government, academic and industry researchers often depend on each others' work and funding. The partial shutdown is getting in the way of some of that collaboration and research.
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Early in 2019, China hopes to land a rover — the first soft landing on the moon's far side. The mission is exploratory, and will lay groundwork for a trip by Chinese astronauts to the lunar surface.
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The Mersenne prime was discovered by a computer in Ocala, Fla., on Dec. 7. Mathematicians have spent the past two weeks verifying the calculations.
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In a quest to rapidly advance its scientific depth and breadth, China is recruiting scientists from around the world. Some from the U.S. say the greater funding for school and research is freeing.