A new course on how oceans are “urbanizing” underscores a decade-long Harvard theme: that cities have to cope with the multiple challenges of water — of there being too much or too little.
After analyzing tree rings — and 400 years of history — researchers from Harvard Forest have indicated ways in which seemingly stable forests could abruptly change over the next century in the wake of climate change and drought.
A team of scientists led by Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics Amir Yacoby has developed a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system that can produce nanoscale images, and may one day allow researchers to peer into the atomic structure of individual molecules.
Faculty, staff, and students gathered from around campus for a discussion about social media at Harvard. While civil in tone, the exchange began with participants throwing Marlon Kuzmick’s softball question right back at him.
Harvard University has made significant progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report released by President Drew Faust, who announced the next steps that the institution will take to meet its goal of cutting emissions 30 percent by 2016.
In addition to conducting research and teaching about climate, energy, and the environment, Harvard faculty members also serve as expert advisers to policymakers, putting their science to work to improve laws and regulations and to foster understanding between the worlds of government and academics.
Two teams of students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design provided a close look — part celebration, part cerebration — at two house designs that won international competitions.
A new course on how to handle big data designed by Assistant Statistics Professor Luke Bornn immerses students in a competitive environment, driven by peer learning, to understand how to handle the massive data sets common in real-world problems.
Scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have discovered a way to build self-assembling cages made of DNA. The cages are the largest stand-alone DNA structures made to date, and one day may be able to deliver drugs or house tiny bioreactors or photonic devices inside the human body.
MIT Professor Rosalind Picard and a team of researchers at the MIT Media Lab have created a wristband that can gauge a person’s emotional response to stimuli or situations by tapping skin conductance, an indicator of the state of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s flight-or-fight response by ramping up responses like heart rate and blood pressure.
Director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication Anthony Leiserowitz spoke at a Harvard Kennedy School seminar called “Climate Change in the American Mind.”
The World Wide Web turns 25 this week, so the Gazette sat down with Scott Bradner, a senior technology consultant with the University who has been involved with the Internet since the early days. Bradner says government regulation is the greatest threat looming over the Net, and its spread around the world via smartphones its greatest promise.
A team of Harvard researchers has demonstrated that the bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris can use natural conductivity to pull electrons from minerals located remotely in soil and sediment while remaining at the surface, where it absorbs the sunlight needed to produce energy.
A symposium on data visualization brought together experts from campus and beyond to show how technology in the arts, sciences, and humanities is helping people think in new ways.
In the Instructional Physics/SEAS Instrument Lab, a machine shop tucked in the basement of Lyman Laboratory, students learn to use a range of equipment — everything from lathes to laser cutters to 3-D printers.
Led by Professor David Liu, a team of researchers has developed a technique to continuously evolve biomolecules that uses negative selection — the ability to drive evolution away from certain traits — to create molecules with dramatically altered properties.
A team of students from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, just back from Japan, took home first prize in an international competition for solutions to sustainable recovery in a region of Japan devastated by a triple disaster in 2011.
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