All articles

  • Campus & Community

    Reservoir system proposed to meet needs

    A former Massachusetts water official is proposing a new network of central Massachusetts reservoirs to meet population-driven demand that he says will outstrip current supplies in the coming decades.

  • Science & Tech

    Climate change an ‘opportunity’ as well as a threat

    Conservation pioneer Russell A. Mittermeier started this year’s Roger Tory Peterson Memorial Lecture (April 5) with a quiz. In front of several hundred listeners at Harvard’s Science Center he turned on a small recorder.

  • Science & Tech

    Planning to save a changing world

    Climate change is not only altering Alaska’s natural world, it’s also affecting how humans interact with it, particularly those whose culture and traditions have pointed the way for generations to survive in the sometimes inhospitable far north. Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Arctic Biology, said that climate…

  • Health

    Study shows waist size predictor of heart failure in men and women

    Adding to the growing evidence that a person’s waist size is an important indicator of heart health, a study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that larger waist circumference is associated with increased risk of heart failure in middle-aged and older populations of men and women.

  • Arts & Culture

    National Endowment for the Humanities supports preservation of Qajar dynasty

    The National Endowment for the Humanities has made a $346,733 grant to a team of Qajar historians. The purpose of this grant, which lasts from May 2009 to June 2011, is to develop a comprehensive digital archive and Web site at Harvard University that will preserve, link, and render accessible primary source materials related to…

  • Arts & Culture

    Cinematic reverberations

    The writing of culture watcher and critic Louis Menand — Harvard’s Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English — has cast a wide net over the years.

  • Arts & Culture

    Poet/critics and the state of the art

    A triumvirate of prominent poet-critics – each with strong Harvard ties – took on the meaning of contemporary poetry last week. And despite a lively discussion, none of them provided a comprehensive definition.

  • Arts & Culture

    Gail Mazur reads at Radcliffe

    After removing her soaked red sneakers, Radcliffe Fellow Gail Mazur read aloud from new poems Monday (April 6) in dry black socks. The poet was undeterred by the onslaught of gray rain that thrashed Radcliffe Gymnasium’s windows — a fitting backdrop for Mazur’s charged, emotional poems.

  • Campus & Community

    Morris Simon

    Morris Simon, MB, BCH, died suddenly and unexpectedly on January 17, 2005, one day after his 79th birthday. At the time of his death he was professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School and working regularly in the Department of Radiology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, as he had for almost a half century.

  • Campus & Community

    MessageMe system to be tested April 16

    The University will test its emergency text-messaging system, MessageMe, on April 16. The test message will be broadcast midday to more than 14,000 Harvard community members who have signed up for the alert system to date.

  • Campus & Community

    FAS dean hosts town meeting

    Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Dean Michael D. Smith will host a town meeting for faculty and staff to update the community on the financial challenges facing FAS; talk about the progress made toward solving these challenges; and present the next steps to address the budget shortfalls projected for FY10 and FY11. The meeting…

  • Campus & Community

    Hammonds, Smith announce College will be closed during mid-year break

    In an e-mail sent Monday (April 6) to Harvard students, faculty, and staff, Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith announced that Harvard College will be closed during the 2009-2010 mid-year break, between the end of exams in December and the first day of classes in January.

  • Campus & Community

    Unleashed pets barred from Yard

    Effective April 1, unleashed pets will no longer be allowed in Harvard Yard. All pets, with the exception of service animals, must be on a leash at all times.

  • Campus & Community

    Samuel P. Huntington service set

    A memorial service for Samuel P. Huntington, who was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, will be held on April 22 at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Huntington, a longtime Harvard University professor, an enormously influential political scientist, and a mentor to a generation of scholars in widely…

  • Campus & Community

    Narayanamurti accepts spot at HKS’s Belfer Center

    Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti will be the new director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Belfer Center director Graham Allison announced April 1.

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson men’s golf take Yale Spring Opener

    For the second consecutive season, the Harvard Crimson men’s golf team found success in New Haven, Conn., capturing the Yale Spring Opener behind the play of senior John Christensen and juniors Danny Mayer and Greg Shuman, who finished first, second, and third, respectively, in the tournament.

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson women’s golf remain unbeaten; win sixth tournament

    The Harvard women’s golf team, which before this past weekend (April 4-5) had won each of the five tournaments they competed in this season, made it six-for-six on Sunday (April 5), completing the 2009 Brown Invitational 34 strokes ahead of second-place finisher Boston College.

  • Campus & Community

    Crimson win 3 in walk-off fashion

    In dramatic fashion, the Harvard men’s baseball team took three-of-four from Cornell and Princeton this past weekend (April 4-5), with the help of three key walk-off hits, two from Tom Stack-Babich ’09 and one from Taylor Meehan ’09.

  • Campus & Community

    PBHA holds Summer Urban Auction

    The Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) will host its sixth annual Auction for the Summer Urban Program at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub (45 Quincy Street) on April 28 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event will support PBHA’s 12 summer camps, which serve more than 900 children and youth in Boston and Cambridge.

  • Nation & World

    Former prime minister of Spain explores ‘Role of Europe’

    Jose Maria Aznar, the prime minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004, will deliver a lecture titled “The Role of Europe in the Geopolitical Context” at 5 p.m. Wednesday (April 15) in the Belfer Center’s Starr Auditorium at Harvard Kennedy School.

  • Campus & Community

    Gates’ ‘Lives 2’ receives Parents’ Choice Award

    Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s PBS documentary “African American Lives 2” has won the Parents’ Choice Gold Award for Television, awarded last month by the Parents’ Choice Foundation.

  • Campus & Community

    HMS professor receives first Thomas H. Lee M.D. Award

    Michael Aaron Lambert, assistant professor of medicine in Harvard Medical School, received the inaugural Thomas H. Lee M.D. Award for Excellence in Primary Care on April 3. Lambert is the medical director of Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center in Boston.

  • Campus & Community

    This month in Harvard history

    April 5, 1898 — Responding to the Spanish-American War, 1st Lt. Wirt Robinson, Instructor in Military Science, solicits volunteers to drill under his supervision. Sixty students show up the next day. By May, more than 400 have responded.

  • Campus & Community

    Police reports

    Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) for the week ending April 6. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.

  • Health

    Mexican program successful at reducing crippling health care costs

    Seguro Popular, a Mexican health care program instituted in 2003, has already reduced crippling health care costs among poorer households, according to an evaluation conducted by researchers at Harvard University in collaboration with researchers in Mexico.

  • Health

    Waist size predictor of heart failure in men and women

    Adding to the growing evidence that a person’s waist size is an important indicator of heart health, a study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that larger waist circumference is associated with increased risk of heart failure in middle-aged and older populations of men and women.

  • Campus & Community

    Hammonds, Smith announce College will be closed during mid-year break

    In an e-mail sent Monday (April 6) to Harvard students, faculty, and staff, Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith announced that Harvard College will be closed during the 2009-2010 mid-year break, between the end of exams in December and the first day of classes in January.

  • Health

    Simple bedside test improves diagnosis of chronic back pain

    A simple and inexpensive method of assessing pain, developed by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), is better than currently used techniques for distinguishing neuropathic pain – pain caused…

  • Health

    Lighting up Parkinson’s disease research

    Most people do not think of jellyfish at the mention of Parkinson’s disease research. But, at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND), researchers Pamela McLean and Bradley Hyman are…

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council

    At its ninth meeting of the year on March 18, the Faculty Council was briefed by the Dean of the College on House renewal and on the review of the Undergraduate Council. The Council also considered a proposal to change the name of the Standing Committee on Ethnic Studies.