All articles

  • Science & Tech

    Female lower back has evolved to accommodate strain of pregnancy

    According to a new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin, women’s lower spines evolved to be more flexible and supportive than men’s to increase…

  • Science & Tech

    Trafficked

    Slight and soft-spoken, the dark-eyed girl called Gina looks into the camera and speaks of her ordeal in a flat, disembodied voice, chronicling a story relived a thousand times. “The…

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard announces sweeping middle-income initiative

    Harvard President Drew Faust and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith today announced a sweeping overhaul of financial aid policies designed to make Harvard College more affordable for families across the income spectrum through major enhancements to grant aid, the elimination of student loans, and the removal of home equity…

  • Health

    Transitivity, the orbitofrontal cortex, and neuroeconomics

    You study the menu at a restaurant and decide to order the steak rather than the salmon. But when the waiter tells you about the lobster special, you decide lobster…

  • Science & Tech

    From neuroscience to childhood policy

    The Center on the Developing Child, founded in July 2006 to promote healthy child development as “the foundation of community development, economic prosperity, and a secure nation,” has been putting…

  • Arts & Culture

    Chute on graphic narratives — they’re not just comic books anymore

    The title of Hillary Chute’s Nov. 29 lecture, “Out of the Gutter: Contemporary Graphic Novels by Women,” has a double meaning. It refers to the elevation of graphic narratives — comics — from the lowest, most disreputable level of artistic expression to a form worthy of New York Times best-sellerdom, literary prizes, and academic attention.

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    Dec. 13, 1856 — A(bbott) Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s future 22nd President, is born in Boston.

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Dec. 3. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

  • Campus & Community

    In Brief

    PBH launches gift drive for area children The Phillips Brooks House (PBH) launched its annual holiday gift drive on Dec. 3 in an effort to collect hundreds of gifts for children in Boston and Cambridge. Running through Dec. 14, the drive will provide books, games, toys, art supplies, and sports equipment to children whose parents…

  • Campus & Community

    Newsmakers

    Olupona to accept prestigious Nigerian National Order of Merit Professor of African and African American Studies Jacob Olupona has been awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit prize for 2007. The president of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’Adua, will confer the award in the nation’s capital city of Abuja today (Dec. 6). The National Order of Merit…

  • Campus & Community

    Emerald walks, Sox tickets up for bid at auction

    A walking tour of Dublin and a pair of Red Sox tickets are just two of the items up for bid at the annual Summer Internship Fund auction scheduled for today (Dec. 6) at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG). The silent auction, featuring dozens of items, will begin at 5:30 p.m., followed by a…

  • Campus & Community

    Robert Dorwart

    Robert Dorwart was an academic of the highest rank and a physician committed to understanding and improving the lives of those who could not access quality health care.

  • Campus & Community

    Classicist, Loeb Library trustee Stewart dies at 86

    Distinguished American classicist Zeph Stewart, who was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Harvard University, passed away at his home in Watertown, Mass., on Dec. 1 at 86.

  • Arts & Culture

    ‘The diverse ways history can be written’

    Relocating to a foreign city for a new job can be stressful in the most congenial circumstances. Trying to depart your home country in the middle of a Communist coup? As Serhii Plokhii, Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, can tell you — that’s downright complicated.

  • Campus & Community

    Donald Pfister chosen as new dean of Harvard Summer School

    Donald Pfister, Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany at Harvard University and curator of the Farlow Herbarium, will become dean of the Harvard Summer School effective Jan. 1, 2008, announced Michael Shinagel, dean of Continuing Education and University Extension in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). He succeeds Robert Lue, professor of the practice…

  • Campus & Community

    David Maybury-Lewis, eminent anthropologist and scholar, 78

    David Maybury-Lewis, a Harvard anthropologist who served as a tireless advocate for indigenous cultures and peoples, died Dec. 2 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 78.

  • Campus & Community

    Sports Briefs

    Free tix for hoops, hockey University employees with a valid ID are eligible to receive a pair of free tickets to the following Harvard athletic events: women’s basketball vs. Holy Cross (Dec. 18 at 7 p.m.); men’s basketball vs. University of California, Irvine (Dec. 30 at 2 p.m.); men’s hockey vs. Clarkson (Jan. 12 at…

  • Campus & Community

    Flu vaccinations offered

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community.

  • Health

    Bonsai collection highlights age, beauty

    The foliage is green and youthful, but the twisted, gnarled trunks show the trees’ age. But that’s the point, of course.

  • Science & Tech

    Seabed microbe study leads to low-cost power, light for the poor

    A Harvard biology professor’s fascination with seafloor microbes has led to the development of a revolutionary, low-cost power system consuming garbage, compost, and other waste that could provide light for the developing world.

  • Health

    Newly discovered type of cell death may end up inhibiting tumor growth

    Sometimes healthy cells commit suicide. In the 1970s, scientists showed that a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis plays a key role in development, and the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine recognized their work. As apoptotic cells degrade, they display standard characteristics, including irregular bulges in the membrane and nuclear fragmentation.

  • Health

    Slow reading in dyslexia is tied to disorganized brain tracts

    Dyslexia marked by poor reading fluency — slow and choppy reading — may be caused by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Their study, using the latest imaging methods, gives researchers a glimpse of what may go wrong…

  • Health

    Blood stem cell’s roles could help clarify pathogenesis

    No other stem cell is more thoroughly understood than the blood, or hematopoietic, stem cell. These occasional and rare cells, scattered sparingly throughout the marrow and capable of replenishing an entire blood system, have been the driving force behind successful bone marrow transplants for decades. Scientists, for the most part, have seen this as the…

  • Health

    Brain systems less coordinated with age

    Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced age is often accompanied by a loss of mental agility, even in an otherwise healthy individual.

  • Health

    Increasing growth hormone release reduces abdominal fat

    Treatment with an investigational drug that induces the release of growth hormone significantly improved the symptoms of HIV lipodystrophy, a condition involving redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in patients receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection.

  • Campus & Community

    Phi Beta Kappa elects 48 seniors

    The following seniors, listed below by their Houses, were nominated to Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) in the latest round of elections, held this past November.

  • Campus & Community

    CPL honors Yacoobi with 2007 Gleitsman Award

    The Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at the Kennedy School of Government presented the 2007 Gleitsman International Activist Award to Sakena Yacoobi on Dec. 4. Yacoobi is the founder and executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), which she established in 1995 to provide teacher training to Afghan women, to support education for…

  • Campus & Community

    Gift to KSG to help advance social justice

    Officials at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) recently announced that the late Alan L. Gleitsman has left a bequest of $20 million to the School in order to advance his longtime passion: the pursuit of social justice. The gift is to serve as an endowment at the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at the…

  • Nation & World

    The importance of early education

    Forty-six years ago, a working-class town in Michigan began a program that changed lives. “Mind-blowing,” one scholar called it at Harvard last week.

  • Arts & Culture

    Scholar uses Singer sewing machine to parse cultural, economic development

    Harvard historian Andrew D. Gordon ’74, Ph.D. ’81 specializes in modern Japan and has written or edited a handful of breakthrough books on big labor, big steel, and big management.