Featured series 
Tag: Science
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Arts & Culture
Libraries launch ‘Expeditions and Discoveries’
Harvard’s Open Collections Program has launched “Expeditions and Discoveries: Sponsored Exploration and Scientific Discovery in the Modern Age.” Through the new collection, Internet users can find thousands of maps, photographs, and published materials, along with field notes, letters, and unique manuscript materials on sponsored exploration and related scientific discoveries between 1626 and 1953.
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Campus & Community
Harvard hosts Science Across the City
In a sun-drenched conference room on the second floor of Maxwell Dworkin Hall, about 40 fourth- and fifth-graders from the Elihu Greenwood and Louis Agassiz schools in Boston gathered for some hands-on experiments with Harvard graduate students.
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Health
‘Super-recognizers’ are the ones who really will never forget a face
Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who’ve discovered a group they call “super-recognizers”: those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.
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Science & Tech
Understanding materials to make microdevices
In the 1990s, semiconductor companies began to incorporate a wider variety of materials into the construction of computer chips, selecting materials based on how they would perform electrically and not necessarily on how they would stand up to the rigors of the manufacturing process or continued use.
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Health
Patients expect computers to play major role in health care
As President Obama calls for streamlining heath care by fully converting to electronic medical records, and as Congress prepares to debate issues of patient privacy, one question has largely gone unasked: What do patients want?
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Arts & Culture
How’d the Russians get the H-bomb?
Ever hear of Elugelab? Until Oct. 31, 1952, it was an island on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Then it vanished, consumed in the fireball of the world’s first hydrogen bomb.
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Campus & Community
Eck delivers Gifford Lectures
Diana Eck, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society and member of the faculty of divinity, recently traveled to Scotland to deliver a series of Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh (April 27-May 7). The lecture series, which was established in 1888 through the endowment of Lord Gifford to four Scottish Universities…
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Nation & World
Still ‘two cultures’ but who’s on top?
Fifty years ago a simple lecture sparked a global debate with lasting implications. On May 7, 1959, British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow declared that the gap between “two cultures,” that of the sciences and the humanities, was a destructive divide hampering the effort to find solutions to the problems of the world.
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Science & Tech
Looking for subatomic insights in Minnesota
After years of planning, officials broke ground this month for a new high-energy physics experiment that will probe the behavior of one of the basic particles that make up the universe: the neutrino.
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Science & Tech
Kepler starts search for other Earths
As NASA’s Kepler space telescope this week begins scanning the Milky Way for planets that might harbor life, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) are keeping their fingers crossed and waiting for the data to start flowing.
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Science & Tech
Spiral swimmers may be new workhorses
Harvard researchers have created a new type of microscopic swimmer: a magnetized spiral that corkscrews through liquids and is able to deliver chemicals and push loads larger than itself.
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Science & Tech
Embryo’s heartbeat drives blood stem cell formation
Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two groups of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston (Children’s) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) — presenting multiple lines of evidence from zebrafish, mice, and mouse embryonic stem…
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Science & Tech
Climate Collaborative’s report suggests culture change
Last year, Harvard University pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2016. That ambitious goal raised a single big question: How?
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Health
Whitesides receives inaugural Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation announced that George M. Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, has won the inaugural Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences.
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Campus & Community
Jain and Vafa honored by NAS
Rakesh K. Jain, the A. Werk Cook Professor of Radiation Oncology for Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the affiliated faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Cumrun Vafa, the Donner Professor of Science in the Department of Physics, have been recently elected into the National Academy…
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Campus & Community
Jerry Mitrovica named geophysics professor
Theoretical geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, whose studies of the Earth’s structure and evolution have important implications for our understanding of climate and sea-level changes throughout Earth’s history, has been named professor of geophysics in Harvard University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, effective July 1.
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Campus & Community
Mark Kisin joins Harvard as professor of mathematics
Mark Kisin, one of the world’s most promising young number theorists, has been named professor of mathematics in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), effective July 1.
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Science & Tech
Molecular secrets in atomic nuclei
For Navin Khaneja, spinning nuclei are like atomic spies. With a little coaxing, they will tell the secrets of the molecules in which they sit.
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Science & Tech
Nectar nurtures pitcher plant’s eating habits
New research from the Harvard Forest shows that carnivorous pitcher plants use sweet nectar to attract ants and flies to their water-filled traps, not color, as earlier research had indicated.
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Science & Tech
Vocal mimicking, sense of rhythm tied
Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying…
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Health
Lack of sleep is easier on older adults than others
In a recent sleep study testing alertness and performance in sleep-deprived adults, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) determined that healthy older adults handle sleep deprivation better than younger adults. The findings appeared online on May 3, in an advance online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
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Science & Tech
Life in the universe? Almost certainly. Intelligence? Maybe not
We are likely not alone in the universe, though it may feel like it, since life on other planets is probably dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures, according to scientists who gave their take on extraterrestrial life at Harvard last week.
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Nation & World
Geneticist ‘who doesn’t believe in God’ offers new conception of divine
The Paul Tillich Lecture, offered annually at Harvard since 1990, commemorates the memory of a public intellectual who was once “the largest theological figure in our orbit,” said The Rev. Peter J. Gomes.
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Liu wins Wendell scholarship; Nye, Walt, and Ruggie recognized by Trip; Witzel receives recognition; CID awards Quadir prize; Koven-Matasy ’10 named Beinecke Scholar; Cheng named to USA Today All-USA College Academic Team; Satcher to give Richmond Lecture; Allison to receive NAS award
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Arts & Culture
Performance rings old bones with sounds of ‘selection’
The Harvard Museum of Natural History’s galleries rang with music Tuesday evening (April 28) as the facility’s fossils made room for musicians performing seven original classical pieces written in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”
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Health
Raising happy — and moral — children
A teenager tells her parents she is considering quitting her soccer team. Worried that her daughter is unhappy, her mother wants to let her skip practice. Her father argues that soccer is important on her college résumé. While both parents are concerned about their child, they neglect another question entirely: How would her leaving affect…
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Science & Tech
Jefferson Lab Harvard’s newest historic site
The American Physical Society (APS) designated Jefferson Physical Laboratory a historical site in a special ceremony on Monday (April 27).
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Health
Scholars discuss ‘medicalization’ of formerly normal characteristics
Not long ago, a majority of Americans described themselves as “shy,” a condition of reticence or caution that for ages just seemed natural.
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Health
Two Harvard freshmen recognized by Discover Magazine
Harvard College freshmen Anastasia Roda and Isha Jain have recently been featured in Discover Magazine’s “Teen Genius: 5 Promising Scientists Under 20,” which highlights outstanding young scientists who tackle some of the biggest challenges in science.
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Health
HMS Dean’s Symposium on Clinical and Translational Research set
Harvard Medical School (HMS) will host a two-day Dean’s Symposium on Clinical and Translational Research on April 30 and May 1. Students, trainees, and faculty who are engaged in, or are interested in, clinical and translational research will convene for the first event of this kind.