Month: July 2015

  • Nation & World

    New hope in old viruses

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear have reconstructed an ancient virus that is highly effective at delivering gene therapies to the liver, muscle, and retina.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Robotic insect mimics nature’s extreme moves

    A team of researchers from Harvard and Seoul National University has unveiled a novel robotic insect that can jump off the surface of water. In doing so, they have revealed new insights into the natural mechanics that allow water striders to jump from rigid ground or fluid water with the same amount of power and…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Uncovering what Thoreau uncovered

    Harvard’s Houghton Library has acquired Henry David Thoreau’s notes from the scene of the shipwreck that killed social reformer and writer Margaret Fuller.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Writing her way back

    Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles is returning to her musical-theater roots as the composer of “Waitress,” which opens at the American Repertory Theater this weekend.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Inadequate hydration can lead to impaired cognitive, emotional function

    Drinking enough water is essential for physiological processes such as circulation, metabolism, temperature regulation, and waste removal. More than half of all children and adolescents in the United States are under-hydrated — probably because they’re not drinking enough water, according to the first national study of its kind from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A Harvard homecoming for this artist

    Jesse Aron Green ’02 is the first Harvard alumnus to have an exhibition at the new Harvard Art Museums. A former Quincy House resident and a Needham native, Green spoke with the Art Museums about his Harvard education and the inspiration for his work.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Expanding the brain

    New findings reveal how genomic imprinting can dramatically expand biological diversity, and could have important implications for understanding the brain.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A shift in motherhood

    New findings draw from evolution to explain why human mothers seek help with raising their children.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hard-won lizards

    Research on the evolutionary history of the anole lizard became an international adventure for Professor Jonathan Losos.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Recurrent ovarian cancer patients may have hope

    Harvard researchers have found a gene therapy that delivers a protein that suppresses the development of female reproductive organs. This new treatment could improve the survival of patients with ovarian cancer that has recurred after chemotherapy. Recurrence happens 70 percent of the time and is invariably fatal.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Go ahead, be sarcastic

    Despite sarcasm’s nasty reputation, new research finds that it can boost creativity and problem-solving in the workplace.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Pesticide found in 70 percent of Massachusetts’ honey samples

    In a new study, Harvard researchers looked at pollen and honey samples collected from the same set of hives across Massachusetts. Findings show they contain at least one pesticide implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Zebrafish reveal drugs that may improve bone marrow transplant

    Using large-scale zebrafish drug-screening models, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have identified a potent group of chemicals that helps bone marrow transplants engraft, or “take.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Quality and quantity of key crops changing

    Changing environmental conditions around the globe caused by human activity could negatively impact the health of millions of people by altering the amount and quality of key crops, according to two new studies from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    It’s all about that bass

    Local students learn how the body talks to the brain — by making bugs dance — at the Harvard Ed Portal.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    James Rothenberg dies at 69

    James F. Rothenberg, a member of the Harvard Corporation since 2004 and the University’s treasurer from 2004 to 2014, died unexpectedly Tuesday. He was 69.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bringing far nearer

    Summer Summits: Notes from further afield, a new initiative at the Carpenter Center, is bringing voices in contemporary art to Harvard for a live travelogue of stories, relics, musings, and photographs from escapades near and far.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    More eyes on climate change

    Season Spotter is a citizen-science project that aims to recruit Internet users to assist researchers analyzing images of natural scenes.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tiny wires, great potential

    Harvard scientists have developed a method for creating a class of nanowires that could one day see applications in everything from consumer electronics to solar panels.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Keeping adults in the game

    In response to a recent poll that found most adults who played sports when they were younger stopped doing so as they aged, a panel of experts convened at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health explored how to keep adults in the game.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sensitive art

    Christina Leigh Geros’ creation for Radcliffe’s Wallach Garden is brilliantly responsive to its surroundings.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    David Grattan Hughes, 88

    David Hughes, Harvard’s Fanny Peabody Mason Professor of Music Emeritus, died in Paris on April 20; he was 88.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    James Lawrence Medoff

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 7, 2014, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late James Lawrence Medoff, Meyer Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry, was spread upon the records. Professor Medoff was an influential labor economist whose distinctive methods and broad interests expanded the vision…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ernst Badian

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 2, 2014, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Ernst Badian, John Moors Cabot Professor of History, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. From fragmentary biographical information about many individuals, Professor Badian deduced political and institutional patterns that greatly deepened…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Calvert Ward Watkins

    At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on November 4, 2014, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Calvert Ward Watkins, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Linguistics and the Classics, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. A larger-than-life Indo-Europeanist, Professor Watkins’s scholarship, including contributions to the American Heritage Dictionary,…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sacvan Bercovitch

    At the Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 7, 2015, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Sacvan Bercovitch, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. Professor Bercovitch was internationally known for learned and provocative work in the entire range of American…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Paul Mead Doty

    At the Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 7, 2015, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Paul Mead Doty, Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. Professor Doty played a leading role in establishing the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard. He…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Wolfhart Peter Heinrichs

    At the Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 5, 2015, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Wolfhart Peter Heinrichs, James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic, was spread upon the records. Professor Heinrichs served as co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam, for which he himself wrote over fifty…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr.

    At the Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 7, 2015, the Minute honoring the life and service of the Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. Professor Ramsey received the Nobel Prize in 1989 for inventing the separated oscillatory field method and the hydrogen…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Frank Moore Cross

    At the Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 5, 2015, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, Emeritus, was spread upon the records. Professor Cross was well-known for his scholarship on the Dead Seas Scrolls and he…

    5 minutes