Science & Tech
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Lifting a few with my chatbot
Sociologist Sherry Turkle warns against growing trend of turning to AI for companionship, counsel
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Hate mosquitoes? Who doesn’t? But maybe we shouldn’t.
Entomologist says there is much scientists don’t know about habitats, habits, impacts on their environments
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‘Harvard Thinking’: Climate alignment is no easy task
Experts at the Salata Institute outline tensions between global and local priorities
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A playbook for policy change
Leah Stokes turns a love for the wilderness into a commitment to help mitigate climate change
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Under pressure
New tool for precise measurement of superconductors
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Glimpse into how mind may affect healing
Study finds bruising fades faster in patients who are led to believe more time has passed than actually has
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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’…
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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…
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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,…