Science & Tech

All Science & Tech

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.”

  • 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.

    Radcliffe fellow and food activist Julie Guthman
  • 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.

  • 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.”

  • 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.

    Student being bullied by a group of students
  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Students aiding the environment

    Five undergraduate women from Harvard College talk about how they spent the summer researching climate and ecological stresses.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    Professor of Government and Technology in Residence, Department of Government Latanya Sweeney
  • 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.”

    Seattle Times environmental reporter Lynda Mapes (left) turned her fellowship year at Harvard Forest, during which she focused on a single oak tree, into a book titled "Witness Tree."
  • Revising the language of addiction

    Harvard experts say that changing the language of addiction is key to fighting the stigma attached to it.

  • Voices from the Incas’ past

    An undergraduate deciphers the meaning of Incan knots, giving long-dead native South American people a chance to speak.

  • 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.

  • The social cycle of repression

    A Harvard study links an individual’s psychological basis for enforcing group hierarchies to national indicators.

  • Eclipses, through the years

    As photography developed, Harvard astronomers embraced it as a scientific means to understand the sky.

  • No harm, no foul

    Researchers at SEAS, the Wyss Institute, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a nontoxic coating that deters marine life from attaching to surfaces in a breakthrough for maritime travel and commerce.

  • Viewing the solar eclipse? There’s an app for that

    The Smithsonian and Harvard have released an interactive app ahead of the 2017 total solar eclipse, giving Americans a front-row seat to a rare celestial event.

  • The negative side of positive thinking

    “It often seems that partisans believe they are so correct that others will eventually come to see the obviousness of their correctness,” said Todd Rogers of the Harvard Kennedy School about his new research.

    girl in field laughing
  • Gauging street change over time

    Study uses computer vision algorithm to study Google Street View images to show urban shifts.

  • Robotic suit promotes normal walking in stroke patients

    Wyss Institute’s soft, wearable, robotic suit promotes normal walking in stroke patients.

  • Last survivors on Earth

    A testament to the resiliency of life, the microscopic tardigrade can survive any cosmic calamity, according to an Oxford-Harvard study.

  • Scientists are using the universe as a ‘cosmological collider’

    Using universe as cosmological collider could provide information that leads to the sign of new physics.

  • Wielding chainsaws for science

    A collaboration between the Arnold Arboretum and the U.S. Forest Service has the two organizations, which typically fight tree pests, rearing wood-boring beetles for science.

  • New CRISPR technology takes cells to the movies

    CRISPR system-based technology enables the chronological recording of digital information, turning living cells into a biological hard drive that can record information.