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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The Phoenix Mars Lander has safely landed on the Red Planet. But getting there is only half the battle. The probe landed in Mars' northern polar region, an area believed to hold a reservoir of ice beneath the surface.
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An emissary from Earth has landed on Mars. NASA's Phoenix probe touched down near the Martian North Pole on Sunday shortly before 8 p.m. ET.
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The Phoenix Mars Lander touched down Sunday on the Red Planet without a hitch. Onboard instruments will analyze the ice and look for signs of life at a relatively boring-looking landing site. Joe Palca was at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the landing.
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The Mars Phoenix probe is scheduled to touch down on Mars around 7:53 Eastern Time on Sunday. If all goes well, it will land near the red planet's north pole. There, it will sample the ice that lies just beneath the surface. On-board instruments will analyze the ice and will look for signs of life.
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In the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi sits on nearly 10 percent of the world's oil reserves. So it may be surprising to hear that climate leaders there have launched a major initiative in sustainability. Masdar, a demonstration city of 50,000 inhabitants, will have a zero carbon footprint.
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Transforming runny egg whites into the fluffy edifice of a souffle is all about physics and chemistry. Enter the kitchen of chef Jeffrey Buben, who has egg cooking down to a science.
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Architects in Holland are showing the rest of the world a way of turning adversity into opportunity. Instead of building around rising waters, they ask, why not build on water? Floating houses, gardens, even villages are the future vision of some Dutch planners.
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The Dutch have historically gone to great lengths to keep the water out of their low-lying country. But anticipated sea-level rise from global warming is causing them to take a dramatically different approach: Let the water go where it wants. -
Two teams of scientists, one in the United States and one in Japan, have independently found a way to make embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo. The result essentially eliminates the ethical objections some people have had about embryonic stem cell research.
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The discovery that human body cells can be used as stem cells is creating buzz in the scientific community. Experts say the development will likely transform research; in the political world, some say it will end the debate over the need to use human embryos.
