Science & Tech
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Complex questions, innovative approaches
Seven projects awarded Star-Friedman Challenge grants
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Early warning sign of extinction?
Fossil record stretching millions of years shows tiny ocean creatures on the move before Earth heats up
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So much for summers of love
Despite ‘hippie’ reputation, male bonobos fight three times as often as chimps, study finds
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Are you a human? Select all that apply.
Philosopher Barba-Kay on CAPTCHA dilemma, Aristotle’s good life, and how the internet is changing us — not for the better
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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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Cutting the military’s energy tether
Fueling America’s war effort is an expensive proposition, costing not only money but lives, since supply convoys are routinely attacked. The constraints imposed by an energy-hungry military prompted the Defense Department to investigate conservation techniques.
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America’s Eden that wasn’t
A new history of science course on the environment moves past the fictions of an unspoiled earlier time of discovery and settlement.
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Chips, efficient and fast
Professor Gu-Yeon Wei explores energy-efficient computing devices that are fast but draw minimal power.
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Matching supply, demand
Harvard graduate student Wonyoung Kim has developed and demonstrated a new device with the potential to reduce the power usage of modern processing chips.
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Brenner awarded Ledlie Prize
Michael Brenner, Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been awarded the George Ledlie Prize by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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Mapping the Human Genome: Ten Years After
On February 15, 2001, a decade ago, the first draft sequence and analysis of the human genome—the blue print for a human being—was published in the journal Nature. On the tenth anniversary of that transformative moment, Harvard hosted an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional forum on the genome project’s origins, promise, and significance to society.
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Deep water, deep trouble
Two insiders view the BP oil spill as a failure of management — but also as an incident that revealed deep regulatory and safety failures.
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Cells flow like glass, study finds
Harvard-led research has found that migrating tissue flows very much like colloidal glass. The research advances scientists’ understanding of wound healing, cancer metastasis, and embryonic development.
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The map of us
To mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Human Genome Map, Harvard President Drew Faust will host a panel discussion on the project next week (Feb. 22) in Sanders Theatre.
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What ultra-tiny nanocircuits can do
Engineers and scientists collaborating at Harvard University and the MITRE Corp. have developed and demonstrated the world’s first programmable nanoprocessor.
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Clues in clay
Research by physicists from Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Princeton, and Brandeis shows that clay vesicles provide an ideal container for the compartmentalization of complex organic molecules. The discovery opens the possibility that primitive cells may have formed inside inorganic clay microcompartments.
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Solar’s time still on horizon
Bruce Sohn, president of the power company First Solar, says that reducing the cost of solar energy is on the horizon, but solar power has to grow dramatically if it is to replace fossil fuels.
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Applied knowledge
Five recent graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences talked to current students about life beyond Harvard in the first of a series of engineering-themed career events hosted by the FAS Office of Career Services.
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Guiding discoveries to the public
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development tries to ensure that the public sees the benefits of Harvard’s research by licensing new technology to companies.
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Innovate, create
From oddities like breathable chocolate to history-making devices with profound societal effects, like the heart pacemaker, Harvard’s combination of questing minds, restless spirits, and intellectual seekers fosters creativity and innovation that’s finding an outlet in new inventions and companies.
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Big thinkers
Psychologists at Harvard University have found that infants younger than a year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals’ goals conflict.
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It’s the ‘lab-on-a-chip’ model
With little more than a conventional photocopier and transparency film, anyone can build a functional microfluidic chip.
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Volumetric Imaging of Fish Locomotion
Using a new form of laser imaging device, Brooke Flammang and colleagues at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology have discovered that “the dorsal and the anal fin make a great contribution to the caudal [tail fin] wake,” and thus are additional propellers, and not just stabilizers. A cichlid swims in the particles that the laser illuminates.
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Light touch
Physicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism.
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Slimy secrets
Harvard researchers have discovered that Bacillus subtilis biofilm colonies exhibit an unmatched ability to repel a wide range of liquids — and even vapors. The finding holds promise for developing better ways to eliminate harmful biofilms that can clog pipes, contaminate food production and water supply systems, and lead to infections.
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Sharp turns
Undergraduates in Engineering Sciences 51: “Computer-Aided Machine Design” spent a semester learning to design gadgets in SolidWorks, building candy-flinging catapults, and mastering the use of the soldering iron. Then came the final assignment: Transform a cordless power screwdriver into a functional all-terrain vehicle.
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Oh, the humanity
Using digitized books as a “cultural genome,” a team of researchers from Harvard, Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the American Heritage Dictionary, unveil a quantitative approach to centuries of trends.
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By the numbers
Thanks to the digital revolution, Harvard is developing a legion of cyberspace fans in the world of social media.
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Digital drive
Across the University, digitization is rapidly changing the nature of scholarship, opening doors to information and collaboration, and redefining research and education.
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Nearer, better
Through analyzing the locations of authors of academic papers, researchers have determined that physical proximity of collaborators, especially between the first and last author, correlates with how widely the paper is cited.
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Poor prospects
Small and midsize cities in poor countries will be among those that suffer most from climate change’s droughts, floods, landslides, and rising waters, an expert on the world’s urban poor said in a talk at Harvard’s Center for Population and Development Studies.
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Squeezing life into patients
Engineers at Duke and Harvard universities have developed a “magnetic sponge” that after implantation into a patient can “squeeze” out drugs, cells, or other agents when passed over by a magnet.
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Like computer science, only cooler
More than 500 students in the introductory computer science course CS 50 descended on the Northwest Science Building for a music-thumping, popcorn-eating fair where students showed off their projects.
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‘One-drop rule’ persists
Harvard psychologists have found that the centuries-old “one-drop rule” assigning minority status to mixed-race individuals appears to live on in our modern-day perception and categorization of people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Halle Berry.
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At last, the edible science fair
Illustrating the tenacious bond between science and cooking, students used physics, chemistry, and biology to manipulate recipes and create foods that stretch the imagination.