Featured series 
Tag: Faculty of Arts and Sciences
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Science & Tech
Harvard science historian publishes results of unprecedented 30-year census of Copernican masterpiece
First published in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium introduced the world to the concept of a sun-centered universe. In it, Copernicus detailed how the motions of the sun,…
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Science & Tech
Website saves wet books
Wondering what to do if you discover a bunch of old books are floating in backed-up sewer water or if a parchment manuscript gets soaked by an automatic sprinkler? The…
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Science & Tech
Researcher wins Nobel Prize for work in X-ray astronomy
Riccardo Giacconi worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1973 to 1981. During that period, he led the development of the Einstein X-ray Observatory, which was launched in 1978.…
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Campus & Community
Earth’s new center
The outer core is liquid, the inner core is solid. That’s the way Earth has been depicted in textbooks for the past 66 years. But the work of Adam Dziewonski,…
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Science & Tech
Daddy longlegs have a global reach
Huge numbers of arachnid and insect species remain unknown. Arachnologists like Gonzalo Giribet, toiling in relative obscurity, routinely identify new species – and their work is far from over. Giribet,…
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Health
Students develop system to fight TB
A new system developed by Harvard undergraduates delivers anti-tuberculosis drugs through an inhaler, increasing the likelihood that patients will take them over longer periods, and reducing the side effects of…
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Health
Glowing mouse shows how immune alarm rallies troops against invasion
In the body, dendritic and other antigen-presenting cells initially handle all infections in the body. The dendritic cells lurk in the skin, lungs, gut, and other tissues. On sentry duty,…
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Health
Resistance mutation found for Gleevec
The drug Gleevec was stunningly successful in treating patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) at early stages of disease, but quickly stopped working in most patients with more advanced forms…
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Health
Scientists discover chemical switch that determines muscle fiber type
Published in the Aug. 15, 2002 issue of the journal Nature, findings from a multi-institutional team describe the pivotal role of a molecule called PGC-1 in transforming “fast twitch” fibers…
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Science & Tech
X-ray arcs tell tale of giant eruption
Scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) report that two arc-like structures of multimillion-degree gas in the galaxy Centaurus A appear to be part of a ring 25,000 light…
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Science & Tech
Neither Rome nor universe built in a day
Theoretical astrophysicists Stuart B. Wyithe and Abraham Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have explained a paradox that has troubled scientists for years. Observations seem to show that…
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Science & Tech
South Pole telescope maps heart of Milky Way
Research results obtained by a team of astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) led by Chris Martin and Antony Stark suggest that we are headed for some celestial…
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Health
Sea squirt cancer drug under test
In the United States, researchers at three Harvard University-affiliated hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have been testing a powerful drug on…
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Science & Tech
New type of matter may have been found
In orbit around Earth, a satellite called the Chandra X-ray Observatory surveys the universe for sources of X-rays. Using Chandra, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has observed…
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Science & Tech
Jungle ordeal leads to surprise treasure
William Saturno was hot, frustrated, low on food, low on water, and low on patience when he sought shade in a trench dug by looters at the San Bartolo archaeological…
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Science & Tech
Scientists predict calmer weather ahead
When the Sun is more active, it has bad effects on our planet. For instance, energy from solar eruptions changes the orbits of satellites, causing them to spiral back to…
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Science & Tech
Even stars use sunscreen!
Mira variable stars are named after the red giant star Mira (omicron Ceti) in the constellation Cetus the Whale. Variable stars brighten, then dim, then brighten again. While astronomers have…
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Health
Alien abduction claims examined
Richard McNally, a Harvard professor of psychology, and his colleagues recruited six women and four men who claimed they had been spirited away by extraterrestrials, some of them more than once.
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Health
Study links Western dietary pattern with greater risk for type 2 diabetes in men
About 16 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, which can cause blindness, kidney failure, and heart disease. Now researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health have linked a diet…
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Science & Tech
New, far-out planet is discovered
A planet discovered in the constellation Sagittarius is so distant that light takes 5,000 years to travel from there to here at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Called…
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Science & Tech
Submillimeter array opens one of astronomy’s last frontiers
Exploring one of astronomy’s last frontiers at a site near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the submillimeter array (SMA) project offers a unique opportunity for astronomers to observe…
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Science & Tech
Structure in dust around Vega may be signature of planet
Vega, located 25 light years away in the constellation Lyra, is the brightest star in the summer sky. Observations of Vega in 1983 with the Infrared Astronomy Satellite provided the…
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in…
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Health
Technique enables quick accounting of gene function
Now that whole genomes have been sequenced, a group of scientists has geared up for the next phase: identification and classification of newly discovered coding regions. The DNA microchip, developed…
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Science & Tech
Looking toward the end
Among astronomers there is almost a consensus that universal expansion will go on forever, with galaxies and clusters of galaxies moving away from each other so fast that gravity cannot…
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Science & Tech
Scientists using gene chips identify unique form of leukemia
Currently, physicians diagnose and treat a rare form of cancer that strikes infants as a particularly aggressive form of the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The cancer may respond to…
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Health
The fruit fly fight club
Fruit flies fight. The males will go after each other, fighting to establish dominance. Edward Kravitz, the George Packer Berry professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, is using the…