Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • Defending science in a post-fact era

    Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, author of “Why Trust Science?,” discusses the five pillars necessary for science to be considered trustworthy, the evidentiary value of self-reporting, and her Red State Pledge.

    Portrait of Naomi Oreskes, author of "Why Trust Science?"
  • Genome editing with precision

    Researchers have created a system called prime editing, a new CRISPR genome-editing approach that has the potential to correct up to 89 percent of known disease-causing genetic variations.

    Portion of graphic on CRISPR
  • Real texture for lab-grown meat

    Researchers are able to build muscle fibers, giving lab-grown meat the texture meat lovers seek.

    Images of gelatin fibers taken by scanning electron microscopy.
  • Scientists pinpoint neural activity’s role in human longevity

    The brain’s neural activity, long implicated in disorders ranging from dementia to epilepsy, also plays a role in human aging and life span, according to research led by scientists in the Blavatnik Institute.

    Mice lacking the protein REST (bottom) showed much higher neural activity in the brain than normal mice.
  • A reliable clock for your microbiome

    The microbiome is a treasure trove of information about human health and disease, but getting it to reveal its secrets is challenging, especially when attempting to study it in living subjects. A new genetic “repressilator” lets scientists noninvasively study its dynamics, acting like a clock that tracks how bacterial growth changes over time with single-cell precision.

    Colonies of bacteria
  • CRISPR enzyme programmed to kill viruses in human cells

    Researchers have turned a CRISPR enzyme into an antiviral that can be programmed to detect and destroy RNA-based viruses in human cells.

    CrispR illustration
  • Unhidden figures

    LaNell Williams wants to encourage more women of color to pursue doctorate degrees in fields such as physics. To help make that happen, she founded the Women+ of Color Project, which last week hosted a three-day workshop that invited 20 African American, Latinx, and Native American women interested in pursuing a career in a STEM field to Harvard.

    Vinothan Manoharan and Lanell Williams
  • Is technology evil?

    A HubWeek panel exploring ethics in the digital world featured computer scientist and entrepreneur Rana el Kaliouby and Harvard Professor Danielle Allen.

    Rana el Kaliouby and Danielle Allen
  • Red flags rise on global warming and the seas

    The world’s oceans, glaciers, and ice caps are under assault by climate change. The Gazette spoke with former Obama science adviser John Holdren about the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report examining the threat.

    John Holdren
  • Tiny tweezers

    Using precisely focused lasers that act as “optical tweezers,” Harvard scientists have been able to capture and control individual ultracold molecules – the eventual building-blocks of a quantum computer – and study the collisions between them in more detail than ever before.

    optical tweezers in use
  • The shape-shifting of things to come

    What would it take to transform a flat sheet into a human face? How would the sheet need to grow and shrink to form eyes that are concave, a nose…

  • First video of viruses assembling

    For the first time, Harvard researchers have captured images of individual viruses forming, offering a real-time view into the kinetics of viral assembly.

    A type 3 poliovirus capsid coloured by chains
  • Innovating an innovation

    HubWeek fall festival takes place Oct. 1‒3 in Boston’s Seaport District.

    Hubweek event
  • Ending ‘dead zones’

    Harvard scientists are teaming up with sustainability officers and landscaping experts to test a new fertilizer that won’t wash into water supplies.

    Hands holding dirt
  • Up close and personal with neuronal networks

    Researchers from Harvard University have developed an electronic chip that can perform high-sensitivity intracellular recording from thousands of connected neurons simultaneously, allowing them to identify hundreds of synaptic connections.

    Neurons on device
  • The future of mind control

    A new paper explores why neuron-like implants could offer a better way to treat brain disorders, control prosthetics, or even enhance cognitive abilities.

    raditional-neural-electrodes-versus-mesh-electronics
  • Solve ocean’s troubles and climate change too?

    Experts from Harvard and beyond gathered Monday to discuss the oceans’ plight in a warming world, offering hopeful solutions despite the often bleak assessment prompted by warming, pollution, acidification, and coral bleaching.

  • Break it up

    Researchers at Harvard and Cornell have discovered exactly how a reactive copper-nitrene catalyst could transform a strong carbon-hydrogen bonds into a carbon-nitrogen bond, a valuable building block for chemical synthesis.

    Erving Professor of Chemistry Theodore A. Betley and graduate student Kurtis Carsch
  • A shot in the arm for vaccine research

    Immunology research at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard has advanced an HIV vaccine into the clinic, and will diversify thanks to a major gift from Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon.

    Group of students
  • A precise chemical fingerprint of the Amazon

    A group of researchers are using a drone-based chemical monitoring system to track the health of the Amazon in the face of global climate change and human-caused deforestation and burning.

    A drone flies over the amazon
  • Playing our song

    Samuel Mehr has long been interested in questions of what music is, how music works, and why music exists. To help find the answers, he’s created the Music Lab, an online, citizen-science project aimed at understanding not just how the human mind interprets music, but why music is a virtually ubiquitous feature of human societies.

  • 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