Month: July 2013

  • Nation & World

    Reducing the juice

    The Office of Sustainability hosted a “lighting fair” Tuesday that offered members of the Harvard community energy-efficient bulbs at a fraction of their regular cost.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nerve damage and fibromyalgia

    About half of a small group of patients with fibromyalgia — a common syndrome that causes chronic pain and other symptoms — were found to have damage to nerve fibers in their skin and other evidence of a disease called small-fiber polyneuropathy.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A cross-country collaboration

    Amy Wagers and Emmanuelle Passegué have found that cancer stem cells actively remodel the environment of bone marrow, where blood cells are formed, so that it is hospitable only to diseased cells. This finding could influence the effectiveness of bone marrow transplants.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Targeting climate change

    EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday promised that the Obama administration will “engage” on climate change issues during its last three years. Her policy speech at Harvard Law School was her first since being confirmed to the post.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Boston, hotbed of anti-slavery

    A Houghton Library exhibit, the work of students, takes in Boston’s sweeping role in ending slavery in America.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Good health lasts later in life

    Working from data collected between 1991 and 2009 from almost 90,000 individuals who responded to the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, Professor David Cutler has found that, even as life expectancy has increased over the past two decades, people have become increasingly healthier later in life.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A year set to music

    Matt Aucoin has been busy since graduating from Harvard last year. The young conductor and composer splits his time among Europe, New York, and Chicago, and is working on a Civil War-themed opera for the American Repertory Theater.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    On the lighter side

    Harvard’s true color might be crimson — but beauty can be found in the neutral palette of the campus.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Weather doesn’t affect ice cream consumption

    As July — National Ice Cream Month — winds down, the National Weather Service shows Cambridge’s temperatures going back up, so chances are you’ll find someone from the Harvard community dipping into a frozen delight. At Harvard, ice cream is a year-round staple.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A patio space transformed

    Envisioning a green space that is as inviting and social as it is operative and effective, students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design worked last semester to transform a concrete patio space at Gund Hall into a modular system of vegetation and planters that could absorb and purify stormwater.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Coffee drinking tied to lower risk of suicide

    Drinking several cups of coffee daily appears to reduce the risk of suicide in men and women by about 50 percent, according to a new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lorna Daniells, 94, HBS librarian

    Lorna Daniells, a prominent research librarian who worked at Harvard Business School’s Baker Library from 1946 until her retirement in 1985, died on June 11 in Bloomfield, Conn., at the age of 94. During her nearly 40 years at HBS, she served as chair of the library’s reference department from 1970 to 1974, head of…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Bacterial blockade

    Harvard researchers have identified a pair of genes that appear to be responsible for allowing a specific strain of bacteria in the human gut to break down Lanoxin — a widely prescribed cardiac drug — into an inactive compound, as well as a possible way to turn the process off.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Perfecting digital imaging

    Despite advances, the best software and video cameras cannot seem to get computer-generated images and digital film to look exactly the way our eyes expect them to. Harvard’s Hanspeter Pfister and Todd Zickler are working to narrow the gap between “virtual” and “real” by asking the question: How do we see what we see?

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    University leaders react to Keating report

    An independent report commissioned by President Drew Faust following news of email searches related to cases before the Administrative Board in fall 2012 was released on Monday.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Clues to cholera resistance

    Researchers have long understood that genetics can play a role in susceptibility to cholera, but a team of Harvard scientists is now uncovering evidence of genetic changes that might also help protect some people from contracting the deadly disease.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Roles of a lifetime

    To mark the 100th birthday of screen legend Burt Lancaster, the Harvard Film archive launches a retrospective that samples his decades of great movies.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    From all over

    This year, Harvard Summer School’s size and span — 6,000 students; the 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and more than 100 countries; an age range of 14 to 81 — demonstrate anew the University’s commitment to diversity.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New plan of attack in cancer fight

    Harvard Professor Martin Nowak and Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a “targeted therapy” — a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer’s ability to grow and spread — could effectively cure nearly all cancers.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The next gold rush: Outer space?

    New observations confirm that colliding neutron stars create short gamma-ray bursts, and such collisions produce rare heavy elements, including gold. Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believe the Earth’s gold likely came from colliding neutron stars.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Small business has big impact on Allston

    Swissbäkers expands in Allston with the addition of a playground and outdoor seating, adding vibrancy to Western Avenue. The ribbon cutting is part of Harvard’s continued efforts to focus on revitalizing the community.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Opening a portal to summer

    The Harvard Allston Education Portal has a summer mentoring program that pairs Harvard undergraduates with schoolchildren from Boston’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood to help find new ways to engage the youngsters in math, science, and writing.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Postdoc wins Runyon Fellowship

    Michael A. Cianfrocco, a postdoctoral fellow in molecular and cellular biology, has been named a fellow by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Planting for peace

    Mexican artist Pedro Reyes visited the Arnold Arboretum to plant a hydrangea — using a shovel made from the metal of surrendered firearms — as part of his Palas por Pistolas (Shovels for Guns) program.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hamburger to receive honorary degree

    Jeffrey Hamburger will receive an honorary degree from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Revolutionary discovery

    Harvard’s Houghton Library recently uncovered documents from 1767 that foreshadow the American Revolution: eight sheets of signatures — more than 650 in all — protesting Colonial taxation.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Reprogrammed cells generate blood vessels

    Harvard researchers have generated long-lasting blood vessels from reprogrammed human cells. The study in the mouse model reveals both the potential and remaining challenges to vessel regeneration.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Target: New ways to battle disease

    “The Road to Vital Therapy,” part of the Broad’s Institute’s midsummer science lecture series, discussed how researchers are tapping the human genome, hoping to create effective treatments for vexing afflictions.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Robert Putnam receives National Humanities Medal

    President Obama awarded Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, with the 2012 National Humanities Medal. Also receiving the award was a former Overseer and former faculty member at the Graduate School of Design.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Daniel M. Wegner famous for ‘thought suppression’

    Daniel M. Wegner, a pioneering social psychologist who helped to reveal the mysteries of human experience through his work on thought suppression, conscious will, and mind perception, died July 5 at age 65.

    5 minutes