All articles


  • Campus & Community

    Divining the dreams of lost worlds

    From an early age, Wai-yee Li has been a frequent visitor to the world of the imagination, at times preferring it to the world of the here and now.

  • Campus & Community

    Cambridge schools seek volunteer tutors, aides

    Cambridge School Volunteers Inc. (CSV), is a private, nonprofit organization that recruits, trains, places, and provides support services for volunteers in kindergarten through grade 12 in the Cambridge Public School system. CSV needs people of all ages and backgrounds to serve as tutors, classroom aides, and library assistants.

  • Campus & Community

    Suspect is sought

    On Monday, Jan. 8, at approximately 2:19 p.m., the victim of an indecent assault and battery incident came to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) headquarters to report that she had just been attacked while walking along Berkeley Street near Phillips Street in Cambridge. The suspect approached the victim from behind and grabbed her in…

  • Campus & Community

    Police Log

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending Saturday, Jan. 13. The official log is located at Police Headquarters, 29 Garden St.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard History

    January 1659 – President Charles Chauncy describes a recent “great disorder at Cambridge” involving nighttime fighting “betweene the schollars and some of the toune.” Cambridge and Harvard thus chalk up…

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council Notes

    At its eighth meeting of the year the Council heard a report from Paul Bergen, the Facultys Instructional Computing Group Manager, on the development of instructional computing in the Faculty. Dean Paul Martin, chair of the Standing Committee on Information Technology, and Frank Steen, director of Computer Services, were present for this discussion.

  • Campus & Community

    Alzheimer’s vaccine looks promising

    In 1993, Harvard researchers Dennis Selkoe and Howard Weiner got together over dinner to talk about how they might combine their expertise to find a better treatment for Alzheimer’s, a…

  • Campus & Community

    Gene for familial dysautonomia discovered

    Familial dysautonomia is a neurodegenerative disease that mainly targets Ashkenazi Jews. The disease, which affects one in every 3,600 members of this group, impairs the development of the sensory and…

  • Campus & Community

    High school dropouts concentrated in 35 cities

    The nation’s high school dropout problem is most desperate in between 200 to 300 schools in the 35 largest cities in the U.S. The cities are Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, San…

  • Campus & Community

    Genetic link discovered for late onset Alzheimer’s

    Although they have not yet identified the actual gene, researchers have evidence that a gene located on human chromosome 10 could be more potent than previous risk factors for late…

  • Campus & Community

    Accurately measuring socioeconomic differences, health disparities

    For more than two years, Nancy Krieger and her colleagues have worked with approximately 1 million records from databases of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Departments of Public Health as…

  • Campus & Community

    Soft news and critical journalism eroding audiences

    A rise in soft news and critical journalism “may now be hastening the decline in news audiences” and “weakening the foundation of democracy by diminishing the public’s information about public…

  • Campus & Community

    Marine science expert monitoring Boston Harbor pollution

    Harvard researcher James Shine is currently researching pollutants in the sediment of Boston Harbor and other harbors. He is crafting criteria for the Environmental Protection Agency that would measure pollution…

  • Campus & Community

    Uncovering new evidence for ‘event horizons’ surrounding black holes

    With results that fundamentally differ from earlier black hole studies, Harvard researchers have shown that some recently discovered black holes are not only ultra-dense, but actually possess event horizons that…

  • Campus & Community

    One in three Massachusetts workers ill-equipped to meet demands

    The most startling finding of a new report is that 667,000 of 1.1 million at-risk workers in Massachusetts have earned a high school credential but still lack basic math, reading,…

  • Campus & Community

    Study quantifies children’s mouthing of objects

    A study asked parents to observe and record their children’s mouthing behavior over five non-consecutive days. Approximately 300 children showed a wide range of mouthing behaviors, from essentially none at…

  • Campus & Community

    Lowering iron levels does not cut heart attack risk for men

    Men who give blood reduce the amount of iron in their bodies, but that does not result in a reduction in their risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and heart…

  • Campus & Community

    Gifts from Kiev

    Gennadii Boriak of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences presented a guide to the Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine to Harvard University in December. Sidney Verba (above), director…

  • Campus & Community

    President issues statement on diversity

    A number of questions have been asked in recent days about the University’s position and my own views on diversity. I thought a brief statement might be helpful in this regard.

  • Campus & Community

    How we talk can change the way we work

    If we want a better understanding of the prospect of change, we first need a better way of seeing into our own powerful inclination NOT to change. Considering every workplace…

  • Campus & Community

    Alzheimer’s vaccine looks promising

    Medical researchers have successfully treated Alzheimer’s disease in mice by putting drops of vaccine in their noses. They think it will ultimately be possible to do the same with people.

  • Campus & Community

    Physicist draws on left side of brain

    A molecule streaks in from the right, smashing into a smaller molecule entering from the top. A third strikes the two as they briefly merge, sending all three on their separate ways, down and out of the frame.

  • Campus & Community

    HLS is key in developing new rules to protect women

    With guidance from the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has recently issued a comprehensive set of new rules providing asylum to abused women if their home countries fail to protect them.

  • Campus & Community

    Stable relationship

    For the 18 members of the Harvard Equestrian Club, riding instructor Alyce McNeil is part drill sergeant, part cheerleader, and part ringmaster. Lets pick up to a trot, McNeil instructed during a recent Wednesday outing for the club. Really make them trot. Hard! Hit her harder . . . yank her and say get-up!

  • Campus & Community

    ACS recognizes Rosenthal

    David Rosenthal, director of University Health Services, accepted an American Cancer Society Sandra C. Labaree Volunteer Value Award for Mission last month at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. The award recognizes an outstanding contribution in leadership to the American Cancer Societys mission. Stephanie Harrison-Diggs, an American Cancer Society New England board member, presented…

  • Campus & Community

    European College information session set at the Barker Center

    The European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA), a recently founded Anglophone liberal arts college in Berlin, will host a wine and cheese party from 4 to 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 18, in the Thompson Room of the Barker Center.

  • Campus & Community

    Bridging racial gaps

    In an attempt to find ways to bridge the potentially explosive gap between police and minority communities throughout the country, a diverse group of civil rights activists, law enforcement officials, legal experts, journalists, and victims of racial injustice visited Harvard Law School (HLS) last week to participate in a three-day conference examining race and the…

  • Campus & Community

    Joint statement on ‘casual’ employees released

    A message from Provost Harvey V. Fineberg: This statement was prepared jointly by HUCTW and representatives of the University on casual employees. The statement summarizes the very productive work done by the joint committee working on this issue. I am confident that you will join me in supporting the sentiments in the statement, and that…

  • Campus & Community

    GSD Prize awarded for transforming Rio Slums

    A massive project that is transforming Rio de Janeiro’s squalid shantytowns into functioning, integrated neighborhoods has won the Graduate School of Design’s Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design. Argentinian-born…

  • Campus & Community

    Innovations in tech teaching garner grants

    The Provosts Office has awarded the first round of 16 grants to Harvard professors and instructors for projects that will enhance the use of technology in education.