Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Science & Tech
Differences between vowels and consonants are real
While working with colleagues in Rome, two Harvard researchers serendipitously met two women with intriguing speech deficits. As the result of a stroke, one patient could not reproduce the sounds…
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Science & Tech
Despite some progress, segregation persists in Boston area
A report, “Segregation in the Boston Metropolitan Area at the End of the 20th Century,” found that despite the progress that disadvantaged minorities have made in achieving homeownership outside of…
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Science & Tech
Closing in on the ‘theory of everything’
A single theory describing nature’s four forces, called the “Theory of Everything,” has been the Holy Grail for physicists and other scientists seeking the universe’s deepest mysteries. Physicist Juan Maldacena…
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Health
Researchers switch cancer off and on in mice
An antibiotic added to the drinking water of mice stops the progress of leukemia. Harvard researcher Claudia Huettner cannot do the same thing in humans, unfortunately, but through such experiments…
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Science & Tech
High stakes tests in Texas threaten disadvantaged students
Texas is frequently cited as a national leader in efforts to raise academic performance and hold schools accountable for student performance. At the center of these efforts is the statewide…
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Science & Tech
Women priests, vegetarianism – early Christian manuscript holds surprises
In the early days of Christianity, when the first Christians were spreading the faith, diversity of belief was the norm rather than the exception. An early manuscript uncovered by a…
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Science & Tech
Study says children with cancer often suffer needlessly
“Since caregivers are very committed to curing their patients, it may be difficult for them to recognize when to incorporate palliative care into treatments, even when there’s little hope of…
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Science & Tech
New detector may open new window on the universe
A new receiver is capable of detecting and amplifying very-high- frequency signals with very fine frequency resolution, so it can detect the spectral lines, or chemical fingerprints, of interstellar molecules…
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Science & Tech
Little giants create a big cosmic controversy
A new measuring technique used to determine the distances to a class of stars called “Red Clumps” in the Large Magellanic Cloud produced a much smaller distance than that found…
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Science & Tech
Streamers of gas feed beast at center of our galaxy
Astronomers have long known that a supermassive black hole, more than 2 million times more massive than our Sun, lies at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy some 27,000…
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Science & Tech
Study finds biotech workers ‘thrive’ on instability
Marked by job insecurity, dependence on changing technology, and uncertain financing, the biotechnology industry is viewed by researchers as one of the best examples of the workplace of the future.…
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Science & Tech
State-of-the-art health guide created
Harvard Medical School believes it has a cure for problems associated with finding accurate, up-to-date medical information: a comprehensive (1,288 pages), $40 medical guide tied to a Web site that…
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Health
‘Take two aspirin and call me manana’
Harvard Medical School is attempting to bridge the language barriers that sometimes arise in medical settings. A set of three medical phrasebooks was first offered in 1999 in three different…
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Science & Tech
Black silicon: A new way to trap light
Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like…
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Science & Tech
Industrial disasters sparked field of environmental health
Two large, unnatural disasters helped to create the impetus for the field of environmental health to grow in scope. But before there was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before…
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Science & Tech
21 moons ‘swarm’ planet Uranus
In 1999 three new moons were discovered orbiting Uranus, a great gasball of a planet about 2 billion miles from Earth. The discovery raised the number of Uranian moons to…
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Science & Tech
New electronic tools reveal forgotten China
German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…
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Science & Tech
Exploring big and small possibilities of the information revolution
” ‘System-on-a-chip’ is the new buzzword today,” said Professor Woodward Yang in 1999. “It’s really not that far away.” As Yang sees it, the computer revolution is really just beginning.…
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Science & Tech
Student-designed lamp brightens Harvard dorms
Halogen lamps became increasingly popular through the ’90s. Their high-wattage bulbs gave off a clear, pleasant light and — at $15 to $25 — even a student could afford them.…