Month: February 2009

  • Nation & World

    Harvard announces Library Task Force

    Provost Steven Hyman today (Feb. 27) announced the formation of a task force charged with developing recommendations to make the Harvard Library system stronger and more responsive to the needs of students and faculty at a time of both technological change and financial challenge.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New loan program helps international students

    Harvard University has signed an agreement with JPMorgan Chase that will provide graduate and professional students from abroad with access to private education loans. International students are not eligible for federal student loans.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Philosophers expand meaning of ‘space’

    Gaston Bachelard, a French philosopher of science, published “The Poetics of Space” in 1958. It was a meditation on the intimate and resonant places that are the cradle of memory — things like a child’s first house, chests, drawers, nests, shells, and corners.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Carpenter Center hosts its architect(s)

    The Carpenter Center for the Arts is currently presenting a daring exhibition of the work of artist William Pope.L titled “Corbu Pops.” The Carpenter Center is the only building in North America designed by the modernist genius Le Corbusier (“Corbu” to his friends).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Beauvoir as intellectual, politico, sexual theorist

    Simone de Beauvoir would likely have had a lot to say at a slightly belated 100th anniversary of her birth on Feb. 20 at the Barker Center as a collection of great minds gathered to discuss her great ideas.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mothers in fiction, mothers in fact

    In 1930, the French author Colette published the novel “Sido” and bound the first copy with swatches of blue fabric cut from her late mother’s favorite dress.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exploring ‘Patterns’ in architecture

    Establishing links between otherwise disparate cultural, intellectual, and technological categories has long been the job of the architect, an arbiter of aesthetic connection. Who else can create a bond between the Parthenon and a sports car, bricks and B movies, octogenarians and the color orange?

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Walsh named to AAM board

    Christopher T. Walsh, the Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), has recently been elected by the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) to its Board of Governors — alongside five other newly elected microbiology scientists joining the board.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Treister named program director

    Nathaniel Treister has been named the new Post Graduate Program director of the Division of Oral Medicine at the Department of Oral Medicine, Infection, and Immunity (OMII) at Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Gazette seeks your opinion in readership survey

    In an attempt to gauge how well the Harvard Gazette addresses the needs, tastes, and desires of its readers, the paper is conducting its first ever readership survey.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Flu continues, shots do too

    With influenza activity in the Boston area continuing to increase, the Harvard community is reminded that free flu vaccines are still available to all Harvard faculty and staff through Harvard University Health Services (HUHS). The flu shots will be given on the third floor of HUHS in Holyoke Center during regular weekly office hours. Similarly,…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Center for European Studies names spring fellows

    The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, dedicated to fostering the study of European history, politics, culture, and society, has recently announced the arrival of its 2009 spring fellows.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Get new Harvard IDs in Holyoke Center

    Harvard has a new, high-technology ID card, and those who have not yet picked up their card should do so at the final card swap event, March 2-6, at the Holyoke Information Center, 1350 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Mass.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Nicolae Iliescu

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 9, 2008, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Nicolae Iliescu, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Iliescu’s scholarly work includes a study of the influence of Saint Augustine on the Canzoniere of Petrarch.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Business School’s Marshall dies at 86

    Harvard Business School (HBS) Professor Emeritus Martin V. Marshall, a driving force in the development of the School’s Owner/President Management Program (OPM) for entrepreneurs and a marketing and advertising expert whose practice-oriented approach to teaching and course development left a lasting impact on countless Harvard M.B.A. students and business leaders, died on Feb. 16 in…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Australia-Harvard Fellowships announced

    An acclaimed physics educator, an honored researcher in regenerative biology, and an Alzheimer’s-focused pathologist are among six winners of the 2009 Australia-Harvard Fellowships recently announced by the Harvard Club of Australia Foundation (HCAF).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Hasty Pudding donates $10K to Cambridge Public Schools

    For the sixth year in a row, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals presented a check for $10,000 to the Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) for the promotion of arts education. Since its inception in 2002, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Fund for Cultural Enrichment has subsidized tickets for thousands of Cambridge students to attend theatrical performances, cultural events,…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Friday marks daffodil deadline

    With spring’s anticipated return still weeks away, there’s a beacon of yellow hope. Daffodils are an invigorating component in the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) efforts, and Harvard is again a key participant in Daffodil Days, the ACS’s annual flowery fight to help patients and eradicate cancer.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Schools as centers of community

    Al Witten worked as a teacher and principal for more than two decades in areas ravaged by poverty, crime, violence, and disease. Now the South African native is at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where he is figuring out ways to make schools central to facing these daunting challenges.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nicholas and Erika Christakis new master, co-master of Pforzheimer

    Nicholas and Erika Christakis have been appointed as master and co-master of Pforzheimer House.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Darwin’s empathy, imagination highlighted

    On Feb. 12, the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Much was made of his key idea, natural selection, and how it still resonates and informs science in the 21st century.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Patients untapped resource for improving care

    As the United States transitions to a new administration, and as the health care crisis mounts, the debate about how to buttress primary care delivery with information technology is getting louder. While much of the attention — and controversy — is focused on how to better equip physicians, little focus appears to be aimed at…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bacteria have more to say than previously thought

    Bacteria are the oldest living organisms, dating back 4 billion years. So it is only logical that they have evolved ways to communicate.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Vitamin B, folic acid may reduce risk of age-related vision loss

    New research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital finds that taking a combination of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid appears to decrease the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in women. This research is published in the Feb. 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Low-income diabetic women at increased risk for postpartum depression

    Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the University of Minnesota have found that living just above the poverty line and having diabetes increases by 50 percent a woman’s chance of developing postpartum depression — a serious illness that affects about one in 10 new mothers.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Calorie reduction key to weight loss, not food type

    Many popular diets emphasize either carbohydrate, protein, or fat as the best way to lose weight. However, there have been few studies lasting more than a year that evaluate the effect on weight loss of diets with different compositions of those nutrients.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HLS mock trial team takes top honors at Black Law Students Association event

    The Harvard Black Law Students Association’s (HBLSA) Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial team won first-place honors at the Black Law Students Association’s Northeast Regional Conference this February. The team will move on to the National Conference in Irvine, Calif., on March 18.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Looking at the world through a comparative lens

    When Steven Levitsky talks politics, a boyish enthusiasm takes over. It’s hardly surprising. He fell in love with the topic at the age of 5.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Taking on the ‘Godzilla Economy’

    The president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas delivered a somber economic message Monday night (Feb. 23) during the annual Albert H. Gordon Lecture at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. But while Richard Fisher admitted that policymakers should have heeded the signs of financial stress long ago, he expressed hope that…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Panelists disagree sharply about Germany’s progress

    A group from the worlds of politics, business, and the academy gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club for a look at “Germany in the Modern World: Division and Unity,” a student-organized conference.

    4 minutes