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Andrew Knoll awarded the Crafoord Prize

News

Congratulations to Professor Andrew H. Knoll awarded the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his pioneering contributions to the studies of life's earliest history. Professor Knoll is Fisher Research Professor of...

Hopi Hoekstra named next Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

News

OEB is pleased to announce that Professor Hopi Hoekstra will become the next Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Hoekstra is currently the C.Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology...

A Mathematical Argument for Stable Families or Stable Friendships

News

Working with Emmanuel College scientists, Martin Nowak and Ben Allen (Researcher) developed an algorithm to predict whether a social structure is likely to favor cooperation. Their findings suggest strong pairwise relationships, rather than loose...

How the Egg Got Its Shape

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An international team of scientists led by L. Mahadevan and Mary Caswell Stoddard (former postdoc in Edwards Lab) have answered the question of why there is great diversity in egg shape and sizes. And, the answer may help explain how birds evolved. The...

Harvard and MIT Develop Hair-Brushing Robot

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L. Mahadevan teamed with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to develop a hair-brushing robot. The robotic arm has a sensorized soft brush, camera with force feedback, and closed-loop control. The robot, which can identify...

Graduate Student, Ben Ewen-Campen and Cassandra Extavour Solves Biological Germ Cell Mystery

News

Research in the Extavour Lab finds that a gene that acts as "master regulator" of germ cell development originally evolved to play a role in the nervous system rather than in reproduction. Graduate student Ben Ewen-Campen was the first author of this...

L. Mahadevan Develops A Simple Device That Mimics Complex Birdsongs

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L. Mahadevan recreated complex birdsongs using air blown through a stretched rubber tube. The study published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, found the complexity of birdsongs may be due to a simple controllable instability in the structure of...

Andrew Knoll and Chinese Team Discover Complex Life Formed Billion Years Earlier than Thought

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Andrew Knoll and a Chinese team discovered centimetre-scale life forms, preserved in mudstones from the Yanshan area in north China, are dated to 1.56 billion years ago. The findings, published in Nature Communications, say the fossils show complex life...

CRISPR Enzyme Programmed to Kill Viruses in Human Cells

News

Pardis Sabeti and researchers at the Broad Institute have turned a CRISPR RNA-cutting enzyme into an antiviral that can be programmed to detect and destroy RNA-based viruses in human cells. Many of the world's most common or deadly pathogens are RNA-based...

The Genetic Basis of Parental Care

News

Why are some mice and people monogamous? And, why are monogamous fathers better at parenting? In a study led by Hopi Hoekstra and postdocs, Andrés Bendesky and Jean-Marc Lassance, the answer points to a genetic basis for parental care in monogamous...

How Clumps of Honeybees Survive Wind

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L. Mahadevan and PhD students, Jacob Peters ('18) and Mary Salcedo (Mahadevan Lab) teamed with Prof. Orit Peleg, Colorado University-Boulder, to research the collective mechanical adaptation in honeybee swarms. The study, published in Nature Physics...

How Honey Bees Keep the Hive Cool on Hot Days

News

Prof. L. Mahadevan and Postdoc, Jacob Peters (PhD '18, Mahadevan Lab) have developed a framework that explains how bees use environmental signals to collectively cluster and continuously ventilate the hive. The study published in Journal of the Royal...