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Campus & Community
Tradition rings out
A peal of bells will ring throughout Cambridge next week, on June 4. For the 21st consecutive year a number of neighboring churches and institutions will ring their bells in celebration of the city of Cambridge and of Harvard’s 358th Commencement Exercises.
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Campus & Community
A glimpse into the future
Five years from now, at high school graduation, the memory of their first visit to Harvard might not be as vivid, but it’s one that will last. The 40 young, inquisitive students who flocked to Cambridge on May 20 got a brief glimpse of a university with three and a half centuries of history —…
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Health
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).
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Health
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…
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Health
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.”
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Health
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.
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Health
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.
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Campus & Community
HAA announces Harvard Medal recipients
The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has announced the recipients of the 2009 Harvard Medal: John “Jack” F. Cogan Jr. A.B. ’49, J.D. ’52; Harvey V. Fineberg A.B. ’67, M.D. ’71, M.P.P. ’72, Ph.D. ’80; and Patti B. Saris A.B. ’73, J.D. ’76.
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Arts & Culture
Seceding from the secessionists
Deep in Civil War Mississippi, where manicured plantations gave way to wild swampland and thick pine forests, a young white man named Newton Knight led a ragtag band of guerilla fighters against the Confederate Army. His story is one of personal bravery and unwillingness to adhere to the secessionist movement that all but surrounded him.
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Nation & World
Talking terror
The two men sit close, knees almost touching, in a mud-walled hut in the Congolese village of Katokota.
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Science & Tech
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.
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Campus & Community
Four faculty join FAS’s teaching elite
Four professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been named Harvard College Professors in recognition of their contributions to undergraduate teaching, advising, and mentoring.
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Science & Tech
Leadership Initiative Fellow Bolden nominated to lead NASA
Retired Marine Maj. Gen. and former astronaut Charles Bolden was nominated to be the head of NASA on Saturday (May 23), interrupting his stay at Harvard as anAdvanced Leadership Fellow.
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Campus & Community
Guiding Harvard’s endowment
Call it fate. Just as the world’s financial markets started tumbling, a woman with unique understanding of the Harvard endowment took over the helm of the Harvard Management Company (HMC).
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Campus & Community
EVP Ed Forst to leave Harvard Aug. 1; return to financial sector
Edward C. Forst has decided to step down as the University’s executive vice president as of Aug. 1, to return with his family to New York and to resume his career in the financial services industry.
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Science & Tech
Hospice care under-used by many terminally ill patients, study finds
A new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) found that only about half the patients diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer discuss hospice care with their physician within…
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Health
‘Super-recognizers’ never forget a face
Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who’ve discovered a group they call “super-recognizers”: those who can easily recognize someone…
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Campus & Community
Police reports
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending May 18. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
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Arts & Culture
Two views of disparate cultures
Art historian Kellie Jones, the child of two writers, grew up in the 1960s and 1970s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was a place of cultural ferment, creation, and comparative racial freedom. Jones is exploring new visual and literary ways to convey her personal history. Legal scholar Stacy Leeds, an expert in tribal law,…
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Arts & Culture
Sarah Messer’s surreal poetics
With long, sun-streaked tresses, Sarah Messer doesn’t strike one as a poetess whose work conjures American histories in bewitching, surrealist twists. But Messer’s poems navigate farther and farther from the familiar mainland into a world wholly her own.
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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
May 21, 1940 — “The Harvard Crimson” publishes a statement endorsed by hundreds of students vowing “never under any circumstances to follow the footsteps of the students of 1917” who had gone off to fight in World War I. Thirty-four members of the Class of 1917 defend their actions in a statement published on May…
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Science & Tech
‘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…
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Campus & Community
Reischauer Institute seeks submissions for essays
The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies is now accepting submissions for its 2009 Noma-Reischauer Prizes in Japanese Studies, given to the undergraduate and graduate students with the best essays on Japan-related topics. The submission deadline is June 30, and $3,000 will be awarded for the best graduate student essay and $2,000 for the…
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Campus & Community
2009 Humboldt Research Award given to Donald Rubin
Donald Rubin, Ph.D. ’70, John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics, has been honored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, with the 2009 Humboldt Research Award. The award will permit Rubin to travel to Germany to collaborate with colleagues, primarily at Universität Bamberg. As one of the most prestigious awards in Germany for…
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Campus & Community
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures awards prize
The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures recently awarded Liyun Jin ’12 and graduate student Maria Khotimsky its V.M. Setchkarev Memorial Prize for their essays on Russian literature. Prizes of $500 each went to Jin for her essay “The Unattainable Ideal of Motherhood in ‘War and Peace’” and to Khotimsky for her paper titled “Internatsional…
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Campus & Community
Martins receives top honor
Princess Anne of Britain presented a Whitley Award, one of the world’s top prizes for grassroots nature conservation, to Dino J. Martins of Kenya, for his work to improve local understanding of and win greater protection for the pollinators that underpin farming in and around the Great Rift Valley and Taita Hills.
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Campus & Community
Hehir to receive honorary degree
J. Bryan Hehir, the Parker Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), will be awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Elms College at its annual commencement exercises on May 17.
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Campus & Community
Forstein honored with the Art of Healing Award
Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a Harvard-affiliated public health care system, has recently presentedMarshall Forstein, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, with its second annual Art of Healing Award. The award recognizes an individual for exemplary leadership, advocacy, and innovation in healing.
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Campus & Community
YIVO to honor Dershowitz
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will honor Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), on May 26 at its 84th annual benefit dinner. The ceremony will be held at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Dershowitz will be honored alongside Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of…