Joe Palca

Why A Hoosier State Scientist Is Stuck On Oysters

Credit Rebecca Davis / NPR

Jonathan Wilker holds up a group of oysters from a tank in his lab at Purdue University.

By Joe Palca

Originally published on Sat March 30, 2013 11:53 am

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How do oysters attach themselves to rocks? They need a glue, but a glue that can set in a watery environment. In this installment of "Joe's Big Idea," NPR's Joe Palca reports that glue could lead to medical advances.

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2:39 am

Tue March 5, 2013

Wanna Play? Computer Gamers Help Push Frontier Of Brain Research

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Credit EyeWire

This image represents a chunk, or "cube," of brain. Each different color represents a different neuron, and the goal of the EyeWire game is to figure out how these tangled neurons connect to each other. Players look at a slice from this cube and try to identify the boundaries of each cell. It isn't easy, and it takes practice. You can try it for yourself at eyewire.org.

Credit Foldit

An image from Foldit's Puzzle 48.

Credit EyeWire

Daniel Berger, a researcher at MIT, traced these neurons using the EyeWire game.

Credit EyeWire

In the EyeWire game, participants identify different neurons by coloring in their shapes using a Web-based 3-D interface.

By Joe Palca

Originally published on Tue March 5, 2013 2:39 pm

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People can get pretty addicted to computer games. By some estimates, residents of planet Earth spend 3 billion hours per week playing them. Now some scientists are hoping to make use of all that human capital and harness it for a good cause.

Right now I'm at the novice level of a game called EyeWire, trying to color in a nerve cell in a cartoon drawing of a slice of tissue. EyeWire is designed to solve a real science problem — it aims to chart the billions of nerve connections in the brain.

9:52 am

Wed February 27, 2013

Cheesecake Factory, IBM Team Up To Crack The Code Of Customer Bliss

Credit PR Newswire

A new outpost for The Cheesecake Factory in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

By Joe Palca

Originally published on Wed February 27, 2013 10:17 am

Consider the following entirely fictitious but totally plausible scenario:

5:12 am

Fri February 15, 2013

Scientists Look To The Internet To Raise Research Funds

By Joe Palca

Originally published on Fri February 15, 2013 7:39 am

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Scientists have made an important discovery, and not really a scientific one. They've learned they can raise money for their research simply by going on the Internet and asking people for support. We heard yesterday how that worked for one researcher. Still, scientists have no idea why this approach is working or how much money they can raise this way. Here's NPR's Joe Palca with the next installment of his project Joe's Big Idea.

7:40 am

Thu February 14, 2013

Scientists Pass The Hat For Research Funding

Credit Courtesy of uBiome

Car commercial? Nope. Jessica Richman, Zachary Apte (center) and William Ludington are looking to the crowd for money to fund uBiome, which will sequence the genetic code of microbes that live on and inside humans.

By Joe Palca

Originally published on Tue February 26, 2013 12:28 pm

When the X-ray was invented, people clamored to get one. Not for any medical reason, but just to see what was typically hidden inside their bodies.

Something like that seems to be happening with DNA sequencing technology. First it was companies offering to sequence people's genomes. Now it's learning all about your microbiome, the collection of microorganisms living on and in your body.

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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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4:51 am

Thu March 28, 2013