Amazon immersion fosters partnerships, offers students, researchers hard look at threats to economic security, environment of rainforest as Earth warms
Researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute are developing an algorithm with information that is so complex, it will understand everything a first-year medical student knows.
For the past decade, scientist Greg Skomal and a team of researchers have been tagging and studying great white sharks off the Massachusetts coast. He hopes his work tracking the sharks’ movement, biology, and behavior will help shed light on the giant predators, help protection efforts, and perhaps reduce their encounters with humans.
Machine learning is an adaptive form of artificial intelligence that could allow physicians to use the collective wisdom of billions of medical decisions, patient cases, and outcomes to inform diagnosis and treatment.
A new rubber computer combines the feel of a human hand with the thought process of a traditional computer, replacing the last hard components in soft robots. Now, soft robotics can travel where metals and electronics cannot — high-radiation disaster areas, outer space, and deep underwater — and turn invisible to the naked eye or even sonar detection.
Developed through Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, an innovative immune-silent stem cell technology could lead to novel cell therapies to treat “any patient with any disease.”
Novelist Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” features trees as key characters in an entwined tale of human life and our impact on the natural world. He will speak at the Arnold Arboretum and the Mahindra Humanities Center later this month.
Led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava, a team of researchers is shedding new light on how animals perform whole-body regeneration, and uncovering a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes used in the process.
For centuries, pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — has fascinated mathematicians and scientists. For more perspective on the famous number, the Gazette turned to physics lecturer Jacob Barandes — who, with some help from his 9-year-old daughter, Sadie, recited pi to 100 digits for us.
Harvard scientists have created brain implants so similar to neurons that they actually encourage tissue regeneration in animal models. They may one day be used to help treat neurological diseases, brain damage, and even mental illness.
It might seem crazy for landlords to tell potential tenants about past bedbug infestations, but Alison Hill believes it will pay off in the long run. In a study, Hill found that while landlords would see a modest drop in rental income in the short term, they would make that money back in a handful of years, and the policies could dramatically slow the spread of the insects.
The Wyss Institute and Roche Innovation Center Basel in Switzerland have teamed up to create 3-D bioprinted proximal tubules beside functioning blood vessel compartments, closely mimicking the kidney’s blood-filtration system that removes waste products while returning “good” molecules, such as glucose and amino acids, back into the bloodstream.
The daylong conference “Beyond Words: Gender and the Aesthetics of Communication” at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study explored body communication and included talks on perfumes, tattoos, sign language, dance, and fashion.
Working with a team of international researchers, Harvard scientists gathered survey data in several locations around the globe and found that, following the trauma of seeing a friend or loved one killed or injured during conflict, many became more religious.
Science authors David Quammen and Carl Zimmer both have recent books showing that DNA is not only passed down from our ancestors but can also come from viruses, siblings, and even our children.
Geneticist David Reich discusses DNA findings that show how migration shaped Europe and southern Asia, and that “No population is, or ever could be, pure.”
Harvard researchers are using a chemical process known as triplet fusion upconversion to transform near-infrared photons into high-energy photons. The high-energy photons could be used in a huge range of applications, including a new type of precisely targeted chemotherapy, in which low-energy infrared lasers that penetrate deep into the body could be used to transform innocuous compounds into cancer-fighting drugs.
A new Harvard study suggests that although the congenitally blind experience abstract visual phenomena such as rainbows and color differently, they still share with the sighted a common understanding of them.
A new study shows that African grey parrots can perform some cognitive tasks at levels beyond those of 5-year-old humans. The results not only suggest that humans aren’t the only species capable of making complex inferences, but also point to flaws in a widely used test of animal intelligence.
Researchers have created the first cellular atlas of the primate retina and discovered that, while the fovea and peripheral retina share most of the same cell types, the cells are in different proportions, and show different gene expression patterns.
Despite often being portrayed as living fossils that have remained virtually unchanged for millions of years, a new Harvard study shows crocodiles have repeatedly altered their developmental patterns, leading to much of the diversity found in modern, living crocodiles.
In a first-of-its-kind study, findings suggest that continued ocean warming and acidification could impact everything from how fish move to how they eat.
A new study, which used everything from tide gauges to GPS data to paint the most accurate picture ever of sea-level rise along the East Coast of the U.S., is suggesting that in addition to rising seas, communities along the coast may also have to contend with the land sinking.
In an effort to understand how colibactin, a compound produced by certain strains of E. coli, may be connected to the development of colorectal cancer, Harvard researchers are exploring how the compound damages DNA to produce DNA adducts.
Hal Harvey, the CEO of Energy Innovation, a San Francisco–based energy and environmental policy firm, encouraged an audience at Harvard to get involved in about innovative ways to address climate change.
Now research suggests that a nerve cells’ axons may be making decisions on their own, challenging the dogma that the nucleus and cell body are the control centers of the neuron.
Researchers investigate how centimeter-sized termites, without architects, engineers or foremen, can build complex, long-standing, meter-sized structures all over the world.
A study in which mice were released into outdoor enclosures to track how light- and dark-colored specimens survived confirms that mice survive better in similarly colored habitats, providing insights into evolution.
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