Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • Environmental health researcher studies lead poisoning in India

    Lead is a naturally occurring toxic element, and exposure poses a serious threat to children whose neurological systems are still developing. Some children suffer from brain damage, poor motor skills…

  • Street vendors often define urban landscape

    “The question is, how is public space to be created — by designers, by the state, or by the people who use it?” asks Margaret Crawford, a professor at the…

  • Workers in buildings with less fresh air more likely to call in sick

    Donald Milton, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, hypothesized that the nature of the air that employees breathe affects how often…

  • Before- and after-school hours key to the nurturing of children

    How to keep children occupied and engaged in worthwhile after-school pursuits is becoming a major focus of study at the Harvard Family Research Project at the Graduate School of Education.…

  • How family leave policies fail working families

    In her book, “The Widening Gap: Why American Working Families are in Jeopardy and What Can be Done About It,” S. Jody Heymann of the Harvard School of Public Health…

  • Protecting nature religiously

    “Our religious institutions are the only institutions that are not completely implicated in the culture of materialism and growth,” said Bill McKibben, an environmental activist and a fellow at Harvard…

  • Chandra X-ray Observatory helps put pieces together on gamma-ray bursts

    Astronomers have long debated how gamma-ray bursts (or “GRBs”) originate. One theory contends that GRBs result when two “compact objects,” that is, neutron stars or black holes, collide and coalesce.…

  • Researchers publish HIV study results despite efforts to block

    Researchers refused to suppress publication of data that indicates an experimental drug did not slow the progression of HIV infection, even though the drug company that sponsored their research tried…

  • Does the Internet make markets more competitive?

    According to Jeffrey Brown of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Internet’s power to allow consumers to engage in low-cost price comparisons online has affected the market for…

  • Better-quality child care has real effects

    In a study, higher quality child care showed a positive relation to higher levels of social functioning in children both at school and at home. Those children who attended higher-level…

  • Business professor works to unlock the mysteries of television viewing habits

    Media consultants have spent years studying what convinces viewers to watch certain programs. While there are no purely empirical answers why certain programs are more popular than others, a new…

  • Astronomers resolve visible blast wave from gamma-ray burst

    Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are mysterious flashes of high-energy light that are detected about once a day somewhere in the sky. However, their origin remains unknown to astronomers, most of whom…

  • Examining differing reproductive desires in Gambia

    For men in rural Gambia, more than 15 kids are desirable. That’s double the number of children that women are actually delivering. The number may seem high to people in…

  • Chandra clinches case for missing-link black hole

    Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have zeroed in on a mid-mass black hole in the galaxy M82. This black hole – located 600 light years away from the center…

  • Cosmic ‘superbubbles’ bespeak toil and trouble

    The merging Antennae Galaxies in constellation Corvus are producing massive bubbles of expanding X-ray-emitting gas at such astonishing rates that they are bumping into each other. Giuseppina Fabbiano, Andreas Zezas…

  • Medical records play role in domestic violence legal cases

    Two researchers studied nearly 100 medical charts of women who had previously been identified as abuse survivors. They found that physicians frequently did not screen for abuse and that the…

  • Mystery of cometary X-rays solved

    Comets, which resemble “dirty snow balls” a few miles in diameter, until recently were thought to be too cold to emit X-rays. So the detection of X-rays from comet Hyakutake…

  • Fighting prostate cancer with radioactive seeds

    In November 1997, a team of surgeons headed by Anthoy D’Amico, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, first used a technique that treats early stages of…

  • Men have distorted image of what women find attractive

    Asked by researchers to choose the bodies they would most like to have, male college students in a study picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they actually…

  • The whys and woes of child beauty pageants

    Hilary Levey, a member of the Harvard College Class of ’02, studied child beauty pageants. “With the death of JonBenet Ramsey, there’s been a barrage of interest in beauty pageants…

  • Nebula resembles gigantic cosmic crossbow

    NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured the details of a compact nebula that resembles a gigantic cosmic crossbow. The nebula, located in the Vela supernova remnant, is created as a rapidly…

  • Chandra discovers elusive ‘hot bubble’ in planetary nebula

    A planetary nebula (so called because it looks like a planet when viewed with a small telescope) is formed when a dying red giant star puffs off its outer layer,…

  • High demands, lack of control on the job damage health

    A new study has advanced previous research by linking job stress to broad, quality-of-life health issues such as carrying out daily household chores and general mental health. Previous studies have…

  • What constitutes “community” online?

    How do we create online communities? Six panelists at the 2000 Harvard Internet and Society Conference struggled with the question. “Real world communities are ever so simple to create,” said…

  • Internet revolutionizing way designers (and others) work

    Professor Spiro Pollalis, who serves as director of the Center for Design Informatics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, estimates Internet-based project management networks are now being utilized by…

  • Gamma rays may be left over from cosmic construction project

    The origin of the diffuse and pervasive background of gamma-ray radiation that exists over the universe has been one of the great unsolved mysteries in cosmology. Even the known population…

  • Study finds that for young men, family comes first

    Breaking ranks with their fathers and grandfathers on the important issue of work-family integration, 71 percent of men 21-39 said in a survey that they would give up some of…

  • Professor’s survey method opens ‘windows of consciousness’

    Bringing together theories and tools from disciplines ranging from psychology to neuroscience, the Mind of the Market Laboratory at Harvard Business School attempts to define and qualify consumers’ and managers’…

  • Helping clear the air in China

    Across China’s industrial areas, black soot settles into people’s lungs and bronchial tubes, producing an annual epidemic of respiratory disease. That’s the result of heating homes, schools, and offices with…

  • New generation of faculty members sets new priorities

    Although doctoral candidates and new faculty still regard tenure as important when seeking employment, they will consider non-tenure over tenure-track positions if jobs meet other conditions, including desirable geographic location,…