light

by Nicolai Penafigures by Jasmin Joseph-Chazan Toward the end of the 20th century, the intricate biology of how the eye produces visual information was thought to be well understood– a combination of sensors and circuits in the eye extract features of…

by Edward Chenfigures by Jovana Andrejevic On a sunny, nondescript Hawaiian day, a Vibrio fischeri bacterium arises the same as on most other nondescript days: homeless. It hurries along on a ride to work. No, not by car. Not onboard a trolley either.…

Tamina Kienka is a third year student in the MD-PhD program at Harvard University. Jovana Andrejevic is a fifth-year Applied Physics Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. Cover image by Gerd Altmann…

by Tamina Kienka Edward Bouchet, Yale College class of 1874 In the fall of 1852, Edward Bouchet was born to a freed slave living in New Haven, Connecticut. His father worked as a laborer and his mother as a housewife. They were both active in their…

Scientists engineer a light-sensitive material that can be used to create ingestible medical devices. These devices can then be easily degraded after their function has been performed.

Scientists find the heaviest neutron star known to man - and it's helping us understand when black holes form.

by Fernanda Ferreira figures by Abagail Burrus In one of the lower-level exhibition rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston is a large red and blue mantle from Peru made of camelid wool. Stylized faces embroidered in yellow, blue, green, and…

Europium and terbium are two rare earth elements that share a colorful similarity: they emit bright red and green light, respectively, when exposed to ultraviolet light. In the image above, there are five thin polymer films embedded with different…

by Andrew McAllister Plants are terrible listeners. I’ve told the plants on my windowsill, “Grow taller, grow faster! Make more delicious leaves for me to put in my food!”, but they just grow in the same slow way they’ve been doing since I bought them.…

Light is made of little particles called photons that usually don’t interact. Imagine how strange it would be if the light from your window ricocheted off the light from computer screen! Our brains couldn’t make sense of these images and we’d be…