Science & Tech

Alyssa Goodman, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, will give a talk titled “Lost Without Longitude” on Thursday at the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

The controlled chaos of the fourth annual Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Design and Project Fair on May 6 offered a taste of the wide range of projects SEAS developed during the school year.

Changing with the times as the world moves from paper to digital, the Harvard Library has adopted forensic techniques to save material stored on obsolete formats.

At Harvard’s 10th annual Plant Biology Symposium, climate expert Chris Field talked about the need to evaluate environmental risks in the coming decades even as many people work to reduce climate-warming emissions.

Sixteen Harvard engineering students spent the last few months researching, designing, and building a better barbecue smoker. They presented their findings — and some tasty brisket — to guests during the final class presentation.

States will gain large, widespread, and nearly immediate health benefits if the Environmental Protection Agency sets strong standards in the final Clean Power Plan, according to the first independent, peer-reviewed paper of its kind, published May 4 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Five student-led teams at Harvard were named winners in the third annual Deans’ Challenges, focusing on health and life sciences, cultural entrepreneurship, the food system, and innovation in sports.

A Harvard conference on design competitions — which can be creative, ubiquitous, and troubling — lays out the present controversies surrounding them, and some solutions.

Nobel laureate and astrophysicist Brian Schmidt returns to Harvard this week to deliver the Morris Loeb and David M. Lee Lectures in Physics. Schmidt will discuss his discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, as well as the SkyMapper survey of the southern skies and the first stars that emerged after the universe’s dark ages.

A group called Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering just celebrated a decade of fellowship in those fields.

A successful bisexual movement would lead not only to more freedom for bisexuals, but to “liberation of all other groups. In fighting for its goals, it would not forget how all forms of oppression are interlinked,” said Shiri Eisner, author of “Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution,” in delivering the annual Nicholas Papadopoulos Lecture.

Terry Virts, commander of the International Space Station and an alumnus of HBS’s General Management Program, chatted live from orbit about his experiences.

The Harvard Climate Change Solutions Fund is one example of how the University is catalyzing the research and innovations needed to accelerate progress toward cleaner energy and a healthier, more sustainable future.

Using an electro-chemical process to etch materials, Harvard scientists have developed a system of patterning that works in just minutes, as opposed to the weeks needed for other techniques. Researchers can build photonic structures that control the light hitting the device and greatly increase its efficiency.

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 light-years away, making it one of the most distant planets known, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Experts on energy, the environment, and climate change gathered at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre Monday to discuss how governments and universities can help meet the challenge.

Unilever CEO Paul Polman outlined the multinational corporation’s commitment to environmental sustainability during a talk at Harvard Business School’s Spangler Center on April 10 as part of Climate Week events at Harvard.

Physicist Amory Lovins outlined a path to a clean-energy future in the United States during a talk at the Kennedy School.

The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School (HLS).

Generations of concentrators in Environmental Science and Public Policy returned to Harvard for the first reunion involving the more than 20-year-old concentration.

The Harvard University Center for the Environment is sponsoring Climate Week, featuring breakfasts with scientists working on the problems along with a variety of climate-centered activities, from talks by prominent scientists to poetry readings to informal gatherings.

Harvard researchers were able to predict when test flames in the lab were likely to switch from slow- to fast-moving fires, which could open the way to making similar predictions for forest fires.

Four teams that took part in a hackathon at the MIT Media Lab last weekend will go on to present their practical solutions for reducing institutional corruption to a conference at Harvard Law School in May.

“Science and Cooking” was the topic of a HarvardX lecture offered at the new Harvard Ed Portal in Allston.

Step by step, a growing Harvard women’s student group is helping to change the male-dominated culture of computer science by creating fresh realities.

Professor David Montgomery’s most recent book explores an unexpected crossroads: the intersection of geology and the Bible.

A new study examines how different kinds of shared beliefs can affect how people cooperate, and how people use common knowledge, a type of shared understanding, to coordinate their actions.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and from universities in Chile, Costa Rica, and Brazil have been studying the secret power of the velvet worm.

Harvard President Drew Faust tells an audience at Tsinghua University in Beijing that universities have a unique and critical role to play in combatting climate change.

The Gazette asked Henry Lee, an authority on electric cars and the Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the Belfer Center, about the opportunity for the Postal Service to improve its environmental footprint — and perhaps spark broader automotive changes — through a more fuel-efficient replacement for the current model, which gets roughly 9 miles per gallon.