Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • A silly-sounding prize for some serious science

    Harvard-trained researchers win Golden Goose Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • An umbrella to combat warming

    Harvard’s Keutsch Research Group is working on a controversial idea that might someday be our best hope against climate change: stratospheric aerosol injection.

    Frank Keutsch stand is a thermal vacuum chamber
  • Life on the ice

    Harvard researchers describe life in the South Pole.

    Auroras as seen from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station..
  • A ‘Goldilocks zone’ for planet size

    Researchers have redefined the lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called habitable zone for small, low-gravity planets.

    moon Ganymede orbits the giant planet Jupi
  • A SWIFTer way to build organs

    A new technique called SWIFT (sacrificial writing into functional tissue) ultimately may be used therapeutically to repair and replace human organs with lab-grown versions containing patients’ own cells.

    SWIFT vascular channels
  • Lessons in learning

    Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

    two students looking at notebook together
  • Hunters, herders, companions: Breeding dogs has reordered their brains

    Erin Hecht, who joined the faculty in January, has published her first paper on our canine comrades in the Journal of Neuroscience, finding that different breeds have different brain organizations owing to human cultivation of specific traits.

    Researcher with two dogs
  • Fighting flora with fauna

    Scientists at the Arnold Arboretum are employing a species of predator moth to fight the invasive swallow-wort vine.

    Releasing moths
  • Pancreas on a chip

    Islet-on-a-chip technology allows clinicians to easily determine the therapeutic value of beta cells for any given patient.

    Islet on a chip
  • A gentle grip on gelatinous creatures

    To study jellyfish and other fragile marine life without damaging them, researchers developed ultra-soft underwater grippers that catch and release jellyfish without harm.

    Soft robotic grippers for jellyfish
  • Exposing how pancreatic cancer does its dirty work

    New research has found that pancreatic cancer actively destroys nearby blood vessels and replaces them with cancerous cells, blocking chemotherapy from reaching tumors. This insight could lead to new treatments that act by preventing cancer’s colonization of blood vessels.

    Pancreatic cancer cell
  • How a zebrafish model may hold a key to biology

    Martin Haesemeyer set out to build an artificial neural network that worked differently than fish’s brains, but what he got was a system that almost perfectly mimicked the zebrafish — and that could be a powerful tool for understanding biology.

    Researchers looking at zebrafish
  • Want to avoid climate-related disasters? Try moving

    For decades, the response to flooding and hurricanes was a vow to rebuild. A.R. Siders believes the time has come to consider managed retreat, or the practice of moving communities away from disaster-prone areas to safer lands.

    Storm surge hitting houses along coast.
  • Clever crows

    A new paper, co-authored by Dakota McCoy, a graduate student working in the lab of George Putnam Professor of Biology David Haig, suggests that, after using tools, crows were more optimistic.

    Crow with tool
  • Prospects clouded for finding life on the largest class of planets

    Led by Laura Kreidberg, a Clay Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a new study shows that LHS 3844b, a terrestrial exoplanet orbiting a small sun 48.6 light-years away, has no detectable atmosphere

    planet is depicted as being largely covered with dark basalt plains.
  • How the moon came to be

    A fourth-year graduate student in the lab of Professor of Geochemistry Stein Jacobsen, Yaray Ku is working on a project aimed at understanding how the moon formed, and to do it, she’s working with actual lunar samples.

    Yaya Ku researches the moon
  • Astronomy Lab sees the light — and wants everyone else to, too

    Accessibility devices at the lab use sound to allow the visually impaired to envision the stars

    Astronomy lab manager showing braille in the astronomy lab
  • Uncovering how cells become organs

    Tiny sensors are embedded into stretchable, integrated mesh that grows with the developing tissue, allowing scientists to track how cells grow into organs.

    Contraction of cyborg human cardiac organoid
  • A red oak live tweets climate change

    Tree in Harvard Forest outfitted with sensors, cameras, and other digital equipment sends out on-the-ground coverage.

    Tree branches with blue birds
  • Predicting the strength of earthquakes

    Scientists will be able to predict earthquake magnitudes earlier thanks to new research by Marine Denolle, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard.

    Professor and students looking at earthquake chart.
  • Mercury levels in fish are on the rise

    A new study concludes that while the regulation of mercury emissions have successfully reduced methylmercury levels in fish, spiking temperatures are driving those levels back up and will play a major role in the methylmercury levels of marine life in the future.

    Fish swimming in ocean
  • Giving teachers a DNA refresher

    Mansi Srivastava’s lab worked with middle school teachers in an education workshop on DNA and evolution.

    teachers participating in a workshop
  • The Mesoamerican attraction to magnetism

    Led by Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Roger Fu, a team of researchers has shown that the makers of ancient Mesoamerican statues found in Guatemala intentionally carved the figures to place the magnetic areas over the navel or right temple — suggesting not only that they were familiar with the concept of magnetism, but had some way of detecting the magnetic anomalies.

  • Electrifying insights into how bodies form

    A researcher is reviving the study of bioelectricity to learn how cells communicate with each other to form tissues and organs, and how harnessing those signals could one day lead to truly regenerative medicine, in which amputees could simply regrow limbs.

    Mike Levin
  • Visual forensics that can detect fake text

    Researchers at the SEAS and IBM Research developed a better way to help people detect AI-generated text.

    Typewriter with word fake typed out
  • Using body heat to speed healing

    To speeding up wound healing, researchers have developed active adhesive dressings based on heat-responsive hydrogels that are mechanically active, stretchy, tough, highly adhesive, and antimicrobial.

    Hand with tough gel adhesive bandage
  • A new spin on an old question

    Understanding how DNA and proteins interact — or fail to — could help answer fundamental biological questions about human health and disease.

    A rendering of a DNA propeller
  • A way to make Mars habitable

    Researchers from Harvard University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and the University of Edinburgh suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that would mimic Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect.

    Robin Wordsworth
  • Harvard reflects on Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s moon walk

    A trio of Harvard astronomers reflect on the impact of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, then and now.

    Earthrise viewed from lunar orbit.
  • Beneath the surface

    New study debunks long-held theory that dolphins had ridged skin, which helped them swim faster.

    Dolphins swimming