Tag: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

  • Nation & World

    Managing just fine

    Measurements of stress hormones and self-reports of anxiety show that leaders in stable organizations experience less stress than their subordinates, likely because they have greater control over their office lives.

    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

    Giving slime the slip

    A team of Harvard scientists has developed a slick way to prevent the troublesome biofilms from ever forming on a surface.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Straight to the source

    As described in an April 23 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), graduate students Eric Morrow and Carling Hay demonstrate the use of a statistical tool called a Kalman smoother to identify “sea level fingerprints” — telltale variations in sea level rise — in a synthetic data set. Using those…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scientists restore basic vision in lab mice

    A researcher at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School has regenerated optic nerves in laboratory animals and restored basic vision to the animals.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dangerous heat

    New research from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that seemingly small changes in summer temperature swings may shorten life expectancy for elderly people with chronic medical conditions, and could result in thousands of additional deaths each year.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Buckling under pressure

    Inspired by a spherical toy that expands and collapses, researchers at Harvard and MIT have created a new type of engineered capsule, called a “buckliball,” that exploits the phenomenon of buckling. The buckliball is the first morphable structure to incorporate buckling as a desirable engineering design element.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New frontier in archaeology

    Jason Ur, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, worked with Bjoern Menze of MIT to develop a system that identified ancient settlements based on a series of factors — including soil discolorations and the distinctive mounding that results from the collapse of mud-brick settlements.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Taste test

    Using friendship data collected from Facebook, Harvard sociologists have found that people who share similar interests in music and movies are more likely to befriend one another, but that very few interests are likely to spread among friends.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Soft-bots

    Harvard Professor George Whitesides and his research team have developed an array of “soft” robots based on natural forms, including squids and starfish, that may one day be used to aid disaster recovery efforts by squeezing into the rubble left by an earthquake to locate survivors, or as a way to free up a surgeon’s…

    5 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

    Nice guys can finish first

    Nice guys can finish first — a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that complex social networks like those of everyday life encourage members to be friendlier and more cooperative, with the possible payoff coming in an expanded social sphere. The study said selfish behavior can lead…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Why cooking counts

    In a first-of-its-kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that challenges the current food labeling system and suggests humans are evolutionarily adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The efficient caveman cook

    Harvard researchers say the rise of cooking likely occurred more than 1.9 million years ago and bestowed on human ancestors a gift of time in the form of hours each day not spent eating.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New approach to traumatic brain injuries

    Bioengineers at Harvard have, for the first time, explained how the blast of an exploding bomb can translate into subtly disastrous injuries in the nerve cells and blood vessels of the brain.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Clues on how flowering plants spread

    Researchers at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum have highlighted female competition among plants, saying it is a new factor that could have driven the mystifying diversity of flowering plants.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    How the lily blooms

    SEAS research has revealed that differential growth and ruffling at the edges of each petal — not in the midrib, as commonly suggested — provide the force behind the lily’s bloom. The work contradicts earlier theories regarding the growth within the flower bud.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Cells flow like glass, study finds

    Harvard-led research has found that migrating tissue flows very much like colloidal glass. The research advances scientists’ understanding of wound healing, cancer metastasis, and embryonic development.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Slimy secrets

    Harvard researchers have discovered that Bacillus subtilis biofilm colonies exhibit an unmatched ability to repel a wide range of liquids — and even vapors. The finding holds promise for developing better ways to eliminate harmful biofilms that can clog pipes, contaminate food production and water supply systems, and lead to infections.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Squeezing life into patients

    Engineers at Duke and Harvard universities have developed a “magnetic sponge” that after implantation into a patient can “squeeze” out drugs, cells, or other agents when passed over by a magnet.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Teeth marks

    A sophisticated examination of teeth from 11 Neanderthal and early human fossils suggests that modern humans’ slow development and long childhood are recent and unique to our own species, and may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    It all adds up

    New mathematical modeling by scientists from Harvard and other institutions reinforces the view of cancer as a complex culmination of many mutations.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    More from spores: How they spread

    Researchers discover how fungi developed an aerodynamic way to reduce drag on their spores so as to spread them as high and as far as possible.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    I’ll get mine, Jack

    A new paper suggests that the mutually beneficial relationships that species create are maintained mostly because of simple self-interest.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Evolution and ailments

    The pressures of human evolution could explain the apparent rise of disorders such as autoimmune diseases and autism, researchers say. Some adaptations may even help such ailments persist.

    3 minutes