Featured series 
Tag: Faculty of Arts and Sciences
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Science & Tech
A pancake, not a doughnut, shapes distant galactic center
Astronomer Lincoln Greenhill (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues have found direct evidence for a “pancake” of gas and dust at the center of Circinus — a thin, warped disk surrounding the galaxy’s central, supermassive black hole. That disk shapes the galaxy’s nucleus. It shadows different regions from the “glare” of the black hole, a…
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Science & Tech
Australian shale tells tale of layered seas
Harvard researchers have found important clues about the Earth’s environment 1.5 billion years ago. Their results present quite a different picture from present times, in which oceans have oxygen-rich waters from top to bottom and are capable of supporting large animal life even in their depths. The findings are important not just for what they…
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Science & Tech
State-of-the-art solar model tracks eruption
The Sun may appear to be a bright, steadily shining orb, but it is actually a seething cauldron of hot gases prone to violent eruptions. The most dramatic eruptions are coronal mass ejections (CMEs), in which giant, bubble-shaped balloons of plasma and magnetic field lines blast outward at speeds of up to 1,500 miles per…
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Science & Tech
Do we live in a “stop and go” universe?
At the 202nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Robert Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), on behalf of the international High-z Supernova Search Team led by Brian Schmidt (Mount Stromlo Observatory), presented evidence that the expanding universe slowed for billions of years before galaxies began accelerating, like cars that get past a bottleneck. “Right now,…
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Health
New ways found to fight anthrax
John Collier, Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, began tinkering with anthrax molecules in 1989. He looked into a powerful electron microscope and, for the first time, saw a natural syringe made by an anthrax molecule. Seven individual proteins assemble themselves into a minute syringe that pierces human cells and…
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Science & Tech
Astronomers link gamma-ray bursts, supernovae
Gamma-ray bursts are incredibly bright flashes of high-energy radiation that likely signal the birth of black holes. Bursts occur at random locations scattered across the sky, and few last more than a minute, making them a challenge to study. A supernova is the explosion of a star at least eight times as massive as the…
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Science & Tech
Looking for the meaning of life at the bottom of the sea
Charles Langmuir, Harvard professor of geochemistry, loves going to sea. “It’s tremendously stimulating, wonderful, exciting, and eye-opening,” he says enthusiastically. “Every time I’ve gone since 1984, I’ve seen things I’ve never seen before. Sometimes, they’re things nobody has ever seen before. Teams of people keep the work going seven days a week, 24 hours a…
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Science & Tech
Area universities enhance regional economy
Harvard and seven other Greater Boston research universities took center stage in their role as the area’s special economic advantage: magnets for talent and investment that infuse more than $7 billion into the regional economy each year. At a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast, leaders from the universities, including President Lawrence H. Summers, President…
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Science & Tech
Professor honored for ongoing environmental research
Harvard Professor Jack Spengler and MIT professor Mario Molina shared the $250,000 Heinz award, which recognized the independent bodies of work by Spengler and Molina, although coincidentally the researchers are collaborating on air quality studies in Mexico City. Spengler, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation in the Department of Environmental Health at…
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Science & Tech
Spotlight on the Dark Ages
“Medievalists are just beginning to be aware of the implications of the revolutions now occurring in the life sciences for the knowledge of the past,” says Michael McCormick, the Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History. “Ancient DNA has proven to be remarkably tough and, even though it is usually no longer completely intact, enough can…
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Science & Tech
Keys to the highway
Even though they have a massive effect on the natural world, roads have been pretty much ignored by ecologists, who prefer to focus on open areas – the territory between the roads. Nor have engineers and other specialists who design, build, and maintain roads been much concerned with the ecological effects of their creation. Richard…
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Science & Tech
First Milky Ways found at edge of universe
One key question that has puzzled astronomers for decades is: When did the first stars and galaxies form after the Big Bang occurred? The answer — very quickly! Astronomers Rennan Barkana of Tel Aviv University and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found the first direct evidence that galaxies as large as the…
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Health
Wide variation in physician career satisfaction seen across local markets
Physician career satisfaction levels are relatively consistent from year to year, and a clear majority of physicians nationally are satisfied with their careers. However, a survey showed significant variation in satisfaction levels across local health care markets. It also found that nationally, 18 percent of physicians were somewhat or very dissatisfied. “Physician career satisfaction is…
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Science & Tech
New moons found around Neptune
Astronomers have discovered three new moons of Neptune, boosting the number of known satellites of the gas giant to 11. These moons are the first to be discovered orbiting Neptune since the Voyager II flyby in 1989, and the first discovered from a ground-based telescope since 1949. It now appears that each member of the…
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Health
Medical texts and other fictions
