Tag: National Science Foundation

  • Nation & World

    Science no longer intimidates her. Neither do sharks.

    Summer research program breaks down barriers for undergraduates with disabilities.

    3 minutes
    Dakota Law holds a shark as Nick Wallis Mauro and Gianna Mitchell touch it.
  • Nation & World

    Reaching for the stars

    Using robotic telescopes and other engaging astronomy activities, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian hope to spark interest in the sciences.

    3 minutes
    Student using computer.
  • Nation & World

    Wood becomes first woman to win $1M Waterman Award in math

    Professor Melanie Wood has won the Alan T. Waterman Award, becoming the first woman ever to receive it in mathematics.

    4 minutes
    Melanie Wood.
  • Nation & World

    Launch of pioneering Ph.D. program bolsters Harvard’s leadership in quantum science and engineering

    Today, the University launched one of the world’s first Ph.D. programs in the subject of quantum science and engineering.

    14 minutes
    Rendering of a magnetic field.
  • Nation & World

    Emily Balskus wins $1M Waterman Award

    Emily Balskus has won the Alan T. Waterman Award, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious prize for scientists under 40 in the United States.

    4 minutes
    Emily Balskus
  • Nation & World

    Life on the ice

    Harvard researchers describe life in the South Pole.

    21 minutes
    Auroras as seen from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station..
  • Nation & World

    Young, female, Native American, scientist

    Six female Native Americans took part in the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bringing biology and mathematics together

    The National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation have awarded a grant to Harvard scientists to create a research center aimed at bringing biologists and mathematicians together to answer some of the central questions about living systems.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    From federal support, groundbreaking research

    Latest federal budget allocations allow Harvard scientists to push toward fresh discoveries.

    12 minutes
    lab
  • Nation & World

    Why more ‘hotspots’ aren’t so cool

    A new study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology reports that the number of ecosystem hotspots in Massachusetts has increased over the past decade, with more and more popping up in metro Boston.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Falling fertility rates

    For the past several years, Mary Brinton, Radcliffe fellow and chair of Harvard’s sociology department, and a team of collaborators have been exploring declining fertility rates in postindustrial societies.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Advancing science and technology

    The National Science Foundation is awarding grants to create three new science and technology centers this year, with two of them based in Cambridge. The two multi-institutional grants total $45 million over five years.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Removing indoor pollution

    A Harvard School of Public Health graduate and doctoral candidate in environmental health is one of the creative forces behind SolSource, a revolutionary, sun-powered grill designed specifically to reduce pollution inside rural houses.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Understanding student weaknesses

    As part of an unusual study that surveyed 181 middle school physical science teachers and nearly 10,000 students, researchers found that the most successful teachers were those who knew what students would get wrong on standardized tests.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The bounty of EDEN

    An associate professor at Harvard, Cassandra Extavour also heads up the Evo-Devo-Eco Network (EDEN), a collaborative group of researchers devoted to encouraging the study of nontraditional “model” organisms, ranging from sea anemones and crickets.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Building with DNA bricks

    Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created more than 100 3-D nanostructures using DNA building blocks that function like Lego bricks — a major advance from the two-dimensional structures the same team built a few months ago.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Controlling behavior, remotely

    Researchers have been able to take control of tiny, transparent worms by manipulating neurons in their brains, using precisely targeted pulses of laser light.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Pecking order

    Harvard researchers have found that a new investigation of tissues and signaling pathways in finches’ beaks reveals surprising flexibility in the birds’ evolutionary tool kit.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Artificial jellyfish swims in a heartbeat

    A team of researchers at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology has turned inanimate silicon and living cardiac muscle cells into a freely swimming “jellyfish.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    President of Brazil comes to Harvard

    Harvard University today signed a five-year agreement with the government of Brazil to eliminate financial barriers for talented Brazilian science students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies at Harvard.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Wood to receive Alan T. Waterman Award

    Harvard engineer Robert J. Wood has been named one of two recipients of the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Model situation?

    Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown that the primary explanation for the reduction in CO2 emissions from power generation that year was that a decrease in the price of natural gas reduced the industry’s reliance on coal.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A swimsuit like shark skin? Not so fast

    Experiments conducted in a Harvard lab reveal that, while sharks’ sandpaperlike skin does allow the animals to swim faster and more efficiently, the structure of some high-tech swimsuits has no effect when it comes to reducing drag as swimmers move through the water.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Physics at 2,500 feet

    In 1934, a group of enterprising young Turks pooled their money and bought construction plans for a glider. Pioneers in the infancy of aviation, they built it by hand, out of wood and fabric, and when the time came for its maiden flight, they drew straws.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Where wild food matters

    A postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Environment, Christopher Golden, is the lead author of a paper. It says that in societies where people rely on bush meat for important micronutrients, people’s lost access to wildlife could hurt children’s health

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tailored to fit

    The dramatic diversity of columbine flowers can be explained by a simple change in cell shape. To match the pollinators’ probing tongues, the flowers’ cells in floral spurs elongate, driving rapid speciation.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    SEAS brings good things to light

    By nestling quantum dots in an insulating egg-crate structure, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have demonstrated a robust new architecture for quantum-dot light-emitting devices (QD-LEDs).

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Understanding interference

    In a discovery that might eventually lead to new biomedical treatments for disease, researchers from Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology have identified two types of RNA that are able to move between cells as part of a process called RNA-interference (RNAi).

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    What’s behind the predictably loopy gut

    Between conception and birth, the human gut grows more than two meters long, looping and coiling within the tiny abdomen. Within a given species, the developing vertebrate gut always loops into the same formation — however, until now, it has not been clear why.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gauging forest changes

    Harvard scientists are leading an international collaboration that aims to coordinate research, data collection, scientist training, and analysis of information gleaned from two networks of forest plots, one through the Harvard-affiliated Center for Tropical Forest Science and the second created by Chinese scientists.

    3 minutes