Tag: biology

  • Nation & World

    Pickles, prisms, and scientists

    Celebrating its 11th year of public engagement, the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ (SEAS) Holiday Lecture Series dazzled and delighted audiences on Dec. 8 with a show guaranteed to kindle curiosity about the natural world.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    One million species, and counting

    Just weeks after adding its millionth Web page, the online biology clearinghouse called the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) has received a grant from the Sloan Foundation that will allow it to continue its mission of documenting every living plant and animal species on the globe.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A new view of DNA

    A new imaging technique, developed by Erez Lieberman-Aiden, a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, is giving scientists their first three-dimensional view of the human genome, one that is already shedding new light on a number of what Liberman-Aiden calls the “central mysteries of biology.”

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sabeti named Young Global Leader

    Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Pardis Sabeti has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Making the worms turn

    Biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel has developed new techniques to monitor and influence the behavior of roundworms to learn how their basic nervous systems work, a first step to understanding the circuitry in more complex creatures, like humans.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Guiding lights

    In a scientific first that could shed light on how signals travel in the brain and how learning alters neural pathways, scientists at Harvard have created genetically altered neurons that light up as they fire. The work may also lead to speedier drug development.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Initiative challenges drug crisis

    Taking aim at the alarming slowdown in the development of new and lifesaving drugs, Harvard Medical School is launching the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology, a comprehensive strategy to transform drug discovery by convening biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore together how drugs work in complex systems.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Giving hybrids some respect

    Harvard researchers have used genetic analysis to confirm that the Appalachian tiger swallowtail butterfly arose through hybridization of two other species, the Canadian and Eastern tiger swallowtails, highlighting a rare case of speciation through hybridization in animals.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Truly inspirational’

    The Harvard Foundation has named Maggie Werner-Washburne the 2011 Scientist of the Year.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Kidney close-up

    Scientists at Harvard have created breathtaking three-dimensional images of an entire organ, moving a step closer to understanding the complex development of the kidney.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Circuits of sense and sensibility’

    A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to the reaction that avoids it.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deep thinker

    Scientists are advancing in their understanding of the biology of the deep sea, which still remains largely unexplored and mysterious, according to Associate Professor Peter Girguis.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Following the genomic road map

    Harvard President Drew Faust hosted a panel discussion on the legacy of the Human Genome Project Feb. 22 at Sanders Theatre.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Project success

    Project Success, a program operated by the Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity and Community Partnership, targets Boston and Cambridge high school students to participate in mentored summer research internships with Harvard researchers.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nabokov’s blues

    Ten years before his novel “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov published a detailed hypothesis for the origin and evolution of the Polyommatus blues butterflies. A team, led by a Harvard professor, is proving him right.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    He’s got a head start

    In his new book, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman traces the human head’s perpetual makeover as it developed through the hominin fossil record.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Carroll E. Wood, Jr.

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on February 1, 2011, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Carroll E. Wood Jr., Professor of Biology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Carroll Wood’s innovative research project, the Generic Flora of the Southeastern United States, took a biological approach to…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The map of us

    To mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Human Genome Map, Harvard President Drew Faust will host a panel discussion on the project next week (Feb. 22) in Sanders Theatre.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    E.O. Wilson receives BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

    Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and naturalist Edward O. Wilson has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the ecology and conservation biology category.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Guiding discoveries to the public

    Harvard’s Office of Technology Development tries to ensure that the public sees the benefits of Harvard’s research by licensing new technology to companies.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    E.O. Wilson to receive Thoreau Prize

    PEN New England will present this year’s Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing on Feb. 8 to author Edward O. Wilson in recognition of his exceptional talents.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Deadline looms for two HMS fellowships

    Two fellowships in Harvard Medical School’s media fellowship program are open for applications from reporters.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    New Arboretum director hosts meet and greet

    In his first month as the Arnold Arboretum’s new director, William Friedman is hosting two meet and greets and has established a Director’s Lecture Series.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Waves and the waggle dance

    In a lecture, titled “Good Vibrations: How We Communicate” and hosted by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Howard Stone, Dixon Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and a former Harvard faculty member, enticed children and their families into the world of physics and biology.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Female chimps treat sticks as dolls

    Researchers at Harvard University and Bates College say female chimpanzees appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have offspring of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Biology researcher’s on a roll

    Florian Engert, a new professor of molecular and cellular biology in Harvard’s Bio Labs, works and plays hard.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fakhri A. Bazzaz

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 19, 2010, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Fakhri A. Bazzaz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Biology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Bazzaz was an ecologist who greatly influenced scientific thought and public policy on climate change.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Wild Harvard

    Nature watchers around campus, open to the hard-to-see creatures nearby, deliver a message of attention and affection.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Termites as architects

    The air exchange system inside termite mounds provides a natural example of how to harness intermittent winds.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Thinking like an octopus

    A philosophy professor’s summer of diving in Sydney Harbour has gotten him thinking about what octopus intelligence might mean.

    6 minutes