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  • Campus & Community

    Korea Institute announces three postdoctoral fellows

    The Korea Institute at Harvard has recently announced its 2007-08 Postdoctoral Fellows in Korean Studies. This year, the institute will welcome Elise Prebin and Isabelle Sancho, international specialists on Korea, and Samuel Perry, the first Korea Institute-Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, a joint appointment shared by the two centers.

  • Campus & Community

    ‘Politics, social movements’ focus of fellows

    James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History Joyce Chaplin, director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, has announced the names of nine resident scholars participating in the center’s 2007-08 workshop, “Politics and Social Movements.” Leading the workshop are Lisa McGirr, professor of history, and Daniel Carpenter, professor of government.

  • Campus & Community

    Second class of Lemann Fellows welcomed

    Kenneth Maxwell, director of the Harvard University Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) and visiting professor of history, has announced the arrival of the second class of Lemann Fellows.

  • Campus & Community

    HMNH’s Wild Wednesdays receives sponsorship

    Distrigas of Massachusetts/SUEZ Energy Resources has announced its support as the lead corporate sponsor of Wild Wednesdays, a program for urban youth at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH).

  • Campus & Community

    Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies awards prizes

    The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Kodansha Publishers hosted the 13th annual Edwin O. Reischauer/Kodansha Ltd. Commemorative Symposium and the 12th annual awarding of the Noma-Reischauer Prizes in Japanese Studies on Oct. 19. These prizes are given annually by Kodansha Publishers for the best essays written by Harvard University students on Japan-related topics. The…

  • Science & Tech

    The cultural politics of pain, from Percodan to Kevorkian

    On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, physicians, historians of science, and members of the general public gathered in the  Gymnasium at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to hear about pain. Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History and founding director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University, began a lecture…

  • Health

    Honorary degree to HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom

    Barry R. Bloom, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), is being awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The University annually awards one or more honorary doctorates to mark its founding, a celebration called “Dies Natalis.” Last year’s awardees were Professor Sir Clive W.J. Granger, who shared the 2003 Nobel…

  • Science & Tech

    Foraging for forest frogs

    In the dark of the Sri Lankan cloud forest, the researchers’ only guides were the headlamps they used to light up the night, illuminating the cold, gray mist that drifted through the trees. They looked carefully as they walked among the trunks, the beams from their headlamps casting left and right, up and down. They…

  • Science & Tech

    Engineered weathering process might mitigate climate change

    Researchers at Harvard University and Penn State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions. By electrochemically removing hydrochloric acid from the ocean and then neutralizing the acid by reaction with silicate (volcanic) rocks, the researchers say they can accelerate natural chemical…

  • Health

    Massive decoding effort reveals fruit fly DNA

    An enormous effort to decode the DNA of one of the most important laboratory animals — the fruit fly — ended in success this week as a collaboration of researchers from 16 nations announced the sequencing of 10 fly species’ genomes. The research allows the extraordinary side-by-side comparison of the DNA of 12 species of…

  • Science & Tech

    Harvard, Japanese science organization sign memorandum of understanding

    Officials of Harvard and RIKEN, Japan’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Lanoratories have October 29 signed a Memorandum of Understanding to encourage and facilitate collaborations between Harvard and RIKEN researchers. Michael D. Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Venkstesh Narayanamurti, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences,…

  • Health

    Study examines substance abuse prevalence among teens receiving routine medical care

    Approximately 15 percent of middle and upper middle class teens receiving routine outpatient medical care in a New England primary care network had positive results on a substance abuse questionnaire, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a journal published by the American Medical Association. “According to…

  • Health

    Flier hails new, cooperative era in Harvard science

    Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier Friday evening issued a call for new approaches to advance the fight against disease, embracing cross-institutional collaborations at Harvard as a way to bring new thinking to old problems. Flier, the keynote speaker at the Fourth Annual Tony and Shelly Malkin Stem Cell Symposium at the Harvard Club of…

  • Health

    Study paints genetic portrait of lung cancer

    An international team of scientists today announced the results of a systematic effort to map the genetic changes underlying lung cancer, the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths. Appearing in the November 4 advance online issue of the journal Nature, the research provides a comprehensive view of the abnormal genetic landscape in lung cancer cells,…

  • Health

    Researchers track down rheumatoid arthritis gene

    Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have discovered a gene involved in rheumatoid arthritis, a painful autoimmune disease that affects 2.1 million Americans and can destroy cartilage and bone within the afflicted joint. In a study led by Robert Plenge, an instructor in medicine at Harvard…

  • Science & Tech

    Percentage of Katrina survivors with mental disorders increasing

    According to the most comprehensive survey yet conducted of people affected by Hurricane Katrina, the percentage of pre-hurricane residents of the affected areas in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi who have mental disorders has increased significantly compared to the situation five to eight months after the hurricane. These findings, which were presented last week to the…

  • Health

    Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility

    Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.

  • Campus & Community

    Statistics captures unpredictability of real world

    Harvard’s small but active statistics department celebrated its 50th anniversary last week. There were two days of lectures and panels Oct. 26-27 at the Gutman Conference Center, and a noisy, social, and musical banquet at the Harvard Club of Boston.

  • Health

    Scientists image vivid ‘brainbows’

    By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering these cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”

  • Health

    AAAS selects four faculty members as fellows

    The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently awarded the distinction of fellow to four Harvard faculty members. In all, 471 new members were named for their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.

  • Nation & World

    Sovereignty vs. global responsibility

    As part of Harvard Business School’s International Week, an annual event to highlight the cultural diversity at the School, Srgjan Kerim, president of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, delivered the keynote address at the Spangler Auditorium on Oct. 25.

  • Health

    1.8 million veterans lack health coverage

    Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, one in every eight (12.2 percent) is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance who are also Harvard Medical School researchers. The study is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Approximately 1.8…

  • Health

    Med students don’t study war, ethics

    A new survey of U.S. medical students shows they receive little training about what they should or should not do in wartime, despite ethical questions over physician involvement in prisoner interrogation and a legal framework making a “doctor draft” possible.

  • Campus & Community

    Faust, Pilbeam greet freshman parents

    To an assemblage of 1,000 freshman parents on Oct. 26 in Sanders Theatre, Dean of Harvard College David R. Pilbeam offered a welcome. “Your freshman is already a member of the extended Harvard family.”

  • Nation & World

    KSG panel: Early campaigning takes voter toll

    The intense media coverage of a small group of presidential hopefuls is prematurely narrowing the field of worthy nominees, many political experts claim.

  • Nation & World

    Dowd works the crowd at White Lecture

    Journalism, the saying goes, is the first draft of history.

  • Nation & World

    Vermont and New Hampshire, geographic twins, cultural aliens

    Ever wonder about Vermont and New Hampshire?

  • Nation & World

    Looking at China’s role in Africa

    China’s increasing influence in Africa is a double-edged sword that wields the potential for prosperity and despair.

  • Arts & Culture

    Rehding finds ‘monumental’ works key to German political history

    In December 1989, a few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein ’39 raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a special arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The central statement of the work — “all men will be brothers” — captured the sentiment of those who saw a brighter…

  • Nation & World

    A vision of collaboration, mutual respect

    Harvard and South Asia go way back.