New research explores horizontal gene transfer
Cassandra Extavour and Leo Blondel provide the strongest suggestive evidence yet that at least part of a specific gene came from bacterial genomes.
Tags: science-technology bacteria genes faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell cassandra-extavour horizontal-gene-transfer gene blondel extavour gene-transfer germ-cells leo-blondel osk-domain oskar
Ancient records of Bering Strait flooding offer fresh insights
Tamara Pico, a postdoctoral fellow, is using records of flooding in the Bering Strait to make inferences about how the ice sheets that covered North America responded to the warming climate, and how their melting might have contributed to climate changes.
Tags: science-technology faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell environments-sustainability sea-level flooding science-advances bering-strait flood ice ice-sheets paleoclimate pico tamara-pico younger-dryas
How humans’ sense of ‘intuitive physics’ touches fictional worlds
A Harvard study is exploring the way humans’ sense of “intuitive physics” of the real world leaves fingerprints on the fictional universes we create.
Tags: science-technology physics faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell fiction fictional-worlds frogs imagination intuitive-physics intuitive-psychology levitating levitating-frogs magic stone tomer-ullman turn-to-stone ullman
Gene flow between butterfly species offers clue to biodiversity
An analysis of 20 butterfly genomes found evidence that many butterfly species — including distantly related species — show a surprisingly high amount of gene flow between them, Harvard researchers found.
Tags: science-technology genome butterfly genes faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell edelman gene-flow genomes heliconius hybrid hybridization introgression james-mallet mallet michael-miyagi miyagi nate-edelman
Built for distance and speed, Tunabot can illuminate how fish move
Scientists from Harvard and the University of Virginia have developed the first robotic tuna that can accurately mimic both the highly efficient swimming style of tuna, and their high speed.
Tags: science-technology robot robotics faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell science-robotics fish george-lauder biomechanics lauder robot-fish swimming tuna tunabot
Conference encourages women of color to pursue doctorates in physics
LaNell Williams wants to encourage more women of color to pursue doctorate degrees in fields such as physics. To help make that happen, she founded the Women+ of Color Project, which last week hosted a three-day workshop that invited 20 African American, Latinx, and Native American women interested in pursuing a career in a STEM field to Harvard.
Tags: science-technology physics phd harvard science latinx women native-american african-american doctorate graduate graduate-school lanell-williams stem williams women-of-color
Harvard scientists use optical tweezers to capture ultracold molecules
Using precisely focused lasers that act as “optical tweezers,” Harvard scientists have been able to capture and control individual ultracold molecules – the eventual building-blocks of a quantum computer – and study the collisions between them in more detail than ever before.
Tags: science-technology quantum faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell science john-doyle doyle quantum-computer lasers center-for-ultracold-atoms kang-kuen-ni molecular-tweezers molecules ni optical-tweezers quantum-science-and-engineering-initiative tweezers ultracold-atoms ultracold-molecules
Online Music Lab studies questions of melody and humanity
Samuel Mehr has long been interested in questions of what music is, how music works, and why music exists. To help find the answers, he’s created the Music Lab, an online, citizen-science project aimed at understanding not just how the human mind interprets music, but why music is a virtually ubiquitous feature of human societies.
Tags: science-technology music psychology internet online faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell citizen-science data-science-initiative mehr music-lab samuel-mehr tone-deaf tone-deafness world-music-quiz
Study shows that students learn more when taking part in classrooms that employ active-learning strategies
A new Harvard study shows that, though students felt like they learned more from traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in active-learning classrooms.
Tags: science-technology education physics test faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell science proceedings-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences pnas active-learning classrooms educational-outcomes learning lecture lectures passive-learning science-education test-scores
Harvard study: Artificial neural networks could be used to provide insight into biological systems
Martin Haesemeyer set out to build an artificial neural network that worked differently than fish’s brains, but what he got was a system that almost perfectly mimicked the zebrafish — and that could be a powerful tool for understanding biology.
Tags: science-technology deep-learning biology faculty-of-arts-and-sciences fas harvard peter-reuell reuell neuron zebrafish artificial-neural-network biological-neural-network haesemeyer heat heat-gradient learning-algorithm martin-haesemeyer neural-network whole-brain-imaging
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