Nell Greenfieldboyce
Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.
With reporting focused on general science, NASA, and the intersection between technology and society, Greenfieldboyce has been on the science desk's technology beat since she joined NPR in 2005.
In that time Greenfieldboyce has reported on topics including the narwhals in Greenland, the ending of the space shuttle program, and the reasons why independent truckers don't want electronic tracking in their cabs.
Much of Greenfieldboyce's reporting reflects an interest in discovering how applied science and technology connects with people and culture. She has worked on stories spanning issues such as pet cloning, gene therapy, ballistics, and federal regulation of new technology.
Prior to NPR, Greenfieldboyce spent a decade working in print, mostly magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins, earning her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social sciences and a Master's of Arts degree in science writing, Greenfieldboyce taught science writing for four years at the university. She was honored for her talents with the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists.
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Move over, fruit flies, rats and zebrafish. Squid and octopuses have elaborate brains and behaviors, and scientists say studying them in the laboratory could yield important biological insights.
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In the 1970s, Rich Isaacson was presented with what seemed like a crazy idea: using lasers to detect gravitational waves. It became the biggest project the National Science Foundation had ever funded.
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A fictitious asteroid is the focus of a realistic exercise, as experts at the Planetary Defense Conference run through how they would respond to news of a looming asteroid strike.
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The cells regained a startling amount of function, but the brains didn't have activity linked with consciousness. Ethicists see challenges to assumptions about the irreversible nature of brain death.
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The Salt Institute spent decades questioning government efforts to limit Americans' sodium intake. Critics say the institute muddied the links between salt and health. Now it has shut its doors.
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Female mosquitoes searching for a meal of blood detect people partly by using a special olfactory receptor to home in on our sweat. The finding could lead to new approaches for better repellents.
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The twin sites in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory are about to go back online. New hardware should make them able to sense more colliding black holes and other cosmic events.
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Physicians have been taught to look for signs of hopelessness, sadness and lack of motivation to help them diagnose depression. But anger as a depression symptom is less often noticed or addressed.
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For years, NASA has had to rely on Russian vehicles to get astronauts to the International Space Station. That could soon change if the flight test of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule succeeds.
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As the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing nears, some say the site of the first footprints on the moon should be protected. But historic preservation off our planet is unprecedented.