Science & Tech
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Is AI dulling our minds?
Experts weigh in on whether tech poses threat to critical thinking, pointing to cautionary tales in use of other cognitive labor tools
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A potential quantum leap
Harvard physicists unveil system to solve long-standing barrier to new generation of supercomputers
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No one knows the answer, and that’s the point
‘Genuinely Hard Problems’ pilots novel approach to scientific education
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Salamanders can regrow limbs. Could humans someday?
Findings on adrenaline’s role in process raise new possibilities for regenerative medicine
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Tracking climate change through nature’s ‘breaths’
New research tower monitoring Harvard Forest’s carbon intake, outtake continues data collection that started in 1989
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What if AI could help students learn, not just do assignments for them?
Professors find promise in ‘tutor bots’ that offer more flexible, individual, interactive attention in addition to live teaching
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Bill Gates on green technology
Bill Gates speaks about how someone following in his footsteps might contribute toward the efforts made in the area of green technology.
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Strength in naughty or nice
Research suggests that when people are convinced they’re engaging in a moral act, either for good or ill, they become stronger in performing physical tasks.
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The Postdocs
Some physicists spend their lives obsessed with questions about the possibility of parallel universes, or of travel at the speed of light. Amy Rowat is obsessed with the mechanical properties of the tiny…
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Circling Saturn:
Carolyn Porco is on a mission. As she explained to an audience of several hundred gathered at the Radcliffe Gymnasium earlier this month, in a lecture titled “At Saturn: Tripping the Light Fantastic,”…
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Mathematician Sophie Morel:
Sophie Morel turned 30 on December 16 of last year, the day after she was appointed a professor of mathematics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a Radcliffe Alumnae Professor…
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Ecosystems under siege
Environmental panel discusses the problems facing the Earth, and what it would take to reverse the damaging trends.
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Battling climate change on all fronts
Harvard’s research spans the gamut from the sciences to the humanities, examining key questions about this critical challenge facing humanity.
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Ambitious undertaking
U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson said the United States plans to have 80 percent of its energy come from alternative and unconventional fossil fuels by 2050. She spoke as part of the “Future of Energy” discussion series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
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What are the “Hard Problems” in the social sciences?
Just over a century ago, one of the world’s leading mathematicians posed this question to a number of his colleagues: What are the most important unsolved questions in mathematics? The…
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Cold atoms and nanotubes come together in an atomic ‘black hole’
Carbon nanotubes, long touted for applications in materials and electronics, may also be the stuff of atomic-scale black holes. Physicists at Harvard University have found that a high-voltage nanotube can…
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‘Settle down,’ warns E.O. Wilson
Esteemed biologist Edward O. Wilson called for renewed efforts to understand and conserve the planet’s biodiversity, in the first of three Prather Lectures being presented this week.
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Understanding tiny reactions
Scientists believe that tiny carbon nanotubes may also create something like atomic-scale black holes.
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Looking for life beyond Earth
Scientist Carolyn Porco explored the deeper regions of the solar system and her work with the Cassini mission to Saturn during a talk at Radcliffe.
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Kicking the habit
Clean, renewable wind and solar power may be the most-preferred fossil fuel alternatives, but their land-hungry collecting requirements make them difficult options for replacing more conventional power sources, according to a British energy…
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An addiction to fossil fuels
David MacKay, physics professor at Cambridge University and scientific adviser to the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, outlines challenges facing efforts to eliminate fossil fuels from the world’s energy mix.
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Posing the Big Questions
In 1900, renowned mathematician David Hilbert laid down a challenge to future generations: 23 handpicked mathematical problems, all difficult, all important, and all unsolved. Since then, countless mathematicians around the world have struggled…
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Women in life sciences still lag in compensation, advancement
Women conducting research in the life sciences continue to receive lower levels of compensation than their male counterparts, even at the upper levels of academic and professional accomplishment, according to…
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Media reporting HSPH professor to be named head of federal Medicare, Medicaid programs
Major media outlets are this weekend reporting that President Barack Obama has selected Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) professor Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, to head the federal government’s…
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Online portal, created by Harvard center, improved on-the-ground earthquake response
Count Harvard computer experts among those who responded swiftly to the deadly earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, throwing their expertise behind an effort to improve information flow for responders on…
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Portals into Haiti, Chile
Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis created Web clearinghouses to aid information flow in response to Haiti’s and Chile’s earthquakes.
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This is CS50
Creative vibe colors enormous CS 50 innovation fair
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An earlier changing climate
Human societies in Europe at the end of the last ice age expanded north across a harsh but changing environment, as glaciers melted and the world got warmer and more humid.
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Scientists discover how ocean bacterium turns carbon into fuel
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We hear this mantra time and again. When it comes to carbon—the “Most Wanted” element in terms of climate change—nature has got reuse and recycle covered. However, it’s up to us to reduce.
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Reality check
Author-turned-activist Bill McKibben says the fight to arrest global warming requires an international movement to force political change.
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Signs of ‘snowball Earth’
Researchers find strong clues that sea ice covered tropical climes, including the equator, 716.5 million years ago, suggesting there was a time of a “snowball Earth.”
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Scientists find signs of ‘snowball Earth’
Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a “snowball Earth” event long suspected of occurring around that time.
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New source of natural gas
Chesapeake Energy’s chief executive officer, Aubrey McClendon, struck a positive note on the future prominence of natural gas as an energy source, though some critics decried new gas extraction techniques.
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Time to change the menu
Climate change, population growth present fresh challenges to a global food supply system already showing cracks.
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Another piece of cancer puzzle falls into place
An international team of researchers has created a genome-scale map of 26 cancers, revealing more than 100 genomic sites where DNA from tumors is either missing or abnormally duplicated compared to normal tissues.…
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Turning to the wind
In a quest for cheaper power, HBS professor helps Maine islanders get wind turbine project off the ground.