Berkman Klein Center | Cierra Robson, a PhD student in Sociology and Social Policy, has been selected as a 2020 Assembly Student Fellow by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The Assembly Student Fellowship program brings together a cohort of Harvard students from a range of disciplines and schools to participate in problem-oriented seminars led by Harvard faculty and collaborate on student-led projects aimed at tackling real-world problems. This year, Assembly is taking up disinformation in the digital public sphere from a cybersecurity perspective.

Broadly, Cierra is interested in how technological advancements both reinforce and revolutionize the American racial order, as well as how public-private collaborations both solidify and make profitable existing power hierarchies. She aims to use her research to conceptualize what meaningful regulation of Big Tech looks like.

New paper:  Power generation performance of dielectric elastomer generator with laterally-constrained configuration

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The cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — a disabling neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and leads to weakened muscles and early death — is not fully understood, but accumulating evidence suggests that inflammatory processes may play a role in the initiation and progression of the condition.

In research led by investigators at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and published in Scientific Reports, treatment with an anti-inflammatory drug delayed the onset of disease in a mouse model of ALS.

Only two...

It seems as if they’re everywhere these days. And while they’re perhaps not as plentiful as they were back when English settlers first piled off the Mayflower, they’ve made a major comeback across the country and enjoy a certain measure of celebrity, at least locally.

We’re talking turkeys. Wild turkeys.

On a recent cool fall morning, one such fowl strutted casually down Massachusetts Avenue at rush hour just outside of Harvard Square, seemingly oblivious to the speeding traffic. To its credit, it crossed in the crosswalk, lending credence to the claim that the wild ones possess...