Science & Tech

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.

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.

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.

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.

Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund, now in its fifth year, is awarding seven research projects $1 million in grants.

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.

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.”

At Harvard, indigenous Alaskan elder Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq and Polynesian navigator Nainoa Thompson offered a close-to-the-earth perspective on climate change.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Three decades after scientists intentionally knocked down nearly 300 trees at Harvard Forest, nature is still surprising as experiments continue.

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.”

Harvard received an award at the Climate Leadership Conference in Baltimore, recognizing its commitment to the environment.

Novelist Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” features trees as key characters in an entwined tale of human life and our impact on the natural world. He will speak at the Arnold Arboretum and the Mahindra Humanities Center later this month.

Led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava, a team of researchers is shedding new light on how animals perform whole-body regeneration, and uncovering a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes used in the process.

For centuries, pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — has fascinated mathematicians and scientists. For more perspective on the famous number, the Gazette turned to physics lecturer Jacob Barandes — who, with some help from his 9-year-old daughter, Sadie, recited pi to 100 digits for us.

Harvard scientists have created brain implants so similar to neurons that they actually encourage tissue regeneration in animal models. They may one day be used to help treat neurological diseases, brain damage, and even mental illness.

It might seem crazy for landlords to tell potential tenants about past bedbug infestations, but Alison Hill believes it will pay off in the long run. In a study, Hill found that while landlords would see a modest drop in rental income in the short term, they would make that money back in a handful of years, and the policies could dramatically slow the spread of the insects.

The Wyss Institute and Roche Innovation Center Basel in Switzerland have teamed up to create 3-D bioprinted proximal tubules beside functioning blood vessel compartments, closely mimicking the kidney’s blood-filtration system that removes waste products while returning “good” molecules, such as glucose and amino acids, back into the bloodstream.

The daylong conference “Beyond Words: Gender and the Aesthetics of Communication” at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study explored body communication and included talks on perfumes, tattoos, sign language, dance, and fashion.

Working with a team of international researchers, Harvard scientists gathered survey data in several locations around the globe and found that, following the trauma of seeing a friend or loved one killed or injured during conflict, many became more religious.

Science authors David Quammen and Carl Zimmer both have recent books showing that DNA is not only passed down from our ancestors but can also come from viruses, siblings, and even our children.

Geneticist David Reich discusses DNA findings that show how migration shaped Europe and southern Asia, and that “No population is, or ever could be, pure.”

Harvard researchers are using a chemical process known as triplet fusion upconversion to transform near-infrared photons into high-energy photons. The high-energy photons could be used in a huge range of applications, including a new type of precisely targeted chemotherapy, in which low-energy infrared lasers that penetrate deep into the body could be used to transform innocuous compounds into cancer-fighting drugs.

A new Harvard study suggests that although the congenitally blind experience abstract visual phenomena such as rainbows and color differently, they still share with the sighted a common understanding of them.

A new study shows that African grey parrots can perform some cognitive tasks at levels beyond those of 5-year-old humans. The results not only suggest that humans aren’t the only species capable of making complex inferences, but also point to flaws in a widely used test of animal intelligence.

Researchers have created the first cellular atlas of the primate retina and discovered that, while the fovea and peripheral retina share most of the same cell types, the cells are in different proportions, and show different gene expression patterns.