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Christopher IntagliataCI

Christopher Intagliata

Senior ProducerScience Friday
Christopher is Science Friday's senior producer, and a regular contributor to Scientific American. His favorite stories feature microbes or food — or in the best-case scenario, both. Before coming to Science Friday, Christopher taught English in Italy and counted endangered frogs (Rana muscosa) in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. He holds a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and a master's in science, health and environmental reporting from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
A close-up view of a male blue orchard bee, also known as Osmia lignaria. This type of bee, which is native to North America, is known to be one of the world's best pollinators.
Science
Book creates buzz about native bees of North America
In 1908, New Zealand Parliament passed the Prevention of Quackery Act to defend against claims such as the one featured in this leaflet: "bile beans" that claimed to cure a vareity of ailments, including indigestion, headaches, pimples and sleeplessness.
Books
New book looks at medical cures now considered ‘quackery’
A biting midge pollinates a cacao flower on the Goodman Cacao Estate in Killaloe, Australia.
Food
Giant chocolate industry depends on tiny insects for survival
For years, Shanghai has featured some of China's worst air pollution. Recent initiatives by the Chinese government, though, have begun to clean up some of the problem.
Economics
With the US pursuing fossil fuels, alternative, renewable forms of energy could be an even bigger boon to China
Wikimedia Foundation servers
Technology
Scientists warn we may be creating a ‘digital dark age’
Bats flying near Bracken Cave, Texas.
Science
For the future of self-driving technology, look to … bats?
Wild horses.
Environment
The trouble with managing America’s wild horses
Rainbow scarab beetle
Science
Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way and other facts about ‘nature’s recyclers’
Three psychologists debunk a persistent myth about how we learn.
Education
Consider yourself a ‘visual’ or ‘auditory’ learner? Turns out, there’s not much science behind learning styles.
phone in hand
Technology
How to make biometric technology more secure
1919 eclipse
Technology
Why we still remember a ‘relatively’ important eclipse nearly a century later
hadron supercollider
Technology
In small collisions, scientists find big new physics questions
A fire ant.
Science
How fire ants manage to build ‘Eiffel Tower’-like structures using their own bodies
Scientists in the Arctic.
Education
What does a scientist look like? The ‘Skype a Scientist’ program helps schoolkids find out.
Solar panels
Technology
California’s electrical grid can’t handle all the solar energy the state is producing
Tomatoes
Food
The key to eating more veggies? Trick your brain.
Used prosthetic legs are seen at the Center of Advanced Prosthetics in San Jose
Health
How to make bionic limbs feel more natural
Magnus Hirschfeld in a group shot
Culture
The story of Magnus Hirschfeld, the ‘Einstein of sex’
Traffic
Health
The noise of cities can harm our health but it can also make us more creative
The spring bloom in California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is pictured here.
Culture
Here are a few ways to make the most of wildflower season
Technology
Wearable, implantable ‘soft robots’ could someday make our bodies stronger
Solar panels at Topaz Solar Farm in California.
Technology
Solar panels are cheaper than ever. But some manufacturers are losing money.
A bluebird braves the cold.
Science
Citizen scientists have been taking an annual ‘bird census’ for over a century
Mortar and pestle
Business
America’s new 21st Century Cures Act will speed up drug approvals. Is that a good thing?
A fingerprint reader in action
Technology
This new 3-D printed glove can dupe fingerprint scanners
Mary Poppins
Technology
Researchers aim to make digital assistants like Siri less annoying
Man holding smartphone
Technology
What’s the future of your commute?
This vista shows damage by mountain pine beetles to the forests surrounding Hume Lake in California as of April 2016.
Science
How can we save California’s forests?
Lacing up for a jog.
Health
How games are changing the way we stay fit
Experts say that color and other sensory phenomena can prime our brains to expect certain flavors when we drink wine.
Food
How does a wine’s color affect what we think of its flavor?
Zebrafish
Science
If other animals can regenerate their limbs, why can’t humans?
An infection
Health
We’re finding more links between immune responses and our ‘body clocks’
Protesters raise their fists during a rally
Health
What does racism do to your health?
