Month: March 2008

  • Nation & World

    Newly discovered class of mouse retinal cells detect upward motion

    Harvard researchers have discovered a previously unknown type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Jane Mendillo to lead Harvard Management Company

    Jane Mendillo will become the new president and chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company (HMC), effective July 1, 2008, the HMC board of directors announced today.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Common aquatic animals show extreme resistance to radiation

    Harvard scientists have found that a common class of freshwater invertebrate animals called bdelloid rotifers are extraordinarily resistant to ionizing radiation, surviving and continuing to reproduce after doses of gamma…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Web of care

    Lake Peligre fills the valley floor, its dark blue waters a relief to the eye after hours winding through central Haiti’s hot, treeless hills on the dusty, potholed road that passes for National Route 3.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard Medical School to reduce student debt burden

    Harvard Medical School (HMS) Dean Jeffrey Flier today announced that the school is taking steps to reduce the cost of a four-year medical education by an average of $50,000 for…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Public interest lawyers come home to HLS

    Last weekend (March 13-15), current and future lawyers at Harvard Law School (HLS) discussed how to change the world. The first “Celebration of Public Interest” at HLS brought together hundreds of the School’s alumni involved in public service careers to discuss their work, share their stories, and engage with the next generation of lawyers considering…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Symposium held on ‘Olympic’ architecture

    The Olympics are never just about sport. This summer’s Beijing Olympics have been emphatically about architecture, too. In preparation for the games this August, the Chinese capital is undergoing an urban transformation unprecedented in recent history.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Satcher’s goal: To help ‘people who have been left out’

    David Satcher — the 16th U.S. surgeon general and co-author of “Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities” (McGraw-Hill, 2006), was in Boston (March 13) to deliver the fourth in a 2007-08 series of lectures in Public Health Practice and Leadership sponsored by the HSPH’s Division of Health Practice.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Arts In brief

    A.R.T. PRODUCTION UP FOR TOP AWARD LOCKWOOD, JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET TO EXPLORE BEETHOVEN

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    The story behind ‘Storied Walls’

    In March 2001, Bill Saturno, a newly minted Harvard Ph.D., was in Guatemala searching for recently uncovered hieroglyphics as a research associate of the Peabody Museum. It turned out that his guides were overbooked and his planned expedition had to be canceled. As a sort of consolation prize, the company offered Saturno a three-hour Land…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    RMJM gift supports integrated design program at GSD

    Despite the current building boom, many recent graduates from architecture and engineering schools are choosing to pursue more lucrative careers in high-tech and management consulting, rather than building and design. This trend, according to design professionals, could have major consequences for the construction industry. As part of an effort to address it, a recent $1.5…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Panel discusses paucity of designing women

    Women in Design, a student group at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) that aims to increase the visibility of women in the field, kicked off its four-part spring symposium, “Progress in Process,” Thursday night (March 13) with a panel discussion on where women in architecture are now and where they are headed. Department…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    With old forms, improvisation, Bielawa creates ingenious anachronism

    Manhattan composer Lisa Bielawa is a Radcliffe Fellow this year. Her tiny studio on Concord Avenue is spartan: white walls, a piano, a violin, two chairs, a table strewn with music staff paper. On one side is the glow of a computer. On the other is a single window, with a blur of trees beyond.…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    This month in Harvard history

    March 13, 1944 — Between matinees at Boston’s RKO Theatre, composer-pianist Duke Ellington visits Paine Hall to give a 20-minute lecture on the blues (“Negro Music in America”). At the keyboard, Ellington illustrates his talk with “Sophisticated Lady,” “Subtle Slough,” “Dancers in Love,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and “Mood Indigo.”

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending March 3. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Sharma to attend Clinton’s Global Initiative University

    Ankush Sharma, a graduate student in the Health Careers Program at Harvard University, attended the inaugural Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) conference at Tulane University March 14-16.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Shapiro selected as 2008 Young Global Leader

    The World Economic Forum recently named Daniel L. Shapiro a 2008 Young Global Leader. The director of the Harvard International Negotiation Initiative and a lecturer on law, Shapiro joins leaders across a wide range of fields who are under 40 years of age to be chosen to pursue solutions to global-scale issues including education, government,…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Memorial services

    MAYBURY-LEWIS MEMORIAL MARCH 24 BYSE MEMORIAL SET FOR APRIL 4

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Commencement information

    Commencement information for the Tercentenary Theatre event.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bowen, 54, was Straus Center’s deputy director

    Craigen Weston Bowen, deputy director of the Straus Center for Conservation at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum and an accomplished rock climber and gardener, died at her home in Lexington, Mass., on March 1, 16 months after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 54.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sports in brief

    SAILING TAKES FOURTH AT CENTRAL SERIES ONE TRIO OF HAT TRICKS OUT-TRICK QUINNIPIAC CRIMSON FENCERS CLINCH SIXTH PLACE AT CHAMPS

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Crimson Frozen Four-bound

    With the Harvard women’s hockey team protecting a 5-1 advantage in the closing minutes of its NCAA regional showdown versus Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon (March 15), a small contingent of Crimson fans suddenly filled Bright Hockey Center with a battle cry. “Min-ah-so-ta” they sang, followed by a rhythmic succession of hand claps (two slow, three…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard graduate student takes good cause and good friend on the road

    What’s a 15-year-old boy, confined to a wheelchair with a fatal form of muscular dystrophy, to do on his summer vacation? Take a 7,000-mile road trip across the country with 11 friends. So thought Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) student Logan Smalley Ed.M. ’08, who organized the trek and then captured it in his…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Conference brings out pacific potential of African hip-hop

    Harvard and hip-hop. One is the famous university, the other the music style marked by rapping, rhyming, and a synthetic backbeat. Both begin with the letter “h.” Nothing else in common, right? Wrong. Harvard last week (March 13-15) hosted a three-day conference on African hip-hop, a musical style that experts say not only makes audiences…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    John Harvard Book Project wraps up at local schools

    In October 2007, a group of Harvard College students proposed a novel way to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Harvard’s birth — donate books. Their initial idea developed into the John Harvard Book Project, which ran from November through February and raised funds from students, faculty, and staff with the goal of purchasing books…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Link between deep sleep and visual learning

    A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the processes that regulates deep sleep may affect visual learning. These results are published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Study shows indicator for cardiovascular events

    A study appearing in this week’s (March 19) New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirms that a combination of gene variants previously associated with cholesterol levels does reflect patients’ cholesterol levels and can signify increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death. Led by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) cardiology division,…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    MGH initiates Phase I of its diabetes trial

    Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a Phase I clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman can be applied in human diabetes.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Study: Know thyself and you’ll know others better

    Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought “lights up” when people infer the thoughts of others like themselves. However, this is not the case when we’re considering people we think of as different politically, socially, or religiously. Published in the current issue of the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Punishment doesn’t earn rewards

    Individuals who engage in costly punishment do not benefit from their behavior, according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics.

    3 minutes