Science & Tech

Astronomers Myron Lecar and Dimitar Sasselov have found that planet formation is a contest, where a growing planet must fight for survival lest it be swallowed by the star that…

Election Night is one of the increasingly rare moments when large numbers of Americans gather in front of their television sets to hear about politics. Although a comparison of the…

Harvard researchers tracked 548 sixth and seventh graders from public schools for 19 months. The children were asked to fill out surveys to determine the time they spent per day…

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the cause of approximately 29,000 deaths a year. Currently, the most common treatments for prostate cancer include radical prostatectomy…

A gene discovered by Harvard researchers and their colleagues in England makes a protein necessary to trigger a hormonal cascade that flows from the brain to the gonads. Without it,…

Harvard researcher Nonie Lesaux’s study, published in the journal “Developmental Psychology” in November 2003, tracked 1,000 children speaking native English and English as a second language (ESL) in mainstream English…

Tim-3 (T cell immunoglobulin domain, mucin domain) proteins are found on the surface of TH1-helper type T cells, which when activated become the body’s first line of defense against foreign…

An analysis conducted by Harvard Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Bridget Terry Long suggests that tax credits encouraged many states to increase the prices of public colleges where students…

Jet-setters and shift workers now sit in front of glaring white lights to readjust their body rhythms and avoid sleep and alertness problems. New experiments condcuted by Harvard University researchers…

According to the College Board, people with a bachelor’s degree will earn, on average, $1 million more throughout their lifetimes than those with only a high school diploma. Yet with…

Folding is a big deal in biology. It not only changes a molecule’s shape but its function. Take the proteins made by genes. Folded one way, they can activate processes…

Over the years, scientists have repeatedly sought to use a cell’s protein-making process to create new drugs and other compounds. They have had some dramatic successes, such as inducing bacteria…

The early universe was a barren wasteland of hydrogen, helium, and a touch of lithium, containing none of the elements necessary for life as we know it. From those primordial…

James Hammitt, professor at the School of Public Health, and his colleagues have spent the past three years doing risk analyses of buses with conventional diesel engines and emission-controlled diesel…

Besides shedding light on mind-teasing and sense-pleasing expressions, the Dictionary of Regional English (DARE) is a fun book to browse through – all four volumes. Hundreds of maps show where…

In 2002, astronomers at Wesleyan University announced that they had discovered a “winking” star that undergoes a regular, long-lasting (approximately 20 day) eclipse every 48 days. They theorized that those…

Juno, the third asteroid ever discovered, was first spotted by astronomers early in the 19th century. It orbits the Sun with thousands of other bits of space rock in the…

Astronomer Lincoln Greenhill (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues have found direct evidence for a “pancake” of gas and dust at the center of Circinus — a thin, warped disk…

You may not think you are prejudiced against other races, gays, or overweight people, but your brain activity could tell a different story.

Radioactive elements in rocks decay in a predictable way, like the ticking of a well-made clock that can run for millions of years. The decay marks a change in character…

Harvard researchers have found important clues about the Earth’s environment 1.5 billion years ago. Their results present quite a different picture from present times, in which oceans have oxygen-rich waters…

Christine Rogers, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, measures particulates – pollen grains and fungal spores – in outdoor air and correlates levels with asthma events.…

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a largely asymptomatic disease that after a long latency period, usually spanning decades, can damage the liver and eventually cause cirrhosis and liver cancer. While…

The Sun may appear to be a bright, steadily shining orb, but it is actually a seething cauldron of hot gases prone to violent eruptions. The most dramatic eruptions are…

A Harvard Medical School study found high rates of depression throughout the U.S. population. The researchers analyzed the depression of over 9,000 Americans and evaluated depression’s effect on daily activities…

Cepheids are important to astronomers for their key role as extragalactic distance indicators. Cepheids are variable stars that regularly brighten and dim as they pulsate rhythmically. Their pulsation period is…

At the 202nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Robert Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), on behalf of the international High-z Supernova Search Team led by Brian Schmidt (Mount Stromlo…

A new dynamic imaging technique described by Mitchell Albert, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Angela Tooker, MIT graduate student; Kwan Soo Hong, Harvard…

The research of Tami Katzir, an assistant professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, centers on reading development and reading breakdown. Her interests revolve around three connected areas: The first…

Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics took a look at how weather has changed in the past 1,000 years. They looked at studies of changes in glaciers, corals, stalagmites,…