The opening study of the Project on Biological Security and the Public found that one-third (33 percent) of Americans who live in areas where there are a lot of mosquitoes…
In the year 2000, the star Rho Cassiopeiae, n the constellation of Cassiopeia, lost more mass than in any other stellar eruption observed by astronomers. An international team of astronomers,…
The dominant state in attracting the incorporations of publicly traded companies is, and has long been, the state of Delaware. Although home to less than one-third of one percent of…
Known as RCW 38, a star cluster covers a region about 5 light years across. It contains thousands of stars formed less than a million years ago and appears to…
Birds sing, chimps grunt, and whales whistle, but those sounds fall far short of expressing the richness of their experiences. Their lack of language goes to the question of why…
Matthew Shair and his students work in “protein trafficking.” Genes in living cells carry instructions for making proteins essential to life. These proteins have to get from place to place…
Humans are changing location more frequently and in greater numbers than ever before in history. But at the same time, the electronic revolution is allowing them to remain in contact…
A research team led by Mark T. Keating showed that zebrafish can regenerate heart muscle within two months after a severe injury. The team, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute…
Researcher Elizabeth Rafferty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Breast Imaging Service described initial results of a study comparing a new technique, called digital tomosynthesis, to standard mammography. Among the new…
Begun as a mapping software decades ago, geographical information systems, known as GIS, today functions to manage different time- and place-dependent data and allows different variables to be projected together,…
Professor Michael Dawson’s most recent book, “Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African American Mass Political Ideologies” (University of Chicago Press, 2001), brings a historical perspective to black political ideologies.…
Bike couriers have become as a much a part of the urban landscape as sky-scrapers and traffic-clogged streets. Boston messengers collectively make between 3,000 and 4,000 deliveries on a given…
“We have obtained the first glimpse inside an antihydrogen atom, and this is a significant step on the way to precision measurements that will allow matter/antimatter comparisons to be made,”…
Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, is among the scientists who since the 1970s have been using paleoclimatic data…
Even though asthma is responsible for more deaths and more hospitalizations than arthritis in the United States, the greater political influence of arthritis sufferers prompts the federal Food and Drug…
Regrowing missing teeth may someday be a possibility, based on work by a team of scientists at the Forsyth Institute, an independent, Harvard-affiliated research organization specializing in oral and craniofacial…
Every day an oak tree moves hundreds of gallons of water up from the soil and out, in evaporated form, through its leaves. “Mechanically, it’s a pretty substantial feat,” says…
Grain weevils alone cost the global economy about $35 billion, or a third of the world’s grain crop, every year. Various other beetle species damage dozens of crops including bamboo,…
First published in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium introduced the world to the concept of a sun-centered universe. In it, Copernicus detailed how the motions of the sun,…
Radiologist Beryl Benacerraf is a Harvard Medical School clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Benacerraf, a handful of like-minded maternal-fetal ultrasound specialists, and…
A nautical group of bacteria known as Prochlorococcus removes carbon dioxide from air and fixes it into the carbon content of their own tiny bodies. The more carbon dioxide they…
The Rwandan genocide memorial was a tiny one-room church, pervaded still by a penetrating stench. On a table in the church was a pile of human skulls and femurs, a…
Wondering what to do if you discover a bunch of old books are floating in backed-up sewer water or if a parchment manuscript gets soaked by an automatic sprinkler? The…
If an ill-timed delivery left them short of linens, nurses observed by Harvard Business School doctoral student Anita Tucker found a way to borrow from another unit. Such initiative taking…
Riccardo Giacconi worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1973 to 1981. During that period, he led the development of the Einstein X-ray Observatory, which was launched in 1978.…
American diplomacy in the 1920s was subtle but ambitious and effective, instead of isolationist, argues Harvard Assistant Professor of Government Bear F. Braumoeller. American policy in the years leading up…
Huge numbers of arachnid and insect species remain unknown. Arachnologists like Gonzalo Giribet, toiling in relative obscurity, routinely identify new species – and their work is far from over. Giribet,…
Astronomers have been using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio telescopes to observe two opposing jets of high-energy particles emitted following an outburst, first detected in 1998 by NASA’s Rossi…
A new report catalogues the connections between biodiversity and human health. The interim executive summary was presented at the United Nations in late October 2002, following the U.N. World Summit…
Statistics and reports on environmental damage and progress routinely come from dozens — if not hundreds — of nonprofit, government, and other agencies. Often the information disagrees with previously published…
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