A recent study published November 19 in Trends in Biotechnology reports that scientists used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to improve how efficiently a fungus produces protein while also lowering the environmental footprint of that production by…
Category: 1. Edi-Choice
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Technically, it’s possible. Ethically, it’s complicated. — Harvard Gazette
A San Francisco pedestrian was severely injured in 2023 when a driver struck her, throwing her in the path of a self-driving car that dragged her 20 feet while attempting to pull over. In the complex circumstances and legal fallout of the crash,…
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Secret underwater language of Hawaiian monk seals has 25 new calls
New research led by the UH Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) has greatly expanded scientists’ understanding of how Hawaiian monk seals (Neomonachus schauinslandi) produce underwater sounds. The…
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Solving mystery at tip of South America — Harvard Gazette
The southern tip of South America was one of the last regions of the world to be populated by modern humans, but the early history of settlement has remained murky.
A new study by Harvard researchers sheds new light on this mystery with the…
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Is AI dulling our minds? — Harvard Gazette
A recent MIT Media Lab study reported that “excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions” may contribute” to “cognitive atrophy” and shrinking of critical thinking abilities. The study is small and is not peer-reviewed, and yet it…
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A potential quantum leap — Harvard Gazette
The dream of creating game-changing quantum computers — supermachines that encode information in single atoms rather than conventional bits — has been hampered by the formidable challenge known as quantum error correction.
In a paper…
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No one knows the answer, and that’s the point — Harvard Gazette
A few weeks after their arrival at the College, 15 first-year students settled into chairs for an unusual class — one with no answers.
The brainchild of Dean of Science Jeff Lichtman, “Genuinely Hard Problems in Science” explores…
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Salamanders can regrow limbs. Could humans someday? — Harvard Gazette
Biologists long have been fascinated by the ability of salamanders to regrow entire limbs. Now Harvard researchers have solved part of the mystery of how they accomplish this feat — by activating stem cells throughout the body, not just at the…
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Gravitational wave detections spark great expectations
On 14 September, 2015, the international LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected the very first gravitational wave signal, a tiny distortion of spacetime predicted by Einstein, in this case produced by the merger of two black holes. The CNRS…
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Tracking climate change through nature’s ‘breaths’ — Harvard Gazette
You might call it the case of the missing carbon.
It was the 1980s. Scientists knew roughly how much carbon dioxide (CO₂) was being emitted globally by humans burning fossil fuels and by natural processes such as volcanos. They also knew…
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