Bit of happenstance, second look at ancient fossils leads to new insights into evolution of tardigrade, one of most indestructible life forms on planet
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…
Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University,…
In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to…
Inviting a new generation of scientists into the study of human development, disease, and aging, Harvard University will offer a new undergraduate concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (HDRB) starting this fall.
Cherry A. Murray, who has led some of the nation’s most brilliant scientists and engineers as an executive at Bell Laboratories and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been appointed dean of Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), effective July 1, 2009. She will also become the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) will present Queen Noor of Jordan and actor Edward Norton with the 2009 Global Environmental Citizen Award. The award, given annually, was developed to recognize those individuals who have been world leaders in protecting the global environment. The award will be presented to Noor and Norton on Sunday (March 15) in New York City.
With literally tens of billions of dollars in federal research funding suddenly available — and application deadlines for proposals extraordinarily short — Harvard’s Provost’s Office has established a new web…
Oohs and ahhs greeted slide after slide as English author and freelance scholar Paul G. Bahn presented “The Shock of the Old: New Discoveries in Ice Age Art” at the Yenching Institute Feb 26.
Earlier this year, Big Coal got its say in “The Future of Energy” lecture series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Now it’s time to hear from Big Wind.
David Charbonneau, the 34-year-old Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy, has been named the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award, and will receive $500,000…
Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and colleagues have identified the potential cause of the increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in shift workers. The researchers found…
A newly empaneled committee is about to begin an intensive review of University-wide conflict of interest (COI) “principles, policies and recommendations.” The committee, under the direction of David Korn, vice…
Harvard President Drew Faust today renewed the University’s commitment to the vision of advancing interdisciplinary, collaborative science in general, and the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB), the…
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