In the 19th century, hysteria was considered one of the most common disorders afflicting women. Doctors advised parents to keep their daughters from riding horseback, eating vanilla, or reading novels, for fear they might develop the condition. Janet Beizer, a Harvard scholar of 19th century French literature, was so struck by the pervasiveness of this…
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Health
Scientists identify hundreds of worm genes that regulate fat storage
Findings by Harvard researchers, published in the Jan. 16, 2003 issue of Nature, represent the first survey of an entire genome for all genes that regulate fat storage. The research team led by Gary Ruvkun, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology, and postdoctoral fellow Kaveh Ashrafi identified about 400 genes encompassing a…
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Health
Study finds frequent consumption of alcohol linked to lower risk of heart attack in men
Men who drank moderate amounts of alcoholic beverages three or more times a week had a risk of myocardial infarction 30 to 35 percent lower than nondrinkers. The observational study, which tracked the drinking habits of nearly 40,000 men over a 12-year period, provides an important clue as to how alcohol helps guard against coronary…
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Science & Tech
Young star cluster found aglow with mysterious X-ray cloud
Known as RCW 38, a star cluster covers a region about 5 light years across. It contains thousands of stars formed less than a million years ago and appears to be forming new stars even today. The crowded environment of a star cluster is thought to be conducive to the production of hot gas, but…
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Science & Tech
Matthew Shair imitates, improves on nature
Matthew Shair and his students work in “protein trafficking.” Genes in living cells carry instructions for making proteins essential to life. These proteins have to get from place to place in the cells and to destinations outside the cells. It’s like traffic on a busy freeway. The problem Shair set for himself was to find…
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Campus & Community
Building circuits measured in molecules
Yu Huang, a doctoral student in Professor Charles Lieber’s lab, has used fluid flows to arrange tiny bits of wires that are just billionths of a meter wide into millimeter-long lengths. By switching the direction of subsequent flows, Huang has been able to create grids of these wires that could function as electronic circuits. The…
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Science & Tech
Researchers regenerate zebrafish heart muscle
A research team led by Mark T. Keating showed that zebrafish can regenerate heart muscle within two months after a severe injury. The team, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston, also identified a possible genetic and molecular model for regeneration in zebrafish that could help direct further research in humans. The…
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Health
Nuts lower diabetes risk
Women in a study who reported eating nuts at least five times per week reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes by almost 30 percent compared to those who rarely or never ate nuts. The researchers also found that women in the study who frequently ate peanut butter reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes…
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Health
Strict enforcement of lead abatement policies saves communities money
Exposure to lead is determined by blood tests, and measured in micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set a “level of concern” at 10 micrograms per deciliter. Even at low levels, lead poisoning in children can cause IQ deficiencies, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced…
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Science & Tech
Scientists look inside antimatter
“We have obtained the first glimpse inside an antihydrogen atom, and this is a significant step on the way to precision measurements that will allow matter/antimatter comparisons to be made,” says Gerald Gabrielse, professor of physics at Harvard and leader of the research team. Such comparisons could show why antimatter and matter have not destroyed…
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Science & Tech
McElroy says it’s time to stop seeing global warming as political issue
Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, is among the scientists who since the 1970s have been using paleoclimatic data to chart changes in the earth’s atmosphere. To obtain these data, researchers drill several kilometers down into polar ice sheets and extract gases from the…
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Health
Long-term memory not fixed until after age one
When does long-term memory develop? This was a natural question for Conor Liston, a Harvard senior, and his mentor Jerome Kagan, Starch Research Professor of Psychology. Liston conducted experiments under Kagan’s supervision, and they came up with an answer. “Our findings suggest that children have great difficulty recalling the past before the end of the…
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Science & Tech
Missy Holbrook investigates the world of plants
Every day an oak tree moves hundreds of gallons of water up from the soil and out, in evaporated form, through its leaves. “Mechanically, it’s a pretty substantial feat,” says Professor Missy Holbrook. “They do it very quietly, with no moving parts, but you’d be hard-pressed yourself to get that much water out of the…
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Health
Starship memories
Psychologists are at odds over the idea that people can forget traumatic events then “recover” intact memories of the trauma years later. On one side are clinicians, who observe that painful memories can be repressed, banished from a trauma survivor’s consciousness until they’re “recovered” with the help of certain psychotherapeutic techniques in adulthood. Memory researchers,…
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Science & Tech
Beetle mania
Grain weevils alone cost the global economy about $35 billion, or a third of the world’s grain crop, every year. Various other beetle species damage dozens of crops including bamboo, palm trees, bananas, grasses, sugarcane, pines, and irises. “My research is about the evolution of interactions of various sorts,” Professor Brian D. Farrell says, “including…