Science & Tech

Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying an evolutionary link between the two capacities.

We are likely not alone in the universe, though it may feel like it, since life on other planets is probably dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures, according to scientists who gave their take on extraterrestrial life at Harvard last week.

The Paul Tillich Lecture, offered annually at Harvard since 1990, commemorates the memory of a public intellectual who was once “the largest theological figure in our orbit,” said The Rev. Peter J. Gomes.

The distinguished chemist Carol Robinson has used mass spectrometry throughout her career to tackle increasingly complex problems in biology. When she delivered the Radcliffe Institute’s first Lecture in the Sciences…

It was a crisp, classic fall day in Cambridge, but little of the golden afternoon sunlight trickled down to Cynthia Friend’s laboratory in the basement of the Harvard chemistry building.…

The American Physical Society (APS) designated Jefferson Physical Laboratory a historical site in a special ceremony on Monday (April 27).

Ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous geologic period has been preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues of a type of duck-billed dinosaur, according to a…

HMNH welcomes opportunities to develop NSF research-related outreach programs with University researchers Posted April 27, 2009 at http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/directory/programs/husec The Harvard Museum of Natural History has partnered successfully with faculty from…

Want a dose of veritas? Even at a place like Harvard, rejection and failure are regular visitors.

Scientists at Harvard University have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming.

Earth is shielded by a film of air barely 6 miles high. About 10 million species of plants and animals, including 6 billion humans, reside within this thin skin of gases.

“Miles per gallon” (mpg) is the most common measure of a car’s fuel efficiency. The typical U.S. consumer, in shopping for a car, uses mpg as a way of calculating gas consumption and carbon emissions.

It was near midnight. Gnarly oak trees and sandy pines draped with Spanish moss encroached upon the narrow road. Warm air sweetened by the scent of orange blossoms wafted through the windows as the van lurched to a stop. The headlights illuminated a metal sign pinned to a gate that read “Archbold Research Station.” We had arrived.

Seguro Popular, a Mexican health care program instituted in 2003, has already reduced crippling health care costs among poorer households, according to an evaluation conducted by researchers at Harvard University in collaboration with researchers in Mexico.

When environmental advocate Alexandra Cousteau left in February on a nonstop, 100-day expedition to critical water sites across five continents, she brought with her a writer, a photographer, an editor, and a support team of more than 60 researchers, all Harvard Extension School students. But the students needed no airline tickets. From their desktops in Cambridge and its environs, these intrepid virtual explorers provide critical support for the expedition team’s field activities.

In 1973, four weeks after the Arab oil embargo, President Richard Nixon went on national television to talk about an energy crisis that had been mounting for two years. He asked Americans to turn off their Christmas lights.

What will the cities of the future look like? Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) offered some ideas last week at a three-day international conference, “Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future,” April 3-5.

A former Massachusetts water official is proposing a new network of central Massachusetts reservoirs to meet population-driven demand that he says will outstrip current supplies in the coming decades.

Conservation pioneer Russell A. Mittermeier started this year’s Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture (April 5) with a quiz. In front of several hundred listeners at Harvard’s Science Center he turned on a small recorder.

Climate change is not only altering Alaska’s natural world, it’s also affecting how humans interact with it, particularly those whose culture and traditions have pointed the way for generations to survive in the sometimes inhospitable far north. Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Arctic Biology, said that climate change is already affecting Alaska in many ways.

When I and 11 fellow Harvard students drove into Money, Miss., last week searching for the site of Emmett Till’s murder, we were expecting to find something to mark the event credited with igniting the Civil Rights Movement. Instead there was nothing.

Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University. The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed individuals in other studies.

Nine out of 10 disasters in the world are related to climate change — the consequence of “a new normal of extreme weather,” said Sir John Holmes. He talked about an accelerating pace of floods, drought, heat waves, and catastrophic storms.

The birth control pill, which revolutionized contraception and sparked a cultural reassessment of the purpose of sex and the sanctity of life, was developed by a Harvard fertility doctor who…

Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti will be the new director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Belfer Center director…

Five Harvard scientists are among 50 young scientists  nationwide who will have their work supported for the next six years by a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute…

At a time of heightened concern about conflicts of interest posed by relationships between academic medical researchers and commercial firms, a new study finds that a significant number of academic…

In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork. What struck her about this South Pacific island nation — and has in many research trips since — was “the absolute preoccupation with food and eating,” she said. “Family and social life really revolve around food. … It’s all about food, all the time.”

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center, Harvard University, and Cambridge Health Alliance found that more than 75 percent of emergency responder candidates for fire and…

Want to know what will make you happy? Then ask a total stranger — or so says a new study from Harvard University, which shows that another person’s experience is…