The question of whether we’re alone in the universe has haunted humankind for thousands of years, and it’s one astronomer Jill Tarter has tried to answer for much of her life. Tarter, chair emeritus of the Center for SETI Research, worked as a project scientist for NASA’s SETI program, which aimed to detect transmissions from alien intelligence. She currently serves on the board for the Allen Telescope Array, a group of more than 350 telescopes north of San Francisco.

“We are looking for signals at some frequency, some wavelength that don’t look like...

Just about any elementary school student can rattle off the characteristics that make mammals special: They’re warm-blooded, have fur or hair, and nearly all are born alive.

A new study suggests mammals are unique in one more way — the makeup of their spines.

Led by Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology Stephanie Pierce and postdoctoral researcher Katrina Jones, the study challenges the notion that specialization in mammal backbones dates back to the earliest land animals. The research is described in a September...

The human arm can perform a wide range of extremely delicate and coordinated movements, from turning a key in a lock to gently stroking a puppy’s fur. The robotic “arms” on underwater research submarines, however, are hard, jerky, and lack the finesse to be able to reach and interact with creatures such as jellyfish or octopuses without damaging them.

Previously, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and collaborators developed a range of soft robotic...

A group of Harvard undergraduates spent the summer in China, working on solutions to an array of environmental problems ranging from examining ozone pollution’s effects on crops to analyzing household electricity demand to studying ways to remediate arsenic contamination of groundwater.

The summer internships extended from late June until mid-August and brought eight students to Beijing and Hong Kong, where they lived and worked at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and the...