Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • 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,…

  • Air pollution deadlier than previously thought

    The idea that air pollution is harmful is hardly new. However, critics of the previous research of Joel Schwartz, associate professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public…

  • Digital communications will reshape the way businesses market goods

    In a chapter of the forthcoming book Digital Marketing, Harvard Business School Professor John A. Deighton and coauthor Patrick Barwise of the London Business School identify three qualities that distinguish…

  • Computers that are more than the sum of their parts

    In the 1960s, a potentially serious drawback threatened further progress toward the computer age. As Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark and his colleague, Professor Carliss Baldwin, wrote in their…

  • Cosmic pressure fronts mapped by Chandra

    The collision of two giant clusters of galaxies has been imaged by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. For the first time, the pressure fronts in this system, which has been compared…

  • Immigration experts focus on attitudes of children

    Too many immigrants in the United States are staring into what Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco call “a toxic mirror” that seriously compromises the self-image of children who will grow up…

  • Scientists probe Northern Hemisphere ozone loss

    The ozone layer shields us from cancerous ultraviolet radiation. Understanding how it is being destroyed was the mission of more than 350 scientists from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan,…

  • Differences between vowels and consonants are real

    While working with colleagues in Rome, two Harvard researchers serendipitously met two women with intriguing speech deficits. As the result of a stroke, one patient could not reproduce the sounds…

  • South Pole telescope sees origin of starbursts

    Astronomers have seen how star formation occurs in the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy by using a telescope based at the South Pole. The observations contribute to our…

  • Despite some progress, segregation persists in Boston area

    A report, “Segregation in the Boston Metropolitan Area at the End of the 20th Century,” found that despite the progress that disadvantaged minorities have made in achieving homeownership outside of…

  • Closing in on the ‘theory of everything’

    A single theory describing nature’s four forces, called the “Theory of Everything,” has been the Holy Grail for physicists and other scientists seeking the universe’s deepest mysteries. Physicist Juan Maldacena…

  • High stakes tests in Texas threaten disadvantaged students

    Texas is frequently cited as a national leader in efforts to raise academic performance and hold schools accountable for student performance. At the center of these efforts is the statewide…

  • Women priests, vegetarianism – early Christian manuscript holds surprises

    In the early days of Christianity, when the first Christians were spreading the faith, diversity of belief was the norm rather than the exception. An early manuscript uncovered by a…

  • Study says children with cancer often suffer needlessly

    “Since caregivers are very committed to curing their patients, it may be difficult for them to recognize when to incorporate palliative care into treatments, even when there’s little hope of…

  • New detector may open new window on the universe

    A new receiver is capable of detecting and amplifying very-high- frequency signals with very fine frequency resolution, so it can detect the spectral lines, or chemical fingerprints, of interstellar molecules…

  • Chandra finds “cool” black hole at heart of Andromeda Galaxy

    A team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., reported that the gas funneling into a supermassive black hole in the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy,…

  • Betelgeuse’s chromosphere beats like a human heart

    For many years astronomers have known that the atmospheres of pulsating stars either expand or contract over time, but they have long puzzled over the question: “What physical mechanism drives…

  • Little giants create a big cosmic controversy

    A new measuring technique used to determine the distances to a class of stars called “Red Clumps” in the Large Magellanic Cloud produced a much smaller distance than that found…

  • Streamers of gas feed beast at center of our galaxy

    Astronomers have long known that a supermassive black hole, more than 2 million times more massive than our Sun, lies at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy some 27,000…

  • Study finds biotech workers ‘thrive’ on instability

    Marked by job insecurity, dependence on changing technology, and uncertain financing, the biotechnology industry is viewed by researchers as one of the best examples of the workplace of the future.…

  • Light weapons are most common in today’s small wars

    In the 1990s, approximately 4 million soldiers and civilians were killed by small arms in the internecine conflicts of the developing world. More people, in other words, were killed in…

  • State-of-the-art health guide created

    Harvard Medical School believes it has a cure for problems associated with finding accurate, up-to-date medical information: a comprehensive (1,288 pages), $40 medical guide tied to a Web site that…