News

As climate changes, so does wine
If you want to buy good wine, Elizabeth Wolkovich says, you’re going to want to stop looking at labels and just listen to your taste buds. An assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, Wolkovich is a co-author of a new study that suggests...
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Harvard study illuminates botanical bias
When botanists began collecting plant samples for herbaria more than a century ago, their goal was to catalog and understand the diversity of the natural world. These days scientists use the collections to understand the transformative effects of climate...
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Harvard researchers gain insights into how tall trees move sugars
Scientists have long assumed that the sugars that nourish trees are pushed by water pressure from the leaves where they are created to the stems and roots where they are needed. But how do taller trees accomplish that task, given the longer distances the...
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Harvard study identifies genetic ‘switches’ that affect height
The network of factors behind height is becoming clearer, thanks to the work of Harvard scientists. Led by Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology Terence D. Capellini, a team of researchers discovered hundreds of genetic “switches” that...
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Harvard panelists consider worst-case scenarios for climate
In July, New York magazine published its most-read article ever, surpassing a photo spread of Lindsay Lohan. The topic? Doom. While defying the belief among author David Wallace-Wells’ editors that climate change would be “traffic kryptonite,” the story...
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Researchers create new type of quantum computer
Programming a computer is generally a fairly arduous process, involving hours of coding, not to mention the laborious work of debugging, testing, and documenting to make sure it works properly. But for a team of physicists from the Harvard-MIT Center for...
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A passion for nature, in a massive beetle collection
For those bitten by the beetle bug, Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) just got a bit more interesting. Already one of North America’s premier natural history collections, with 25 million animal specimens and 4 million beetles, the MCZ recently...
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Study explores whole-body immunity
Over the next few months, millions of people will receive vaccinations in the hope of staving off the flu — and the fever, pain, and congestion that come with it. But how can one injection trigger an immune response that protects someone from head to toe...
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Harvard research suggests microbial menace
For the most part, scientists think of the trillions of microbes that call the human gut home as allies — after all, they’ve been shown to aid the body in synthesizing key vitamins and other nutrients. But a new study suggests that things can sometimes be...
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Humans need microbes for survival — and a decent dinner
What makes bread rise, or sour cream, sour? What turns grapes into wine, or milk into cheese? What makes coffee drinkable and chocolate wonderful? “All of these processes happen because of microbes — key players in not only what we love and enjoy, but...
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