Science & Tech

In a question-and-answer session, Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb explains the new data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.

A lecturer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says that “dark clouds of gas and dust have the potential to alter Earth’s climate.

In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists has measured the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter with unprecedented precision.

In “Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan,” Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, explores a range of fascinating subjects, including how emotions influence decisions and the often-thorny matter of understanding the perspectives of others. Blending social science and real-world examples, Gino’s book also highlights the science of gratitude.

With the world’s sea levels rising and posing a long-term threat to coastal cities, Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi suggests building houses that float, but, taken together, still function as a community.

Stamping Harvard’s digital presence on the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, more than 250 alumni, students, faculty, and guests convened on Icenhauer’s for the second annual Digital Harvard in Austin at SXSW, hosted by the Harvard Alumni Association.

The Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak isn’t the most famous ancient site in Egypt — that honor goes to the Pyramids at Giza — but newly developed reconstructions using 3-D virtual reality modeling make clear its architectural importance and rich history.

In online education, the future is now. That was an overriding message Harvard and MIT hosted a summit on March 3 and 4 titled “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education.”

Three Harvard affiliates are launching Zeega, a software platform that makes it easy for Internet storytellers to blend audio, images, and text from the riches of the Web.

Scholars convened at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to explore the topic of bullying and potential ways forward.

Harvard’s Avi Loeb is helping prepare the next generation of astronomers with a new textbook, “The First Galaxies in the Universe.”

Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and longtime collaborator Anthony Greenwald condense three decades of work on the unconscious mind in “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.”

There may be a formula for happiness after all, says Daniel Gilbert, Harvard professor of psychology and best-selling author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” who presented an impressive array of scientific research from the disciplines of economics, psychology, and neuroscience to assess his mother’s recipe for happiness.

A report co-authored by Professor Michael McElroy and D. James Baker, a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, connects global climate change, extreme weather, and national security.

Harvard President Drew Faust called for the scientific community to unite in its efforts to press Congress for continued federal research support during a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

More vigorous grassroots social action is needed to drive the reforms that could address climate change, panelists said during a discussion at Sanders Theatre.

Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air.

Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air. That ability to jump could one day prove critical in allowing the robots to avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.

As research funding dwindles, scientists need to rethink their methods for supporting the most promising projects, and how they communicate their work to the public, Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Paul Nurse told an audience of Harvard scientists.

Scholars are beginning to learn what’s working and what’s not when it comes to using new media to get people to do what you want, and a conference on “Behavioral Economics, Social Media, and Apps” at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 brought together experts from academia and business to discuss it.

Former Vice President Al Gore repeated his call for action on climate change Wednesday, saying society is treating the skies as an “open sewer.” He spoke at Harvard’s Memorial Church in a session sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.

Researchers recently completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance. The team is currently conducting a study with athletes in the Boston area to determine the sensitivity of the technology in diagnosing concussions.

It might appear that evacuating a major city following a natural disaster and playing foosball have little, if anything, in common. For students participating in the IACS Computational Challenge, however, both are problems that can be tackled with some clever coding.

Using computer simulations designed to play a simple economic “game,” researchers at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics showed that uncertainty is a key ingredient behind fairness. Their work is described in a Jan. 21 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seventeen teams of Harvard students toiled on campus during the last days of winter break, working to finish computer projects during the annual Hack Week sponsored by the Hack Harvard student group.

Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of a computational principle that was little noticed in its time, but that underlies all of modern science.

Record warmth in 2010 and 2012 resulted in similarly extraordinary spring flowering in the eastern United States — the earliest in the more than 150 years for which data is available— researchers at Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Wisconsin have found.

Astronomers have identified a new structure in the Milky Way: a long tendril of dust and gas that they are calling a “bone.”

The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the new analysis of Kepler data that shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury.

Students in the “Physics and Applied Physics Research Freshman Seminar” labored hard to improve on a model heat engine, continuing the work of a previous class.