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Engineering & Technology
The trouble with Kepler
HarvardScience
By: Alvin Powell/
May 16, 2013
Robotic insects make first controlled flight
The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade’s work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
Robot hands gain a gentler touch
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed an inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to turn a brute machine into a dexterous manipulator.
Insignificant, with a lousy future
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss described a universe with mysterious particles popping in and out of existence, in which the discoveries of dark energy and dark matter have made mankind more insignificant than ever.
Astronomers have found a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces.
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Putting the stars within reach
Two communications specialists at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have authored a guide to the universe, aiming to show people around a universe they say belongs to us all.
Stars align at astronomy reunion
Harvard astronomers past and present gathered in Cambridge Friday (April 5) for the first-ever reunion of the Harvard Astronomy Department.
Andrew Ho, research director of HarvardX and an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, spoke with the Gazette about a recent study that found that interspersing online lectures with short tests improved student performance.
Online learning: It’s different
By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, said Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and Karl Szpunar, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology.
Scientists may soon be able to turn to one of the most powerful forces in biology — evolution — to help in their quest to develop new synthetic polymers.
In a question-and-answer session, Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb explains the new data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.
In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists has measured the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter with unprecedented precision.
Stamping Harvard’s digital presence on the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, more than 250 alumni, students, faculty, and guests convened on Icenhauer’s for the second annual Digital Harvard in Austin at SXSW, hosted by the Harvard Alumni Association.
In online education, the future is now. That was an overriding message Harvard and MIT hosted a summit on March 3 and 4 titled “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education.”
Three Harvard affiliates are launching Zeega, a software platform that makes it easy for Internet storytellers to blend audio, images, and text from the riches of the Web.
A learner’s guide to the universe
Harvard’s Avi Loeb is helping prepare the next generation of astronomers with a new textbook, “The First Galaxies in the Universe.”
Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air. That ability to jump could one day prove critical in allowing the robots to avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.
Scholars are beginning to learn what’s working and what’s not when it comes to using new media to get people to do what you want, and a conference on “Behavioral Economics, Social Media, and Apps” at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 brought together experts from academia and business to discuss it.
Technology to help monitor concussions
Researchers recently completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance. The team is currently conducting a study with athletes in the Boston area to determine the sensitivity of the technology in diagnosing concussions.
It might appear that evacuating a major city following a natural disaster and playing foosball have little, if anything, in common. For students participating in the IACS Computational Challenge, however, both are problems that can be tackled with some clever coding.
Seventeen teams of Harvard students toiled on campus during the last days of winter break, working to finish computer projects during the annual Hack Week sponsored by the Hack Harvard student group.
An idea that changed the world
Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of a computational principle that was little noticed in its time, but that underlies all of modern science.
First ‘bone’ of the Milky Way identified
Astronomers have identified a new structure in the Milky Way: a long tendril of dust and gas that they are calling a “bone.”
Search for Earth’s twin shows promise
The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the new analysis of Kepler data that shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury.
Students in the “Physics and Applied Physics Research Freshman Seminar” labored hard to improve on a model heat engine, continuing the work of a previous class.
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