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Campus & Community
Fanfare, dramaturges mark dedication
The dusty old grand dame of Harvard theater has gotten a new lease on life, and what was once known as the Hasty Pudding Theatre has been reborn as the New College Theatre, a state-of-the-art facility boasting the latest in technology, ambience, and creature comforts.
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Campus & Community
Neighbors enjoy Crimson football
In her first official public appearance since her installation as Harvard’s 28th president, Drew Faust joined more than 700 Allston Brighton neighbors at the Allston Brighton Family Football Day Oct. 13 at Harvard Stadium.
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Health
Popular causes not necessarily best
Conservation policies favoring keystone animal species are insufficient to conserve the world’s biodiversity because many of these target animals don’t live in the world’s most biodiverse spots: lowland tropical forests under pressure from agriculture, logging, and other human activities.
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Health
Nanowire makes own electricity
Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well.
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Campus & Community
Frankel receives Lennart Nilsson Award for science photography
Felice Frankel, scientific imagist and researcher in Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing, has been named the recipient of the 2007 Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific or nature photography. Frankel was cited for creating images described by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, which oversees the award, as “exquisite works of art and crystal-clear scientific photographs — both fascinating…
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Campus & Community
Junior faculty, clinicians receive Shore Fellowships
The Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program for Scholars in Medicine has announced the selection of more than 90 junior faculty members, researchers, and clinicians as fellows for the 2007-08 academic year. Fellows generally receive between $25,000 and $30,000 for one year.
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Health
Study probes academic, industry relationships
A study led by members of the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy (MGH-IHP) has found that institutional academic-industry relationships — financial relationships companies have with medical schools or teaching hospitals rather than with individual physicians or scientists — are as common and pervasive as individual relationships. The report, the first nationwide look at…
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Nation & World
Phyllis Schlafly speaks out on judicial activism
The woman credited with defeating the Equal Rights Amendment was on the Radcliffe campus last week to discuss the current target in her crosshairs: judicial activism.
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Campus & Community
Joseph Vacanti wins 2007 John Scott Medal
Acting for the city of Philadelphia, the board of directors of city trusts has awarded John Homans Professor of Surgery Joseph P. Vacanti the 2007 John Scott Medal. The award is given to men and women whose inventions have contributed in some outstanding way to the “comfort, welfare, and happiness” of mankind.
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Arts & Culture
‘Hillary factor’ among topics at leadership and women lunch
Is America on the verge of an explosion of “girl power” — a new level of female leadership in public life?
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Nation & World
Nobel laureate Yunus gives Wiener Lecture
On Oct. 13, economist and microfinancing pioneer Muhammad Yunus stood in front of a cheering capacity crowd at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. One year earlier, to the day, he had received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize — news that Yunus said “exploded with happiness all over Bangladesh.”
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Campus & Community
KSG, Quadir award prize for innovations in Bangladesh
The lives of rural people of Bangladesh can be improved by utilizing absentee-owned fallow land more effectively and by employing the vitamin-rich fruits and leaves of the now ignored moringa tree. Those are the promises of the two prize-winning essays in an annual contest sponsored by the Kennedy School of Government’s Center for International Development…
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Campus & Community
Shore Fellows awarded valuable time
N. Stuart Harris, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is also an active researcher doing groundbreaking research on hypoxia — a shortage of oxygen in the body.
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Nation & World
Inequality and justice, why, where, when, who
“Universities are inequality machines,” Christopher Jencks, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said. “Combating inequality works only by leveling up … which often takes generations.” Jencks was one of a panel of five participants in the symposium titled “Inequality and Justice in the 21st Century.” Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb…
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Arts & Culture
How interpretation makes meaning
In 1973, the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion. But where did that right come from? The Constitution never mentions abortion, or the right to privacy, on which the court’s abortion decision was based. “It’s a long story,” said Michael Sandel, the Anne…
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Science & Tech
Harvard science depth, breadth is on display
Five prominent Harvard scientists illuminated the cutting edge of Harvard science, predicting new treatments for old diseases, describing new ways to think about the universe, and hailing advances in our understanding of humanity and the human body. The symposium featured faculty studying everything from theoretical physics to the human genome, also touching on stem cell…
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Nation & World
The truths lost and gained in wartime
The symposium “War and Truth” explored the modern resonance of an ancient sentiment: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s attributed to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) and was revived to describe the events of World War I and other confounding 20th century conflicts. Six scholars and writers investigated what truths are lost…
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Science & Tech
Yale honors E. O. Wilson with Verrill Medal
Yale honors Wilson with Verrill Medal Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus E.O. Wilson received the Addison Emery Verrill Medal from Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History on Wednesday (Oct. 17) in New Haven, Conn. Awarded by the curators and trustees of the museum, the medal was established in 1959 to honor “some signal practitioner in…
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Science & Tech
Nanowire generates its own electricity
Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well. Charles M. Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, and colleagues created the nanowire out…
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Health
Database of human genetic diversity allows identification of disease-associated genes
Investigators from six countries have completed the second phase of the International HapMap Project, an effort to identify and catalog genetic similarities and differences among populations around the world. Information provided in the first phase of the HapMap, completed in 2005, has led to the development of techniques facilitating the search for genes associated with…
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Science & Tech
Frankel wins Lennart Nilsson Award
Felice Frankel, scientific imagist and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing, has been named the recipient of the 2007 Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific or nature photography. Frankel was cited for creating images described by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, which oversees the award, as “exquisite works of art and crystal-clear scientific photographs –…
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Health
Medical schools’ departments, department heads often have industry relationships
BOSTON – A study led by members of the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy (MGH-IHP) has found that institutional academic-industry relationships – financial relationships companies have with medical schools or teaching hospitals rather than with individual physicians or scientists – are as common and pervasive as individual relationships. Their report, the first nationwide…
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Science & Tech
Basic understanding of biological clock advances
Writing this week in the journal Science, researchers at Harvard describe what causes a trio of proteins, if placed in a test tube with the common biochemical fuel ATP as a source of phosphate, to function as a minimalist biological clock of sorts, maintaining an accurate circadian rhythm for long periods of time. The new…
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Science & Tech
Forests, reefs, mountaintop illuminate tropical biology
Morning came in the middle of the night in the hikers’ hut partway up the side of Borneo’s towering Mount Kinabalu. At 2 a.m., after just a few hours’ sleep, the Harvard Summer School students slowly roused themselves, creating a chorus of rustling sleeping bags, zippers, and boots on the wooden floor. They’d been on…
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Science & Tech
Survey of hurricane preparedness finds one-third on high risk coast will refuse evacuation order
Thirty-one percent of residents surveyed in coastal areas said they wouldn’t evacuate in the face of a major hurricane, even if told to do so by the government, according to a new survey of people in high-risk hurricane areas conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security. This…
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Health
High rates of HIV infection documented among young Nepalese girls sex-trafficked to India
A study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers of girls and women who were sex-trafficked from Nepal to India and then repatriated has found that 38 percent were HIV positive. The infection rate exceeded 60 percent among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 years. One in seven of the study’s participants…
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Health
Income Inequality Associated with Double Disease Burden of Overnourishment and Undernourishment in India
It has been known that countries with rapidly developing economies may experience a double-disease burden that results from undernutrition and overnutrition. People living in poverty experience diseases that result from a lack of resources, while affluent individuals may suffer from diseases that result from an abundance of resources. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public…