Christopher Joyce

Christopher Joyce is a correspondent on the science desk at NPR. His stories can be heard on all of NPR's news programs, including NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Joyce seeks out stories in some of the world's most inaccessible places. He has reported from remote villages in the Amazon and Central American rainforests, Tibetan outposts in the mountains of western China, and the bottom of an abandoned copper mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over the course of his career, Joyce has written stories about volcanoes, hurricanes, human evolution, tagging giant blue-fin tuna, climate change, wars in Kosovo and Iraq and the artificial insemination of an African elephant.

For several years, Joyce was an editor and correspondent for NPR's Radio Expeditions, a documentary program on natural history and disappearing cultures produced in collaboration with the National Geographic Society that was heard frequently on Morning Edition.

Joyce came to NPR in 1993 as a part-time editor while finishing a book about tropical rainforests and, as he says, "I just fell in love with radio." For two years, Joyce worked on NPR's national desk and was responsible for NPR's Western coverage. But his interest in science and technology soon launched him into parallel work on NPR's science desk.

In addition, Joyce has written two non-fiction books on scientific topics for the popular market: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (with co-author Eric Stover); and Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest.

Before coming to NPR, Joyce worked for ten years as the U.S. correspondent and editor for the British weekly magazine New Scientist.

Joyce's stories on forensic investigations into the massacres in Kosovo and Bosnia were part of NPR's war coverage that won a 1999 Overseas Press Club award. He was part of the Radio Expeditions reporting and editing team that won the 2001 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award and the 2001 Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Joyce won the 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science excellence in journalism award.

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2:01pm

Thu April 14, 2011
Animals

A Look In The Eye Reveals Killer Habits Of Dinos

Velociraptors, those clever carnivores that hunted in packs in the Jurassic Park films, may actually have been night hunters.

That's the conclusion of scientists who have studied the bones of dinosaurs, reptiles and early flying creatures that lived tens of millions of years ago. In particular, they examined the eye sockets, which the scientists say reveal a great deal about what kind of vision those extinct animals had.

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1:12pm

Tue April 5, 2011
Science

Japan Accident Renews Focus On Spent Fuel In U.S.

The nuclear accident in Japan has rekindled debate about what to do with used reactor fuel.

The Japanese power plant housed tons of highly radioactive used fuel in pools filled with water. Some of that water either leaked out or boiled away during the accident, putting that fuel at risk of burning and releasing radioactive material. With similar fuel pools at more than 60 reactor sites in the U.S., there's renewed interest in their safety.

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6:51pm

Fri April 1, 2011
Technology

Computer Translator Reads Between The Tweets

One way to follow what's going on in the Middle East and South Asia right now is through social media — Facebook, Twitter and blog posts.

But of course you have to speak the local languages to do that. So scientists in the U.S. are trying to get computers to work around that problem.

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3:47pm

Fri April 1, 2011
Environment

Lost, Then Found: Shipping Containers On Seafloor

Scientists surveying the bottom of the Pacific Ocean have discovered something they knew was there but had never seen before: a shipping container.

Cargo ships regularly lose these containers overboard — they write them off and collect insurance. But now marine biologists have found one off the coast of California and have decided to study how it may affect sea life. Already, they've discovered that the container has become a new type of habitat on the muddy ocean floor, attracting its own suite of creatures.

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3:44pm

Thu March 24, 2011
Japan In Crisis

Japanese Players Swing Big In Tokyo Fundraiser

People in Japan are describing the earthquake and tsunami that rolled under and over eastern Japan as the gravest disaster since World War II. Television and newspapers are full of images of urban devastation, grieving survivors and smoking nuclear power plants. Editorials are calling for everyone to pull together to put the country back on its feet.

And who better to cheer up a weary nation than one of the country's pre-eminent baseball teams?

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