Science & Tech
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Amazon butterfly evolved from hybrids
Genomic findings challenge thinking on what makes a species
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‘Harvard Thinking’: Is AI friend or foe? Wrong question.
In podcast, a lawyer, computer scientist, and statistician debate ethics of artificial intelligence
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Getting ahead of dyslexia
Harvard lab’s research suggests at-risk kids can be identified before they ever struggle in school
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Why AI fairness conversations must include disabled people
Tech offers promise to help yet too often perpetuates ableism, say researchers. It doesn’t have to be this way.
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How did you get that frog to float?
Ever-creative, Nobel laureate in physics Andre Geim extols fun, fanciful side of very serious science
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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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Greener delivery?
The Gazette asked Henry Lee, an authority on electric cars and the Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the Belfer Center, about the opportunity for the Postal Service to improve its environmental footprint — and perhaps spark broader automotive changes — through a more fuel-efficient replacement for the current model, which gets roughly 9 miles per gallon.
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Sculptor finds physics a welcoming space
Sculptor Kim Bernard, known for her spinning, swaying, bouncing, moving creations, is artist-in-residence in the Physics Department.
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Staying power for shale gas
The shale gas boom, which has transformed domestic and global energy markets, is still in its infancy, according to the chair of Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
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Focus on food
Twenty-two faculty members presented seven-minute lightning lectures on research and realities involving food.
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Stages of design
Three exhibits at the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall represent different facets of how design learning gets done.
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Climate engineering: In from the cold
Harvard Professor David Keith says that two new reports by the National Academy of Sciences are likely to boost a deeper look at possible geoengineering options for climate engineering.
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Playing the ‘envelope game’
Harvard researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind model, dubbed the “envelope game,” that can help researchers to understand not only why humans evolved to be cooperative but why people evolved to cooperate in a principled way.
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Mysterious link between galaxy and black hole
A new study of football-shaped collections of stars called elliptical galaxies provides insights into the connection between a galaxy and its black hole. This new research was designed to address a controversy in the field.
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Less corporate, more mindful
Harvard Law School grad and former Pixar CFO Lawrence Levy was on campus to talk about leaving corporate life to promote the benefits of meditation with his nonprofit Juniper Foundation.
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Discovering ‘star nurseries’
In a quest to find mismatched star pairs known as extreme mass-ratio binaries, Harvard astronomers have discovered a new class of binary stars, in which one star is fully formed while the other is still in its infancy. The discovery of these stellar twins could provide invaluable insight into the formation and evolution of massive stars, close binaries, and star nurseries.
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An exchange in ideas and culture
Harvard and Brazilian students spent 10 days visiting sustainability-related sites around São Paulo as part of a field course sponsored by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the University of São Paulo.
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Support for seven from president’s climate fund
Seven research projects aimed at confronting the challenge of climate change using the levers of law, policy, and economics, as well as public health and science, have been awarded grants in the inaugural year of President Drew Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund.
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Taking to the woods
For a handful of Harvard undergraduate and graduate students, the January semester break included a rare treat — a visit to the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass.
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A trap for greenhouse gas
A team of researchers has developed a novel class of materials that enable a safer, cheaper, and more energy-efficient process for removing greenhouse gas from power-plant emissions.
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Charged air
For doctoral student Sarah Rugheimer, the study of atmosphere holds deep promise in the search for extrasolar life.
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A lefty’s lament
A southpaw science writer comes to terms with research on handedness by the Kennedy School’s Joshua Goodman.
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Boston’s leaky pipes add to greenhouse-gas buildup
A Harvard-led study reveals that an aging natural-gas distribution system short-changes Boston-area customers and contributes to greenhouse-gas buildup. Depending on the season, natural gas leaking from the local distribution system accounts for 60 percent to 100 percent of the region’s emissions of methane.
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One size won’t fit all
The Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University have released a report on “multistakeholder governance groups” to better inform the discussion over Internet governance models and mechanisms.
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Sea level correction
A new study shows that sea levels have increased over the last two decades at a greater rate than previously understood.
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Crafting ultrathin color coatings
In Harvard’s high-tech cleanroom, applied physicists produce vivid optical effects — on paper.
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Eight new planets found in Goldilocks Zone
Astronomers announced Tuesday that they have found eight new planets in the Goldilocks Zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. The discoveries double the number of small planets believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars.
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Stars’ age: A well-kept secret
Harvard researchers have found that stars slow down as they age, and their ages are well-kept secrets. But astronomers are taking advantage of the first fact to tackle the second and tease out stellar ages.
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Surfing on a super-Earth
For life as we know it to develop on other planets, those planets would need liquid water, or oceans. Geologic evidence suggests that Earth’s oceans have existed for nearly the entire history of our world.
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A key urban intersection
Harvard researchers are pushing for a closer look at links between green spaces and health in cities.
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Confronting despair with hope
Naomi Klein, author and syndicated columnist, says she hopes that once people understand the enormity of climate change, it will spark conversation on how they can chart a path to deal with it.
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Kepler ‘rising from the ashes’
Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, the Kepler spacecraft is alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler’s “second life.”
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Back into the dark
Harvard physicists look toward new frontiers as they anticipate the restart of the Large Hadron Collider and their ATLAS experiment in spring 2015.
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Where ideas trump devices
At the annual CS50 Fair, students of history, literature, music, and more create tools to share knowledge across fields.
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Creating ‘genomic origami’
Researchers have assembled the first high-resolution, 3-D maps of entire folded genomes and found a structural basis for gene regulation, a kind of “genomic origami” that allows the same genome to produce different types of cells.
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Eyes on Orion
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Jonathan McDowell answers questions on the Orion test run and prospects for getting to Mars.