Science & Technology

Saying goodbye to daylight saving time, and the summertime memories we associate with it, can be difficult. But experts in biological rhythms, including Erik Herzog in Arts & Sciences, agree that it’s time to let it go.

Using a novel technology, the lab of Michael Vahey at the McKelvey School of Engineering uncovered shape-shifting properties of a common respiratory virus.

Ryan Calcutt and Ram Dixit in Arts & Sciences and their collaborators created the first artificial scaffolds that can support the growth of individual plant cells — a discovery that will make it possible to study how forces such as gravity affect the way that plant cells form and grow.

In her book, Lessons from Plants, Beronda Montgomery, AB ’94, explains what plants can teach us about the world and about ourselves.

Islands are hot spots of evolutionary adaptation that can also advantage species returning to the mainland, according to a study led by biologist Jonathan Losos in Arts & Sciences, published the week of Oct. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New research from the laboratory of Jonathan Losos begins to unravel one of the major mysteries of invasion biology: why animals that tend not to hybridize in their native range abandon their inhibitions when they spread into a new land. The study is published the week of Oct. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neuroscientists in Arts & Sciences discovered that the daily release of hormones depends on the coordinated activity of clocks in two parts of the brain, a finding that could have implications for human diseases.

Sarah Anderson, a postdoctoral research associate in biology in Arts & Sciences, won the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a three-year fellowship valued at about $200,000.

Biologist Rachel Penczykowski in Arts & Sciences sizes up an unlikely natural phenomenon: when parasitism actually causes the number of hosts to increase, an effect known as a hydra effect. Her study of common water fleas and their fungal parasites includes laboratory components and an analysis of 13 fungal epidemics in nature.

Biomedical engineer Hong Chen at the McKelvey School of Engineering will use a $2.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find noninvasive tools to treat the brain.