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Science & Tech
Structure in dust around Vega may be signature of planet
Vega, located 25 light years away in the constellation Lyra, is the brightest star in the summer sky. Observations of Vega in 1983 with the Infrared Astronomy Satellite provided the first evidence for large dust particles around another star, probably debris related to the formation of planets. This discovery likely inspired Carl Sagan to place…
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in psychiatry and a research associate in McLean Hospital’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Laboratory and Brain Imaging Center, and his colleagues investigated. They found that repeated sexual…
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Health
Researchers explain how protein inhibits growth of blood vessels
Thirty years ago, Judah Folkman, of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first developed the idea that cancerous tumors are dependent on the growth of small blood vessels. Since then, Folkman and other researchers have sought a way to block the growth of cancer tumors through restricting or eliminating the small blood vessels that…
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Health
Study upends earlier thinking about immune cell’s readiness against disease
A type of disease-fighting cells in the body — T cells — have a reputation for being ever-ready to fight invading infections. But that’s not the way they really work, found Vassiliki Boussiotis, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Boussiotis and her colleagues found that…
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Health
Study finds embryonic stem cells can repair heart muscle
Heart failure develops when the heart stops pumping effectively due to the destruction of muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Damage inflicted during a heart attack causes massive loss of cardiomyocytes, resulting in ventricular dysfunction. Although heart transplantation has proven very successful, only a small number of organs are actually available for transplant each year. That’s…
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Health
High levels of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies in women linked to risk of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Nationwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 people with MS. Researchers have long wondered how MS develops and why it targets certain individuals, though they have long suspected that a virus was involved. Alberto Ascherio, associate professor in the Departments of Epidemiology…
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Science & Tech
Grants vs . investment subsidies
In many countries, governments face policy decisions about how to help poor people who have difficulty helping themselves because they can’t borrow money. What is the proper form of intervention? What role is it best for the government to fulfill? Should the government just give poor people money, in the form of a grant? Or…
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Science & Tech
Economic growth in Colombia: A reversal of “fortune”?
Between 1950 and 1980, the Colombian economy grew at a respectable average rate of 5 percent. Between 1980 and 2000, that average rate of growth fell to 3 percent. Why? Because of the drop in productivity caused by violence, primarily from the drug trade. According to Colombian economist Mauricio Cardenas, a visiting scholar at the…
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Science & Tech
User fees have unintended effect of decreasing health care access for poor
The reform of health care systems is supposed to make access to health care better. But in the particular case of user fees, the opposite effect was observed. During the 1980s and 1990s, health sector reforms to improve the efficiency of health systems and the quality of care provided were implemented in low-income countries, mainly…
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Science & Tech
Indivisible territory and ethnic war
Monica Duffy Toft is assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and assistant director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Toft has studied the causes of ethnic war and developed a theory based on territory. She says that “Attempts to…
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Health
Sickle cell disease cured in mouse model
Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder caused by a single mutation in the beta-globin gene that results in the substitution of one amino acid. This small error is enough to change the properties of the protein: when “sickled,” the blood’s hemoglobin dumps its oxygen in tissues, and it tends to stick to itself. This…
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Health
Polarity gene yields clues to organization of cell signaling, structural growth
Researchers are beginning to understand how a gene called “stardust” works to set up the basic top-down architecture of the epithelial cells that line the gut, skin, and many other organs of an embryo. Working with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of genetics, Beth Stronach, HMS research fellow in genetics, has cloned the…
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Health
Technique enables quick accounting of gene function
Now that whole genomes have been sequenced, a group of scientists has geared up for the next phase: identification and classification of newly discovered coding regions. The DNA microchip, developed just a few years ago, has already become a standard tool in the geneticist’s repertoire. With genomic sequence in hand, the researcher can synthesize all…
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Science & Tech
Diagnosis by database shows promise
A relatively new approach to researching cancer involves looking at the actions of thousands of genes in cancer tumors. This technique just recently became possible because, using new applications of technology, researchers are able to make “diagnoses by database.” At Harvard Medical School, several teams of researchers have recently discovered new types of cancer or…
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Health
Pain and pleasure activate same brain structures
David Borsook is a Harvard Medical School associate professor of radiology, who both treats patients and conducts research. “Over 15 years of seeing patients with pain it became obvious that we do not have good methods of assessing chronic pain,” Borsook says. “And we do not have good methods for treating it.” So Borsook and…
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Campus & Community
Two named 2002 Marshall Scholarship winners
Lauren Baer and Sarah Moss, both Harvard College seniors, have won Marshall Scholarships. The prestigious scholarships allow young American leaders to study at a university in Britain. On Dec. 5, the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, announced the names of the 40 American students who will become the new Marshall class.
