Month: July 2014

  • Nation & World

    New hope for ‘bubble boy’ disease

    Children born with so-called “bubble boy” disease have the best chance of survival if they undergo a hematopoietic stem cell transplant as soon after birth as possible, according to a detailed analysis of 10 years of outcome data by researchers at the Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Help for halting autism symptoms

    A new study shows that boosting inhibitory neurotransmission early in brain development can help reverse deficits in inhibitory circuit maturation that are associated with autism.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lessons in craft

    A group of young students from Boston are working with members of the American Repertory Theater to craft short plays based on themes from “Finding Neverland.”

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Common Threads: Summer in the Yard

    The heat is on at Harvard, but it’s summer students, faculty, and international guests are keeping — and looking — quite cool.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dining alfresco

    The 39th Annual Senior Picnic celebration welcomes Cambridge seniors to Harvard Yard.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The unsinkable Alex Calabrese

    A staff profile of Alex Calabrese, who splits time between working as a lifeguard at Harvard and performing with his band, Neversink.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Chinese economists zero in on crises

    Economist Lawrence Summers and foreign policy expert Graham Allison talk about lessons learned from a Chinese research team’s comparison of the conditions around the Great Depression and the recession of 2008.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Wyss Institute’s organs-on-chips develops into new company

    The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced on Monday that its human organs-on-chips technology will be commercialized by a newly formed private company to accelerate the development of pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic, and personalized medicine products.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Marc J. Roberts, 71

    Marc J. Roberts, a longtime professor at the Harvard School of Public Health whose former students run health systems across the country and around the world, died suddenly on July 26 at his home in Cape Cod.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Destination: Doom

    A novella co-authored by Professor Naomi Oreskes imagines the long-term consequences of inaction on climate change.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Adam Cohen receives 2014 Blavatnik Award

    Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, has been named one of three winners of the 2014 Blavatnik National Awards, which honor young scientists and engineers who have demonstrated important insights in their respective fields and who show exceptional promise going forward.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New treatment for depression shows immediate results

    In a study at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, individuals with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder who received low-field magnetic stimulation (LFMS) showed immediate and substantial mood improvement.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Cheese-based research

    Bauer Fellow Rachel Dutton has identified three general types of microbial communities that live on cheese, opening the door to using each as a “model” community for the study of whether and how various microbes and fungi compete or cooperate as they form communities, as well as what molecules and mechanisms are involved in the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A virtual analysis

    A new analysis of four blended-format courses taught last fall offers practical guidance for faculty members interested in fresh pedagogical approaches. The pilot study led by the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning placed a premium on person-to-person interaction, and found redundancies between in-class and online instruction.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘The choicest of their kind’

    A look back at Harvard’s role in World War I, from the men and women who entered as volunteers after the first shot was fired to the thousands of graduates and students who joined the fighting in the American phase of the conflict.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Broken genes’ for a broken system

    To David Altshuler, the recent discovery of a genetic mutation that protects against type 2 diabetes offers hope in fighting more than just diabetes. It also illustrates how using the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Untangling spider webs

    The largest-ever phylogenetic spider study shows that, contrary to popular opinion, the two groups of spiders that weave orb-shaped webs do not share a single origin.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dual appointment for O’Neil Outar

    Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith and Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Tamara Elliott Rogers have announced O’Neil A.S. Outar will become the new senior associate dean and director of development for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) effective Sept. 8.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Funding international science research

    Six Harvard faculty members received Human Frontier Science Program awards to fund international collaborative science research.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Targeting alien polluters

    New research by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) shows that we could spot the fingerprints of certain pollutants under ideal conditions. This would offer a new approach in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deep in the beat

    Teens from The Hip Hop Transformation program visited the Hutchins Center’s Hiphop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard to learn about the culture’s history and make their own music.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Family strife

    Harvard Business School’s John A. Davis, who chairs the Families in Business program, talks about the struggles that companies like New England grocery chain Market Basket face when family members are at the helm.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    $650M gift to Broad seeks to propel psychiatric research

    Philanthropist Ted Stanley announced plans to donate $650 million to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT to foster research into psychiatric diseases, whose biological causes, long a mystery, scientists have begun to tease out in recent years.

    14 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Researchers shed new light on schizophrenia

    Harvard-affiliated researchers joined an international team to identify more than 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The Peter Pan portfolio

    Harvard’s Houghton Library contains a lush Peter Pan portfolio, a collection of vivid drawings by noted illustrator Arthur Rackham. The images are from the children’s book “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,” published by J.M. Barrie in 1906.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Behind ‘Peter Pan’

    The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) will stage the premiere of “Finding Neverland.” The new musical, about the real-life genesis of J.M. Barrie’s groundbreaking work “Peter Pan,” runs from July 23 through Sept. 28.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Photographic treasures

    Earlier this year, photograph conservators from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, visited Harvard and shared some treasures held by the Hermitage, many never before seen in the West. Recently, they shared several of these images in digital format.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tracking Fritz Lang

    The Harvard Film Archive is celebrating the work of Fritz Lang with a retrospective running through Sept. 1.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Art historian Seymour Slive, 93

    Seymour Slive, Gleason Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard and one of the world’s leading authorities on 17th-century Dutch painting, died in June at the age of 93. Slive had been battling cancer, but was present at Harvard’s May Commencement, where he received an honorary doctor of arts degree.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    “Many Rivers to Cross” nominated for an Emmy Award

    On the heels of receiving a Peabody Award, it has just been announced by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences that “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross…

    1 minute