Harvard researchers have found that humans can make difficult moral decisions using the same brain circuits as those used in more mundane choices related to money and food.

These circuits, also found in other animals, put together two critical pieces of information:  How good or bad are the things that might happen?  What are the odds that they will happen, depending on one's choice?  The results suggest that complex moral decisions need not rely on a specific "moral sense."

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Once thought to be a problem primarily in the developed world, cancer is now a leading cause of death and disability in poorer countries.  Almost two-thirds of the 7.6 million cancer deaths in the world occur in low- and middle-income countries.

According to a paper published online in the Lancet, the international community must discard the notion that cancer is a “disease of the rich” and instead approach it as a global health priority.

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“Love stinks!” the J. Geils band told the world in 1980, and while you can certainly argue whether or not this tender and ineffable spirit of affection has a downside, working hard to find it does.  It may even shorten your life.

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Expectant mothers who gain large amounts of weight tend to give birth to heavier infants who are at higher risk for obesity later in life. But it's never been proven that this tendency results from the weight gain itself, rather than genetic or other factors that mother and baby share. A large population-based study from Harvard researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, looking at two or more pregnancies in the same mother, now provides evidence that excess maternal weight gain is a strong, independent predictor of high birth weight.

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A collaborative team of scientists at Harvard and the University of Leeds have demonstrated a new terahertz (THz) semiconductor laser that emits beams with a much smaller divergence than conventional THz laser sources.  The advance, published in NatureMaterials, opens the door to a wide range of applications in terahertz science and technology.  Harvard has filed a broad patent on the invention.

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A team of Harvard physicists led by Mikhail D. Lukin
has achieved the first-ever quantum entanglement of photons and
solid-state materials.  The work marks a key advance toward practical
quantum networks, as the first experimental demonstration of a means by
which solid-state quantum bits, or "qubits," can communicate with one
another over long distances.

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Harvard researchers have uncovered a mechanism in mice through which caloric restriction and exercise delay some of the debilitating effects of aging by rejuvenating the connections between nerves and the muscles that they control.

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Two powerful new tests developed by Harvard psychologists show great promise in predicting patients’ risk of attempting suicide, researchers say.

These tests may help clinicians to overcome their reliance on self-reporting by at-risk individuals, information that often proves misleading when suicidal patients wish to hide their intentions.  Both tests are easily administered within minutes on a computer, giving quick insight into how patients think about suicide, as well as their propensity to attempt it soon.

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A hundred million years ago, a triple-star system was traveling through the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy when it made a life-changing misstep.  The trio wandered too close to the galaxy's giant black hole, which captured one of the stars and hurled the other two out of the Milky Way.  Adding to the stellar game of musical chairs, the two outbound stars merged to form a super-hot blue star.

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