Science & Tech
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Lifting a few with my chatbot
Sociologist Sherry Turkle warns against growing trend of turning to AI for companionship, counsel
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Hate mosquitoes? Who doesn’t? But maybe we shouldn’t.
Entomologist says there is much scientists don’t know about habitats, habits, impacts on their environments
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‘Harvard Thinking’: Climate alignment is no easy task
Experts at the Salata Institute outline tensions between global and local priorities
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A playbook for policy change
Leah Stokes turns a love for the wilderness into a commitment to help mitigate climate change
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Under pressure
New tool for precise measurement of superconductors
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Glimpse into how mind may affect healing
Study finds bruising fades faster in patients who are led to believe more time has passed than actually has
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A new vision for neuroscience
For decades scientists have been searching for a way to watch a live broadcast of neurons firing in real time. Now, a Harvard researcher has done it with mice.
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Researcher connects the dots in fin-to-limb evolution
With an innovative technique called anatomical network analysis, clear patterns emerge that help solve the puzzle of how fins became limbs 420 million years ago.
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Learning why cancer drugs work (or don’t)
Assistant Professor Brian Liau of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department has answered the question of why some new drugs for acute myeloid leukemia don’t work by combining CRISPR gene editing with small-molecule inhibitor treatments in a technique he calls CRISPR-suppressor scanning.
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The evolution of flightless birds
Based on an analysis of the genomes of more than a dozen flightless birds, including an extinct moa, a team led by Harvard researchers found that while different species show wide variety in the protein-coding portions of their genomes, they appear to turn to the same regulatory pathways when evolving flight loss.
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Easy on the eyes
New computer program uses artificial intelligence to determine what visual neurons like to see. The approach could shed light on learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and other neurologic conditions.
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Researchers ID molecules that rein in CRISPR systems
Scientists have identified the first chemical compounds able to inhibit and regulate CRISPR systems, which could ultimately make CRISPR gene-editing technologies more precise, efficient, and safe.
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AI model predicts TB resistance
A Harvard undergrad, working with Harvard Medical School scientists, has designed an artificial intelligence model that predicts tuberculosis resistance to 10 most commonly used drugs. The new model outperforms previous machine-learning tools, and incorporating it into clinical tests could dramatically enhance early detection and prompt treatment of drug-resistant TB.
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Embedded EthiCS wins $150,000 grant
A joint program of the computer science and philosophy departments, Embedded EthiCS has won a $150,000 grant as part of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge sponsored by Omidyar Network, Mozilla, Schmidt Futures, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
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Ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi breakthrough
In a breakthrough on the road toward ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi, Harvard researchers have demonstrated for the first time a laser that can emit microwaves wirelessly, modulate them, and receive external radio frequency signals.
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Day of the golden jackal
The surprising success story of the golden jackal in Europe holds lessons about nature’s resilience and about how nature might respond to the evolutionary pressure exerted by humans as we change the natural landscape. The Gazette spoke with doctoral student Nathan Ranc for insight.
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Arboretum gets a solar boost
The Weld Hill Solar Project, currently underway, is the Arnold Arboretum’s third and largest solar project and Harvard’s most ambitious sustainability initiative to date, with nearly 1,300 solar panels powering a 45,000-square-foot science laboratory and teaching facility in Roslindale.
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Written in the bones
Harvard doctoral students offered a glimpse of the future of evolutionary inquiry, outlining projects that touch on the human pelvis, butterfly hybrids, field and forest mice, and the mystery of an ancient pile of bones.
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Containing the sun
Scientists from Harvard and Princeton have teamed up to create an artificial intelligence algorithm that can predict destructive disruptions in nuclear fusion experiments
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Protecting P-town
Architect and GSD Professor Scott Cohen discusses his studio course that considered how architects could help his beloved Provincetown, Mass., address the prospect of rising seas due to climate change while still retaining its quirky magic.
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Rocketwoman
Fifty years ago this summer, Neil Armstrong took his “giant leap for mankind” on the moon. In his wake hundreds of others have flown into space, including Ellen Ochoa, a four-time shuttle astronaut who stepped down as director of the Johnson Space Center in 2018 and is currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.
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Clearing the way for cleaner air in China
Researchers have analyzed technical and economic viability for China to move toward carbon-negative electric power generation and found that China can do so in an economically competitive way.
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Before the Big Bang
Harvard researchers are proposing using a “primordial standard clock” as a probe of the primordial universe. The team laid out a method that may be used to falsify the inflationary theory experimentally.
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Identifying exotic properties
Though they have unusual properties that could be useful in everything from superconductors to quantum computers, topological materials are frustratingly difficult to predictably produce. To speed up the process, Harvard researchers in a series of studies develop methods for efficiently identifying new materials that display topological properties.
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Laying some groundwork for environmental protection
The Wyss Institute has developed a sheet pile driving robot, Romu, that works in uneven terrain to build metal walls that can act as dams, retaining walls, or building foundations.
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Tackling climate change through study
Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund, now in its fifth year, is awarding seven research projects $1 million in grants.
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‘Seeing the unseeable’
A years-long effort by dozens of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveals the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole.
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A black hole, revealed
Researchers at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) just unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole, which captures what EHT Director Sheperd Doeleman called “a one-way door from our universe.”
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Putting ‘the language of the Earth on the agenda’
At Harvard, indigenous Alaskan elder Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq and Polynesian navigator Nainoa Thompson offered a close-to-the-earth perspective on climate change.
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Breaking down ‘Beowulf’
Using a statistical approach known as stylometry, which analyzes everything from the poem’s meter to the number of times different combinations of letters show up in the text, a team of researchers found new evidence that “Beowulf” is the work of a single author.
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Building a better med student
Researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute are developing an algorithm with information that is so complex, it will understand everything a first-year medical student knows.
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Beware the deeper water
For the past decade, scientist Greg Skomal and a team of researchers have been tagging and studying great white sharks off the Massachusetts coast. He hopes his work tracking the sharks’ movement, biology, and behavior will help shed light on the giant predators, help protection efforts, and perhaps reduce their encounters with humans.
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Tapping the collective mind
Machine learning is an adaptive form of artificial intelligence that could allow physicians to use the collective wisdom of billions of medical decisions, patient cases, and outcomes to inform diagnosis and treatment.
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A soft touch
A new rubber computer combines the feel of a human hand with the thought process of a traditional computer, replacing the last hard components in soft robots. Now, soft robotics can travel where metals and electronics cannot — high-radiation disaster areas, outer space, and deep underwater — and turn invisible to the naked eye or even sonar detection.
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Scientists are blown away by hurricane experiment’s results
Three decades after scientists intentionally knocked down nearly 300 trees at Harvard Forest, nature is still surprising as experiments continue.
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‘Any patient with any disease’
Developed through Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, an innovative immune-silent stem cell technology could lead to novel cell therapies to treat “any patient with any disease.”