Right Now

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

What Makes the Human Mind?

Biological anthropologist Marc Hauser explores what he terms “humaniqueness”

Images from the Encyclopedia of Life include these examples. James Hanken plans to allow amateur ecologists to upload their own photographs to the catalog. Above, a smooth snake (<em>Coronella austriaca</em>)

World-Wide Web of Life

James Hanken of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and other scientists launch an ambitious project to chronicle all life on earth.

by Paul Gleason

The Financial Cost of Feeling

Psychologist and public-policy scholar Jennifer Lerner explores how emotions influence behavior and judgment.

Mechanical engineer Emilie Dressaire

A Durable Bubble

Mechanical engineering student Emilie Dressaire studies tiny bubbles that can last up to a year and replace fat droplets in ice cream.

by Paul Gleason

The slave trade shipped Africans to the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia; where victims ended up depended in part on which trade route their captors used. In total, the four routes ferried nearly 20 million people out of Africa.

Slavery’s Sway

Interdisciplinary economist Nathan Nunn explores the problem of African underdevelopment by drawing on—and unearthing—historical data about slavery.

by Paul Gleason

This unorthodox de-mining team avoids most of the traditional pitfalls. Metal detectors give too many false alarms, fooled by bullets or other debris. Hand-held ground-penetrating radar machines are too expensive. Dogs weigh enough to trigger mines, injuring or killing themselves and their handlers.

Man, Mongoose, and Machine

Standing outside a Sri Lankan army base in the spring of 2007, Thrishantha Nanayakkara mapped an entire minefield without once setting foot in it.

by Paul Gleason

Daniel Carpenter

Prescription for Error?

In recent years, safety recalls of widely prescribed drugs like the pain-killer Vioxx have sent an unsettling message to consumers.

The Teen Brain

It’s a paradoxical time of development. These are people with very sharp brains, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them...

by Debra Bradley Ruder

Proof Positive

Richard L. Taylor’s work connects two discrete domains of mathematics: curved spaces, from geometry, and modular arithmetic, which has to do with counting...

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Tools of Stasi spying: jars containing dust cloths used to capture the body scent of people the Stasi was trying to track; a deer statuette with a camera hidden inside; a Swiss-made Tessina 35-mm miniature camera.

The Seductions of Snooping

Historian of science Kristie Macrakis's book on spying techniques used by communist East Germany's secret police.

by Elizabeth Gudrais