Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • As climate changes, so will wine grapes

    Though vineyards might be able to counteract some effects of climate change by planting lesser-known grape varieties, scientists and vintners need a better understanding of the wide diversity of grapes and their adaptions.

  • Single metalens focuses all colors of the rainbow in one point

    Harvard researchers have created the next generation of flat lenses, developing a “metalens” that can focus all the colors of the spectrum at the same time. The new design opens up the field for wearable optic devices. 

  • Study uncovers botanical bias  

    Climate change studies that rely on herbarium collections need to account for biases in the data, new research says.

  • Improved image of supermassive black hole

    Improved image allows astronomers to follow filament much closer to the galaxy’s central black hole.

  • How tall trees move sugars

    A nine-member team of scientists, mostly from Harvard, has discovered that the hydraulic resistance to moving sugar-rich sap downward from the leaves of tall trees does not increase with the length of the tree as much as would be expected.

    Michael Knoblauch (right) and son, Jan,
  • Single-stranded DNA and RNA origami go live

    For the first time, researchers have enabled the design of complex single-stranded DNA and RNA origami that can autonomously fold into diverse, stable, user-defined structures, with the potential for precision drug delivery.

    Single-Strand-DNA-Origami_
  • Feast for the mind

    The General Education course “Ancient Lives” connects undergrads with the earliest civilizations.

  • Opioid deaths jump

    A new Harvard study shows people who end up in the hospital due to an opioid-related condition are four times more likely to die now than they were in 2000.

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  • Climate made scary

    Journalist David Wallace-Wells and others debated the most effective way to communicate climate urgency in a Harvard discussion.

    Nikhil Advani, (from left) University of Alaska, Nancy Knowlton, World Wildlife Fund, and Cam Webb talk about the best ways to understand and communicate about the environment's future inside the Harvard University Center for the Environment before the evening event at the Geo Lecture Hall.
  • Researchers create quantum calculator

    Researchers have developed a special type of quantum computer, known as a quantum simulator, that is programmed by capturing super-cooled rubidium atoms with lasers and arranging them in a specific order, then allowing quantum mechanics to do the necessary calculations.

  • Skin pigmentation is far more complex than thought

    The genetics of skin pigmentation become progressively complex the closer populations reside to the equator.

  • Babies understand cost-reward tradeoffs behind others’ actions, study says

    Harvard and MIT study reveals that babies understand the cost-reward tradeoffs behind others’ actions.

  • Students help groups to pursue climate action

    Harvard living lab course works to find practical alternatives to carbon use.

  • Small media, big payback

    Researchers found that if just three outlets write about a particular major national policy topic, discussion of that topic across social media rises by more than 62 percent.

  • The selfie’s gone, but the damage is done

    New HBS research examines whether we are less inhibited when posting on temporary social media and how others perceive the posts.

  • History under the microscope

    Researchers delivered lectures on recent findings to launch the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean.

  • First glimpse of a kilonova, and Harvard was there

    Marking the beginning of a new era in astrophysics, scientists for the first time have detected gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, or light, from the same event. Harvard researchers were pivotal in the work.

  • When machines rule, should humans object?

    Harvard scholars shared concerns and ideas in a HUBweek panel titled “Programming the Future of AI: Ethics, Governance, and Justice.”

  • In surge of strawberries, some dirty details

    Julie Guthman sets her sights on a tangled story involving land, plant breeding, border policy, pathogens, and highly effective, highly toxic soil fumigants.

    Radcliffe fellow and food activist Julie Guthman
  • Putting tomorrow’s doctors on opioid alert

    Gov. Charlie Baker joined HMS faculty members in discussing the opioid crisis and the role physician education must play in fighting it.

  • How to defend against your own mind

    Harvard psychology chair Mahzarin Banaji is working with a research fellow to launch a new project called “Outsmarting Human Minds.”

  • Not a popularity contest

    New research from faculty at Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School finds that a majority of college freshmen believe others have more friends than they do, when they often don’t.

    Student being bullied by a group of students
  • The robots are coming, but relax

    As artificial intelligence takes hold in more fields, you’ll likely have a job, analysts say, but it may be a different one.

  • New England is losing 65 acres of forest a day

    A new Harvard Forest report, “Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities,” calls for tripling conservation efforts across the region.

  • Connecting the dots in data sciences

    Harvard’s new Data Science Initiative hosted its inaugural event, the first in a series of planned seminars featuring talks by faculty members focusing on new methods of managing and analyzing data and on cutting-edge applications.

  • Students aiding the environment

    Five undergraduate women from Harvard College talk about how they spent the summer researching climate and ecological stresses.

  • A master of explaining the universe

    Brian Greene ’84, a Columbia University theoretical physicist and mathematician, has made it his mission to illuminate the wonders of the universe for non-scientists.

  • A pragmatic model to conserve land

    Martha’s Vineyard is best known as a summer playground for the rich, but it’s also setting an important conservation example, according to a new book by Harvard Forest Director David Foster.

  • Building a robot, developing a nation

    Harvard College sophomore Sela Kasepa looked for robotics competitions that Zambian youth could join, and found FIRST Global, an annual student robotics Olympiad.

  • Voting-roll vulnerability

    Online attackers may be able to purchase enough personal information to alter voter registration information in as many as 35 states and the District of Columbia, a new study says.

    Professor of Government and Technology in Residence, Department of Government Latanya Sweeney