Science & Tech

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.

With big data becoming routine and applications penetrating even areas not traditionally thought of as data-heavy, Harvard is part of a multi-university collaboration designed to better store and provide faster access to the enormous data sets increasingly common in research into genomics, particle physics, and a host of other fields.

In a Harvard talk, ex-EPA official Robert Perciasepe outlined some narrow openings for bipartisanship on environmental issues.

Harvard experts gather to discuss climate change in all its complexity, and share some surprising views.

Harvard environmental experts looking ahead to a Trump administration see trouble for President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and U.S. international climate action, but add that the nation’s environmental protection regulatory framework would be difficult to dismantle, and there may be hope for new approaches to addressing environmental ills.

Harvard researchers found 90 percent of new or proposed hydroelectric power plants will increase the concentration of toxic methylmercury in the food web near indigenous communities in Canada.

The Gazette interviewed Robin Bronen, a human rights attorney and a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, on climate change displacement.

University of Arizona physicist Dimitrios Psaltis has devoted his Radcliffe fellowship to black hole imaging linked to the Event Horizon Telescope project.

Melting Arctic ice is opening the Northwest Passage, just a symptom of the accelerating warming in the Arctic and around the globe, speakers at a Radcliffe symposium on the oceans said.

During Tanner Lectures, Professor Dorothy E. Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, will explain how society leaned on flawed judgments about race.

Panelists at the Kennedy School discussed the possibility of hackers targeting the U.S. vote.

Harvard scholars Joshua Greene and Steven Pinker were joined by Princeton philosopher Peter Singer in a conversation examining how to be moral — and happy.

Harvard graduate student Molly Edwards is the creator and host of “Science IRL (In Real Life),” a YouTube channel she launched more than a year ago while working as a lab technician at New York University. The show is dedicated to taking viewers inside labs for an up-close-and-personal view of the day-to-day work of scientists.

A Harvard research summer at CERN in Switzerland can lead to hard work, sightseeing, and, for some, a lifetime in physics.

A reinvigorated “campus as a living laboratory” initiative includes two new, fully funded projects for that will tackle real-world challenges on campus or in the community, and lead to the practical application of emerging technologies or strategies regarding climate change.

Michael McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies, talks about his new book, “Energy and Climate: Vision for the Future.”

The Internet of Things is growing ever more sophisticated, enabling everything from smart cities to automatic appliances. A Harvard ethicist says we should think not just about what we can do, but what we should do.

The future of visual and augmented reality was the theme of a HUBweek event that attracted students, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, and software developers for an afternoon of demonstrations and discussions.

Aldís Elfarsdóttir ’18 didn’t like the energy-wasting implications of cracking the window to lower the temperature in her Eliot House room. So she and two recent grads have launched a temperature data-gathering project to help the House conserve wasted energy.