Richard Harris

It's 'Birds Gone Wild' Out On Australia's Heron Island

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On Australia's Heron Island, buff-banded rails like this one have become the avian equivalent of a weed.

Credit Richard Harris / NPR

Every year, tens of thousands of white capped noddy terns swarm the tiny island to breed.

By Richard Harris

Originally published on Fri March 22, 2013 10:01 am

NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris traveled to Australia's Great Barrier Reef to find out how the coral reefs are coping with increased water temperature and increasing ocean acidity, brought about by our burning of fossil fuels. Day 3: Waiting for a boat to the next island, Richard meets some rowdy birds.

Weeds are not a true category of plant. A weed is simply a plant that's growing where a person wishes it weren't.

9:49 am

Wed March 20, 2013

On Australia's Great Barrier Reef, There's A Turf Battle Raging

Credit Richard Harris / NPR

Guillermo Diaz-Pulido from Griffith University in Brisbane grows bits of seaweed attached to pieces of coral in tanks at the research facility on Australia's Heron Island.

By Richard Harris

Originally published on Fri March 22, 2013 10:02 am

NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris traveled to Australia's Great Barrier Reef to find out how the coral reefs are coping with increased water temperature and increasing ocean acidity, brought about by our burning of fossil fuels. Day 2: The good news is life could get better for seaweed.

Picture a coral reef and the first things likely to come to mind are brilliantly colored fish swimming among stout branches of coral. Let your mind wander a bit more and you might imagine some sea turtles, stingrays and sharks.

9:00 am

Tue March 19, 2013

Australia's Heron Island: A Canary In The Coal Mine For Coral Reefs?

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Credit Ted Mead / Getty Images

Heron Island is located on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, about 25 miles off the northeast coast of Australia.

Credit Richard Harris / NPR

Sophie Dove (right) and Annamieke Van Den Heuvel of the Coral Reef Ecosystems Laboratory at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, check on part of an experiment on the effects of water temperature and carbon dioxide levels on coral reefs.

Credit Courtesy of Sophie Dove

This composite image of pots used in the experiment shows how healthy coral (left) is dramatically affected by higher carbon dioxide levels and sea temperatures (right).

By Richard Harris

Originally published on Fri March 22, 2013 10:02 am

I've seen the future, and it isn't pretty.

5:00 pm

Thu March 14, 2013

'God Particle' Discovery Disappoints Some Physicists

By Richard Harris

Originally published on Thu March 14, 2013 5:49 pm

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Scientists in Switzerland have reinforced a huge discovery they announced last summer. They said today that they've almost certainly found the Higgs particle, the long-sought missing link that helps explain the basic nature of our universe. This firms up similar results they unveiled with great fanfare in July.

But NPR's Richard Harris reports, it's actually disappointing news for some scientists.

4:01 pm

Mon February 25, 2013

Increased Humidity From Climate Change Could Make It Harder To Tolerate Summers

By Richard Harris

Originally published on Mon February 25, 2013 6:23 pm

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now, a story about heat, the sweaty, miserable kind. Heat plus humidity. Working outdoors or playing sports on a hot, muggy day can be dangerous, even deadly. And as the climate continues to warm, being outside will become even more challenging. Those are the findings of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

NPR's Richard Harris tells us more.

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Award-winning journalist Richard Harris reports on science issues for NPR's newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Harris, who joined NPR in 1986, has traveled to the ends of the earth for NPR. His reports have originated from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis).

In 2010, Harris' reporting uncovered that the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing out far more oil than asserted in the official estimates. He covered the United Nations climate negotiations, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, followed by Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Harris was a major contributor to NPR's award-winning 2007-2008 "Climate Connections" series.

Over the course of his career, Harris has been the recipient of many of the journalism and science industries' most prestigious awards. The University of California at Santa Cruz awarded Harris the 2010-11 Alumni Achievement Award – the school's highest honor. In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Harris shared a 1995 Peabody Award for investigative reporting on NPR about the tobacco industry.

As part of the team that collaborated on NPR's 1989 series "AIDS in Black America," Harris was awarded a Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a first place award from the National Association of Black Journalists and an Ohio State Award. In 1988, Harris won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award for his report, "Anti-Noise: Can Technology Turn Noise into Quiet?" which explored a revolutionary technology that uses computer-generated noise to cancel out, not just mask, unwanted noise.

Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues. Under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harris spent the summer of 1980 as a Mass Media Science Fellow reporting on science issues for The Washington Star, in Washington, D.C.

Harris is co-founder of the Washington, D.C., Area Science Writers Association, as well as past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

A California native, Harris was valedictorian of his college graduating class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with highest honors.

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9:35 am

Thu March 21, 2013