Year: 2013

  • Nation & World

    Found in translation

    An associate curator at the Woodberry Poetry Room is also a translator who has brought a Chinese poet’s work to life for a widening audience.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Creative, useful, and fun

    From a “Bad Basketball” fantasy league to software that helps partygoers communicate with DJs, students at Harvard’s introductory computer science course created a wide array of programs on display during the annual fair.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Measuring life’s tugs and nudges

    Harvard scientists have devised the first method to measure the push and pull of cells as embryonic tissue develops. The cells’ tiny forces are measured in 3-D tissues and living embryos.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hard-pressed

    In a new polemic, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Thomas Patterson calls for sweeping changes to the education of journalists and the practice of journalism.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Signature signatures

    Long, tall, short, and small, the signatures of the famous are housed in many Harvard albums and archives.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Happily ever after, sometimes

    A Scholars at Risk panel investigates the universal uses of narrative and the hard-wired human need for storytelling.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    World Cup wisdom

    Urban planning scholar Judith Grant Long spoke with the Gazette about the impact of hosting a mega-event like the World Cup.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Grad students have can-do attitude

    Five Harvard graduate Schools challenged each other in a competition to collect cans and other dry goods for the Greater Boston Food Bank. The result: 1,899 cans and enough money to provide 738 meals.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Can iPads help students learn science? Yes

    A new study by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that students grasp the unimaginable emptiness of space more effectively when they use iPads to explore 3-D simulations of the universe, compared with traditional classroom instruction.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mandela’s legacy

    Harvard South Africa specialists discuss the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the future of the country he changed.

    14 minutes
  • Nation & World

    How it really happened

    Professor Annette Gordon-Reed was at the Ed Portal to talk about her scholarship on the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The power of trans

    “Trans Arts” was a two-hour panel Wednesday of poets, critics, and performers who in some cases identify with the gender opposite from the bodies into which they were born.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Pinpointing the higher cost of a healthy diet

    The healthiest diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health. The finding is based on the most comprehensive examination to date comparing prices of healthy foods and diet patterns against less healthy ones.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Other unknowns in health care rollout

    Politics and change are the only sure things ahead in the continued implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to a panel of experts at the Harvard School of Public Health.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Business School to dedicate Tata Hall

    Harvard Business School will soon have a new home for executive education with the dedication Monday of Tata Hall.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Liu named Marshall Scholar

    Brandon Liu has been named one of 36 students nationwide to receive a Marshall Scholarship, which will allow him to study for two years at a university in the United Kingdom.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Polly want a vocabulary?

    Irene Pepperberg, best known for her work with an African grey parrot named Alex — whose intelligence was estimated as equal to that of a 6-year-old child — recently relocated her lab to Harvard, where she continues to explore the origins of intelligence by working with birds.

    3 minutes
    grey parrot
  • Nation & World

    Universities as peacemakers

    A panel of experts and scholars from a range of fields convened at Harvard Divinity School to explore the role that universities can play in forging interreligious dialogue and peacemaking.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Majority of millennials don’t support health care reform

    A new national poll of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds by the Institute of Politics finds a solid majority of millennials disapprove of the comprehensive health reform package that the president signed into law in 2010, regardless of whether the law is referred to as the Affordable Care Act (56 percent disapprove) or “Obamacare” (57 percent…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Are U.S. students falling behind?

    The results of the latest program for international student assessment tests have been released, and there is both good news and bad news to report for U.S. students.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New lifestyles for Stone Hall

    Since students moved back into Quincy House’s Stone Hall in August, after 15 months of construction, they have explored and utilized the new academic, social, and study spaces in creative ways.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    How to speak American

    Harvard University Press delivers the flavor and idiosyncrasies of our spoken language in a new online version of the acclaimed “Dictionary of American Regional English.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Classroom magic

    A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber collaborated on a fall freshman seminar titled “Theater and Magic.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Airmail, to your door

    Harvard engineering Professor Robert Wood lends his perspective to Amazon’s proposal to start a flying drone delivery service within a few years. His verdict is that FAA regulations and liability concerns will likely be bigger hurdles than the technology.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard announces Evergrande support of three initiatives

    Harvard University announced today that Evergrande Group, an integrated industry leader based in China, has provided Harvard with University-wide, interdisciplinary support for three major initiatives.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘A once-in-human-history opportunity’

    A new report chaired by Harvard economist and University Professor Lawrence Summers says that eliminating health disparities between rich and poor nations is not only possible by 2035, it’s cost-effective. The study also sets out the steps to achieve it.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A character fit for a novel

    For 13 months from 1940 to 1941, Harvard graduate Varian Fry forged papers and planned rescue routes from occupied France for a list of people that reads like a Who’s Who of Europe’s cultural and political elite. Author Julie Orringer is spending her year at Radcliffe working on a novel about Fry’s life.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Persian inspiration

    Farrin Abbas Zadeh, a visiting fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, has mounted an art show called “A Window to Heaven: Motifs of Nature in Life and Dream.”

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gripes between bites

    A Pusey Library exhibit, “Dining and Discontentment,” is just one of many at Harvard that illustrate the power of investigating material artifacts in order to understand the past.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New hope for imperiled children

    A new suite of courses designed by the Harvard School of Public Health’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights aims to bring academic rigor to the field of child protection.

    3 minutes