Nell Greenfieldboyce

Nell Greenfieldboyce appears in the following:

What Comes Next For NASA After Juno? Not Much

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Enjoy Juno's trip to Jupiter — after that we'll see a little gap in planetary science missions from the U.S. That's because a NASA budget crunch several years ago left fewer missions in the pipeline.

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Inside A Secret Government Warehouse Prepped For Health Catastrophes

Monday, June 27, 2016

More than $7 billion in drugs, vaccines and supplies are stashed in warehouses to be tapped in case of a pandemic or an attack with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. NPR got a peek at one.

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Light Pollution Hides Milky Way From 80 Percent Of North Americans, Atlas Shows

Friday, June 10, 2016

More than 99 percent of the people living in the U.S. and Europe look up and see light-polluted skies, according to a new atlas of artificial night sky brightness.

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Bats In The Bedroom Can Spread Rabies Without An Obvious Bite

Thursday, June 02, 2016

When a Wyoming woman fell ill, no one suspected that she could have rabies from a bat in her bedroom. Health officials say sleeping in a room with a bat is a rabies risk because bites are hard to see.

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She's A Man-Eater, And That's OK With Male Orb-Weaving Spiders

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Usually in nature, the females choose the males they mate with. But researchers say a type of male orb-weaving spider selects the female — which will cannibalize him afterward.

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Bumblebees' Little Hairs Can Sense Flowers' Electric Fields

Monday, May 30, 2016

The fields bend the hairs, and that generates a nerve signal, scientists say.

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For Female Fruit Flies, Mr. Right Has The Biggest Sperm

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

It's not unusual for males to try to impress females with big body parts. Consider antlers on deer, or elaborate tails on peacocks. Some male fruit flies take a different approach: giant sperm.

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CDC: 157 Pregnant Women In The U.S. Have Tested Positive For Zika

Friday, May 20, 2016

The women being monitored now include those who had positive lab tests but no symptoms, according to the CDC. Also affected are 122 women in U.S. territories, almost all in Puerto Rico.

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How Do You Lift A Million Pounds Of Stainless Steel? Very Carefully

Friday, May 20, 2016

The U.S. is the proud owner of the world's largest deadweight machine, used to calibrate high-tech measurement devices. Repairing it recently was risky, using 50-year-old tools. No toes were smashed.

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Look, Ma! No Mitochondria

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Scientists have found the first eukaryotic organism that functions fine without mitochondria, the "powerhouses" that make energy for the cells of yeast, humans and other animals.

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NASA Spots 1,284 New Planets, Including 9 That Are 'Potentially Habitable'

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Of the more than 1,200 planets in the latest trove turned up by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, about half seem to be rocky, like Earth.

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3 Strange Worlds Circling A Cool Star Might Be Prime Spots To Support Life

Monday, May 02, 2016

Scientists say each of these planets has one searingly hot side that's always facing the star and one frigidly cold side that's always facing away. But the regions in between might be cozy.

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Scans Show 'Brain Dictionary' Groups Words By Meaning

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Brain maps constructed by MRI show that language meaning is distributed throughout the brain's outer layer. And it turns out that different people organize language in similar ways.

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Task Force Calls For More Safety Oversight At NIH Research Hospital

Thursday, April 21, 2016

NIH Director Francis Collins has stopped research at two leading labs for now. But an independent board of experts wants even more oversight to ensure that patient safety is the top priority.

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NIH Halts Some Research Amid Concerns Over Contamination And Safety

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

The National Institutes of Health shut down some clinical trials and two production facilities over concerns that safety rules haven't been followed, but it says no patients appear to have been hurt.

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Hot On The Trail Of Alien Moons

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Astronomers have found about 2,000 planets beyond our solar system. Now, some scientists are expanding the search to look for distant moons, too, in the hunt for signs of life.

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Supermassive Black Holes May Be More Common Than Anyone Imagined

Wednesday, April 06, 2016

A black hole with about 17 billion times the mass of our sun has turned up in another remote galaxy. Astronomers now think these mass-eating monsters may not be so rare after all.

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Tighter, Controversial Silica Rules Aimed At Saving Workers' Lungs

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Long known as a workplace hazard, silica dust can cause irreversible lung scarring and cancer. The Department of Labor expects its new limit to save about 600 lives a year. But industry is balking.

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Lessons From Rubella Suggest Zika's Impact Could Linger

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Forty-seven years after a vaccine against rubella was created, the virus still harms about 300 newborns every day, worldwide. Even a cheap vaccine can be a financial burden for poorer countries.

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Scientists Report In Real Time On Challenging Zika Research

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

It's rare for researchers to share their data as they work, but scientists in Wisconsin are reporting on their Zika virus experiments in real time. They say it's critical for stopping the virus.

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