Right Now
Harvard’s Plant Collection Meets Space Science
Light-based analysis of botanical collections link plants to Earth’s changing climate.
Clean Air, Longer Life
Controls on fine particle pollution extended average lifespan in the United States by five months between 1980 and 2000.
Fighting Disease in Situ
A new technique aims to boost the body’s ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
"Dissing Evolution"
Energy is the key to understanding human evolution—and to saving ourselves and our planet, says Daniel Lieberman.
Our Psychotropic Lives
History professor Daniel Lord Smail explores the role of psychotropic mechanisms in human evolution and history.
Save Yourself
Harvard Business School’s Peter Tufano says simplifying savings-bond purchases for small savers will benefit citizens and government alike.
The Internet: Foe of Democracy?
The Internet, by allowing like-minded individuals to self-segregate, has had a polarizing effect on democracy, suggests Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein..
Laughing at Slavery
In Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery, Glenda Carpio describes how slavery has provided a background and a source of raw material for African-American humor.
Rx for the Books
McKay professor of applied biology Ralph Mitchell and postdoctoral fellow Nick Konkol work with preservation librarians to develop a test that can detect damaging mold in books before it becomes visible.
by Paul Gleason
The Fit Fat
Harvard Medical School’s Bruce Spiegelman studies brown fat, a little-known type of tissue with health-promoting potential.
Does Thinking Make It So?
In The Cure Within, historian of science Anne Harrington explores the medical history of the mind-body connection.