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An image depicting high carb ultra processed foods, those which are often associated with health risks

Is Ultraprocessed Food Really That Bad?

A Harvard professor challenges conventional wisdom. 

by Craig Lambert

Orchid bees navigate turbulence by extending their massive hind legs to prevent rolling.

Orchid bees and flight turbulence

Orchid bees in flight extend their hind legs for stability.

by Jonathan Shaw

Scrutinizing facial-recognition ability

“Super-recognizers” have an astonishing ability to identify faces.

by Craig Lambert

Even at the scale of cities, planners can work with the local ecology to create lasting interventions that minimize disruptions to the landscape, such as Khed Sez (shown) and Lavasa, both in India.

Architecture that imitates life

Architects are beginning to employ biomimicry, studying nature as a model for building design.

by John Gendall

In her research, Anat Keinan asks people to reflect on their regrets over choices made in the near and distant past.

The Poor Payoff of Pleasure Postponed

Why a little self-indulgence makes sense.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Gas jets punch out of the collapsing star and blast into space, producing gamma rays that can be detected billions of light years away.

Gamma-ray bursts reveal the oldest star yet discovered

A star more than 13 billion years old

by Jonathan Shaw

Robert Patterson’s letter to Thomas Jefferson included a worked example of his cipher. He began by writing his message in lower-case letters and in columns, running top to bottom like Chinese. This example begins with the words “Buonaparte has at last given peace to Europe,” legible in the first two columns.

Jefferson's Conundrum

Mathematician Lawren Smithline ’94 has decrypted an encoded message sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1801.

by Craig Lambert

Traditional light-microscopy, such as this image of human brain-tumor cells in culture, still has a place in cancer research.

Virtual Tumors

Modeling tumors may help scientists beat cancer.

by Mike Martin

Brain images show the differences in activity patterns between the two groups of subjects that professor of psychology Jill Hooley examined. The brains of recovered depressed subjects (left) had more active amygdalae while listening to criticism than did the brains of subjects who had never been depressed. The brains of the latter showed more activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (center) and the anterior cingulate cortex (right) compared to brains of subjects with a history of depression.

How Depression Lingers

After depression patients recover, their brains still process criticism differently.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), the kind emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes, is known to be especially harmful. Reductions in such pollution lead to increased life expectancy. In Boston between 1980 and 2000, for example, as PM2.5 concentrations dropped from 18 to 11 micrograms per cubic meter, local average life expectancy climbed four years. Of that increase, four-tenths of a year—or 10 percent of the total gain—was attributable to improved air quality.

Clean Air, Longer Life

Controls on fine particle pollution extended average lifespan in the United States by five months between 1980 and 2000.

by Jonathan Shaw

A scanning electron microscope image reveals the porous nature of a bioengineered disk where immune cells can reside and be programmed for vaccination.

Fighting Disease in Situ

A new technique aims to boost the body’s ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells.