Month: April 2013
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Nation & World
The price of women’s immigration
Author Sonia Nazario told a Radcliffe conference that people don’t generally know that large numbers of women who immigrate to the United States illegally to get jobs and support their families back home leave their own children behind to do so.
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Nation & World
Understanding student weaknesses
As part of an unusual study that surveyed 181 middle school physical science teachers and nearly 10,000 students, researchers found that the most successful teachers were those who knew what students would get wrong on standardized tests.
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Nation & World
Discovering the path to Harvard
“In my first semester at Harvard, I worked with several other students to create a chapter of the national DREAM Program here. It was my first foray into working with youth, and I was excited to give Cambridge kids a taste of the campus that was so close to their homes,” says Harvard student Sara…
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Nation & World
Seeking fairness in ads
Latanya Sweeney, Harvard professor of government and technology in residence, wants to add a new factor to the weighting Google uses when delivering online ads, one that measures bias. In a new paper, she describes how such a calculation could be built into the ad-delivery algorithm Google uses.
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Nation & World
In plaza, ‘remembrance walls’ rise
In the wake of tragedy, people gather to support each other, and to give thanks for family, friends, and community. After the Boston Marathon bombings and the area shutdown during the search for suspects, the Harvard community has been doing just that.
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Nation & World
Melding the Web and the tactile
An organismic and evolutionary biology course this semester has formed a virtual classroom with other universities to examine the holdings of museum collections and the vast amount of data they contain and integrate them into the classroom.
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Nation & World
$50M gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation
The Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Len Blavatnik, M.B.A. ’89, has donated $50 million to Harvard University. The gift will launch a major initiative to expedite the development of basic science discoveries into new breakthrough therapies for patients and cures for disease. The gift underpins Harvard’s growing commitment to creating an entrepreneurial culture in the…
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Nation & World
Music as fine medicine
For the first time, students at Harvard Medical School in the Longwood area are participating in the annual Arts First festival, the University’s four-day celebration of the visual, literary, and performing arts.
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Nation & World
View from the Porch
Harvard officials dedicated a new common space, called the Porch, in the Yard on Wednesday, and welcomed the reopening of the science plaza after a reconstruction project.
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Nation & World
Mapping blackness in creativity
Art historian Steven Nelson inaugurated the Richard Cohen Lecture Series at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute with a look at how black American artists draw from centuries of the African diaspora.
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Nation & World
Reshaping Manhattan’s Midtown
Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni working in New York City outline a plan to revamp a 70-block area around Grand Central Station, where zoning restrictions have long restricted the height of buildings, to allow for structures twice as tall.
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Nation & World
What rocks can teach
The Harvard Museum of Natural History has opened its renovated Earth and Planetary Sciences gallery, linking the fantastic mineral displays to the story of the Earth and the work of faculty members who conduct research on geological processes.
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Nation & World
Matt Damon, on his craft
Actors Matt Damon and John Lithgow met at Sanders Theatre on Thursday for a spirited conversation that kicked off Harvard’s annual Arts First celebration.
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Nation & World
Reflections on week of terror
A panel at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum examined the interplay of law enforcement coordination, leadership, and social and traditional media during the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.
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Nation & World
Potential diabetes breakthrough
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans.
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Nation & World
Resources in the aftermath of tragedy
The following events are being held to help the Harvard community cope with Monday’s tragedy during the Boston Marathon.
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Nation & World
Radcliffe Gymnasium renamed
At a celebratory event on Wednesday, the Radcliffe Gymnasium was renamed the Knafel Center in honor of Sidney R. Knafel ’52, M.B.A. ’54, and in recognition of the center’s increasing role in promoting intellectual exchange across Harvard’s Schools and with the public.
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Nation & World
Science in service
Teams of students from “Engineering Sciences 20: How to Create Things and Have Them Matter” in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are working to create unusual products that are designed to change the world.
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Nation & World
The problem with predictions
People would like to predict the future, says author and mathematician David Orrell, but it remains quite a difficult thing to do, even with lots of data at hand.
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Nation & World
To protect, serve, mourn
The Harvard University Police Department joined thousands of colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday to pay tribute to Sean Collier, the officer slain in aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.
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Nation & World
‘Beowulf,’ as it was told
Steven Rozensk and Matthew Sergi have collaborated with the American Repertory Theater for a public reading of the epic poem “Beowulf” in its original Old English. There is a free reading from noon to 5 p.m. at the A.R.T. on April 25.
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Nation & World
11 elected to American Academy
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected 11 from Harvard as its newest members.
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Nation & World
Robot hands gain a gentler touch
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed an inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to turn a brute machine into a dexterous manipulator.
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Nation & World
Insignificant, with a lousy future
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss described a universe with mysterious particles popping in and out of existence, in which the discoveries of dark energy and dark matter have made mankind more insignificant than ever.
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Nation & World
Confronting evil, embracing life
Two Harvard conferences, each trimmed from two days to one by the Boston Marathon bombing and resulting manhunt, provided surprisingly appropriate lessons of comfort and perspective.
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Nation & World
With nature in mind
Kongjian Yu, who received a doctor of design degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1995, espouses an environmental design ethic that considers natural processes on a site first. Since 2010, he has guided GSD students through the problems related to China’s rapid urbanization.
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Nation & World
Your own news platform
The information revolution seemed to hit another high gear last week in Boston, leaving authorities on information technology pondering the ramifications.
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Nation & World
Pitcher plants provide tipping point
New research out of the Harvard Forest offers insight on exactly when the tipping point occurs that can disrupt the intricate web of life in a lake.
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Nation & World
Earth feels impact of middle class
The rise of the middle class is a bigger environmental challenge than the rising global population, according to Sir David King, the former science adviser to the British government, who urged the adoption of sustainable development as a way to manage growing global demands in a finite world.