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Campus & Community
This month in Harvard history
March 9, 1857 — The faculty adopts the recommendation of a joint faculty/Overseers committee that annual examinations of each Class in each subject before an Overseers Visiting Committee be in writing instead of by recitation. Papers are to be set and marked by instructors, with Overseers essentially functioning as proctors. Thus begins Harvard’s modern ritual…
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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 March 9. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
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Arts & Culture
Harvard goes to Broadway
Ten minutes after pulling out of Cambridge on a bus bound for New York City, Davone Tines ’09 turned to his classmate Jordan Reddout ’10 and said, “I really like the prospect of this group of people going to Broadway to watch a musical.”
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Health
Faculty approves undergraduate concentration in human developmental, regenerative biology
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences late today voted to approve a new undergraduate concentration, or major, in Human Development and Regenerative Biology. One of the first of its kind…
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Health
Blood type study sheds light on biology of pancreatic cancer
Offering a novel clue about the basic biology of pancreatic cancer, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have confirmed a decades-old discovery of a link between blood type and the risk…
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Campus & Community
Sally Zeckhauser, vice president for administration since 1988, to retire in June
Sally Zeckhauser, who launched her Harvard career in 1973 and has served for more than two decades as the University’s vice president for administration, today (March 9) announced her plans to retire at the end of the 2008-09 academic year.
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Health
End-of-life conversations associated with lower medical expenses
Few physicians are eager to discuss end-of-life care with their patients. Yet such conversations may result in better quality of life for patients and could lower national health care expenditures…
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Health
Higher temperatures lead to more severe headaches
Although large numbers of headache sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their assertions. Now,…
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Health
Taking a stride toward synthetic life
Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances…
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Science & Tech
New web site aids Harvard faculty seeking funding
With literally tens of billions of dollars in federal research funding suddenly available — and application deadlines for proposals extraordinarily short — Harvard’s Provost’s Office has established a new web…
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Health
Banking of umbilical cord blood has little physician support
A survey of physicians has found broad support for the position that parents should not bank their newborns’ umbilical cord blood in a private blood bank unless another member of…
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Arts & Culture
Scholar plucks composers out of the dark
Wielding a viola da gamba almost as tall as she, Laury Gutiérrez plays with the assurance and animation of a rock star. She is, after all, one in a select club of artists who hold a National Interest Waiver from the U.S. government, granted to noncitizens “who because of their exceptional ability in the sciences,…
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Arts & Culture
Aykroyd honored, student groups featured
Dan Aykroyd has got Cultural Rhythms and blues. As celebrity emcee of the 24th annual Cultural Rhythms Festival and the Harvard Foundation’s Artist of the Year, a bespectacled Aykroyd dazzled the audience.
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Arts & Culture
When Boston was the hub of the literary world
Matthew Pearl, author of “The Dante Club” and “The Poe Shadow,” wove an engaging tale of Boston’s literary legacy — one significantly and curiously shaped by 19th century copyright laws.
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Arts & Culture
Office for the Arts announces its spring 2009 grants
More than 800 students will participate in 40 projects in dance, music, theater, and multidisciplinary genres at Harvard University this spring, sponsored in part by the Office for the Arts (OfA) grant program. Grants are designed to foster creative and innovative artistic initiatives among Harvard undergraduates.
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Arts & Culture
Dance, music, literature celebrate human rights
Human rights are all about history, politics, and the law — right? Not entirely. The arts have a role to play. Literature, music, dance, and other forms of creative expression often convey oblique stories of injustice and trauma. They also inspire humans to embrace the human rights implicit in every act of creation.
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Campus & Community
Faculty Council
At its seventh meeting of the year on Feb. 18, the Faculty Council discussed international centers and continued its discussion of the finances of the Faculty.
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Campus & Community
Stasa of Planning Office, 85
Josef Stasa, who worked as an urbanist for the Harvard University Planning Office for more than 25 years, passed away on Feb. 17 in Cambridge at the age of 85.
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Campus & Community
Flu continues, shots do too
With influenza activity in the Boston area continuing to increase, the Harvard community is reminded that free flu vaccines are still available to all Harvard faculty and staff through Harvard University Health Services (HUHS).
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Campus & Community
Pick up new Harvard IDs at Holyoke Center
Harvard has a new, high-technology ID card, and those who have not yet picked up their card should do so at the final card swap event, March 5 and 6, at the Holyoke Information Center, 1350 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Mass.
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Arts & Culture
Community lecture series debuts at Allston Education Portal
The Harvard Allston Education Portal buzzed with activity on Tuesday night (March 3) as Robert Lue, professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, gave the first in a series of faculty lectures for the community. His talk, titled “Using Science to Understand the World and Ourselves,” covered the importance of science…
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Science & Tech
Vivid images, stern warnings mark Ice Age ‘rock’ star’s talk
Oohs and ahhs greeted slide after slide as English author and freelance scholar Paul G. Bahn presented “The Shock of the Old: New Discoveries in Ice Age Art” at the Yenching Institute Feb 26.
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Health
Congressmen highlight challenges of mental illness, substance abuse
In 2008, 54 million Americans suffered with mental illness; 35,000 Americans committed suicide due to untreated depression; and 180,000 people died as a direct result of an untreated addiction. Congressmen Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) and Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) spoke at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Monday (March 2) on the truths and realities of mental…
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Health
Runyon Foundation names fellows from Harvard
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named six Harvard affiliates among its 13 new fellows. The recipients of this prestigious, three-year award are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators across the country.
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Science & Tech
The key to energy independence: Go fly a kite!
Earlier this year, Big Coal got its say in “The Future of Energy” lecture series sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Now it’s time to hear from Big Wind.
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Health
Watching evolution in real time
In 1831, the young Charles Darwin set off on the H.M.S. Beagle, a Royal Navy sloop bound for detailed surveys of South America. He took with him the first volume of the massive trilogy “Principles of Geology” by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell. (He had the other volumes sent later.)
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Health
Capillary formation’s mechanical determinants
Harvard researchers have established a link between the growth of blood vessels and the mechanical stresses caused by the environment within which the vessels grow, a new understanding that researchers hope can lead to novel disease treatments based on manipulating blood flow to living tissues.
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Campus & Community
Harvard astronomer Charbonneau honored with Waterman Award
David Charbonneau, the 34-year-old Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy, has been named the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award, and will receive $500,000 over a three-year period for scientific research or advanced study in his field.
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Campus & Community
Child-care programs, aid to continue at Harvard
Harvard University will continue a number of programs designed to help meet specific child care needs at the University. In 2006, the Task Force on Women Faculty and the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering issued a final report that pointed to the need for increased University support for child care. Subsequently, several…
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Arts & Culture
When gentrification occurs in City of the Seven Hills
History and modernity collide in Monti, a neighborhood in Rome, and the local way of life is falling victim to the impact. Michael Herzfeld, professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explores the changing landscape of this ancient neighborhood in a new ethnography about this district within Italy’s capital city.