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Joe Palca

Credit Doby Photography / NPR

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. In addition to his science reporting, Palca occasionally fills in as guest host on Talk of the Nation Science Friday.

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 and 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 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.

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.

Palca lives in Washington, D.C, with his wife and two sons.

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Shots - Health Blog
12:25 pm
Thu September 20, 2012

Could Genes For Stripes Help Kitty Fight Disease?

Credit kennymatic via Flickr
The genetic factors responsible for a cat's stripes might help researchers understand disease resistance in humans.
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Originally published on Thu September 20, 2012 3:04 pm

At this point it's just an interesting hypothesis, but it's possible that understanding cat coloration could help scientists understand resistance to infectious diseases.

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Shots - Health Blog
3:33 pm
Mon September 10, 2012

Vaccine For Dengue Fever Shows A Glimmer Of Hope

Credit Erika Santelices / AFP/Getty Images
A health worker in the Domincan Republic sprays insecticide between houses to stop dengue fever outbreaks this month.
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It's human nature to hope for positive results after spending months or even years conducting a research study. In well-designed studies, however, scientists identify in advance the criteria for success, so their optimism won't color their conclusions when the study is completed.

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Animals
12:52 am
Thu September 6, 2012

Who's Your Daddy?: Male Snail Carries Eggs As Cargo

Credit P.B. Marko / Ecology Letters
A male Solenosteira macrospira, left, carries snail eggs on its shell. But not all of the eggs were fertilized by him. Females, like the one on the right, deposit the eggs into papery capsules and attach them to the males' shells.
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Originally published on Fri September 7, 2012 2:28 am

A man is not a mollusk, and many men probably think that's a good thing. And it's not just because a mollusk is a squishy invertebrate with a shell. It's also because for at least one species of mollusk, the males do all the heavy lifting when it comes to childcare.

The species of mollusk we're talking about is Solenosteira macrospira, a marine snail about 2 inches long. These snails live off the coast of Baja California, and during the mating season, the beach is awash with male and female snails in connubial bliss.

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Humans
11:51 am
Thu August 30, 2012

Pinky DNA Points To Clues About Ancient Humans

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Credit Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
A replica of the pinky bone fragment found in a Siberian cave. Researchers used the bone bit to extract and sequence the genome of a girl who lived tens of thousands of years ago.
Credit Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
The entrance to the Denisova cave in southern Siberia.
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Originally published on Thu August 30, 2012 3:09 pm

Scientists in Germany have been able to get enough DNA from a fossilized pinky to produce a high-quality DNA sequence of the pinky's owner.

"It's a really amazing-quality genome," says David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston. "It's as good as modern human genome sequences, from a lot of ways of measuring it."

The pinky belonged to a girl who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Scientists aren't sure about the exact age. She is a member of an extinct group of humans called Denisovans. The name comes from Denisova cave in Siberia, where the pinky was found.

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Joe's Big Idea
12:23 am
Thu August 23, 2012

Telescope Innovator Shines His Genius On New Fields

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Credit Jason Millstein for NPR
Roger Angel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, stands in front of his new project: a solar tracker. Angel wants to use the device to harness Arizona's abundant sunlight and turn it into usable energy.
Credit Gary Williams/Stringer / Getty Images North America

Angel uses this rotating furnace at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on the University of Arizona campus to make his giant mirrors. The process, called "spin casting," helps form the molten glass into the parabolic shape needed for focusing light.

Credit Joe McNally / Getty Images
Roger Angel's mirror technology is now used in many large telescopes around the world, including this one, the Large Binocular Telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona. Its twin mirrors can produce images 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit Jason Millstein for NPR
Angel does a final inspection on one of his mirrors. The weight of telescope mirrors made the traditional way limits their size. Angel realized he could produce a bigger mirror by creating a mold with a honeycomb pattern, making the mirror lighter.
Credit REhnu
Angel is working to put another mirror-based concept into action, this time to fight climate change. The solar tracker, seen here, makes electricity by focusing sunlight on photovoltaic cells.
Credit University of Arizona
An illustration of Angel's 2006 idea to reduce the effects of global warming by reflecting the sun's light with massive glass shields in space. It's a last-resort sort of idea, Angel admits.
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Originally published on Thu August 23, 2012 9:23 am

You may not be familiar with the name Roger Angel, but if there were ever a scientist with a creative streak a mile wide, it would be he.

Angel is an astronomer. He's famous for developing an entirely new way of making really large, incredibly precise telescope mirrors. But his creativity doesn't stop there. He's now turned his attention to solar power, hoping to use the tricks he learned from capturing distant light from stars to do a more cost-efficient job of capturing light from the Sun.

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