Tag: Science

  • Nation & World

    Medical grants a boon for Mass.

    Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Around the Schools: Faculty of Arts and Sciences

    Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered a record-breaking gamma-ray burst located 13 billion light-years from Earth.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Concentrating on stem cells

    New concentration is the latest example of the University’s commitment to and pre-eminence in the promising field of stem cell research.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Around the Schools: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

    The Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH), based at SEAS, launched its new Innovation Space Sept. 1. The space expands SEAS’s resources for experiential innovation education and provides Harvard’s undergraduate student innovators with the first dedicated environment for learning and working in teams on entrepreneurial projects.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Two centers join fellowship programs

    The Berkman Center and the Center for Research in Computation and Society (CRCS) have joined their fellowship programs for the 2009-10 academic year.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Bringing science back to Liberian classrooms

    Adam Cohen, assistant professor in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Ben Rapoport, a student at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are bringing science to war-torn Liberia.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shukri F. Khuri

    Dr. Shukri F. Khuri passed away peacefully at the age of 65, surrounded by family and friends, on September 26, 2008, at his Westwood home, after courageously battling brain cancer for more than eighteen months. A gifted and spirited surgeon and researcher, his absolute love for life enabled him to achieve remarkable professional success and…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Committee on African Studies awards 51 summer travel grants

    Through its Africa Initiative, the Harvard Committee on African Studies has awarded 51 grants to Harvard students for travel to sub-Saharan Africa during the summer of 2009. The grants fund internships, language study, senior thesis research, master’s thesis research, and doctoral dissertation research. Twenty-four undergraduates and 27 graduate students were awarded grants, the largest number…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Green reunions: Groundwork set

    As of June 4, Harvard has celebrated 358 commencements. Add to that the simultaneous celebration of untold thousands of reunions.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Physics for musical masses

    Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is taking Paris’ operagoing public to the fifth dimension this month, working with a composer and artist to present an opera that incorporates Randall’s theories about extra dimensions of space.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Frans Spaepen named interim director of Center for Nanoscale Systems

    Frans Spaepen, director of the Rowland Institute, will serve as interim director of Harvard University’s Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) starting July 1, upon completion of his term as interim dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    ‘Water guy’ John Briscoe stays in motion

    For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Trading energy for safety, bees extend legs to stay stable in wind

    New research shows some bees brace themselves against wind and turbulence by extending their sturdy hind legs while flying. But this approach comes at a steep cost, increasing aerodynamic drag and the power required for flight by roughly 30 percent, and cutting into the bees’ flight performance.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mohan Sundararaj of HSPH harnesses the power of music to heal

    It was 1998 and Mohan Sundararaj was frustrated. A medical student at India’s Sri Ramachandra Medical College and the child of two physicians, Sundararaj was committed to his medical education but frustrated by the demands that kept him from his other passion: the piano.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Opening the door to knowledge

    As thousands of Harvard students celebrate their graduation in grand style, the first graduating class from a project across the river will depart with little fanfare but immeasurable success.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dean Tosteson dies at age 84

    Daniel C. Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology, who served an extraordinary two decades as dean of Harvard Medical School, from 1977 to 1997, died peacefully on May 27 after a long illness. He was 84 years old.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Radcliffe’s Fay Prize awarded to Norman Yao for pioneering research

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has named Harvard math and physics concentrator Norman Yao ’09 the winner of its 2009 Captain Jonathan Fay Prize. Yao was selected for the quality and potential impact of his senior thesis, which describes a breakthrough scientific technique he developed to measure the properties of neurofilaments,…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Three honored with gift to support science

    An anonymous donor honored the extraordinary service of three Harvard veterans with a $15 million gift to support innovative science. From left, Robert L. Scalise, M.B.A. ’89, Nichols Family Director of Athletics; William R. Fitzsimmons ’67, Ed.M. ’69, Ed.D. ’71, dean of admissions and financial aid; and John P. Reardon Jr. ’60, executive director of…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Take two: Brother’s keepers Bill and Dan Jones ’09, ’09

    Complete strangers recognize Dan Jones on campus all the time. It’s the same for his brother, Bill. “I just play along,” said Dan. “I don’t know their names, I’ve never seen them before. I just assume Bill knows them and I try to be friendly so they don’t start hating him.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Young scholar aims at physics, finance, and the physical

    Lin “William” Cong remembers his early childhood as a time of playing in the street, reading comic books, and coasting through the early grades. College was a dream.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Class of 1984 takes giant step in reducing carbon footprint

    For its fifth reunion, the Class of 1984 added community service to the celebration — a novel feature that other reuniting classes have since copied.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mobile health van returns $36 for every dollar invested

    Researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed a prototype “return on investment calculator” that can measure the value of prevention services. Using a Boston-based mobile health program called the “Family Van” to test the tool, the team found that for the services provided in 2008, this program, in the long run, will return $36…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Chemical leaches from plastic drinking bottles into people

    A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles, the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles, showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

    4 minutes
    Plastic bottles lined up.
  • Nation & World

    Acid-suppressive medicines increase pneumonia risk for hospital patients

    Ever since a class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors was introduced to the market in the late 1980s, the use of these acid-suppressive medications for heartburn, acid reflux, and other gastrointestinal symptoms has grown tremendously. The widespread use has extended to the inpatient hospital setting, where patients are often routinely given the medications as…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Brigham face transplant recipient goes home

    James Maki, a 59-year-old who became the nation’s second face transplant recipient in April to repair injuries from a horrific subway accident, left Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Thursday (May 21), thankful for what he called a “new chance to build my life.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Evolution explored from all angles

    From humanity’s close relationship to chimpanzees to the missing link between land and sea creatures, the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) has capped off a year celebrating Darwin and “On the Origin of Species” with a new exhibit that puts evolution front and center.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Biology department evolves at FAS

    Earlier this month, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) made official what scientists worldwide have known for years: Harvard is a hotbed of research and teaching in the field of human evolutionary biology — the study of why we’re the way we are.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Talking terror

    The two men sit close, knees almost touching, in a mud-walled hut in the Congolese village of Katokota.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scholar makes robots that detect land mines

    On Oct. 10, 2005 — he remembers the date exactly — Thrishantha Nanayakkara was driving down a country road, headed for a science workshop at Jaffna Central College, a high school in the far north of Sri Lanka. The event was designed to distract potential child soldiers from the allure of war.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Black Holes’ at the Museum of Science

    The exhibition “Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists,” produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, will open at the Boston Museum of Science on June 21. The exhibit journeys to the edge of black holes to discover how recent scientific research is challenging notions of space and time, and, in the process, turning science…

    1 minute