Science & Tech

For their capstone project in the course ES 96: “Engineering Design Seminar,” 16 SEAS students conducted an analysis of the geothermal heating and cooling system that serves Radcliffe’s Byerly Hall.

Geothermal energy is the natural heat that is stored deep underground (about 1,500 feet down, in the case of the wells at Radcliffe). While the seasons change above ground in…

In her Fellows’ Presentation, Nancy E. Hill, the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, discussed her research into socialization and cultural development in relation to parents’ interaction with children and how this interaction varies across geography, income levels, and ethnicity.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on May 6 talked to a Harvard audience about youth exposure to violence as a public health issue — and the need for a public health response.

A sustainability music video produced by Harvard University students Akshay Sharma ’14, Maura Church ’14 and Molly O’Laughlin ’11 in anticipation of Earth Day 2011. It was presented at Harvard’s second annual Green Carpet Awards sustainability celebration and recognition event. Miranda J. Morrison ’14 also assisted with writing the lyrics.

Two panel discussions, organized by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, examined the “promise and perils” of creating digital repositories of genetic records and considered the policy implications of an individual’s right to access, control, and interpret his or her own genetic data.

Child victim of Nazi medical experiments recounts the horrors, in opening an exhibit that explores how physicians embraced the thinking and practices that became the Holocaust.

Scientists have long believed that sunfish, perch, trout, and other such bony fish propel themselves forward with the movement of their tails, while their dorsal and anal fins — the fins on their tops and bottoms — work primarily as stabilizers.

Human-induced changes to the Earth from emission of greenhouse gases are here to stay, with computer models showing that changes made by 2100 could take 1,000 years to decline.

Students presented projects Wednesday (April 13) from the Idea Translation Lab, which pushes students to turn ideas into reality and sets them up to take the next steps in project development.

Just how much should we allow “human nature” to guide our politics — and our everyday decision making? Columnist David Brooks and a trio of Harvard analysts debated new findings on the unconscious mind during a panel discussion.

Harvard physicists have expanded the possibilities for quantum engineering of novel materials such as high-temperature superconductors by coaxing ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice — a light crystal — to self-organize into a magnet, according to an article in the journal Nature.

Professor Michael McCormick has been working with tree-ring experts, bringing the perspective of long-ago writings to understanding environmental conditions.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says the world should stop waiting for governments to solve the global warming problem. He called on academics to band together to find workable solutions.

Scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and SiEnergy Systems LLC have demonstrated the first macro-scale thin-film solid-oxide fuel cell. This is the first time a research group has overcome the structural challenges of scaling up the technology to a practical size with a proportionally higher power output.

Two Harvard undergraduates have developed a website called Newsle that tracks news of Facebook and Linked In contacts.

SEAS research has revealed that differential growth and ruffling at the edges of each petal — not in the midrib, as commonly suggested — provide the force behind the lily’s bloom. The work contradicts earlier theories regarding the growth within the flower bud.

Within hours of the massive earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis had launched a web-based data clearinghouse, the Japan Sendai Earthquake Data Portal, to provide a site where disaster responders can find needed information.

Student entrepreneurs at Harvard have won $50,000 in grants to support further development of innovative ventures in the Harvard College Innovation Challenge.

Graduate student Alice A. Chen received the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize on Wednesday (March 9) for her innovative applications of microtechnology to study human health and disease.

Scientists can finally look at circuits in the brain in all of their complexity. How the mind works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature, and this research presents a new and powerful way for us to explore that mystery.

Three technology proposals from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have been selected for presentation at the University Research and Entrepreneurship Symposium (URES).

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today (March 9) named Leslie G. Valiant the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science.

A new research paper by Harvard geophysicists Brendan Meade and Jack Love-less says that the earth sciences principle of plate tectonics is applicable on a continental scale.

Only 39 percent of the nearly 10,000 North American plant species threatened with extinction are being maintained in collections, according to the first comprehensive listing of the threatened plant species in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Fueling America’s war effort is an expensive proposition, costing not only money but lives, since supply convoys are routinely attacked. The constraints imposed by an energy-hungry military prompted the Defense Department to investigate conservation techniques.

A new history of science course on the environment moves past the fictions of an unspoiled earlier time of discovery and settlement.

Professor Gu-Yeon Wei explores energy-efficient computing devices that are fast but draw minimal power.

Harvard graduate student Wonyoung Kim has developed and demonstrated a new device with the potential to reduce the power usage of modern processing chips.

Michael Brenner, Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been awarded the George Ledlie Prize by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.