Science & Tech

There are thousands of unapproved chemicals, often banned elsewhere, in the U.S. environment, panelists at a Harvard forum say.

The inaugural session of the Harvard DataFest conference brought attention to Harvard’s growing interest in data science.

A study suggests that while psychopaths do feel regret, however, it doesn’t affect their choices.

A course featuring adaptive learning explores the technological feasibility, implications, and design of such a system to improve massive open online courses.

A new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History brings an artist’s view to the ongoing extinction crisis affecting the planet.

Nearly a century after it was theorized, Harvard scientists have succeeded in creating metallic hydrogen. In addition to helping scientists answer some fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the material is theorized to have a wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature superconductor.

Researchers have developed a customizable soft robot that fits around a heart and helps it beat, potentially opening new treatment options for people suffering from heart failure.

The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics included lab tours, lectures, and practical discussion on research, grad school applications, how to deal with discrimination and implicit bias, and finding mentors.

A group of Harvard researchers is taking a new approach to the challenge of developing new catalysts.

Shorter city blocks stimulate urban life, but if they’re too short, people spend too much time crossing roads, and the streetscape suffers, study says.

Venkatesh Narayanamurti, he former dean of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is suggesting doing away with the traditional applied/basic research divide in favor of one that encourages greater collaboration and a two-way path between discovery and invention.

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has established a collaborative research agreement with Facebook, which establishes a platform to quickly and easily pursue joint or sponsored research projects with the company.

Using the atomic-scale quantum defects in diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy centers to detect the magnetic field generated by neural signals, scientists working in the lab of Ronald Walsworth, a faculty member in Harvard’s Center for Brain Science and Physics Department, demonstrated a noninvasive technique that can show the activity of neurons.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver, built out of an assembly of atomic-scale defects in pink diamonds.

On a visit to Harvard, best-selling author Michael Lewis talked about the deep friendship and pioneering collaboration of famed psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work created the field of behavioral economics.

Four experts gathered at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for a panel concerning the impact of climate change on agriculture and the global food system, with an emphasis on the United States and Africa, and a nod toward what the incoming Trump administration might do about the issue.

Students taking part in a new freshman seminar class learn to appreciate the sophistication of Neanderthals by manufacturing their own stone tools from scratch.

To halt the rise of global temperatures, Harvard researchers are looking at solar geoengineering, which would inject light-reflecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the planet.

Harvard University achieves ambitious climate goal set in 2008.

With big data becoming routine and applications penetrating even areas not traditionally thought of as data-heavy, Harvard is part of a multi-university collaboration designed to better store and provide faster access to the enormous data sets increasingly common in research into genomics, particle physics, and a host of other fields.

In a Harvard talk, ex-EPA official Robert Perciasepe outlined some narrow openings for bipartisanship on environmental issues.

Harvard experts gather to discuss climate change in all its complexity, and share some surprising views.

Harvard environmental experts looking ahead to a Trump administration see trouble for President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and U.S. international climate action, but add that the nation’s environmental protection regulatory framework would be difficult to dismantle, and there may be hope for new approaches to addressing environmental ills.

Harvard researchers found 90 percent of new or proposed hydroelectric power plants will increase the concentration of toxic methylmercury in the food web near indigenous communities in Canada.

The Gazette interviewed Robin Bronen, a human rights attorney and a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, on climate change displacement.

University of Arizona physicist Dimitrios Psaltis has devoted his Radcliffe fellowship to black hole imaging linked to the Event Horizon Telescope project.

Melting Arctic ice is opening the Northwest Passage, just a symptom of the accelerating warming in the Arctic and around the globe, speakers at a Radcliffe symposium on the oceans said.

During Tanner Lectures, Professor Dorothy E. Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, will explain how society leaned on flawed judgments about race.

Panelists at the Kennedy School discussed the possibility of hackers targeting the U.S. vote.

Harvard scholars Joshua Greene and Steven Pinker were joined by Princeton philosopher Peter Singer in a conversation examining how to be moral — and happy.