Science & Tech

A new study suggests that infant-directed song evolved as a way for parents to signal to children that their needs were being met, while leaving time for other tasks, like food foraging or caring for other offspring.

Seven Harvard projects will share $1 million to help battle climate change across a range of academic boundaries.

A trio of Harvard researchers has developed a new 3-D pictorial language for mathematics with potential as a tool across a wide spectrum, from pure math to physics.

Researchers have shown, for the first time, that chimpanzees learn certain grooming behaviors from their mothers. Once learned, chimps continued to perform the behavior long after the deaths of their mothers.

Based on data collected from a French grocery store chain, a new Harvard study has found that minority workers were far less efficient in a handful of important metrics when working with biased managers.

The Gazette speaks to Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and a past member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, about the future of the EPA under the leadership of Scott Pruitt.

A new Harvard study argues that technological approaches to sustainability must be accompanied by efforts to reduce inequality.

A Nobel Prize-winning chemist has called for additional research into the air pollution blanketing the world’s megacities, saying that solutions found in the developed world’s cities are not likely to apply in other places.

In a trio of studies published earlier this month, researchers have shown that the process of catalysis is more dynamic than previously imagined, and that molecular forces can vastly influence the process.

Harvard study is the first to show that working in high-performing, green-certified buildings can improve employee decision-making using objective cognitive simulations.

Students threw paper airplanes in class for inspiration, not trouble, in a workshop led by a record-setting designer.

There are thousands of unapproved chemicals, often banned elsewhere, in the U.S. environment, panelists at a Harvard forum say.

The inaugural session of the Harvard DataFest conference brought attention to Harvard’s growing interest in data science.

A study suggests that while psychopaths do feel regret, however, it doesn’t affect their choices.

A course featuring adaptive learning explores the technological feasibility, implications, and design of such a system to improve massive open online courses.

A new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History brings an artist’s view to the ongoing extinction crisis affecting the planet.

Nearly a century after it was theorized, Harvard scientists have succeeded in creating metallic hydrogen. In addition to helping scientists answer some fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the material is theorized to have a wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature superconductor.

Researchers have developed a customizable soft robot that fits around a heart and helps it beat, potentially opening new treatment options for people suffering from heart failure.

The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics included lab tours, lectures, and practical discussion on research, grad school applications, how to deal with discrimination and implicit bias, and finding mentors.

A group of Harvard researchers is taking a new approach to the challenge of developing new catalysts.

Shorter city blocks stimulate urban life, but if they’re too short, people spend too much time crossing roads, and the streetscape suffers, study says.

Venkatesh Narayanamurti, he former dean of Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is suggesting doing away with the traditional applied/basic research divide in favor of one that encourages greater collaboration and a two-way path between discovery and invention.

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has established a collaborative research agreement with Facebook, which establishes a platform to quickly and easily pursue joint or sponsored research projects with the company.

Using the atomic-scale quantum defects in diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy centers to detect the magnetic field generated by neural signals, scientists working in the lab of Ronald Walsworth, a faculty member in Harvard’s Center for Brain Science and Physics Department, demonstrated a noninvasive technique that can show the activity of neurons.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver, built out of an assembly of atomic-scale defects in pink diamonds.

On a visit to Harvard, best-selling author Michael Lewis talked about the deep friendship and pioneering collaboration of famed psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work created the field of behavioral economics.

Four experts gathered at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for a panel concerning the impact of climate change on agriculture and the global food system, with an emphasis on the United States and Africa, and a nod toward what the incoming Trump administration might do about the issue.

Students taking part in a new freshman seminar class learn to appreciate the sophistication of Neanderthals by manufacturing their own stone tools from scratch.

To halt the rise of global temperatures, Harvard researchers are looking at solar geoengineering, which would inject light-reflecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the planet.

Harvard University achieves ambitious climate goal set in 2008.