Researchers compile dictionary of vocalizations suggesting the animals use equivalent of word compounds, phrasings to communicate complex social situations
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two Harvard-led teams are among the 66 selected by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) that will receive a total of $130 million in funding through its OPEN 2012 program, which is designed to support innovative energy technologies.
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created more than 100 3-D nanostructures using DNA building blocks that function like Lego bricks — a major advance from the two-dimensional structures the same team built a few months ago.
A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75 percent of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.
Jason Ur, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, earlier this year launched a five-year archaeological project — the first such Harvard-led endeavor in the war-torn nation since the early 1930s — to scour a 3,200-square-kilometer region around Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, for the signs of ancient cities and towns, canals, and roads.
Harvard University Dining Services has turned its attention to sustainable seafood, an effort that may lead to new institutional standards for purchasing.
Scientist and Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman argued for a new approach to teaching science to college students, introducing it earlier in the learning process.
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