Year: 2008

  • Nation & World

    Researchers study glaciers on Earth’s coldest desert

    It’s December, and undergraduate Jenny Middleton bundles up to face the cold. While all across campus, students, and faculty don their winter gear, Middleton is not preparing for the New England winter; she is preparing for an expedition through the Earth’s coldest desert: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Climate options must include ‘all of the above’

    Climate change has so much momentum behind it that “either/or” discussions about options are meaningless because it’ll take all we can do just to arrest carbon dioxide at levels double those in preindustrial times, a top climate scientist said Dec. 11.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Government of India gives $4.5M to support grad students

    The government of India has given Harvard University $4.5 million to support fellowships for graduate students from India. The gift recognizes the accomplishments of Harvard Professor of Economics and Philosophy and Thomas W. Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen and his work for social and economic justice across the globe. It also recognizes the work of…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HGSE group brings civics back into curriculum

    As schools around the country work to meet academic requirements in reading and math set by the No Child Left Behind Act, some educators worry the trend ignores a critical part of a child’s learning: civic and moral education.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Du Bois Institute awards four with medals of honor

    The W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, Harvard’s highest honor in African American Studies, was presented on Friday (Dec. 12) to Ingrid Saunders Jones, Richard L. Plepler, Tamara Robinson, and Tavis Smiley, at a ceremony at the Harvard Kennedy School to honor their outstanding “contributions to culture, art, and the life of the mind.”

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Semester’s series ends with daylong panels

    Sixty years ago this month, the United Nations released to a war-shocked world the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a catalog of norms understood to apply to all human beings.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lawrence Lessig receives two Harvard appointments

    Renowned legal scholar Lawrence Lessig has been appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School, and as the faculty director of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    War Stories: Inside Campaign 2008 at the Institute of Politics

    No one will ever confuse the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School with Gillette Stadium. But the forum was host Thursday evening (Dec. 11) to two of the undisputed rock stars of American political campaigns: David Axelrod and David Plouffe, chief strategist and manager, respectively, for Barack Obama’s successful campaign for…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New label-free method tracks molecules and drugs in live cells

    A new type of highly sensitive microscopy developed by Harvard researchers could greatly expand the limits of modern biomedical imaging, allowing scientists to track the location of minuscule metabolites and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Supply of board-certified emergency physicians unlikely to meet projected needs

    The number of physicians with board certification in emergency medicine is unlikely to meet the staffing needs of U.S. emergency departments in the foreseeable future, if ever.  In the December…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Seidel honored with Crystal Quill Award

    Steve Seidel, the Patricia Bauman Arts in Education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), received the Crystal Quill Award from the Shakespeare Festival/LA Nov. 20 in Los Angeles. The Shakespeare Festival/LA is an arts organization that uses professional theater traditions to “enchant, enrich, and build community.”

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Author McGowan is honored as ‘2008 Harvard Humanist of the Year’

    Can parents raise moral children without religion? Greg Epstein M.T.S. ’07 thinks so. He’s the Humanist chaplain at Harvard, and has just finished writing a book due out next fall. Its title: “Good Without God.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    This month in Harvard history

    December 1899 – December 1921

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Dec. 8. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In brief

    Requests for HSPH Distinguished Alum Award nominations; Holiday gifts for those in need

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    Alfred Goldberg, cell biology professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS), recently received a $15,000 cash prize as the recipient of the 11th annual Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award for Biotechnology and Medicine from Brandeis University.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Darman memorial service, dedication on Dec. 16

    There will be a memorial service honoring Richard Darman ’64, M.B.A.’67 from 11 a.m. to noon on Dec. 16 at the Memorial Church. Darman, who died Jan. 25, was a member of the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) where he received the Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching and Distinguished Public Service, having…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    HUHS continues to offer flu vaccination clinics

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is conducting free vaccination clinics.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Zeph Stewart

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on November 18, 2008, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Zeph Stewart, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Stewart was an effective and beloved teacher.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard welcomes 2008-09 Fulbright Scholars

    Twenty-nine foreign scholars and professionals have been named Fulbright Scholar Program grant recipients for the 2008-09 academic year. 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 the University.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New high-tech ID cards to be distributed around University

    Beginning this week and continuing through the early winter of 2009, Harvard is distributing new, high-technology ID cards to the University community. The Harvard ID card is used in more than 400 systems across campus, and the new card will make those systems more secure by segregating key information and encrypting it in card-based technologies…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sports in brief

    Harvard’s All-American cornerback Andrew Berry ’09 was honored as one of 15 finalists for The Draddy Trophy by the National Football Foundation (NFF) on Tuesday (Dec. 9) at the 19th annual NFF Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    New shelter will protect bicycles

    Bicyclists across the University have a new way to protect their rides. University Operations Services’ Transportation Services and CommuterChoice recently unveiled a covered bike shelter near the newly completed Francis Avenue parking lot close to the Divinity School.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Plummer, Noble honored at Memorial Church

    It was only last year that a crowded room in Salem, Mass., chuckled as the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes of the Memorial Church remarked that the city had erected a statue of “Bewitched” actress Elizabeth Montgomery — an irony as her sole relationship to Salem was her role as a TV witch. Salem’s real…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sackler Museum, Gutman Library ‘Step Into Art’ with children

    “Look at that blue! Look at it! Isn’t it pretty?” exclaims Adriana, a sixth-grader from Mother Caroline Academy in Dorchester. Four of Adriana’s peers rush to see the plastic paint tray she’s pointing at. They’re eager to share in Adriana’s excitement: after all, she’s just discovered a new shade of blue. This color, a luminous…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HKS students will help out city of Boston

    When the mayor of Somerville needed help with his city’s fiscal crisis in 2004, he looked to Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) for assistance. Four years later, in today’s uncertain economic climate, the city of Boston is turning to the institution for aid.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shai Agassi dreams of a gas-free future

    Electric cars with zero emissions. Powered by renewable energy. All over the world. That is Shai Agassi’s dream. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur left a lucrative corporate software track last year to found Better Place, a transportation company based on sustainability and independence from oil.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lovins: Protecting the environment is ‘a highly profitable enterprise’

    As U.S. automakers plead for a government bailout, the next great automotive revolution is already under way, as Japanese automakers plan for a generation of lightweight cars that vastly increase mileage and whose advanced materials pay for themselves through dramatically streamlined assembly and smaller engines, an energy expert said Wednesday (Dec. 3).

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HLS students effect real change in law, policy clinic

    In October 2007, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment made the unprecedented decision to deny a permit application for three new coal-fired generating units that together would emit 11 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year, citing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change as the reason for the denial.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Researchers replicate ALS process in lab dish

    A Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) research team has succeeded in deriving spinal motor neurons from human embryonic stem cells, and has then used them to replicate the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease process in a laboratory dish.

    3 minutes