Nell Greenfieldboyce Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.
Nell Greenfieldboyce 2010
Stories By

Nell Greenfieldboyce

Doby Photography/NPR
Nell Greenfieldboyce 2010
Doby Photography/NPR

Nell Greenfieldboyce

Correspondent, Science Desk

Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.

With reporting focused on general science, NASA, and the intersection between technology and society, Greenfieldboyce has been on the science desk's technology beat since she joined NPR in 2005.

In that time Greenfieldboyce has reported on topics including the narwhals in Greenland, the ending of the space shuttle program, and the reasons why independent truckers don't want electronic tracking in their cabs.

Much of Greenfieldboyce's reporting reflects an interest in discovering how applied science and technology connects with people and culture. She has worked on stories spanning issues such as pet cloning, gene therapy, ballistics, and federal regulation of new technology.

Prior to NPR, Greenfieldboyce spent a decade working in print, mostly magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist.

A graduate of Johns Hopkins, earning her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social sciences and a Master's of Arts degree in science writing, Greenfieldboyce taught science writing for four years at the university. She was honored for her talents with the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists.

Story Archive

Friday

IMPACTS mission researchers inside the research plane, monitoring weather data being collected by onboard instruments. Erica McNamee/NASA hide caption

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Erica McNamee/NASA

What scientists are hoping to learn by flying directly into snowstorms

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Friday

Macaques use stones as hammers to smash open food items like shellfish and nuts. Lydia V. Luncz hide caption

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Lydia V. Luncz

Stone flakes made by modern monkeys trigger big questions about early humans

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Saturday

This imagery from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after NASA's DART spacecraft smashed into the asteroid's surface. NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble hide caption

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NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble

Astronomers still have their eyes on that asteroid NASA whacked

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Friday

A new study of ancient human remains finds that horse riding may have been common as early as 4,500 to 5,000 years ago. Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images hide caption

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Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images

Scientists find signs of horse riding in ancient human remains

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Wednesday

NASA made history by knocking an asteroid off course. Now, it's publishing the data

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Monday

IMPACTS mission researchers inside the research plane, monitoring weather data being collected by onboard instruments. Erica McNamee/NASA hide caption

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Erica McNamee/NASA

Scientists are flying into snowstorms to explore winter weather mysteries

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Thursday

This composite was made with images from NASA's Juno mission and shows the shadow on Jupiter cast by Io, one of its many moons. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill hide caption

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Here's why Jupiter's tally of moons keeps going up and up

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Tuesday

Clouds of material funnel into a growing protostar, photographed in near-infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope Observatory. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption

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NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Monday

James Webb Space Telescope managers weigh whether to release its data right away

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Friday

This image shows purified particles of mpox virus, formerly called monkeypox. Viruses like these can be genetically altered in the lab in ways that might make them more dangerous. NIAID hide caption

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NIAID

When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? It's a more relevant question than ever

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Thursday

Biologist Peter Wimberger holds an ice worm in the snow. Nell Greenfieldboyce/NPR hide caption

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Nell Greenfieldboyce/NPR

Meet the mysterious ice worms that live in mountaintop glaciers

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Tuesday

Stanford University/Getty Images

Zircon: The Keeper Of Earth's Time

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Friday

Scientists dig up biologist Gregor Mendel's body and sequence his DNA

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Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 - 1884) the priest and botanist whose work laid the foundation of the study of genetics. Hulton Archive/Getty Images/ Max Posner/NPR hide caption

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images/ Max Posner/NPR

Thursday

A thin, polished slice of a rock collected from the Jack Hills of Western Australia, viewed through a special microscope equipped with a gypsum plate that shows the rainbow spectrum of quartz that makes up the rock. Whereas the rocks at the Jack Hills are greater than 99% quartz, the remaining 1% of material includes the precious zircons. Michael Ackerson/Smithsonian hide caption

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Michael Ackerson/Smithsonian

To peer into Earth's deep time, meet a hardy mineral known as the Time Lord

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Wednesday

Meet the mineral known as the time lord

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Friday

When women get a blood test during pregnancy that looks at free-floating DNA, they expect it to tell about the health of the fetus. But the test sometimes finds signs of cancer in the mother. Isabel Seliger for NPR hide caption

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Isabel Seliger for NPR

A new kind of blood test can screen for many cancers — as some pregnant people learn

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Thursday

A chimp walks at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. A federal judge has ruled that the NIH violated the law when it chose not to move former research chimpanzees in New Mexico to the sanctuary. Gerald Herbert/AP hide caption

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Gerald Herbert/AP

Sunday

50 years later, NASA is on the verge of sending people to the moon again

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Wednesday

It's been 50 years since the Apollo 17 mission put humans on the moon

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Orion's maximum distance from Earth was achieved on flight day 13, when it was 268,563 miles away. That's farther than any other spacecraft built for people--but only mannequins were on board. NASA/JSC hide caption

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NASA/JSC

Monday

A flower crafted by Nell Greenfieldboyce, at an American Society for Microbiology event highlighting agar art. Aidan Rogers/Edvotek hide caption

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Aidan Rogers/Edvotek

Tuesday