Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • Higher education on the move

    In online education, the future is now. That was an overriding message Harvard and MIT hosted a summit on March 3 and 4 titled “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education.”

  • Alpha, beta, Zeega

    Three Harvard affiliates are launching Zeega, a software platform that makes it easy for Internet storytellers to blend audio, images, and text from the riches of the Web.

  • Schoolyard scourge

    Scholars convened at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to explore the topic of bullying and potential ways forward.

  • A learner’s guide to the universe

    Harvard’s Avi Loeb is helping prepare the next generation of astronomers with a new textbook, “The First Galaxies in the Universe.”

  • Peering into our blind spots

    Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and longtime collaborator Anthony Greenwald condense three decades of work on the unconscious mind in “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.”

  • Money, marriage, kids

    There may be a formula for happiness after all, says Daniel Gilbert, Harvard professor of psychology and best-selling author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” who presented an impressive array of scientific research from the disciplines of economics, psychology, and neuroscience to assess his mother’s recipe for happiness.

  • Weather warning

    A report co-authored by Professor Michael McElroy and D. James Baker, a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, connects global climate change, extreme weather, and national security.

  • A clarion call for science

    Harvard President Drew Faust called for the scientific community to unite in its efforts to press Congress for continued federal research support during a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • A groundswell on climate change

    More vigorous grassroots social action is needed to drive the reforms that could address climate change, panelists said during a discussion at Sanders Theatre.

  • Using explosions to power soft robots

    Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air.

  • Robots with lift

    Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air. That ability to jump could one day prove critical in allowing the robots to avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.

  • New ways to fund science

    As research funding dwindles, scientists need to rethink their methods for supporting the most promising projects, and how they communicate their work to the public, Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Paul Nurse told an audience of Harvard scientists.

  • Technology’s new frontier

    Scholars are beginning to learn what’s working and what’s not when it comes to using new media to get people to do what you want, and a conference on “Behavioral Economics, Social Media, and Apps” at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 brought together experts from academia and business to discuss it.

  • The sky as a ‘sewer’

    Former Vice President Al Gore repeated his call for action on climate change Wednesday, saying society is treating the skies as an “open sewer.” He spoke at Harvard’s Memorial Church in a session sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.

  • Technology to help monitor concussions

    Researchers recently completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance. The team is currently conducting a study with athletes in the Boston area to determine the sensitivity of the technology in diagnosing concussions.

  • Competition that computes

    It might appear that evacuating a major city following a natural disaster and playing foosball have little, if anything, in common. For students participating in the IACS Computational Challenge, however, both are problems that can be tackled with some clever coding.

  • When fairness prevails

    Using computer simulations designed to play a simple economic “game,” researchers at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics showed that uncertainty is a key ingredient behind fairness. Their work is described in a Jan. 21 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Hack Week nurtures innovators

    Seventeen teams of Harvard students toiled on campus during the last days of winter break, working to finish computer projects during the annual Hack Week sponsored by the Hack Harvard student group.

  • An idea that changed the world

    Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of a computational principle that was little noticed in its time, but that underlies all of modern science.

  • An early sign of spring, earlier than ever

    Record warmth in 2010 and 2012 resulted in similarly extraordinary spring flowering in the eastern United States — the earliest in the more than 150 years for which data is available— researchers at Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Wisconsin have found.

  • First ‘bone’ of the Milky Way identified

    Astronomers have identified a new structure in the Milky Way: a long tendril of dust and gas that they are calling a “bone.”

  • Search for Earth’s twin shows promise

    The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the new analysis of Kepler data that shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury.

  • Building a better machine

    Students in the “Physics and Applied Physics Research Freshman Seminar” labored hard to improve on a model heat engine, continuing the work of a previous class.

  • Climate change on world stage

    In a question-and-answer session, Professor Robert Stavins discusses the recent international conference on climate change, and the prospects for nations to reach agreement on a plan to confront it.

  • Corn in a changing climate

    Harvard researchers have concluded that omitting the adaptive ability of crops from assessments of potential damages from a warming climate could substantially overestimate losses to U.S. maize yields.

  • A military base, reborn

    Harvard design students imagine multiple futures for a longtime New England military base.

  • Lessons for the next Sandy

    Disaster relief dollars flowing to those affected by hurricanes like Sandy and Katrina represent an important opportunity to ensure that communities are better able to withstand the stronger storms and higher seas likely coming as climate change worsens, panelists said.

  • A notion to cool the skies

    An international regulatory framework is needed to govern possible research and deployment of engineering approaches to counter climate change, an authority on environmental law says.

  • For a day, geek is chic

    Hundreds of students — hackers and newcomers alike — showed off their programming chops at Monday’s CS50 Fair, a raucous exhibit of mobile apps, websites, and other projects created for Harvard’s wildly popular computer science class.

  • AA benefits vary between sexes

    A new study finds differences in the ways that participation in Alcoholics Anonymous helps men and women maintain sobriety.