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Health
What made Darwin first
Evolution icon Charles Darwin rushed “On the Origin of Species” into print to beat the competition, but neglected to credit early thinkers on the subject, who let him know it after the book’s 1859 publication, leading to his appended “Historical Sketch” in later editions.
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Nation & World
Haiti: New Hospital
Harvard faculty work through nonprofit to bring health to world’s poor.
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Nation & World
Progress in Haiti ‘painfully slow’
A year after a devastating earthquake in Haiti, Harvard faculty members reflect on work done there and the difficult job that remains.
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Campus & Community
AAAS announces 15 Harvard fellows
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has awarded 15 Harvard faculty members the distinction of being named an AAAS Fellow on Jan. 11.
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Health
Checking in, saving lives
Harvard researchers have estimated the likely cost-effectiveness of post-discharge follow-up phone calls to smokers hospitalized with acute heart attacks. In a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers suggest that phone calls to these discharged smokers encouraging them to quit would yield significant health and economic gains.
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Campus & Community
Nominations open for Harvard Corporation members
As announced in December, the Harvard Corporation will expand from seven to 13 members, as part of a broader set of changes involving the Corporation’s composition and work.
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Nation & World
Congo: Rape as Strategy
Researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative have been working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for several years examining the roots of the violence against women that has plagued this war-torn region.
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Nation & World
Haiti: Home Visit
Living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, most of Haiti’s nine million people are subsistence farmers. Poverty and malnutrition are exacerbated by poor health care and a low vaccination rate.
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Nation & World
Haiti: Mother to Child
Living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, most of Haiti’s nine million people are subsistence farmers. Poverty and malnutrition are exacerbated by poor health care and a low vaccination rate.
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Health
Expecting better
Harvard researchers in the Children’s Hospital Boston Informatics Program have created a model for predicting a drug’s tendency to cause birth defects.
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Science & Tech
Slimy secrets
Harvard researchers have discovered that Bacillus subtilis biofilm colonies exhibit an unmatched ability to repel a wide range of liquids — and even vapors. The finding holds promise for developing better ways to eliminate harmful biofilms that can clog pipes, contaminate food production and water supply systems, and lead to infections.
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Campus & Community
New Arboretum director hosts meet and greet
In his first month as the Arnold Arboretum’s new director, William Friedman is hosting two meet and greets and has established a Director’s Lecture Series.
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Campus & Community
Gregory Verdine wins prize for cancer research
Gregory Verdine has won the 2011 American Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research.
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Arts & Culture
Inside Dumbarton Oaks
More people are enjoying the treasures of Harvard-owned Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., in part because of the opening of new library and museum facilities, and because of fresh efforts to increase connections with Harvard’s Cambridge campus and reach out to political, educational, and cultural leaders in Washington.
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Campus & Community
HBS faculty-authored book garners acclaim
“Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads,” a book by two Harvard Business School faculty members, has been named one of the best business books of 2010 by Strategy + Business magazine.
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Campus & Community
Something to shoot for
A number of girls and boys from Cambridge and Allston-Brighton who, along with their families, cheered the Crimson to an 83-70 win over UMass. The game capped a series of three Community Days sponsored by the Harvard men’s and women’s basketball teams that offered free admission to Cambridge and Allston-Brighton residents over the winter break.
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Campus & Community
Basketball player earns honors
Harvard sophomore Victoria Lippert earned her first league honors of the season this week (Jan. 3) as she was named Ivy League Co-Player of the Week for her performances last week for the Crimson.
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Health
Tiny donors
In the first study to look at the potential for organ donation from dying infants in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) setting, Harvard researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center demonstrated that an estimated 8 percent of NICU mortalities would be eligible for organ donation after…
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Science & Tech
Sharp turns
Undergraduates in Engineering Sciences 51: “Computer-Aided Machine Design” spent a semester learning to design gadgets in SolidWorks, building candy-flinging catapults, and mastering the use of the soldering iron. Then came the final assignment: Transform a cordless power screwdriver into a functional all-terrain vehicle.
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Health
Newborns need for vitamin D
The vitamin D levels of newborn babies appear to predict their risk of respiratory infections during infancy and the occurrence of wheezing during early childhood, but not the risk of developing asthma. Results of a study in the January 2011 issue of Pediatrics support the theory that widespread vitamin D deficiency contributes to risk of…
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Health
Mixed messages
A comparative analysis found wide disparities in the results of four common measures of hospital-wide mortality rates, with competing methods yielding both higher- and lower-than-expected rates for the same Massachusetts hospitals during the same year.
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Health
Placebos work — even without deception
Patients who were knowingly given placebos for irritable bowel syndrome experienced significant symptom relief when compared with controls.
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Campus & Community
Chinese scholars celebrate Gates
Specialists in African-American and American literature from across China gathered on Dec. 11 and 12 at the Beijing Foreign Studies University to commemorate the 60th birthday of Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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Health
Seeing double
By comparing the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia to DNA extracted from two extinct species, the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, researchers have concluded that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Now that we know the forest and savanna elephants are two very different animals, the forest elephant…
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Health
The face looks familiar
People’s ability to recognize and remember faces peaks at ages 30 to 34, about a decade later than most other mental abilities, a new study says.
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Campus & Community
Waves and the waggle dance
In a lecture, titled “Good Vibrations: How We Communicate” and hosted by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Howard Stone, Dixon Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and a former Harvard faculty member, enticed children and their families into the world of physics and biology.
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Campus & Community
Library Board names executive director
The Harvard Library Board today (Dec. 20) named Helen Shenton as the first executive director of the new Harvard Library, turning to a veteran of the British Library to develop a more coordinated management structure for the oldest library in the Western Hemisphere.
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Health
Dairy fat may help not harm
Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and collaborators from other institutions have identified a natural substance in dairy fat that may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
