Joe Palca

Atop A Hawaiian Mountain, A Constant Sniff For Carbon Dioxide

Joe Palca — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:46:00 +0000

Climate scientists have a good reason to want to get away from it all. To get an accurate picture of the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, you have to find places where the numbers won't be distorted by cities or factories or even lots of vegetation that can have a major local impact on CO₂ concentrations.

Starting in 1958, scientists from the Scripps Institution for Oceanography have been using an instrument on the top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii to measure CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Wake Up And Smell The Tuna? Sunrise At Honolulu's Fish Auction

Joe Palca — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:04:00 +0000

If you are up at 5 in the morning in Honolulu and are wondering what to do, I have a suggestion: Head over to Pier 38 and watch the Honolulu Fish Auction. It's quite a scene.

Getting up at 5 may seem a bit extreme, but for recent arrivals to Hawaii from the East Coast of the mainland — as I was last Friday — the six-hour time difference makes waking up early easy, if not inevitable.

The auction takes place in a low-slung single-story building toward the end of the pier. At about 1 a.m., fishing boats start bringing in their catch.

Envisioning The Future With Cori Lathan

Joe Palca — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:59:00 +0000

Computers were created to be useful tools, but all too often it's still a chore to get technology to do our bidding.

Corinna Lathan imagines a future that's no longer a chore, where computers understand our wants and needs so well that we don't even have to think about telling them what to do. She's an inventor who has started her own company, AnthroTronix, to make that kind of intuitive technology part of our lives.

Kepler Telescope Spots 3 New Planets In The 'Goldilocks Zone'

Joe Palca — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:39:00 +0000

Astronomers have found three planets orbiting far-off stars that are close to Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone": a distance from their suns that makes the planets' surfaces neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

One of the three planets orbits a star with the prosaic name Kepler-69.

"Kepler-69 is a sun-like star," says Thomas Barclay, a research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute who uses the Kepler space telescope, which is on a mission to search for Earth-lik

Wanna Play? Computer Gamers Help Push Frontier Of Brain Research

Joe Palca — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:39:00 +0000

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.

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

Joe Palca — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:58:00 +0000

Consider the following entirely fictitious but totally plausible scenario:

A diner at the Kuwait City branch of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant chain complains to his waiter that the pickles in his Americana Cheeseburger (American and cheddar cheese, crunchy potato crisps, lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, pickles and secret sauce) had a funny texture.

Scientists Pass The Hat For Research Funding

Joe Palca — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:40:00 +0000

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.

People's fascination with their inner workings may provide a new way for scientists to raise money for basic research.

Scientist Gets Research Donations From Crowdfunding

Joe Palca — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:01:00 +0000

What do you do when you're a scientist and you have no job and no money for your research? If you're Ethan Perlstein, you try crowd funding. He raised $25,000 to investigate where the drug methamphetamine is stored in the brain.

Small Meals, Big Payoff: Keeping Hunger And Calories In Check

Joe Palca — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:04:00 +0000

When presented with a tempting buffet of French food, not overeating can be a challenge. But a new study by researchers in Lyon suggests there are strategies that will help people resist temptation.

People trying to keep off excess weight are frequently told that it's better to eat small amounts of food frequently during the day, rather than the typical breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Drug Fulfills Promise Of Research Into Cystic Fibrosis Gene

Joe Palca — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:04:00 +0000

The promise of genetic medicine is beginning to be fulfilled, but it's been a long, hard slog.

Take the story of Kalydeco. It's designed to treat people with a lung disease called cystic fibrosis. While not quite a cure, the drug is extremely effective for some CF patients.

But the success of Kalydeco has been more than two decades in the making.

A good starting point for the story is Aug. 24, 1989. That's the day scientists from the U.S. and Canada announced the discovery of the gene associated with the disease.