Featured series 
Tag: Harvard
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Science & Tech
Understanding insect damage over time
A study used herbarium specimens to track insect eating patterns across more than a century and found that four species collected in the early 2000s were 23 percent more likely to be damaged than those collected in the early 1900s.
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Science & Tech
Examining aftershocks with AI
Sparked by a suggestion from researchers at Google, Harvard scientists are using artificial intelligence technology to analyze a database of earthquakes from around the world in an effort to predict where aftershocks might occur. Using deep-learning algorithms, they developed a system that, while still imprecise, was able to forecast aftershocks significantly better than random assignment.
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Science & Tech
Movement monitor
A team of researchers from the Rowland Institute at Harvard, Harvard University, and the University of Tübingen is turning to artificial intelligence technology to make it far easier than ever before to track animals’ movements in the lab.
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Science & Tech
Learning catalysts’ secrets
Cynthia Friend, who recently received a multimillion dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, is well positioned to help “change the face and carbon footprint of the chemical industries sector,” one of her team’s goals.
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Science & Tech
Tracking rivers to read ancient glaciers
In a new study, Harvard researchers say they may be able to estimate how glaciers moved by examining how the weight of the ice sheet altered topography and led to changes in the course of rivers. The study is described in a paper published in Geology.
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Science & Tech
Solving the problem of the calculus whiz
New Harvard research challenges conventional wisdom on what it takes to excel in calculus.
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Science & Tech
Deep into the wild
Researchers used “deep learning” to identify images captured by motion-sensing cameras.
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Science & Tech
Mining Facebook data for science
An organization co-created by Harvard scientists is set to release a massive trove of Facebook data, strictly for research purposes.
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Science & Tech
Game-changing game changes
Games that can change based on players’ actions help Harvard’s Martin Nowak and his fellow researchers to understand the evolution of cooperation.
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Campus & Community
Questions, answers with Harvard’s Muslim chaplain
In a Q&A session, Harvard’s Muslim chaplain, Khalil Abdur-Rashid, explains what he’s found here, and where he’d like to focus his ministry next.
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Science & Tech
How to feel the heat
A team of researchers was able to show how sensory neurons in the face detect temperature, and how this information is later passed on to the hindbrain of zebrafish, where it is processed to produce behavior.
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Science & Tech
We solved the problem! Now let’s unsolve it.
Harvard researcher Daniel Gilbert’s “prevalence-induced concept change” speaks to humankind’s conflicted relationship with progress.
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Health
When wandering minds are just fine
While most of the psychological literature calls mind wandering a detrimental “failure of executive control” or a “dysfunctional cognitive state,” a new study led by Paul Seli, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow working in the lab of Dan Schacter, suggests that in some cases there’s no harm in it.
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Campus & Community
Leveling the playing field
Often, getting into college and paying for it are two very different challenges. That’s where Harvard’s Financial Aid Initiative comes in. By opening the doors to exceptional students regardless of their family income, the initiative has brought more diversity — both racially and economically — to Harvard College.
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Campus & Community
Expanding support for leading research
A gift from Josh Friedman ’76, M.B.A. ’80, J.D. ’82, and Beth Friedman, longstanding benefactors of the University, will double the resources available for high-risk, high-reward science, allowing more of the most ambitious research projects at Harvard to move forward.
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Campus & Community
Rewarding remarkable studies
The annual awards created through a gift from James A. Star ’83 fund research unlikely to be funded through other programs — risky studies with the potential to contribute to radical new understandings of our world.
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Health
Moving beyond the scientific nudge
In a study published in Nature Human Behavior, Harvard’s Michèle Lamont argues that if researchers want to capture a fuller picture of human behavior, they need a new approach that bridges the gap between sociology and cognitive psychology.
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Health
Enzyme interference
Researchers discovered that Eggerthella lenta — a bacterium found in the guts of more than 30 percent of the population — can metabolize the cardiac drug digoxin in high enough quantities to render it ineffective. Now, a team of researchers has identified the culprit gene that produces the digoxin-metabolizing enzyme.
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Campus & Community
82% of those admitted will join Class of ’22
So far 82 percent of the students admitted to the Class of 2022 have notified Harvard they will matriculate to campus this August.
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Health
Beam Therapeutics receives Harvard license
Harvard University has granted a worldwide license to Beam Therapeutics Inc. to develop and commercialize a suite of revolutionary DNA base editing technologies for treating human disease.
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Science & Tech
Carbon consumers
Natural lab holds promise to transform understanding of deep-ocean carbon cycling, says Professor Peter Girguis.
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Science & Tech
Choosing partners or rivals
A new study shows that in repeated interactions winning strategies involve either partners or rivals, but only partnership allows for cooperation.
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Health
Research sheds light on how parents operate
In a new study, Harvard researchers describe how separate pools of neurons control individual aspects of parenting behavior in mice.
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Science & Tech
Developing micron-sized magnetic resonance
Harvard scientists have developed a system that uses nitrogen-vacancy centers — atomic-scale impurities in diamonds — to read the nuclear magnetic resonance signals produced by samples as small as a single cell — and they did it on a shoestring budget using a 53-year-old, donated electromagnet.
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Health
Biology without borders
To increase scientific understanding of biological systems, Harvard is launching an interdisciplinary research effort called the Quantitative Biology Initiative, with support from University President Drew Faust and Dean Michael D. Smith.
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Campus & Community
FAS stars honored with Dean’s Distinction Awards
Four teams and 61 employees from across FAS were honored at the annual Dean’s Distinction Awards ceremony.
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Science & Tech
The ruse of ‘fake news’
In a recently published study, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Matthew Baum and Northeastern University Professor David Lazer, an associate of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, argue that a multidisciplinary effort is needed to understand better how the Internet spreads content and how citizens process the news and information they consume.
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Science & Tech
A role for cyanide in recipe for life
New Harvard findings show that a mixture of cyanide and copper, when irradiated with UV light, could have helped form the building blocks of life on early Earth.
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Science & Tech
Learning to find ‘quiet’ earthquakes
Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Marine Denolle is one of several co-authors of a study that used computer-learning algorithms to identify small earthquakes buried in seismic noise.
