Science & Tech

MIT’s Anant Agarwal, who is the first president of edX, shared early results from the new online education venture’s first pilot course at the second annual Harvard IT Summit.

On the roof of the Gordon Indoor Track and Tennis building, workers installed rooftop solar panels as part of what has become Harvard’s largest solar energy project. It is part of Harvard’s commitment to sustainability and its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2016 (from a 2006 baseline).

A business idea born in a Harvard classroom to improve the delivery of vaccines in developing countries has been selected as the grand prize winner of the Harvard University President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship.

A new, highly innovative, computer-based simulation tool, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (Mass. Eye and Ear) Cataract Master, bridges the learning gap that residents and ophthalmologists new to phaco must navigate prior to performing actual surgery.

Harvard will offer a master’s degree in computational science and engineering.

As described in an April 23 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), graduate students Eric Morrow and Carling Hay demonstrate the use of a statistical tool called a Kalman smoother to identify “sea level fingerprints” — telltale variations in sea level rise — in a synthetic data set. Using those fingerprints, scientists can determine where glacial melting is occurring.

A recent SEAS workshop emphasized comprehensive planning, cultural awareness, and a holistic approach to design in developing solutions to global problems.

Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have figured out how to use short lengths of DNA as physical, rather than genetic, building blocks, creating letters and other shapes from the molecules in a proof of design that could one day lead to the creation of structures that, among other things, deliver drugs to disease sites.

Before 2004, the most recent Venus transit occurred more than a century ago, in 1882, and was used to compute the distance from the Earth to the sun. On June 5, 2012, another Venus transit will occur. Scientists with NASA’s Kepler mission hope to discover Earth-like planets outside our solar system by searching for transits of other stars by planets that might be orbiting them. The next Venus transit: Dec. 11, 2117.

Environmental scientists at Harvard have discovered that the Arctic accumulation of mercury, a toxic element, is caused by both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers that carry the element north into the Arctic Ocean.

Harvard researchers probe environmental shifts on Martha’s Vineyard, where they document one wooded area’s recovery from a massive die-off and another’s passage into the ocean.

“Envision,” a tool developed with backing from the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at GSD, provides a comprehensive framework for governments and industry to evaluate infrastructure projects of all types and sizes based on environmental, economic, and community benefits.

The first Design Fair at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) displayed the wealth of ideas that have emerged at SEAS throughout this past academic year.

Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis will work with United Nations University on a system that will allow users to track and map wildlife crime, and how it is related to a host of socioeconomic factors.

University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne says that dysfunction within American society promotes high levels of religious belief that in turn blocks general acceptance of evolutionary theories.

Nicholas Christakis, whose research explores how everything from obesity to smoking to happiness spreads among our social networks, is turning his attention to the past, exploring why and how we became the social animals we are.

A Harvard authority on ancient Iraq spent several years studying clay tablets looted from that nation, which had been stored in a World Trade Center building that was destroyed on 9/11. The tablets eventually were retrieved, restored, translated, and returned.

A Harvard engineering class helps find a metric for a computer scheme that tracks gang violence.

The mitotic spindle, an apparatus that segregates chromosomes during cell division, may be more complex than the standard textbook picture suggests, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States — that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.

Steven Raichlen, author of “The Barbecue Bible” and “Planet Barbecue,” discussed on barbecue’s origins among early humans and barbecue customs around the world in a recent Harvard talk.

Two of Harvard’s leading social scientists discussed the way that humans make decisions, and whether having more choices really makes us happier.

Executives from a leading debris-recovery firm, Phillips & Jordan Inc., were at Harvard on April 19 to discuss challenges and lessons learned in two decades of aiding the biggest cleanup efforts in the United States.

Harvard researchers compiled ice and sedimentary core samples collected from dozens of locations around the world, and found evidence that while changes in Earth’s orbit may have touched off a warming trend, increases in CO2 played a far more important role in pushing the planet out of the ice age.

A new book by Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov explains the revolution in understanding the universe that views life as a natural part of planetary evolution and that has researchers on the brink of finding worlds that echo this one.

Harvard scientists have taken a critical step toward building a quantum computer — a device that could someday harness subatomic particles such as electrons to perform calculations far faster than the most powerful supercomputers.

Vinothan Manoharan, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and physics at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, wants to make self-assembly — when particles interact with one another and spontaneously arrange themselves into organized structures — happen in the laboratory to treat life-threatening diseases or manufacture useful objects.

Free water purification is needed to head off more than a million childhood deaths from diarrhea each year, says Gates Professor of Developing Societies Michael Kremer.

New research from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that seemingly small changes in summer temperature swings may shorten life expectancy for elderly people with chronic medical conditions, and could result in thousands of additional deaths each year.

The U.S. energy picture has changed dramatically in recent years, with a flood of shale gas making natural gas a more attractive fuel option and the opening of new supplies cutting U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, an energy expert says.