A screenshot of the Flyover Country app.
Science
An app that tells you what’s outside your plane window
A nurse holding a syringe, from Shutterstock
Health
Zika vaccines are ready for testing
the Hubble Space Telescope Image of a Frontier Fields galaxy cluster, Abell 2744 (one of the deepest images taken of any cluster in the universe). Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, HST Frontier Fields and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and the HFF Team (ST
Science
These are some of the darkest mysteries of our universe
Staphylococcus aureus
Health
Our options for fighting superbugs are dwindling
There is marked cortical atrophy in Alzheimer's Disease, associated with loss of gyri and sulci in the temporal lobe and parietal lobe, and parts of the frontal cortex and cingulate gyrus.
Health
Could brain infection set the stage for Alzheimer’s?
Since Kepler launched in 2009, 21 planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars. The light and dark green shaded regions indicate the conservative and optimistic habitable zone.
Science
Confirmed: More planets are capable of hosting life than have ever been previously substantiated
The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR).
Medicine
Would you trust a robot to perform your surgery?
Artist's conception of GPS Block II-F satellite in Earth orbit.
Technology
Do we rely too much on GPS?
An incirrate octopod
Books
Are we smart enough to really understand how smart animals are?
Electron microscopy of Zika virus (orange) bound to cell membrane (brown) in neurosphere generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells. Photo by Credit: Rodrigo Madeiro
Health
How much do we really know about the Zika virus?
Burkhart, 24, plays a guitar video game as part of a study with neural bypass technology. A computer chip in Burkhart`s brain reads his thoughts, decodes them, then sends signals to a sleeve on his arm, that allows him to move his hand. Credit: Ohio Stat
Health
This computer device allows a paralyzed man to regain movement
Insulin
Health
Why insulin prices have tripled in just a decade
Satellite imagery reveals the ISIS-led destruction of the tombs of Uwais al-Qarani, Obay ibn Qays, and Ammar ibn Yasir in Raqqa.
Science
‘Space archaeologists’ and activists are using satellites to unearth history
Death Valley super bloom 2016
Environment
Check out this video of Death Valley’s amazing spring ‘super bloom’
Electron micrographs of clusters of JCVI-Syn 3.0 cells
Science
How many genes are necessary to create a living cell? These scientists say 473.
The Wari mountaintop city of Cerro Baúl was the site of the oldest large-scale brewery discovered in the Andes.
Food
Want a taste of an ancient Peruvian civilization? Try this 600 AD beer recipe
Breast cancer cell
Medicine
These researchers have figured out a new way to kill cancer cells
A D-Wave 2X quantum computer is pictured during a media tour of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, December 8, 2015.
Science
Scientists hail latest quantum computer as ‘holy grail’ of computing
Photo courtesy of ChefSteps.
Food
What exactly is processed cheese, anyway?
Earth from space
Environment
Biologist says we need to make half the Earth a wildlife reserve to stave off extinction
Mario, a robot
Technology
Can we teach robots right from wrong by reading them bedtime stories?
Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center
Justice
After the Hollywood Presbyterian hospital hack, how much of a threat are ransom-driven cyber attacks?
A colony of human embryonic stem cells (center, blue) from the lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s James Thomson. These cells, which arise at the earliest stages of development, are blank-slate cells capable of differentiating into any of the 220
Science
Scientists in the UK are now allowed to edit the genes of human embryos. Are designer babies next?
Vice President Joe Biden (L) meets with (C-R) Dr. Bruce Levine, Dr. Carl June, and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann while touring the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center. During the State of t
Health
Are we getting close to the ‘death’ of cancer?
An empty plate
Health
‘Overeating doesn’t make you fat. The process of getting fat makes you overeat.’
Snow water equivalent across the upper Conejos Watershed, located in south central Colorado and part of the headwaters for the Rio Grande, on April 6th, 2015. Image by Airborne Snow Observatory program, NASA/JPL, California Institute of Technology
Environment
Can the ‘Godzilla’ El Niño’ solve California’s drought problem?
Luong Van Nam
Health
Psoriasis? Arthritis? New designer cells might be able to stop symptoms before they start.