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Campus & Community
Alexander wins International Rhodes
Karin Alexander of Lowell House is a winner of an International Rhodes Scholarship. Alexander plans to further her work in social studies, in which she concentrated, during her time at Oxford University. Alexander, who grew up in Zimbabwe, will be pursuing a degree in Development Studies at Oxford. She wants to prepare herself to work…
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Campus & Community
In brief
Hauser Center accepting fellowship applicants The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations is currently accepting applications for the 2002-03 Doctoral Fellowships in Nonprofit Sector Studies. The center will award up to five two-year residential fellowships to doctoral/advanced degree candidates who are enrolled in any program at Harvard University and are engaged in major research or are…
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Faculty selects Lewis for Bond Book Award David Levering Lewis, the Martin Luther King Jr. University Professor at Rutgers University, is the recipient of this year’s Horace Mann Bond Book Award for “W.E.B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and The American Century, 1919-1963” (Henry Holt and Company, 2000). The award, given annually by the faculty…
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Campus & Community
Holiday tree trimming
John Carrol from Facilities Maintenance Operations trims trees in JFK Park during the warmer weather earlier this month.
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Campus & Community
Edward Wagner dies at 77
Edward Wagner, who taught Korean studies at Harvard for 35 years, died Dec. 7, 2001, at the Walden Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Concord of pneumonia and other complications from AlzheimerÕs disease. He was 77.
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Campus & Community
The end
The good news is that the universe will last forever. The bad news is that we will be seeing less and less of it as galaxies fade and become frozen in time.
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Campus & Community
Stone resigns as Fellow of Harvard College
Following twenty-seven years as a member of the Harvard Corporation, Robert G. Stone, Jr., will conclude his service as Fellow of Harvard College at the end of the 2001-02 academic year.
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Campus & Community
President Summers Appoints William A. Graham Acting Dean of the Harvard Divinity School
William A. Graham, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of the History of Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, will serve as Acting Dean of the Harvard Divinity School pending the appointment of a permanent dean, President Lawrence H. Summers announced today.
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Campus & Community
Harvard After School Initiative announces $400,000 in grants
From soccer to science, civics to computers, the after-school offerings of 21 programs serving Boston youth got a $400,000 boost yesterday (Jan. 9), as Harvard formally honored its agreement to participate in Boston’s After School for All Partnership. Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino were joined by politicians, educators, and students…
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Campus & Community
The beauty of numbers
After three hours of mathematics one recent Saturday morning, 25 Boston middle school teachers paused briefly for lunch, after which they began their fourth hour of class totally engaged with the question of how to show that the square root of 2 is an irrational number. What would make a group that works hard all…
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Campus & Community
Contemporary approach to art
When Linda Norden got hired by the Fogg Art Museum as associate curator of contemporary art, she faced a challenging problem. Museums like the Fogg collect art objects, and they support research that focuses on careful comparative analysis within an historical context, an approach often referred to as “connoisseurship.” Much contemporary art, however, resists such…
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Campus & Community
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
If you asked most college students at most colleges to name their favorite class, chances are the words “freshman chemistry” wouldn’t come up all that often. On the other hand, if the retirement party for Jim Davis, senior lecturer on chemistry and chemical biology, is any indication, at Harvard “freshman chemistry” just might top the…
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Campus & Community
Harvard welcomes 2001-02 Fulbright Scholars
Thirty-seven foreign scholars and professionals and a senior fellow at Harvard have been named 2001 – 02 Fulbright Grant recipients. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, participating governments, and host institutions in the United States and abroad, these grants allow scholars from across the globe to lecture or conduct research at Harvard during the…