Tag: Peter Reuell

  • Health

    Reading shapes

    A team of Harvard researchers has demonstrated that a shared developmental mechanism in songbirds is responsible for generating tremendous variability in their beaks, and is also a control on what kind variation can be produced.

  • Campus & Community

    Beyond the horizon

    Harvard is immersed in understanding the world and improving it. Here’s how the University is making a difference now, and likely will do so in the next decade, in five key fields.

  • Health

    Strategy for diabetes treatment

    Harvard scientists have discovered a compound that inhibits insulin-degrading enzyme from breaking down insulin in the body.

  • Health

    Parental controls

    It could be that the key to being a better parent is all in your head, Harvard researchers say.

  • Science & Tech

    Flipping the switch

    Harvard researchers have succeeded in creating quantum switches that can be turned on and off using a single photon, an achievement that could pave the way for the creation of highly secure quantum networks.

  • Science & Tech

    Annals of climate

    Professor Michael McCormick will lead a project aimed at constructing the most detailed historical record yet of European climate.

  • Campus & Community

    Meaningful meal

    Donors and students recently gathered for the Celebration of Scholarships dinner, an annual event that brings together students who benefit from financial aid with donors who support the program.

  • Science & Tech

    MRI, on a molecular scale

    A team of scientists led by Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics Amir Yacoby has developed a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system that can produce nanoscale images, and may one day allow researchers to peer into the atomic structure of individual molecules.

  • Campus & Community

    A specialist in hows and whys

    Matthew Rabin wants to know what makes you tick. One of the nation’s top scholars of behavioral economics, Rabin has been appointed to the first of three endowed professorships in…

  • Health

    Rules of evolution

    For most people, rock-paper-scissors is a game used to settle disputes on the playground. For biologists, however, it is a powerful guide for understanding the key role mutation plays in…

  • Health

    A face is not a fish

    A new study from Dartmouth and Harvard researchers looks at the mechanisms behind facial recognition.

  • Campus & Community

    Opening academia widely

    In an effort to dispel the notion that graduate school and careers in academia are generally beyond the reach of minority students, Harvard hosted the second Ivy Plus Symposium.

  • Health

    Fair-minded birds

    New research conducted at Harvard demonstrates sharing behavior in African grey parrots.

  • Science & Tech

    Getting to the source

    A team of Harvard researchers has demonstrated that the bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris can use natural conductivity to pull electrons from minerals located remotely in soil and sediment while remaining at the surface, where it absorbs the sunlight needed to produce energy.

  • Health

    Key connection

    Scientists have long suggested that the best way to settle the debate about how phenotypic plasticity may be connected to evolution would be to identify a mechanism that controls both. Harvard researchers say they have discovered just such a mechanism in insulin signaling in fruit flies.

  • Science & Tech

    Hierarchical differences

    Female academics are less likely to collaborate across rank, a Harvard study found.

  • Science & Tech

    Bringing order to the court

    New Harvard research points to a sharper method for evaluating basketball players.

  • Science & Tech

    Heads for steel

    In the Instructional Physics/SEAS Instrument Lab, a machine shop tucked in the basement of Lyman Laboratory, students learn to use a range of equipment — everything from lathes to laser cutters to 3-D printers.

  • Science & Tech

    Negative plus

    Led by Professor David Liu, a team of researchers has developed a technique to continuously evolve biomolecules that uses negative selection — the ability to drive evolution away from certain traits — to create molecules with dramatically altered properties.

  • Science & Tech

    Curves alter crystallization, study finds

    A new study has uncovered a previously unseen phenomenon — that curved surfaces can dramatically alter the shape of crystals as they form.

  • Science & Tech

    Mars rover, slightly used, runs fine

    Originally scheduled to operate on the Red Planet’s surface for 90 Martian days, the rover Opportunity has now logged more than 3,500 days, traveled nearly 39 kilometers, and collected a trove of data that scientists have used to study the planet’s early history, particularly any past traces of water.

  • Health

    Study ties fetal sex to milk production

    A new study offers the first evidence that fetal sex can affect the amount of milk cows produce, a finding that could have major economic implications for dairy farmers.

  • Health

    ‘On’ switches for cells

    Scientists at Harvard have identified a previously unknown embryonic signal, dubbed Toddler, that instructs cells to move and reorganize themselves, through a process known as gastrulation, into three layers.

  • Campus & Community

    A break to explore

    January@GSAS offered more than 100 classes, seminars, and training sessions to students in Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences during semester break. Students had the chance to escape the lab or library, and spend time exploring subjects that might not otherwise appear in a Harvard course catalog.

  • Health

    Inconsistent? Good

    Though variability is often portrayed as a flaw to be overcome, Harvard researchers now say that, in motor function, it is a key feature of the nervous system that helps promote better or more successful ways to perform a particular action.

  • Health

    Something doesn’t smell right

    Harvard scientists say they’re closer to unraveling one of the most basic questions in neuroscience — how the brain encodes likes and dislikes — with the discovery of the first receptors in any species evolved to detect cadaverine and putrescine, two of the chemical byproducts responsible for the distinctive — and to most creatures repulsive…

  • Health

    Fin to limb

    New research brings scientists closer to unraveling one of the longest-standing questions in evolutionary biology — whether limbs, particularly hind limbs, evolved before or after early vertebrates left the oceans for life on land.

  • Science & Tech

    Rethinking the roots of altruism

    In a new study, Harvard researchers find that inclusive fitness — for decades a standard tool in understanding how altruism evolved — often leads to incorrect conclusions.

  • Science & Tech

    Measuring electrons

    In making the most precise measurements ever of the shape of electrons, Harvard and Yale scientists have raised serious doubts about several popular theories of what lies beyond the Higgs boson.

  • Health

    Your gut’s what you eat, too

    A new Harvard study shows that, in as little as a day, diet can alter the population of microbes in the gut – particularly those that tolerate bile – as well as the types of genes expressed by gut bacteria.