Science & Tech

Harvard scientists are leading an international collaboration that aims to coordinate research, data collection, scientist training, and analysis of information gleaned from two networks of forest plots, one through the Harvard-affiliated Center for Tropical Forest Science and the second created by Chinese scientists.

New research shows that aurorae on distant “hot Jupiters” could be 100 to 1,000 times brighter than Earth’s aurorae. “I’d love to get a reservation on a tour to see these aurorae,” said lead author Ofer Cohen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a one-micrometer-resolution version of the intravascular imaging technology optical coherence tomography (OCT) that can reveal cellular and subcellular features of coronary artery disease.

New website opens a window onto naturalist Charles Darwin’s struggle with the complexities of gender, and illustrates how culture affects science’s vaunted neutrality.

Harvard Summer School students broke ground June 29 for the biennial archaeology class investigating the long history of Harvard Yard. Students will resume the search for traces of the Harvard Indian College, where the College’s first Indian students lived and studied.

A quantitative analysis of the streams, drips, and coils of artist Jackson Pollock by a Harvard mathematician and others reveals that he had to be slow and deliberate to exploit fluid dynamics as he did.

A Harvard University study built around an innovative economic game indicates that, at least for our younger selves, the desire for equity often trumps the urge to maximize rewards.

From across the University, members of the information technology community gathered for the first Harvard IT Summit.

Three Harvard affiliates nab a big new-media prize, and marvel at the University’s converging forces that mix the digital age with traditional scholarship.

The Arboretum is so serene and languid it can seem almost imaginary. On a warm summer day, dogs and runners and bicyclists all share the nearly silent space under the shade of giant and rare trees of odd shapes and sizes.

A symposium sponsored by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society explored the design of public and private spaces in the digital realm.

Researchers are examining the Harvard Semitic Museum’s collection of ancient glass for clues about the people who made it and their interactions with other societies through trade.

Ralph Mitchell, a Harvard professor and authority on cultural heritage microbiology, investigates “fingerprints” left on the walls of Egyptian King Tutankhamen’s tomb by ancient microbes.

Harvard Medical School researchers have traced the influence of genes from sub-Saharan Africa in European, Middle Eastern, and Jewish populations, quantifying the intermingling that occurred over many generations.

A researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has uncovered a new way that stars end their lives, in a bright, fast explosion that appears different from the known characteristics of the stellar cataclysms called supernovas.

Astronomy Professor Alyssa Goodman is helping to bring astronomy to area schools, founding an “ambassador” program that combines with new software to provide an interface on the universe for students and researchers alike.

New England forests are the focus of a new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, funded by the largest donation in the institution’s history.

For their capstone project in the course ES 96: “Engineering Design Seminar,” 16 SEAS students conducted an analysis of the geothermal heating and cooling system that serves Radcliffe’s Byerly Hall.

Geothermal energy is the natural heat that is stored deep underground (about 1,500 feet down, in the case of the wells at Radcliffe). While the seasons change above ground in…

In her Fellows’ Presentation, Nancy E. Hill, the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, discussed her research into socialization and cultural development in relation to parents’ interaction with children and how this interaction varies across geography, income levels, and ethnicity.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on May 6 talked to a Harvard audience about youth exposure to violence as a public health issue — and the need for a public health response.

A sustainability music video produced by Harvard University students Akshay Sharma ’14, Maura Church ’14 and Molly O’Laughlin ’11 in anticipation of Earth Day 2011. It was presented at Harvard’s second annual Green Carpet Awards sustainability celebration and recognition event. Miranda J. Morrison ’14 also assisted with writing the lyrics.

Two panel discussions, organized by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, examined the “promise and perils” of creating digital repositories of genetic records and considered the policy implications of an individual’s right to access, control, and interpret his or her own genetic data.

Child victim of Nazi medical experiments recounts the horrors, in opening an exhibit that explores how physicians embraced the thinking and practices that became the Holocaust.

Scientists have long believed that sunfish, perch, trout, and other such bony fish propel themselves forward with the movement of their tails, while their dorsal and anal fins — the fins on their tops and bottoms — work primarily as stabilizers.

Human-induced changes to the Earth from emission of greenhouse gases are here to stay, with computer models showing that changes made by 2100 could take 1,000 years to decline.

Students presented projects Wednesday (April 13) from the Idea Translation Lab, which pushes students to turn ideas into reality and sets them up to take the next steps in project development.

Just how much should we allow “human nature” to guide our politics — and our everyday decision making? Columnist David Brooks and a trio of Harvard analysts debated new findings on the unconscious mind during a panel discussion.

Harvard physicists have expanded the possibilities for quantum engineering of novel materials such as high-temperature superconductors by coaxing ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice — a light crystal — to self-organize into a magnet, according to an article in the journal Nature.

Professor Michael McCormick has been working with tree-ring experts, bringing the perspective of long-ago writings to understanding environmental conditions.