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Nation & World
School vouchers’ greatest impact
A new study on the impact of school vouchers on college enrollments shows that the percentage of African-American students who enrolled part time or full time in college by 2011 was 24 percent higher for those who had won a school voucher lottery and used their voucher to attend a private school.
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Science & Tech
Listening for clues
Baby songbirds learn to sing by imitation, just as human babies do. So researchers at Harvard and Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, have been studying the brains of zebra finches — red-beaked, white-breasted songbirds — for clues to how young birds and human infants learn vocalization on a neuronal level.
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Campus & Community
Where sand and sun meet science
The annual Rhino Cup volleyball league stokes the competitive fires of Harvard’s biological community, drawing researchers out of the lab and onto the sandy volleyball court in the courtyard of the Biological Laboratories.
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Health
Vitamin D’s impact on infection
A study led by Harvard researchers of Mongolian schoolchildren supports the possibility that daily vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of respiratory infections in winter.
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Campus & Community
Researchers awarded NARSAD grants
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced $11.9 million in new research grants, strengthening its investment in the most promising ideas to lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating mental illness, including 19 grants to Harvard researchers.
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Health
Synthetic future
In the synthetic biology lab of Professor Pamela Silver, researchers are looking for ways to make biological engineering faster, cheaper, and more predictable.
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Health
A story that doesn’t hold up
A study conducted by Professor of Psychology Richard J. McNally and colleagues from the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam is casting doubt on the “amnesia barrier” that has long been a hallmark of multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder, by demonstrating that patients have knowledge of their other identities.
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Science & Tech
Butterflies heading north
A Harvard study reveals that over the past 19 years, a warming climate has been reshaping Massachusetts butterfly communities.
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Science & Tech
Using evolution to understand pollution
A tool rarely used to understand the impact of pollution on the natural world is evolution, an oversight that an environmental toxicologist says is robbing investigators of important information.
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Campus & Community
Teens learn and earn at Harvard
Despite a bleak forecast for summer jobs for teenagers, Harvard employed more than 150 teens from Boston and Cambridge to work throughout the University. According to the teens, the skills they acquired include some valuable life lessons.
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Science & Tech
Soft robots go for color, camouflage
Researchers have developed a system — inspired by nature — that allows soft robots to either camouflage themselves against a background, or to make bold color displays. Such a “dynamic coloration” system could one day have a host of uses, ranging from helping doctors plan complex surgeries to acting as a visual marker to help…
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Science & Tech
Soft Robots, in color
Having already broken new ground in robotics with the development, last year, of a class of “soft”, silicone-based robots based on creatures like squid and octopi, Harvard scientists are now working to create systems that would allow the robots to camouflage themselves, or stand out in their environment.
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Health
CYCLOPS genes an Achilles’ heel in tumors?
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT used new technology to explore a 19-year-old theory, discovering what may be an Achilles’ heel for cancer cells: essential genes disrupted in the process of becoming cancerous that can be attacked further with drug therapy.
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Science & Tech
Re-creating a slice of the universe
Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and their colleagues at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies have made it possible to build a universe from scratch.
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Science & Tech
Making sense of memory
It happens to all of us: We think we learned of the Sept. 11 attacks from a radio report, when, in fact, the news came from a co-worker; we’re sure the robber running from the bank was tall, when actually he was short; we remember waking up at 7 yesterday, when 8 is closer to…
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Arts & Culture
Wedding digital with traditional
Event showcases metaLAB summer projects displaying ways to access, annotate, and remix knowledge in the digital age.
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Health
The tangled web around spiders
A biologist with an affinity for spiders shared his passion, taking the audience on a tour of arachnids large and small and making a pitch for their conservation as natural pest control.
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Campus & Community
New dean for GSAS
Xiao-Li Meng, chair of Harvard’s Department of Statistics, has been named dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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Nation & World
Taking a stand on diversity
After the Supreme Court announced it will hear a major case on affirmative action in October, Harvard joined 13 other universities to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting considerations of race in college admissions.
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Campus & Community
Harvard carrying Dell on campus, online
At Harvard’s Technology Products and Services, personal purchasers can now buy a selection of Dell notebooks, desktops, and displays on campus.
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Arts & Culture
A Julia-worthy feast
An extensive archive at the Schlesinger Library illuminates the life and work of Julia Child, whose writings and TV show brought the world of French cuisine to the American masses.
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Campus & Community
The poetry of achievement
Thirty high school students from the Boston area gathered for the Crimson Summer Academy’s annual poetry slam. The young scholars spend three consecutive summers on the Harvard campus, amid classes, projects, field trips, and cultural activities to achieve their dream: success at college.
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Health
Simplifying multidrug therapies
As described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team found that by studying how drugs interact in pairs, researchers can predict how larger combinations of drugs will interact.
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Campus & Community
Pausing to celebrate
More than 100 faculty, students, and staff from the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology turned out for a barbecue to celebrate the full-professor promotions of Kevin Eggan, Konrad Hochedlinger, and Amy Wagers.
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Campus & Community
Amid the gold rush
Harvard Olympians are making headway in the 2012 London Olympic Games.
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Campus & Community
O’Callahan a new director at HUHS
Patrick O’Callahan has been named the new director of after-hours urgent care and the Stillman Infirmary at Harvard University Health Services.
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Campus & Community
Varsity status for women’s rugby
Harvard will create a varsity women’s rugby team, to begin play in the 2013-14 season.
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Health
Estrogen and female anxiety
Some women’s vulnerability to anxiety and mood disorders may be explained by their estrogen levels, according to new research by Harvard and Emory University neuroscientists.
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Health
Mercury pollution, still spreading
With mercury contamination from coal burning and other industrial processes spreading in the environment, a new book edited by a Harvard Medical School staff member offers an overview, touching on chemistry, biology, and public health.
