Science & Tech
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The answer to your search may depend on where you live
Researchers find ‘language bias’ in various site algorithms, raising concerns about fallout for social divisions among nations
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Putting human past on the MAPS
Harvard digital atlas plots patterns from history ancient and modern
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Does AI help humans make better decisions?
One judge’s track record — with and without algorithm — surprises researchers
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Tracking entwined histories of malaria, humans
New study of ancient genomes tracks disease over 5,500 years, factors in spread, including trade, warfare, colonialism, and slavery
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Want to make robots more agile? Take a lesson from a rat.
Scientists create realistic virtual rodent with digital neural network to study how brain controls complex, coordinated movement
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More than a planetary fender-bender
New study finds Earth collided with dense interstellar cloud, possibly affecting life on planet
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Feast for the mind
The General Education course “Ancient Lives” connects undergrads with the earliest civilizations.
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Opioid deaths jump
A new Harvard study shows people who end up in the hospital due to an opioid-related condition are four times more likely to die now than they were in 2000.
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Climate made scary
Journalist David Wallace-Wells and others debated the most effective way to communicate climate urgency in a Harvard discussion.
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Researchers create quantum calculator
Researchers have developed a special type of quantum computer, known as a quantum simulator, that is programmed by capturing super-cooled rubidium atoms with lasers and arranging them in a specific order, then allowing quantum mechanics to do the necessary calculations.
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Skin pigmentation is far more complex than thought
The genetics of skin pigmentation become progressively complex the closer populations reside to the equator.
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Babies understand cost-reward tradeoffs behind others’ actions, study says
Harvard and MIT study reveals that babies understand the cost-reward tradeoffs behind others’ actions.
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Students help groups to pursue climate action
Harvard living lab course works to find practical alternatives to carbon use.
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Small media, big payback
Researchers found that if just three outlets write about a particular major national policy topic, discussion of that topic across social media rises by more than 62 percent.
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The selfie’s gone, but the damage is done
New HBS research examines whether we are less inhibited when posting on temporary social media and how others perceive the posts.
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History under the microscope
Researchers delivered lectures on recent findings to launch the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean.
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First glimpse of a kilonova, and Harvard was there
Marking the beginning of a new era in astrophysics, scientists for the first time have detected gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, or light, from the same event. Harvard researchers were pivotal in the work.
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When machines rule, should humans object?
Harvard scholars shared concerns and ideas in a HUBweek panel titled “Programming the Future of AI: Ethics, Governance, and Justice.”
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In surge of strawberries, some dirty details
Julie Guthman sets her sights on a tangled story involving land, plant breeding, border policy, pathogens, and highly effective, highly toxic soil fumigants.
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Putting tomorrow’s doctors on opioid alert
Gov. Charlie Baker joined HMS faculty members in discussing the opioid crisis and the role physician education must play in fighting it.
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How to defend against your own mind
Harvard psychology chair Mahzarin Banaji is working with a research fellow to launch a new project called “Outsmarting Human Minds.”
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Not a popularity contest
New research from faculty at Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School finds that a majority of college freshmen believe others have more friends than they do, when they often don’t.
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The robots are coming, but relax
As artificial intelligence takes hold in more fields, you’ll likely have a job, analysts say, but it may be a different one.
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New England is losing 65 acres of forest a day
A new Harvard Forest report, “Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities,” calls for tripling conservation efforts across the region.
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Connecting the dots in data sciences
Harvard’s new Data Science Initiative hosted its inaugural event, the first in a series of planned seminars featuring talks by faculty members focusing on new methods of managing and analyzing data and on cutting-edge applications.
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Students aiding the environment
Five undergraduate women from Harvard College talk about how they spent the summer researching climate and ecological stresses.
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A master of explaining the universe
Brian Greene ’84, a Columbia University theoretical physicist and mathematician, has made it his mission to illuminate the wonders of the universe for non-scientists.
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A pragmatic model to conserve land
Martha’s Vineyard is best known as a summer playground for the rich, but it’s also setting an important conservation example, according to a new book by Harvard Forest Director David Foster.
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Building a robot, developing a nation
Harvard College sophomore Sela Kasepa looked for robotics competitions that Zambian youth could join, and found FIRST Global, an annual student robotics Olympiad.
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Voting-roll vulnerability
Online attackers may be able to purchase enough personal information to alter voter registration information in as many as 35 states and the District of Columbia, a new study says.
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Branching out from her own tree of knowledge
Seattle Times environmental reporter Lynda Mapes turned her fellowship year at Harvard Forest into a book titled “Witness Tree.”
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Revising the language of addiction
Harvard experts say that changing the language of addiction is key to fighting the stigma attached to it.
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Voices from the Incas’ past
An undergraduate deciphers the meaning of Incan knots, giving long-dead native South American people a chance to speak.
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Paying the price of surviving childhood cancer
Study finds out-of-pocket health care costs can lead to financial problems for survivors of childhood cancer.
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The social cycle of repression
A Harvard study links an individual’s psychological basis for enforcing group hierarchies to national indicators.
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Eclipses, through the years
As photography developed, Harvard astronomers embraced it as a scientific means to understand the sky.