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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
Sunney Xie is one of the world’s leading researchers in molecular imaging and in single-molecule reactions. Xie’s has devised a way to use laser beams to see collections of protein…
Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like…
Two large, unnatural disasters helped to create the impetus for the field of environmental health to grow in scope. But before there was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before…
In 1999 three new moons were discovered orbiting Uranus, a great gasball of a planet about 2 billion miles from Earth. The discovery raised the number of Uranian moons to…
German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…
Physics Professor John Doyle traps the tiny particles that make up the universe and then studies them, looking for what they can tell him about the most basic rules of…
” ‘System-on-a-chip’ is the new buzzword today,” said Professor Woodward Yang in 1999. “It’s really not that far away.” As Yang sees it, the computer revolution is really just beginning.…
Charles Marshall’s childhood passion led him to a career in paleontology, trying to understand the interplay between inheritance, environment, and catastrophe in directing evolution. Marshall’s work attracted media attention in…
About 2,700 years ago, two Phoenician ships sank to the Mediterranean’s muddy bottom, where they lay upright, preserved in the relative stillness and tremendous pressure of the deep, dark waters.…
Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for…
Halogen lamps became increasingly popular through the ’90s. Their high-wattage bulbs gave off a clear, pleasant light and — at $15 to $25 — even a student could afford them.…
Some significant details emerged from the items uncovered by Harvard archaeology students at a dig on Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. For instance, the site has been used by humans much…
“Los Angeles is caught in a vise,” says John Shaw, an associate professor of structural and economic geology at Harvard who was half of a research team that discovered a…
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